They gave him a new robe and cloak and brought him a tray of food. And then they put him in the same carriage they had used to kidnap him the night before and drove him to the ornate palatium in the Forum from which the Roman province was ruled.
He was placed in a chilly anteroom, where he sat alone and waited. Finally he was summoned, and once again he sat opposite Decius, this time in a large, high-ceiling room lined with frescoes. The floor was covered with thick rugs. In the corner was a statue of Hieron, the beloved discoverer of Via. Odd that the statue had not been removed, but he supposed that would happen eventually. Two braziers gave off welcome heat.
In daylight, sober, Liber still thought the governor was impressive, with his penetrating gray eyes and aquiline nose. He was short but fit-looking. Even seated he seemed alert, ready to spring into action.
And yet, Liber knew that he was a match for Decius. At least when he was sober. The man was smart, but he was not a viator. Liber bowed, and Decius gestured for him to sit.
“The thing that happened to you in the Circus Maximus,” Liber began, without waiting for Decius to start the conversation. “Affron did it to me, as well.”
There, that piqued his interest. Decius sat forward, waiting for more.
“It was when we were at the schola in Urbis together,” Liber went on. “I do not think he even intended it. I do not think he understood his power back then. We were arguing, and he became angry, and suddenly I found myself on the ground. I did not know how I got there. I still don’t know, not exactly. I felt as if my brain had been shattered. I thought at first perhaps he had hit me. But no, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t his fist; it was his mind.”
“Yes, his mind! But how? How did he do it?” Decius demanded.
Liber shrugged. “As I said, I have no idea. And he had no idea either.”
“Surely you must have considered this. Surely you must have a theory.”
“I have considered it, as you have. But I have no more insight than you do.”
“Does it have something to do with Via?”
Liber thought: Of course it has something to do with Via. But how could he explain such things to this man, who knew nothing of Via? “Perhaps” was all he could bring himself to say. “But I do not know.”
“What happened afterwards?”
“I recovered, as you did,” Liber replied. “But not as well, not as fully. To speak the truth, I was a broken man. Before this happened, I was destined to be a viator—the highest honor in the priesthood. Afterwards…as you know, not all priests become viators. There is no shame in it. There are many worthy positions for such priests, in Urbis and throughout the empire.
“But after what happened I was no longer fit for any of these positions. I would not even try to fill one. I left the schola; I left the priesthood; I left Urbis. And I never returned. I became an impecunious tutor to young imbeciles; I became a drunkard. I waited for death.”
Both of them fell silent. “So then I was right last night,” Decius said finally. “You have experienced this. I could tell that you understood.”
“You are perceptive, my lord,” Liber replied. “But now I want to ask you about something I do not understand. For months the priests were looking for Affron in Roma. There were crowds in the city demanding that Affron be made pontifex in place of Tirelius. After the Pan-Roman games these demands ceased, but the priests kept looking for him. And then the Gallians took over Urbis. Many people naturally assumed that Affron was working with the Gallians. But you told me last night that Affron was not involved. I believe this; the Gallians would not be ruling so badly with Affron in charge. So, where is Affron?”
“I do not know,” Decius said. “As I told you last night, I don’t even know if he’s alive. After I had that encounter with him in the Circus Maximus, we reached an agreement, as I said. He promised to use his power against Tirelius after the chariot race; he would drive the pontifex mad and take over in his place. In return he would help the people of my province. So I protected him from the priests; I whipped up the people to support him. But he failed, or perhaps he didn’t even try—I don’t know why. I was angry afterwards; I had risked much on his behalf. I sent soldiers to arrest him, but he and his friends had disappeared. I searched for him, but I did not find him.”
Liber pondered this. “It seems unlikely that Affron is dead,” he said.
“Yes, I suppose. But for now, I don’t care about him,” Decius replied. “Tell me what you know about Via. About the weapons. About everything.”
Liber shook his head. “I will tell you nothing, unless I tell it to the Gallians at the same time.”
“There is no need of that.”
“Of course there is. Do I want you to take all the credit?”
“Prince Feslund has sent soldiers into Via,” Decius said, “but the men simply disappeared.”
“Of course they did.”
“And you can do better?”
“I cannot obtain more of those weapons for them, which is presumably what they want. I hadn’t progressed far enough in my training to learn how to travel to the world where they are obtained. But I can get the Gallians something else that will benefit them.”
“What?”
Liber shook his head. “Bring me to Urbis,” he said. “Bring me to the Gallians.”
He expected an argument, but Decius gazed at him for a moment and finally nodded. “Very well,” he said.
And it was done.
He was sent back to the anteroom as Decius took care of other business that couldn’t be delayed. And then he was summoned again and brought to the governor’s carriage; finally they headed to Urbis—through city streets still clogged with revelers, and at last onto the long, straight road that led from the old capital of the empire to the new. “Have you been to Urbis since you left the priesthood?” Decius asked.
Liber shook his head. “They would not have me back,” he said, “and I could not stand to return.”
Could not stand to think about what he had lost. Could not stand the memories. Like the first time he had ridden along this road. On a warm day in the fall, bouncing along in a wagon with a couple of classmates-to-be, fresh from a sea voyage up the coast, eager to prove himself, eager to conquer this challenge, as he had conquered all the others in his young life.
Ah, and yes, he had conquered. In his memory, Urbis was warm, sunlit, filled with joy and triumph. Somehow he had forgotten days like this, with their leaden skies and cold winds. But he had not forgotten Affron.
“There are two people we will need to meet,” Decius said. “Prince Feslund, of course. And his mother, Queen Gretyx.”
“The king isn’t here?”
“King Carolus remains in his castle in Lugdunum. It is said that he disapproved of the raid on Urbis. Also, he is mourning his daughter, Princess Siglind, who died in the raid.”
Liber considered. “Feslund is a headstrong fool, I take it,” he said. “And Gretyx is the one we must be wary of.”
“The queen is a clever woman,” Decius replied.
“If she is clever, she understands the Gallians’ predicament.”
“I suppose she does. But she, too, is in mourning for her daughter. She is not paying attention to the predicament as yet.” Decius paused, presumably wondering if Liber would tell him the solution to the predicament. Smart enough by now to know that he wouldn’t.
In fact Liber had no solution—not an easy one, at any rate. King Carolus was correct: even though successful, the raid had been a bad idea. Had the Gallians suffered so much under the yoke of the priests that they had been forced to do this?
He knew why they had done it. The weapons. Gants, they were called. The Gallians had been given a gant—why or how, he could not imagine—and they thought: We can destroy the priests with such a weapon. We can rule Terra with it. We can avenge the deaths of our ancestors.
It was not so easy, they were discovering.
No greater issue had faced the priests than what t
o do with the gants. For decades—since the destruction of King Harald and his army—it had been debated. The priests back then believed they’d had no choice but to use them; Urbis itself was at stake. And so the weapons had been obtained and put to use, and the enemy had literally disappeared. But afterward, many priests had recoiled in horror from the deaths and wanted nothing more to do with the gants. Others had seen a different path. In the long years since a peasant named Hieron had discovered Via, they thought that he and his followers had been too conservative in taking advantage of the wonders that it laid before them. Hieron had worried about the dangers and temptations associated with these wonders, but hadn’t the priests proved they could avoid their temptations? And weren’t they doing Terra a disservice by withholding the wonders from its people? Not just those who lived in the priests’ empire, but those beyond it, in the wilds of far-off Barbarica? The gants were just a means to that end—they would make the complete conquest of Terra simple and inevitable. And then the wonders would start to flow for everyone.
Finally a pontifex was elected who wanted to follow this path: Tirelius. But he lacked the support he needed to begin. Too many priests resisted his vision. Too many didn’t want to change what had worked for so long. So he focused on the next generation of priests—the ones being trained in the schola. Surely they could be convinced.
Liber had been convinced. He hadn’t actually been much interested in the arguments for and against; what mattered to him was his ambition. The pro-Tirelius faction in the schola needed a leader, and he wanted to be that leader. The anti-Tirelius faction already had its leader: Affron.
Everyone loved Affron. He was charming, funny, and brilliant. A perfect candidate to be pontifex one day. And he wanted no part of a future that included gants. So other students at the schola came to see things as he saw them. And this enraged Liber, as it enraged Tirelius. Because Affron was far from perfect. Liber sensed a weakness in him, an inability to take these issues seriously. Or—no—a feeling that he had more important things to think about than the future of Terra. And what could be more important than that?
Liber recalled the night when it happened. It was like all Urbis nights in his memory—warm, moonlit, sweet-smelling. He had drunk a little too much wine and had gone off wandering by himself. He hadn’t seen Affron at first, but then he spotted him—a figure in a white robe sitting alone on a bench in the garden behind the schola.
The figure was doing something strange with his hands—moving them in the air as if trying to grasp something that wasn’t there.
Was Affron drunk too? No, Affron had no vices. And—perhaps it was the wine—but seeing his foe calmly sitting there by himself and waving his hands annoyed Liber. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
Affron lowered his hands and turned to look at Liber. He didn’t respond. It seemed as though at that moment he barely knew who Liber was.
And that annoyed Liber even more. Ah, wine had never been his friend! “You sit there so calm, so satisfied, snatching at invisible bugs or whatever you are doing,” he snarled. “Do you realize how many women die in childbirth on Terra every day? They are dying this very minute. And we know how to save them. But people like you don’t care. Let them suffer! Let the deformed babies die horrible deaths! Treat the young girl’s cancer with herbs and unguents! Let us all die decades before we should! You don’t care.”
Affron said nothing. Did he even understand what Liber was saying? Did he even care?
“This world means nothing to you,” Liber went on. “Why should you become pontifex? You care about none of us. You care only about what’s going on inside your own mind.”
Affron said nothing.
And Liber could stand it no more. He rushed over to his enemy, put his hands around his neck, and started to squeeze. He expected Affron to resist, to fight back—why wouldn’t he fight back? Where were his hands, which should have been struggling to break Liber’s grip? What was the matter with him?
And then it happened. The indescribable terror. The spinning, dizzying whirlwind of nameless immensity and dread. Now Liber was the one who couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think.
He opened his eyes, finally, and he was on the ground, looking up at the moon.
“Are you all right?” Affron asked. He was on the ground, kneeling next to Liber. He looked dazed.
Liber tried to say something. But he couldn’t—what was there to say? What had happened? Had Affron hit him? No, he couldn’t have. What, then? Finally he managed three words: “You did this.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Affron replied. “I’m sorry. It just…happened.”
“Happened,” Liber repeated.
“I’m sorry,” Affron repeated.
The terror subsided. But it didn’t go away; Liber somehow knew that it would never go away. Affron’s gaze was full of concern. Liber couldn’t stand that gaze. He turned his head away. He tried to think of something to do. But what?
And abruptly Liber knew that he had lost—this fight and, likely, every other one. His anger turned to ashes. He had been defeated—by accident, apparently. He looked back at Affron. Why wouldn’t he say anything? He was the victor; why didn’t he gloat? “You did it with your mind,” Liber said. “What is it that you did?”
“You saw…you glimpsed…all that is,” Affron responded. “All that could be.”
That meant nothing to Liber. “Do you see this too?” he asked.
“All the time.”
“Does it have to do with Via?”
“Of course.”
“What does it have to do with Via?”
“I don’t know.”
Liber stopped talking. He would learn nothing from Affron. And what did it matter, after all? His head ached; his body trembled. He got to his feet finally, though standing was an effort. He needed more wine. Much more wine.
Affron rose too. “We can be friends, I hope,” he offered.
Liber simply shook his head. “We can never be friends,” he muttered. And he wandered away, back to the schola.
And not long after that he wandered away from the schola, from Urbis, from the priesthood. Not many tried to stop him. He had started drinking far too much. He had uttered dark warnings about Affron. But everyone loved Affron! He ignored his studies. Instead he sat in his room and relived the terror. All that is. All that could be.
And finally he left. Even Tirelius was glad to see him go.
He vowed never to return. Today he would break that vow.
And now the city came into view, and beyond its walls Liber could make out the temple of Via, high on a hill in the very center of the city. He felt his eyes start to water, in spite of himself. He closed his eyes. Via. The Gallians did not understand it; Decius did not understand it.
But Liber understood the truth of Via. He would have to explain it to them, even though he was unworthy to know the truth, and they were unworthy to learn it.
He would explain it because he needed to survive.
“Are you all right?” Decius asked.
“Of course,” Liber replied. “I have never been better.”
But the tears pressing against his eyelids told a different story.
Five
Gretyx
Queen Gretyx sat on an intricately carved wooden armchair in the temple and stared up at the large blue object hovering just above the marble altar.
Perhaps it wasn’t really blue. No matter how much she stared at it, she couldn’t make up her mind. The color seemed to fade and shift, like ocean waves.
And perhaps it wasn’t really an object. She had ventured once up onto the altar and tried to touch it. But there was nothing to touch.
It was what it was. It was Via.
But it was not why she was sitting here, in Via’s temple.
She sat here because this was where her daughter had died: Princess Siglind, killed in the glorious raid that had captured Urbis for Gallia. Killed here, somewhere in the temple—Gretyx didn’t
know the exact location. Everyone who had been here when she died had died themselves—everyone except the boy, who disappeared the night after. And there was no corpse left for Gretyx to mourn, because the awful weapon had turned her child into nothingness, as if she had never existed.
Siglind had ridden off on her own to join the soldiers on their journey to Urbis; Gretyx would never have allowed it. But Feslund—Siglind’s own brother!—was in charge of the raid, and he had allowed it. Had seen nothing wrong with such a thing, even though he should have known the risks. The fool. Siglind was very persistent, very persuasive; but he should not have let her go with him to Urbis.
The queen closed her eyes. She was tired of Via; she was tired of Urbis. She longed to go back to Lugdunum and run Gallia while Carolus was off on one of his endless hunts. She wanted to calm Siglind down when she complained about something; she was always complaining.
Gretyx missed her daughter’s complaining.
She felt a cold breeze behind her; the temple doors had opened. No matter. She was well guarded.
“My lady?” a voice behind her said after a moment.
She ignored the voice.
“Mother?” another voice said. Feslund.
She sighed and opened her eyes. “Yes?”
Three people ranged themselves in front of her.
Feslund was on the left, looking dashing as usual in an elegant blue cape trimmed with gold, white tunic, and flowing black trousers. Was she the only one who could sense the confusion and fear lurking beneath his bold, boastful exterior?
In the center was Decius. Smart, calm, reserved. Ultimately untrustworthy, of course, because he looked only to his own advantage. But that was always the case with such men. And right now it was clear that his needs were the same as theirs. He needed a stable, peaceful empire, and at least for the moment only the Gallians could give it to him. So, that was acceptable.
And to her right stood a third man whom she didn’t recognize. Short, badly shaven, with bloodshot eyes and messy black hair. Wearing an ill-fitting robe. And not looking at her, not bowing to her as was her due.
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