The Gates of Hell

by Michael Livingston

  “You’re right,” Vorenus said. “Just hold on. We’ll go home. All of us.”

  Khenti had turned to look up at the stars, still smiling, but beneath the hand of Vorenus his heart beat no more.

  PART II

  THE SPEAR OF DESTINY

  11

  THE POWER WITHIN

  CANTABRIA, 26 BCE

  But for the dead, Juba was alone in the meadow.

  Dawn was breaking over the hills to the east; its first bright rays fell on the sides of the burned-out husks of the wagons that had been ambushed there, starkly contrasting with the long shadows that stretched behind them. What was left of the bodies of the men had been buried, but he still felt their presence here in a kind of hushed and watchful quiet.

  His horse tramped its feet uneasily beneath him. He reached down to pat its neck, steadying it—and himself, he supposed.

  There were two long, canvas-wrapped bundles behind him on the rear of the horse, both carefully bound to his saddle with thick leather straps. It was, he thought, a remarkable sign of trust that Octavian had allowed him to bring Corocotta’s spear here, alone, so that he could test it. It was more remarkable still that he had allowed him to bring the Trident as well. “If you lose control of the one, my brother,” Caesar had told him when he was called to his tent in the early morning darkness, “you may find the other necessary.”

  And although Octavian’s assault on Vellica was set to begin with the dawn—now, Juba supposed—his stepbrother had told him to go away from the death and din of the battle, to find a quiet place behind their lines in order to discover whether he could control the spear’s power. After all, Octavian had mused, the Cantabrian might want it back.

  It was that trust, more than the two artifacts behind him, that had Juba lost in thought for the moment. Octavian hadn’t trusted him for years, not since that day at the villa in Rome when he’d confronted Juba about showing the Trident to a woodworker. The day that he’d first made Juba use the artifact’s power to kill, to rip the life out of the slave Quintus.

  Juba closed his eyes against the memory, and against all those that followed, all the men he’d killed with the power of a god.

  In all that time, not once had Octavian let the Trident out of his possession. Not once had he let Juba handle it alone.

  And now here, at the edge of the world, he’d given it to Juba—along with the spear of Corocotta. What did that mean?

  Juba realized that he had begun to frown, so he opened his eyes and tried to smile. Whatever else it meant, he had two Shards of Heaven with him. Three, if he counted the Aegis of Zeus back in his tent. What it meant to have them was a question that certainly would need answering, but for now it was enough to have them.

  And to see how they worked.

  He dismounted and walked the horse to the burned-out remains of the wagon, where he’d stood with Octavian. Tying off the lead, he took a moment to stare once more at the crate and its unnatural flame scars that had surely come from the Lance of Olyndicus. It was, he thought, like a gashing wound. However the Shard was activated, it seemed that once it was in use it was like the spray of a fire-breathing chimera. That was different from the Trident and Palladium, which had always welled up energy in a concentrated effort—unless he and Selene had not yet tapped the fullness of their powers?

  Juba turned away and, reassuringly patting his horse along its neck and flank, returned to his saddle and the two long bundles tied behind it. His hands paused as he began to reach for the leather straps and brass buckles. Though he’d helped Selene learn to control the Palladium, he’d not used a Shard himself in many years. Being this close to the Trident made him yearn to grip it once more, to feel its power course through his veins.

  Besides, if there was a new way to focus its power—like the scar upon this crate—he should practice doing so before he tried to handle the spear.

  Taking a deep breath, he let his fingers open the straps. He lifted free the bundle holding the Trident of Poseidon.

  The artifact was just as he remembered it. The long, polished wood shaft fit neatly into the socket of the triple-pointed spearhead—a perfect fit made by a craftsman in Rome who’d been repaid for his talents first with Juba’s coins and then, later, with the knives of Octavian’s men, who would suffer none to know of this secret weapon. The three points of the spearhead were unlike the head of any other trident he had seen: the center spear pointed directly forward, as expected, yet although the ones to either side were broken off, it was clear that they did not angle forward, but instead shot out directly to left and right—as if a double-ended spear had been shoved through the base of the first. Around and down the silver metal of the head were two intertwined snakes—one bronze and one copper in color—whose mouths opened forward like they were weapons on their own.

  And in the middle of it all was the Shard of Heaven, the real weapon. Set in a metal housing, it was a blacker-than-black stone that seemed to draw in the very light of the air around it. A similar stone was set within the Aegis of Zeus, which had belonged to Alexander the Great before Juba had taken it, and a similar stone was embedded within the crystal-like rock that was the Palladium. And if he had succeeded in taking control of it back in Alexandria, Juba was certain he would have found another stone, probably the biggest of all, within the Ark of the Covenant. Each Shard seemed to control a single element: the Ark, earth; the Palladium, air; the Aegis, life; and this Trident, water. The Lance controlled fire. The Shards of Heaven, each a remainder—or so Didymus had said—of the throne that had been destroyed when the angels in heaven had tried to resurrect the one God, who died giving free will to creation.

  As he lifted the Trident—being careful to grip it by the wood and not the metal snakes, which functioned as conduits of the power of the Shard—Juba observed how the stone within its housing was looser than he last recalled. He had first noticed it loosening after Octavian had made him use the Trident to sink a Roman bireme at sea. Octavian had let him handle the Trident only once after that: at Actium, where he called up a far greater wave to swamp Mark Antony’s flagship and send it to the deep. The act had nearly taken the life from Juba, for through some means he did not understand the Shards could give power to their users—but they could also wrest power away if the users were not prepared, taking their very lives. This was the reason, Juba was certain, that Octavian would never use the Trident himself: if he failed to control its power, it would consume him.

  What it meant that the stone had grown looser, Juba was not sure. Perhaps it meant that using the Shard diminished its power in some way—though he had noticed nothing similar happen to the Aegis and the Palladium—or perhaps the housing was simply ill-fitting for the black stone. Finding out if it was an issue of fitment seemed simple enough, but then Juba had never touched the stone directly. He feared very much what would happen if he did.

  Juba walked ten paces or so from his horse. He planted the Trident butt-down before him, still holding on to its wood shaft as he looked between the interwoven snakes at the broken, charred heap of another cart not far away.

  Taking a deep breath, Juba moved his hands up to grip the bodies of the two snakes where the curves of their curling bodies made a pair of handholds on each side of the Shard itself. He closed his eyes, letting the metal grow warm beneath his skin, letting that contact become a kind of unity. Then, letting out his breath, he fell back down into himself, back into a darkness that was him and not him. He pulled it up into his hands, pushed it into the stone, and then pulled it out before him, to make it ready to strike out toward the cart.

  He knew at once the power of the Shard. He knew it as he remembered it—a pool of molten metal bubbling and churning in its hot rage to be free—but for a moment nothing happened. No energy flowed forth. The ruined cart stood unfazed.

  Of course. Every other time he’d used the Shard, it had been with a clear water source: the sea, a barrel of water, a jug of wine. But the meadow was dry, even parched. What coul
d the Shard use?

  And then he felt it: a tingling upon his skin, like the tiniest of raindrops dancing in feather-light song. A few at first, and then more and still more. The metal beneath his grip grew warm.

  Juba opened his eyes and saw what was happening now. A fine mist was forming, swirling into a kind of wispy cloud before him. Like the wind that Selene had raised with her Palladium, what Juba had raised was the semblance of a storm. It strained with an urge to dissipate, but with concentration Juba bunched it as tight as he could and then pushed it forward with as much mental strength as he could muster.

  The droplets splattered against the side of the cart.

  Juba let go of the snakes and once more gripped the wooden shaft. He licked his lips, noticing how much drier the air around him had become.

  That was where the water had come from, he decided. The Shard had drawn it out of the very air.

  Juba smiled at the wonder of that, but then he frowned. The Trident was no match for the power that the Lance had shown. The concentrated force that Corocotta had managed to burn these carts and kill these men … it was so far beyond what Juba knew.

  For that matter, where did that Shard’s fires come from? There was no fire in the area for the Cantabrian outlaw to manipulate, and what fire was upon the wind that it could be gathered in such abundance?

  Juba thought back to the previous night, when Corocotta had stood before them with the artifact in his possession. He was surely ready to use it then, so how? Would it have drawn substance from the torches? That seemed so little. Yet he had held it out nevertheless, his thick hand enwrapping the black stone itself as he stood ready …

  Juba’s eyes widened.

  Corocotta had not held the staff or some other part of the Lance. He had held the Shard itself.

  He’d held the Shard.

  Juba swallowed hard. Then, biting his lip, he slowly raised his right hand and placed it, palm down, atop the Shard of Heaven.

  If he had imagined the power of the Trident to be like a pool of molten metal, this was like pressing his hand down into its surface. The pain was white-hot, but not fire, not flame. It was something both liquid and solid, something that writhed around beneath his palm almost like a creature alive. In rippling flashes, pulsing with each beat of his stunned, lurching heart, it took more of him—though whether it climbed up his flesh or pulled it down, Juba could not tell. He fought to pull himself away, to pull back, but the searing shocks just pulled him on, deeper and deeper into a bright, screaming light.

  He had closed his eyes at the lurching shock of the power, and as it rushed up his arms and began lapping like waves against his chest, shaking him into convulsions, he opened them as if he might witness his flesh consumed.

  What he saw instead was that his hand was unharmed, but it was crackling with ripples of lightning that flashed in hot sparks across his skin.

  His jaw was clenched by the agony of the power rushing through him. It was the only thing preventing him from screaming out whatever last gasps of breath he had.

  His shaking legs gave way, and he began to fall backward, his hand still wrapped around the flashing stone as if it was rooted upon it.

  The horizon fell away. The sky rose like a great hood over his eyes.

  He saw the gathering storm.

  Above him, wispy streaks coalesced and grew into a churning black pillar of cloud that spun up into the pale blue summer sky, looming over the parched landscape. Lightning flashed in its depths, like hungry beasts in a dark cage.

  Juba’s back struck the ground, and what air he had in his lungs coughed out in the same moment that a bolt of jagged lightning flashed down and exploded into the Trident with an explosion that shook the earth.

  Juba somehow unclenched his jaw, and he screamed back against the pain and the power, willing it out of his body and into the Shard. Above him the lightning flashed again, menacing, but he pushed that away, too. It did not strike.

  The shocking fear that had threatened to consume him slowed and halted. He began to take deeper, steadying breaths. He could feel the presence of the power that was now coiled within the Shard, he could feel it poised like a beast ready to leap and rip his heart from his chest. But it did not jump. It sparked and crackled there, as if it was watching, as if it was waiting.

  Juba—his hand still locked upon the terrible black stone—managed to rise to his knees and then stand, panting at the exhaustion of his willpower. He could smell rain in the air. He could feel more lightning roiling above him, ready to be commanded.

  Bracing himself, gritting his teeth in the effort to keep the power controlled within the Shard, Juba focused on the remains of the cart and willed the gathered power into its destruction.

  Released at last, the lightning struck out from the Trident, hot and bright, a jagged bolt of energy that ripped through the air and impacted the charred wood like the crack of a mighty whip.

  The cart exploded outward from the impact in fragments of blackened wood and cascading sparks. And at last, as the energy dissipated and left him, Juba finally managed to let go of the Shard, dropping the Trident to the ground.

  Juba fell to one knee, gasping air, his eyes riveted on the destroyed cart. Broken splinters kicked high by the discharge clattered down to the grass around him. The air smelled strangely sweet.

  What he’d just seen, what he’d felt … the power was simply indescribable. It was unfathomable.

  “My God,” he panted. “My God.”

  At the sound of a quiet rumble, he at last turned to look upward at the sky. The clouds, so quickly summoned into being, were breaking apart. The coiled fury that had been there moments earlier was now idly drifting away on high, indifferent breezes. Juba watched it for a few moments, then he sat down roughly into the grass, staring at everything and nothing.

  He’d had no idea the true power of the Trident. It wasn’t just the movement of water. It was storms. Lightning. It was the power of Poseidon. The power of God.

  And something in his heart told him that there was still more that it could do. That he could do.

  Knowing what he might do with it made him want to laugh. Knowing what he’d already done with it made him want to be sick.

  For several minutes, Juba didn’t move.

  Then, collecting himself at last, he picked up the Trident from where it had fallen—being careful not to touch the snakes or the Shard itself—and walked it back to the bundle behind his saddle. Only as he was placing it there did he notice that it had changed. The stone no longer shook within its housing. It was stable. Solid. It had, Juba was certain, grown.

  But how? And what did it mean?

  Juba frowned. He was too exhausted to think. He felt weary straight down through his bones.

  And he still had another Shard to test.

  Very carefully, as he settled the first artifact into place, he pulled out the second: the spear that Corocotta had carried into the tent and handed over with such ceremony. Then he walked back to the spot where he’d stood to use the Trident.

  Hours earlier, in the darkness of the command tent, he’d seen a glimpse of the stone in the spear. It had been only a glimpse. But seeing it now in the light of the breaking day it seemed different than he had expected. It was a glossy black stone, but it didn’t swallow the light the way the stones did upon the Trident of Poseidon and the Aegis of Zeus. It was instead dark in color yet flickering with strands of the growing light around it, like burned glass.

  The stone in the Palladium could seem different from the others, too. Another question he would consider later.

  There were no obvious ways to hold the weapon, so Juba simply gripped it as he would any other spear. Widening his stance, the spear firmly in his hands, he couched it against his hip, the spear point aimed at one of the wagons across the way. Then he closed his eyes and sank back into himself with a sigh, mentally bracing for the rush of the power he’d felt when he’d wielded the Trident or donned Alexander’s armor.

&nbs
p; Nothing happened.

  Juba blinked. He shifted his grip—gently at first, but then with increasing fervor. The spear didn’t react. It was as if it was nothing but an ordinary weapon, adorned with a black stone.

  In desperation, he held it before him and wrapped his fist around the stone, just as Corocotta had.

  Nothing.

  But it had to be the Lance of Olyndicus. It was there last night. Corocotta would not have come without it. And whatever else the man was, he was no liar. Juba had seen his reaction when he mentioned Olyndicus, and he’d said he had it with him. But if this wasn’t it, where was it? Where had the Cantabrian and his little crippled slave hidden—

  Juba gasped, and he spun to look down the road back toward camp, toward the war.

  The battle had begun. The legions would already be marching, strung out across the valley.

  Juba ran toward his horse, hastily shoving the useless spear back into its bag and once more pulling free the Trident.

  He spurred the horse into speed even as he pulled himself into the saddle. He’d been a fool. They all had. He knew where the Lance of Olyndicus was now.

  He only hoped he wasn’t too late.

  12

  THE BATTLE OF VELLICA

  CANTABRIA, 26 BCE

  As the sun rose behind her tent, Selene looked out to the west. The two praetorians who were waiting for her looked expectant, but for several heartbeats she could do nothing but stare at the emptiness of the camp around her. The legionnaires were already on the move. Few had been left behind, it seemed, as the men formed up for the attack on Vellica. And though she could not see them, she had no doubt that atop the high hill across the valley, the men of Vellica were readying their weapons, too, preparing for the coming assault.

  Many men would die today. Hundreds, she was certain. Perhaps far more if the Romans actually succeeded in breaching the gates.

  So many lives would be lost.