A few months ago he had set in motion events that had killed hundreds or even thousands and brought down that empire.
What was next?
There was much he didn’t know. But he was learning; every day, he was learning.
It was impossible to explain, though, just exactly what he was learning. This was not math; this was not history; this was not riding a horse or speaking a foreign language. This was…unlocking things inside himself that he didn’t know existed. And if you don’t know they exist, how can you figure out how to unlock them?
Affron could help, he knew. But Affron was gone.
And once he had learned what he needed to know, what then?
Not even Affron could tell him that. Larry had caused much suffering and death here. It wasn’t his fault, he could tell himself. He hadn’t asked to come to Terra; he hadn’t asked to be held in Urbis against his will, then hunted down once he and the others had escaped.
But he knew better. It was his fault. He had done what he had done.
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but as usual sleep was slow in coming. And when it did come, it was not restful. It was never restful. He did not dream of Christmas mornings at home, or of family expeditions to the beach, or of long, silly conversations with Kevin, but of the temple of Via, and the carnage he had unleashed there. The bodies of Siglind and the Gallian soldiers disappearing before his eyes. The hatred on the face of the ancient woman who guarded the temple, who had killed them with her gant, who was now prepared to kill him…
Until he reached into her mind and caused her pain and terror beyond imagining. Caused her body to fall from the balcony to the temple floor, where it lay broken but still alive, until his own gant had disposed of it.
He had much to atone for, although he did not know how.
He knew what his next step should be, though. If he could bring himself to take it.
Because he knew where Affron had gone.
Sort of.
The knowledge now haunted him. It was not what he had wanted; it was not what he had expected. He was tired. Tired of strange worlds and hard decisions. Tired of leaving people behind.
How could he bear to leave anyone else behind?
Everyone rose early, although there wasn’t much to do. No books, no entertainment, just conversation and chores. He recalled how Palta and he had explored Roma every day when they went to buy food, and she had taught him Latin along the way. He missed those days.
After breakfast, he volunteered to go to the village to do the errands. Palta offered to go with him, but he shook his head. “It’s better if I go by myself,” he said.
He wasn’t sure why he said that. Palta looked upset. “You’ll get lost,” she pointed out, with good reason. She had a much better sense of direction than he did.
“No, I won’t,” he insisted.
No one argued with him. Valleia told him what they needed and how to find the store. Outside, Palta helped him saddle his horse. “Come back,” she whispered before he left.
“Of course I will.”
And he left with a wave. He found the village without difficulty, a couple of miles along a rutted path, next to a river that apparently fed the lake. It was no more than a few dozen houses and shops. The villagers looked at him with curiosity and perhaps suspicion, but he wasn’t worried; Gratius had had no difficulty yesterday. Larry had learned enough Erse to explain what he needed to the short, bald proprietor of the tiny store. The man wanted to chat. Did Larry know the other stranger—the one who had been there yesterday? Would they be here long? Were they related to the nice couple in the cottage by the lake? They were from the empire, right? What was the news from the empire? People here were always interested in news. So many strange goings-on in the empire.
Larry had the same news that Gratius had given the proprietor yesterday, but he tried to be pleasant. The man was happy that they were buying food and supplies for five now, and Larry didn’t haggle over the price. When the purchases were made, he got back on his horse and left the village.
He didn’t return directly to the cottage. Instead he went back to the hill where they had stopped yesterday. He looked up at it. His horse snickered as they stood there, wondering what his rider was up to. Larry dismounted. He stroked the horse’s mane. He continued to stare at the hill. Finally he walked a few steps towards it, stopped, and then abruptly turned around and came back.
“Not today,” he murmured.
He remounted his horse and continued on to the cottage.
It wasn’t that day, and it wasn’t the next. Everyone did chores, and reminisced, and speculated about the Gallians and the priests and what would happen to the empire. And they started making tentative plans for the spring. How should they make a living? Should they farm? Fish? Hunt? Should they add on to the cottage? Build a new one? Gratius and Palta had skills to offer; Larry had none.
Occasionally one of the others would look at him questioningly, but he said nothing. And at night he stared at the fire and felt the pressure of Palta’s body against his.
And then one morning he woke up, and he realized that it was time. He roused Palta. “Come with me,” he whispered to her. It was early, barely dawn, and the others were still asleep.
“Where?” she asked drowsily.
“Just come.”
They got up, put on their sandals and cloaks, and left the cottage. Outside, snowflakes blew past them in the frigid air. “Are we riding?” Palta asked.
Larry considered, and shook his head. “Let’s walk.”
It was a long walk. Mid-way, he sensed that Palta knew where they were headed. She said nothing. He too was silent, but he took her hand.
Finally they reached the hill. They paused and looked up. Their breath came in clouds; the snowflakes stung his eyes. “We’re climbing it?” Palta asked.
Larry nodded.
They started up the hill. Occasionally Palta would help him when he stumbled. This is stupid, he thought. He shouldn’t be making her do this. But he couldn’t just…
They reached the top. The wind was stronger here. Fog was blowing in from the lake, obscuring the view. They seemed to be isolated in their own cold, barren world.
Palta looked at him. Now what? her gaze seemed to be asking. Why are we here?
“I have to leave,” he told her. “There are things I need to learn, things I need to accomplish. But I can’t—I can’t take you with me. I’m sorry.”
She looked around. “Where? How?”
He didn’t reply. She didn’t seem to expect a reply.
He felt tears welling in his eyes. Palta’s eyes, too, were filled with tears. He held his arms out to her, and she moved into his embrace. They kissed. He stroked her golden hair, wet from the snow.
“You are coming back,” she said.
Her voice rose at the end of the sentence, so it became half-statement, half-question. “If I—” he began to reply, and then he stopped himself. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m coming back. But I don’t know when.”
She hugged him tight then. And finally he had to gently move out of her embrace.
And he had to turn away from her and walk into the fog, alone.
Palta
Palta watched him walk away.
And then she saw him disappear. Not into the fog, but into nothingness.
She knew what that meant.
She stood there for a moment, not moving, not breathing. And then she couldn’t stand it anymore and she ran forward to where he had disappeared and moved her hands in front of her body, searching desperately for the nothingness, for the spot where her hands would no longer be visible as they encountered the magic of Via, of the portal.
But she found…nothing. No way out of this world, no way to follow Larry to wherever he had gone.
And finally she gave up and sank to the frozen ground, howling with despair as she realized that she was finally and utterly alone, in this world and every other.
Afford
&
nbsp; It was not, Affron thought, a particularly well-run world. But people seemed happy enough. The streets were always crowded with vehicles—small, odd-looking, three-wheeled machines of a kind he had never encountered before. But there were no traffic lights, no one directing traffic, and not much evidence of rules that people were following. But the drivers didn’t seem upset; no one shouted or cursed or gesticulated out the window. Instead the drivers just patiently wended their way through the mess towards their destinations.
Some major festival or religious holiday seemed to be approaching—or perhaps this was always the way the streets and shops were decorated—with green and yellow streamers everywhere, along with statues and paintings of the same bearded, smiling man, with one hand raised in a pleasant greeting.
People were generally smaller and darker than Affron, with thick, muscular bodies, but no one stared at him, and everyone happily put up with his efforts to speak their language, which seemed to be a strange variant of Latin with a strong admixture of something else—Chinese, perhaps. They used a Latin-like alphabet, though, which helped him decipher the names of shops and streets.
He was walking along a busy sidewalk, carrying a satchel of food he had just bought. He wore flowing pants and a loose shirt, like all the other men. The day was hot but dry; so far he had experienced nothing like the enervating heat of a Roman summer. He paused at an intersection. On a platform high above it a couple of young women wearing nothing but shorts were enacting some kind of dance to the accompaniment of drums pounding out an intricate rhythm. Was it art? A religious ritual? A sporting event? Sometimes they ran towards each other and appeared to be struggling to throw each other onto the floor of the platform. The struggle would last for a few seconds, and then abruptly they would back away and continue their dance. Affron watched, fascinated, until the dance ended. When the girls were done there was no applause, no cheering. They simply slipped on shirts to cover their bare chests and made their way down from the platform. People who had stopped to watch them now walked on.
As did Affron. Sometimes worlds fit into familiar patterns; sometimes they seemed inexpressibly alien. There were learned treatises about this in the schola at Urbis. Although perhaps those treatises no longer existed.
Affron turned a corner. Ahead of him was the warren of interconnecting rooms and apartments and houses where he lived. Communal baths, communal kitchens, communal everything, really, except you had your own room to sleep in and another little room that was identified by a word that seemed to mean something like shrine. You stayed away from other people’s shrines.
As usual he got lost as he made his way through the warren to his own room. As in Roma, there were no street signs or house numbers; you simply needed to know where you were going. He entered the wrong room at one point, and its inhabitant shooed him away with a grin and a burst of words Affron didn’t understand.
Finally he found his room. He put the satchel on the floor and lay down on the bed with a sigh. A pleasant breeze blew in through the open window. Outside, he could hear the sounds of distant music and children playing—high-pitched shouts and laughter. Affron smiled.
And then he thought he heard something else.
He lay still and listened. Yes. Of course.
He stood up and walked across the room. He slid back the curtain that separated his bedroom from the shrine.
There, sitting cross-legged on the floor, his eyes closed, was Larry Barnes.
Eventually Larry opened his eyes and looked up at him.
“It took you long enough,” Affron said.
Thirteen
Lamathe
Lamathe had been born near Alexandria and now, finally, he returned to it. He and the other priests settled in a ramshackle building in an anonymous neighborhood not far from the harbor. And, more important, not far from the library. The director of the library, Olef-Nan, was an old friend, and she was able to assist, secretly, with money and supplies. But his plan worried her.
“You have a long task ahead of you, I fear,” she said to the viator one evening as they dined at her villa, soon after they had arrived.
“Yes, I know. But what else can we do?”
“Fight, perhaps?”
“We do not know how to fight, any more than you do. And they have the gants. No one can defeat them if they choose to use those weapons.”
“So, what hope is there?”
“The gants will eventually lose their power. We must be prepared for when that happens.”
“They can’t replace them?”
“To replace them—to find any weapons like them—they’ll have to learn how to use Via. And they are likely to fail at that without a viator to teach them. And we will not help. We would kill ourselves first.”
“How long will it take?”
“A few years at most. Even if the weapons aren’t used, their power leaks away over time.”
“And then what?”
“I do not know,” Lamathe admitted. “The Gallians may succeed for a while, or they may fail utterly. But when their rule finally collapses, we must be ready. And we must not forget all that the priests have learned over the years. Regaining power may take longer than our lifetimes to achieve. But our wisdom must not be allowed to die out. And so we will write it down. Create our own library.”
The director nodded. “You know better than I, of course. But if you live here you must remain quiet and inconspicuous. This is still part of the empire, after all.”
“Yes, of course,” Lamathe replied. “I would love to visit your library again, but we want nothing more than to be inconspicuous.”
“And the others—the ones who aren’t with you?”
“They are living outside the empire. They will be safe, I pray.”
“Well, I wish all of you every blessing,” Olef-Nan said. “I fear that the world is about to become a very turbulent place, and I hope you will be the ones to save it.”
Lamathe nodded his thanks. He could use all the blessings she could send his way. It was an awful time. He felt as though all his wisdom, all his knowledge, now counted for nothing. He no longer wore the purple robe of the viator; he no longer had the certainties that came with his role and status. He was just trying to do his best to solve the awful problem with which he had been presented.
He walked back from Olaf-Nen’s lovely villa to the building where he and the other priests now lived and worked. He didn’t feel especially safe walking through the streets of Alexandria at night, but he had no choice. The others were asleep except for Samos, who had waited up for him, looking weary and upset. Samos always looked upset, it seemed to Lamathe.
“I have written for twelve hours today,” Samos informed him.
“I admire you, Samos,” he replied, “but there is no need—”
“I have nothing else to do. If I don’t write, I think about the Gallians, and I don’t want to do that.”
“I understand.”
“I do not like it here,” Samos continued. “The food, the smells, the language. It is ugly. It is alien.”
“If you had become a viator,” Lamathe pointed out, “you would have encountered places far more alien than Egypt.”
“If,” Samos repeated. “And now that will never happen.”
“You must have faith, Samos.”
“Why? Why must I have faith?”
Lamathe stifled a sigh. Samos was a good man, but dealing with him was always difficult. “If you don’t have faith, you will go mad,” he replied.
This answer didn’t satisfy the young priest, of course. But what answer would? “Some worlds end badly,” Samos replied. “That is in the nature of things. Progress ends; people give up. Empires collapse into savagery and never return to their former glory. That is what I have been taught. That is what you taught me.”
“Not all worlds,” Lamathe pointed out. “I taught you that, as well.”
“Which kind do we inhabit?”
“That is up to us—our choices, our ac
tions.”
“We are pebbles on the shore,” Samos said. “The tides of history overwhelm us.”
“That is foolish,” Lamathe responded. “A year ago the Gallians probably felt as you do. But they changed history.”
Samos waved a hand wearily, as if dismissing the Gallians—or Lamathe. “As you say. I will do what I can. But still I feel like a pebble.”
Lamathe smiled. “You are far more than a pebble, Samos. Get some rest.”
Samos went off to bed, and Lamathe was left alone, sitting in the empty room and pondering history in the warm Egyptian night.
Fourteen
Tirelius
Why was he still alive?
For months Tirelius had expected some Gallian thug to enter his jail cell in the dead of night and slit his throat. Or they would hang him in the forum in front of cheering crowds. What were they waiting for?
He had no reason to live, and yet still he lived.
Once he had been the pontifex maximus, the high priest, the leader of the greatest empire that Terra had ever known. An empire that treated its citizens with dignity and justice, that used the wisdom and knowledge of Via to make people happier, healthier, and stronger.
And in one night it had all been destroyed.
How? How had he let Affron and the others slip away from Urbis? How had he not found them as they hid in Roma? How had he failed to secure the armamentarium and properly guard Urbis? Day and night he thought about these things and a thousand others like them. He had nothing else to occupy his mind, just the monotony of eating and sleeping and waiting for death.
He was an old man, and he had nothing to show for his life except failure.
The cell where he now lived was in the bowels of the palatium. It was cold and damp and smelled of mildew and piss. For all he knew, it was the same one in which Affron had been held before he escaped. His guards had little to say to him. The food was tolerable, but he could scarcely bring himself to eat it. He had lost weight here, despite doing nothing all day but thinking.
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