An iron wall began to form between Juba and the Ark, a solidifying fog of gray growing up from the floor. A foot high, then two. Three. Four.
Bigger. It needed to be bigger.
Caesarion tried to bring up more power, to draw more metals to him, but he felt suddenly dizzy and his vision swam.
I’m fainting, he thought, wondering how he could be so objective even as his body rejected his mind. I can’t take it. I’m not ready. No one should ever be.
But he had to stop Juba. If he didn’t, they all were dead. And what would this power be in the hands of such a man? What would it be in the hands of any man?
He’d surprised the Numidian, but he knew it wasn’t enough. If Juba accessed the Shard again, it would be the end of them all. He wouldn’t be able to stop him.
By sheer force of will, Caesarion’s vision cleared. He saw Juba was stepping over the waist-high wall, his hands already reaching out for the Ark.
“No,” he said.
Praying that Hannah would live out the day, that the Ark would be safe, that it would all, in the end, be worth it, Caesarion dove into the depths like a man seeking the bottom of the sea. Only when he thought he could take no more did he rise up and throw it all—the power, his heart, the last moment of his consciousness—into Juba’s stomach.
As his limp body let go of the Ark, through a pulse of bright green fire, Caesarion saw the Numidian doubled over, flying backward into the darkness beneath the city. Then the fire was gone and he saw the side of the Ark rising in his vision. He saw the arching supports of the bridge above him. And, just as the light behind his own eyes went out, he saw the face of Hannah, like an angel’s in sunlight.
30
THE LIES OF A SCHOLAR
ALEXANDRIA, 30 BCE
Didymus was, first and foremost, a scholar. Long before he’d traded his morality for Octavian’s support of his candidacy to lead the Great Library at Alexandria, before he’d even begun to tutor the children of Cleopatra, he’d been fascinated with knowledge. As a child his thirst for learning was insatiable. He’d read anything and everything he could get his hands on, forgetting nothing his eyes passed over, and he prided himself on his observational skills.
It was perhaps to be expected, then, that when he awoke to screaming in the half-darkness beneath the streets of Alexandria, he was driven first by intellectual curiosity to look around. Even after he remembered what had happened—he’d seen Juba, impossibly still alive, coming down the walkway beside the underground canal toward the Ark, and the Numidian had flung him aside into the hard stone wall—and realized what was currently happening—men were dying, screaming out the end of their lives in horrifyingly pitched wails of excruciating pain—he couldn’t run. He couldn’t move. He had to stay, to try and watch, in increasing shock, what was unfolding.
Slumped over against the wall, he saw first his own blood glistening on the moss that grew in the gaps between its stones. Next he saw flashing light—blue light, he thought—and he felt a bitter cold wind coming down the canal, as if the city were breathing out, or the sea was breathing in.
Something rattled into his side, and Didymus rolled to see what it was, trying to ignore the pain that threatened to split his potentially cracked skull. Pullo’s lamp, he saw, still lit. By its light, he saw the long spray of blood on the ground beside him, leading to good, loyal Pullo, who was writhing on his side facing him, his head jerking backward with pained gasps, again and again, into the big oil pots behind him. Didymus started to reach out toward his old friend, his stomach twisting, when he saw that for all Pullo’s pain, he wasn’t one of the men being torn apart. His gaze moved past Pullo and the pots, past the still form of Jacob, impaled on a sword, to where Juba, the man he’d led to this place, stood with his hands on the First Shard, the Ark of the Covenant.
A thin veil of what looked like luminous blue smoke curled about the Numidian like a tornado, sucking the air out of the tunnels. In front of him, the four archers assigned to help protect the Ark were in various states of torture: each of them was screaming in a rain of his own blood, the worst of them shrunken down and in on himself as if his skeleton was being crushed within his body.
Just then Caesarion jumped into view on the other side of the Ark, and his hands gripped the two angels on its top. His shoulders began to shake, and his eyes shut. The twisting clouds spinning about the two men and the Ark between them began to turn faster and faster.
“Did-mus,” Pullo croaked through clenched teeth.
Didymus managed to pull his attention away from the Shard-driven storm of power on the platform. He looked down at Pullo, who’d pushed his back up against the pots and was shaking and jerking like a man in seizures. The big man’s eyes seemed to be going in and out of focus, as if he couldn’t keep the world in sight.
“Pullo,” Didymus said. “I … what can I do?”
“Vorenus,” Pullo whispered. “Vorenus.”
“It’s Didymus. I’m here.” The air around them seemed to groan, but Didymus didn’t look. He wanted to see, to understand, but he wanted more to help the man who’d been his friend even when he didn’t deserve to have one.
“Vorenus,” the big man repeated. “Save … Ark. Caes-ion.”
Didymus started to ask what Pullo wanted Vorenus for, if that’s what he was wanting, but an exhalation of wind jerked his gaze upward. The storm around the Ark had calmed slightly, and it seemed to his eyes more green than blue now. Juba had staggered back toward him and Pullo, only a few steps away, and Didymus thought for a moment about reaching out and grabbing his feet out from under him, about doing something to help Caesarion, even if he could save no one else. But he knew, deep down inside, that he was a coward. He was weak. Why else had he gone along with Octavian’s plan to kill Caesarion so many years ago? Why else had he led Juba here now? Had there really been no choice? And he could do nothing against a man such as Juba, he rationalized. He was a librarian, not a warrior. Not a man like Pullo.
A high-pitched tinkling sound came to the scholar’s ears. The surface of the platform shimmered as a haze of dust formed upward and swept across it. Didymus watched it slide past them, past Juba, gathering between the Numidian and the Ark, a swirl of debris that took the shape of a wall. Inch by inch, up from the platform, it grew more and more solid.
An iron wall, his scholar’s mind noted. An iron wall that will seal Juba away from the Ark. And us with him. That’s interesting.
The wall ceased forming for a moment, the storm abating slightly. Juba stepped back toward the Ark, one leg coming up over the low half of the wall. His arms were reaching out.
“No,” Caesarion said, his voice booming with otherworldly power.
Didymus, without thinking, dove atop Pullo, protecting him with his body an instant before the storm exploded outward in a flash of green fire, scattering debris that pounded bruises into the librarian’s back. He felt but did not see as Juba soared over them, and he heard his body skittering across the paved walkway into the deeper dark.
The silence that fell around him next was so sudden that the librarian thought for a moment that the concussive force of the energy burst had deafened him. But then he heard the rasp of Pullo’s quick and shallow breaths beneath him, and the call of frightened seagulls out below the bridge.
“Caesarion,” he heard Hannah say from somewhere on the platform beyond the Ark. “Stay with me. I see it, Caesarion. I see the boat.”
Didymus pulled himself off Pullo, his face excited. “Do you hear, Pullo? Vorenus is coming. We’ll get you—”
Pullo wasn’t looking at him. His gaze was fixed on a point behind him, up the walkway toward the Ark chamber.