by Adam Golden
Through years of fruitless searching, endless questioning, and constant searching, the thought of that monster bleeding and scarred, and of his gentle quiet sister struggling fiercely to live, kept the priest on his path. His faith was for God, but his devotion, that was all wrapped up in his quest, his need for justice, for closure, for vengeance. For more than a year he’d searched Jerusalem and the lands around for any hint of the dark-haired man in the red cloak, convinced that the two witnesses had in fact seen the same man. He found little, and his hope waned, but in the end, it was Chara who gave him the clue he needed.
It was the books. The sack the second witness had seen had been full of books looted from Chara’s shelves, books which his careful meticulous sister had carefully cataloged. Arius set the little knife on the square of silk and drew out his sister’s ledger. The pages were worn with years of turning, the entries long ago committed to memory, every loop and swirl of her handwriting as familiar to him as the words of his daily prayers. Some of the texts that were found to be missing were common enough works on history and geography, but others were more rare. Esoteric texts on herbology, numerology, demonology, and the occult traditions of the tribes of Isreal, Egypt, and many other lands. Those texts would be the key. They were largely untranslated, written in ancient tongues not known by many. That was why Chara had them, she had loved deciphering the languages of the ancients.
The rare books gave him somewhere concrete to focus. Arius sought out experts and scholars in the Holy Land and beyond. He built contacts in circles concerned with pagan lore and history and published theological opinions out of step with more conservative teachings. In a few years he was thought of as a Pagan’s kind of Christian, which made his searching all the easier.
The clues came slowly, painfully slowly, over years, but they did come. A bit of text translated for an anonymous patron in Greece, a manuscript sold to a Roman in Africa, a dealer in Rome who recalled a dark featured man seeking a translation of an Egyptian tablet on colour magic.
His best clue came from home, from Alexandria. The city, ever a hub of learning, scholarship, and tourism, was always rife with gossip, news, and whispers. A friend of many years, one who took tourists to see the temples of the old gods for a fee, sent Arius a letter about a dark haired Greek who he’d led on a tour of several temples, a Greek with an uncommon knowledge of the old Egyptian mysticisms, a Greek whose luggage contained a fine red cloak he never wore in the daylight. Arius had clutched the letter so hard that he’d torn it and had struggled to read the last words. His source said the man was a wealthy, refined nephew to a Bishop, and a presbyter himself.
A priest of Arius’ own church!
Reading through the damage he’d done, Arius thought his source had said the man’s name was Mikos or perhaps Nicos, priest of the bishopric of . . . Palmyra! Finally, after more than eighteen years of searching, he had his man. Arius set out at once and, at nearly sixty years old, he was filled with a vigor he hadn’t known since boyhood.
The journey from Alexandria to central Syria was nearly a thousand miles of rocking sea and burning desert. Weeks of dry mouth, sore feet, and surly mules. The roads were busy with traders’ caravans and imperial patrols meant to keep money flowing.
Arius rededicated himself to his God on the long road to Palmyra. With his quest’s fruition so close at hand, he found a place in himself for quiet, peaceful reflection. He knelt in silent meditation each night when the caravan stopped, and he prayed in silence as he walked. He begged forgiveness for his darkness, for his obsession, and pledged himself to piety and service in thanks for the mercy his God had granted in bringing him to his heart’s desire. By the time the walls of the Syrian city came into view, Father Arius of the Church of Christ was as close to a man at peace as he had ever been.
No one in Palmyra had ever heard of a Presbyter named Nicos or anything similar. The Bishop of Palmyra was a godly and forthright man named Marinus, a man who had no siblings, and therefore, no nephews. In less than an hour in Palmyra, all of Arius’ hopes had been dashed, all his hard-fought peace lay shattered. He’d raged and howled like a madman that night. He carried his anger and pain out into the dark empty desert and vented his bitter tears on sand still hot from the day’s sun. He tore at his hair, ripped his flesh with cracked and broken fingernails, and when he was spent, sobbing in a ball on the sand, he called out to Chara’s spirit, begging for her forgiveness.
The ship swayed hard and creaked, and Arius heard muffled splashes as the boats were lowered and voices calling loudly as the crew lowered anchor. They’d arrived. The ancient priest all but dove into a light robe of undyed wool, battered sandals and scrip came next, his prized possessions tucked back into their places. His timeworn stick found his hand as he flew out the cabin and up toward the deck.
It was months before he’d been able to return to Alexandria from Syria. Upon his return he found that the contact who had led him astray had died, kicked in the chest by a fractious mule in the market. Just like that, Arius was set back to the start.
For years he collected whispers of occult doings throughout the Empire and beyond, rituals, cults, cabals, strange deaths, nothing was too small to be considered. Eventually he became aware of a strange series of deaths and disappearances in and around Lycia. He latched on with all the tenacity of a coursing hound, sniffing out every piece of information he could find.
Eventually, he heard tales of a young Bishop given to wondrous healings and near-perfect prediction, by all accounts, a miraculous figure. The young Bishop’s patron had been his uncle, the Bishop of Patara, and he himself had become Bishop of the neighboring town, Myra.
Patara near Myra? Had Arius perhaps misread the ripped missive when he read Palmyra? It was possible, but perhaps a bit of a stretch, and then he’d heard the name of the young miracle worker.
Nicholas.
The name rang in his mind. Nicholas. The man who had killed Chara. He knew. Now he stood waiting to board his boat, a single bony hand inside his scrip, clutching his bronze handled knife in a white knuckled fist. Twenty-five years of searching. It was almost done. He offered a prayer to the Father and one to his sister. Almost.
“I have you now, monster.” The words came unbidden as he took his seat in the bow of the tiny boat and the ship’s crew began to row. “I have you now.”
What A Hungry Beast Dares
The wall wasn’t particularly high, it’s wide top edge stood barely above his head, but the facade was flawless. An unbroken barrier of brilliant white limestone stood before him, smooth as fine glass and gleaming in the pale light of the moon. Scrambling up took a humbling amount of time and strength. Once he managed the climb, his arms and legs quivered so violently with fatigue that his descent had all the grace and coordination of a drunk
The would-be burglar pretended to himself that as a younger man he would have exhibited more ability, but in truth, Arius of Alexandria had never been the athletic type. The fact was that his twenty-year-old self would likely have ended the same way, a twisted heap of limbs mired in the tangled thorns of a sprawling rose bush. Slowly, painfully, and with more than a few sharply stinging wounds, the old man dragged himself upright and freed himself from the clinging thorns.
The gardens of the Villa Nicholas were a stunning collection of aromatic flowers, delicate fruit trees, and perfectly manicured shrubbery dotted with beautifully formed and painted statuaries and softly burbling fountains. The whole scene was a carefully designed and maintained testament to the wealth and subtle good taste of the villa’s owner, and it brought a contemptuous sneer to the old man’s face.
What should he expect from a pampered, amoral monster than such a wanton display of avarice and pride? The old man’s hand found the hilt of his dagger at his waist and clutched it almost painfully. If he’d considered it at all, the bloodlust rising in his breast would have disquieted Arius. The thought never occurred.
He crabbed awkwardly toward the living spaces of the villa, doi
ng his best to move with some measure of stealth. Such a place would surely have servants about, and the priest knew he couldn’t bring himself to harm an innocent to hide his presence. If he were discovered, all his efforts would be for naught, his prey would escape and he would be taken, either as a failed assassin or a bumbling thief.
The villa was gorgeous, ostentatious, and thankfully, largely deserted. Room after room of expensive furniture, brightly colored murals, and finely wrought mosaic floors met the assassin as he searched for the master sleeping chamber. There were more lamps lit to illuminate empty rooms than Arius could credit. He couldn’t imagine the expense in oil his quarry incurred just to keep his house lit at night, though he had to admit it did make creeping through the sprawling domus all the easier. The old man passed through an arch and stopped dead. He had just entered the tabularium, an office and library of such size and grandeur that the studious priest couldn’t help but gape.
Shelves of some exotic and brilliantly oiled wood climbed to the ceiling and covered every wall of the nearly perfectly circular room, each stacked with scores of books, tablets, and scrolls. Codices bound in leather, cloth, and wood stood stacked on antique tables, and piled on the floor. A pyramid of furled scrolls had been erected on the seat of a delicate looking chair, and a mass of waxed tablets lay strewn about a massive desk like a soothsayer’s thrown bones. They were everywhere, and yet there was a sense of ordered chaos, a purposefulness to the mess that made it seem neat. Arius found himself reaching out to caress the spine of a beautifully bound collection of the works of Cicero but shook off the impulse. He had a task. He turned from the shelves and moved toward the door at the rear of the room.
Two strides before he reached the small door, a violent shock shot up his right leg and his knee buckled. The old man careened wildly, arms pinwheeling as he tried to recapture his balance. He managed to catch a stack of books and clung to it as he bit down hard on the scream trying to burst from his lips.
What is this? Why now? Arius wailed inside his mind. He tested the leg gingerly, forcing the stiff muscles to their work and setting his weight on it. The pain was excruciating; brilliant flares of red and orange danced before his eyes, tendons jumped and quivered, but the leg held. He wouldn’t be stopped when he was so close, certainly not by his treasonous old wreck of a body. Arius forced a pair of deep breaths, and then pushed himself completely upright and teetered for the door.
The purposeful stride, built of a long life travelling on foot, was reduced to a sort of pained shuffle as the old monk moved deeper into the private spaces of the villa. His right leg held but his control was weak, he was forced to almost drag the foot forward with every step. The short corridor off the library was plain stone, unadorned save for the lamps that lit it, obviously a private area not meant for guests.
Arius ignored the pain in his leg and the sudden tight feeling building in his chest as he pulled the dagger from his belt. At the end of the corridor was a single door sheathed in bronze and worked with a relief of a lounging female form under a full moon, the pagan goddess Nyx, the night goddess.
This was it!
Fifty feet to the door, Arius’ breathing came in sharp, heavy, excited gasps. Visions of his sister as she had been all those years before, young, vibrant, and beautiful, played before him.
“Justice.” The slurred drawl his mouth made of the word brought Arius up short.
“Wha?” the question died stillborn, as a shock of burning agony struck the old man like a thunderbolt. The force of it spun the priest around and sent him crashing into the wall on his left side. His dagger clattered to the marble tiles underfoot, dropped by numb, lifeless fingers. Arius clutched desperately at a worked iron lamp bracket in order to keep himself standing.
The delicate construction of brass and thin glass that had been held by the bracket crashed to the floor in an explosion of sparks and spilt oil. In moments, a miniature lake of fire danced on the marble tiles at the priest’s feet. Arius was barely aware.
The riot in his own flesh consumed his attention. He gasped and clutched at his chest. His heart felt gripped in iron, his lungs strained but wouldn’t fill. The muscles of his arms and legs jumped in riots of painful convulsions. His grip on the wall bracket gave way a fraction at a time until finally the old priest slid down the wall and came to rest in a contorted heap amidst the flaming oil.
The heat of the flames didn’t reach him, even when his woolen robe ignited, the pain was far away. His mind was dull, his thoughts sluggish but the shame was as bright and hot as the sun.
Failed. The word rang in his fractured, fuzzy thoughts. Hot stinging tears rolled down his cheeks, a ragged sob broke from his ruined body, and after an eternal moment, he slipped gratefully from consciousness.
—
There was light everywhere. It was clean, white light, brilliant but somehow soft. A whisper of breeze brought cool air and a sweet soft trilling of birds. He was surrounded by softness; he felt light. His thoughts were foggy, but in a not unpleasant way, like the slow waking from an easy restful slumber.
‘Heaven.’
The word floated forward through the cotton haze in his mind, unbidden, and the shock of it brought another forward.
‘Fire.’
The flames. The pain. Death! He started in a purely mental, bodiless sort of jerk, and the euphoria burnt off slightly.
Dead.
He was dead! He’d had some sort of fit, some kind of attack. The memories crashed back. The fear, the pain, the regret.
Failed.
He’d been so close! All but in reach of the goal of his lifelong struggle, only to be betrayed by his own body! Body . . . Arius forced his will into a fine point of focus and pressed at the clouds in his thoughts. There was something, a twinge, a pressure. Yes. Pain! There was pain. A lot of it, dulled, but present. His body remained. He lived!
With an effort that brought to mind Atlas holding up the sky, the old man forced his eyelids open. The light hurt and his vision was unfocused, but slowly he came to see the timbers and stone of the ceiling above. He was in a room, presumably lying in a bed, still earthbound then. Still alive!
He thought jumbled prayers of thanks and regret. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks and he tried to dash them away. Nothing happened. His arm wouldn’t move! Neither of them would. He tried to call out, a strangled sort of warble was the only noise that issued. He was a cripple! A ruin!
“Easy friend, easy!” A weight settled at his side and then there was a wizened, kindly-looking face over his. A man of maybe sixty, with sharp green eyes and a face creased with a long life of smile lines, looked down at him. “Welcome back. We were concerned for you.”
“We surely were.” The second voice was deep, rich, and cultured, but Arius couldn’t see it’s source. The man looking down at him seemed to guess his thoughts, and a wave of pain crashed against Arius’ mind. With a couple of jerking pulls, the stranger hiked the crippled patient up on his pillows until he was in a kind of seated lounge.
The man who’d spoken was tall, broad shouldered, and undoubtedly one of the most elegant looking men Arius had ever seen. He was perhaps in his mid-fifties, though his hair and the neatly trimmed beard he wore were already stark white and shot through with silver. The effect served to make him look exotic and regal rather than age him, and the white in contrast with his dark olive skin served to accentuate the sharp crisp Grecian bone structure of his face. If some Greek master had ever chiseled the mature Adonis, surely this man could have been the model.
Arius hated him in the instinctual way a dog who smells a strange mutt. The bearded Adonis was dressed simply in leather trousers and boots with a woolen tunic, all plain enough but of obviously excellent cut and quality. The entire costume seemed designed to accentuate the strong vital frame of the man beneath it. There was no embellishment, no jewelry that Arius could see, yet there was something about the man that spoke of wealth and influence, of a life issuing instructions with every expectat
ion of being obeyed.
The very simplicity he affected seemed an arrogance to Arius, and then the broken priest spotted the knife—Chara’s dagger—hanging from the man’s belt. Arius’ eyes flew from the knife to the gently smiling face of the man.
Nicholas!
Arius snarled, or tried to, it came out more like the burbling of an infant. He should have guessed! He wanted to spring at the man’s throat, but his best efforts resulted in a weak flopping, all of his fury got him no more than the gasping death throes of an asphyxiated fish.
“Now, now, carefully friend,” the first man said gently. “You’ll do yourself further injury. His Excellency and his man surely did not haul you all this way just to have you die in my dormitory.”
“Quite right,” Nicholas said, his face a perfect mask of beatific concern and gentle care. “Be at ease. Brother Feris here will see you well soon enough. You cannot imagine my horror that you’ve come to such a state under my roof. If my man, Tulio had not found you when he did . . . well, thank the Lord he did.” The iron grey of the man’s eyes bored into Arius, and the small, almost imperceptible smile on his lips mocked him. “I have not been able to find the servant who admitted you and then failed to advise me of your presence, I apologize for not meeting you personally, though, I rarely take guests so late.”
Arius struggled again, enraged, and saliva flew as he tried to launch vicious curses at the smirking monster before him. Pain skittered across his frenzied mind as he jerked and twisted in impotent rage. The other man, Feris, clucked his tongue and produced a vial from somewhere. With a sickening ease he held Arius’ head still, forced the mouth of the vial between his lips, and upended the glass tube.
“There now, the opium solution will let you rest. We’ll get you right, worry not.” Ferris patted the old man’s hand kindly and, in his quickly darkening mind, Arius wanted to tear the caring monk’s throat out with his teeth. His eyes stayed locked on Nicholas. The man spoke and the words were lost, but that mocking little smile remained, seared into the crippled man’s heart.
