Vorenus saw a genuine pleading in his friend’s eyes. Pullo had never cared for the gods. When they were younger, when they’d known far less about such things, Pullo had mocked Vorenus for believing. And yet here the big man was, wanting to know the belief of the Therapeutae. What had happened to him while they were apart?
“It is difficult to understand,” Madhukar admitted. “It took the Teacher many years to learn the truth: life is suffering. You know this. You need only look around to see that all the joys of life are matched with an infinity of sorrows. Joy, one might say, is only possible because of that sorrow, for if all life was joy you would know it not for the joy that it is. We need sorrow and pain in this life, if only to know the importance of those blessed moments without them. But still, in the end, from the child trembling in the cold night to the worm drying upon the earth, the one truth of life is suffering. So we want to break the cycle of our being. Going to the Elysian Fields—to a heaven, as some call it—would only be to continue to exist, no matter what form you imagine for it.”
Pullo chewed on his lip for a moment, thinking. “So you want to be released from existence?”
“Released from suffering, yes.”
“So that’s what happened to Khenti? He was released from existence? He’s just gone?”
“I cannot know. I can only say what we have been taught. But I would say that he has not gone into nothingness, if this is your concern.”
“Tell him about the flower,” Vorenus said. “It’s about the only way this ever made sense to me.”
If Madhukar was offended by the negativity of the statement, it did not show. The monk instead gave an acknowledging nod. “I’m glad at least something in these years is getting through your Roman skull.”
Vorenus wanted to tell the monk that it wasn’t his fault—that what he had seen, what he knew now of the death of the one God and the futility of a life of pious belief, had left him unable to believe in anything anymore—but instead he just smiled. “I’m an old dog and this is all a new trick,” he said.
Madhukar chuckled a little. Pullo still had a kind of frown on his face. “Flower?”
“Ah, yes.” Madhukar waved his hand to a patch of leafy green growing a little ways down the path among the rocks. “Imagine for a moment a seed. Placed in fertile earth it will take root. Care for it, and it will grow. Tend to it, and it will bloom. But only so long. In time the caterpillar will gnaw upon its leaves. The wind will sweep away its soft petals. The frost will kill its roots. The flower will die, and it will fade back into the earth from whence it came. Perhaps a new flower will grow in its place, rising from the very dust of the old one, rising in birth in the moment of death. It, too, will take root and grow. It, too, will live and die. So it is for most of us. We live. We die. We live again. And each time the value of our being sows the ground of our new life for good or ill. What we are matters very much for what we will be.”
“In other words,” Vorenus said, “after death, Madhukar thinks Khenti probably took on a new life.”
Madhukar shrugged. “It is what the Teacher taught.”
Pullo’s face had softened. “So you live a good life in order to live a better one again? And that’s the release you seek?”
“It is a noble and proper thing to live well,” Madhukar agreed. “But rebirth is not release. The flower that returns must suffer again. The caterpillar. The wind. The frost. No, release is to no longer be the flower. To be a new thing now: the butterfly, the air, the chill itself. To become one with the very fabric of creation.”
“To know the mind of God,” Caesarion said.
Everyone turned to where the young man was walking up the path, holding hands with Hannah. Rishi and the other monks were nowhere to be seen.
“Welcome,” Madhukar said, exchanging acknowledgments with them both. Then he looked around at them all and opened his arms in a gesture of completion. “I am glad you are all come together at last. I do not doubt that you have much of which to speak, and I have work to tend to elsewhere. The bees won’t keep themselves. May you all find solace and peace in this place.”
The little monk bowed once more to them all, quickly embraced Caesarion in a joyous hug, and then retreated back down the path.
“I’m really glad you were here for this,” Caesarion said. “And especially you, Titus Pullo. Thinking you dead and now seeing you alive … well, it’s amazing.”
Pullo smiled, and without leaving his seat on the rocks he reached out and grabbed the younger man with one big paw and pulled him in for a hug that was at once playful and fatherly. “I did miss you, little pharaoh,” he grumbled.
And I missed this, Vorenus thought, recalling the shared memories of a time before war and the Shards of Heaven entered into their lives.
Pullo let Caesarion go, tousling his damp hair with one hand while with his other he quickly wiped at his own eyes. Seeing them smiling suddenly brought back the memory of another day in Alexandria, when they’d first learned that Juba the Numidian was trying to attain the fabled Scrolls of Thoth, thought to hold all the secrets of the gods.
“Is everything all right, Vorenus?”
Vorenus opened his eyes when Caesarion spoke, not having realized that he’d closed them. “All is well.” He blinked back dampness as he looked at his old friend, so beaten by the world, and the boy they’d come to view like a son, so ready to enter the next stage of life with the young woman he loved. “I was simply thinking how it is that things can stay the same even as they change.”
“Time passes,” Hannah said. “All things change.”
Vorenus nodded respectfully. “So it does.”
Hannah’s eyes twinkled as they so often did when she saw to the clear truth of things. “But you were thinking of something specific, Lucius Vorenus.”
Vorenus couldn’t help but smile at how he was exposed before her. Even from the first time they’d met her, the young Jewish girl had read them all like a book. It was one of the first things, he suspected, that drew young Caesarion to her. Wise and wise again, he thought to himself. “I was thinking of the house of Asclepius,” he admitted. “After the assassin’s attack in Alexandria. Do you remember it?”
“I do,” Caesarion said. “You saved many lives that day, Vorenus.”
Vorenus nodded, though he didn’t feel the least bit heroic for what he’d had to do. “I remember we talked about the Scrolls of Thoth, how they were said to hold all the knowledge of the gods. You told us that if we actually found them you would destroy them. You said you had no desire to know the mind of God.”
“I remember it well.” Caesarion smiled. “And that’s still true to a point. But remember that back then I guess I thought God was alive. But He’s dead, remember?”
Vorenus shivered despite the warm morning air. It still bothered him to hear it said so plainly. No matter how much it made sense of the world, he didn’t want to believe that God was dead.
“Dead,” Pullo said. “But you still do believe there was a God?”
“How could I not?” Caesarion exchanged a smile with Hannah and squeezed her hand. “I know that the monks here say that their Teacher didn’t speak of a god, but I do think there was one. Nothing else explains the Shards. At the same time, it’s like I told Didymus back in Alexandria: no just God could allow such injustice in the world. So it makes sense, as Hannah and her people believe, that for God to give His creation the free will to live on its own, He had to unmake Himself. His death was His greatest gift.”
“But the monks say life is suffering,” Pullo said.
“The gift indeed comes with a price,” Hannah replied. “But remember that we prefer to dwell on what lies within ourselves, not that which dwells without. As the monks here say, through right wisdom, right conduct, and right focus, we can achieve release.”
“To be unmade ourselves,” Vorenus whispered. The stark truth of it struck him so suddenly, so abruptly, that he couldn’t help but speak the words out loud. It was as if they
had been spoken into his very soul.
The smile with which Caesarion met him was kindly, almost paternal. “And so to know the mind of God.”
“A hard thing to understand,” Vorenus said, looking at the ground.
Caesarion stepped forward and put his hand on Vorenus’ shoulder. “An even harder thing for many to accept.”
For a moment there was silence amid the gathering on the rocks. And for all that Vorenus might have thought he would hear next, it was not the voice of his old friend.
“I accept it,” Pullo said. “But I know it’s not everything.”
Vorenus looked up, but it was Hannah who spoke first. “How do you know?”
“Well,” Pullo said, a smile creasing the ragged lines of his scarred face, “I know there’s more, because I died.”
17
THE MOON TAKES FLIGHT
CANTABRIA, 26 BCE
In the dark before the dawn, Selene left Tiberius sleeping. Pulling her shawl close about her as she left, she pretended to be unhurried. Not one of the praetorians outlined by the watch fires around the tent stopped her as she turned toward the baths on the far side of the encampment and began to walk. Not one of them even looked at her.
She tried not to limp, though she ached from the bruising and the strains of muscles and joints that had been twisted in the rape. She tried to walk tall and proud, like the queen that she should have been.
She didn’t need to try not to cry, though. She had had enough of tears. This night had seen the end of them. Only vengeance was left. Vengeance and her love for her husband, stronger than ever.
Juba. Beautiful, kind Juba. She wasn’t sure whether she would tell him what had happened. She wasn’t sure if she could.
It wasn’t her fault. She had tried to fight. Tiberius had simply been too strong. It was true, and she knew it in her soul, yet she felt a horrible guilt. Another man had been inside her, and it left her feeling dirty, soiled in ways that she feared would never become clean.
But that wasn’t why she walked toward the baths.
She walked toward the baths because they were away from the main gate, away from any hint that she was escaping. And escaping was exactly what she intended to do.
Around her, the camp was heavy with the smells of the fires along the paths between rows of tents. A few legionnaires stood guard or walked from one place to another on the various ceaseless duties of maintaining order within the encampment. The air was crisp, and Selene kept her heavy shawl held close as she walked. From time to time she looked behind her, but she saw no one following. The praetorians, it seemed, had judged her no threat to leave.
The baths were situated toward the rear of the encampment, but when she arrived there she paused and then, as if making a sudden decision, walked onward, toward the latrines along the rear wall of the camp.
These latrines, she knew, were among the least used. And here the legionnaires had built a few enclosed areas, one in particular being designated for the few women in the camp: most of them camp followers, but a few were wives like Selene who had come for one reason or another. It was a simple plank-built structure, only large enough for three or four women at a time to squat over the rock-lined channel, but it was enough to shield private business from public eyes. And privacy was precisely what Selene needed now.
Entering the latrine, wrinkling her nose at the bitter, thick smells, she was grateful to find the little space unoccupied. The early hour had more than one use for her this day.
With the wood door pulled shut behind her—taking one last glance back out to see that no one was watching—she lowered the shawl off her body and exposed the satchel and the Aegis of Zeus hidden beneath.
She’d had to be careful removing the breastplate from its hiding place, and she couldn’t bother to tighten its straps for fear that they would make too much noise and wake Tiberius from his wine-drunk stupor, but she had felt certain that she couldn’t leave either of the Shards where they were. Tiberius knew too much. He’d come too close to engaging the Palladium last night. She had to get it and the Aegis of Zeus away from him.
Carefully, Selene tightened the Aegis as best she could. It was too large for her by any measure, but by cinching every strap to its limits, she found that she could keep the armor of Alexander the Great from moving too much around her smaller body. It was good enough, she supposed. And she didn’t have much choice.
As she took a deep breath and tried to relax she realized that the armor felt warm against her breast: a deep warmth that nuzzled up against her, settled into the center of her being. It was comforting, she decided, though it trembled with a power she could not define.
Whatever it was, she was certain she would need it.
She resettled the shawl upon her shoulders, covering the armor as effectively as she could and tying it tightly about her neck.
Next, she took from her small satchel the Palladium.
The rock statue had been broken when Tiberius had thrown it against the iron headboard. She’d seen the crack as she’d lain upon the bed and taken his weight. She’d stared at it. She’d remembered all that she had seen in the battle between Juba with the Trident of water and the little girl with the Lance of fire. Both of them had been holding the stones, the blacker-than-black Shards of Heaven themselves.
Carefully, Selene knelt. Ignoring the proximity of the open channel of refuse, she gripped the statue in both hands and swung it hard against the corner of the stone wall of the latrine trough. The rock sparked and chipped. She swung again, and this time her aim was true: she struck the jagged crack perfectly and the top half of the statue fell away with a clatter into the dirt.
Selene stared. The stone, like all the others they’d seen, was of a glossy darkness, a pit with no color. It was about the size of a throwing stone. It was smooth and round, like a slightly flattened egg, and if it wasn’t still nestled within the lower half of the Palladium like a jewel within its setting, the Shard would have fit perfectly in the soft flesh of her palm, wrapped in her fist.
Selene stood, and she took one more look outside. No one had approached the latrine. Nothing stirred in the darkness.
It was now or never, she decided, and after one last deep breath, like a diver getting ready for the plunge, she held the base of the little statue in her right hand and placed her left upon the top of it, her palm cupping over the smooth black surface of the Shard.
The power surged up or pulled her down—she could not tell which—and she clenched her jaw to keep from screaming. For several seconds it threatened to overwhelm her, but she knew something of the surge and how to control it from her practice with Juba.
But this power was far greater than anything she had tapped into before. It was, a part of her thought, as if she’d had a mere basin of water before and now was given the sea.
She became aware that each time the tumultuous power of the Shard in her hands bucked up, hungry and wanting to devour her, another force pushed it back—another wave of power that was both her and not her. The Aegis of Zeus.
Selene at last unclenched her jaw and forced herself to breathe again, first in labored gasps and then, as the forces steadied, in longer, calmer breaths. She felt giddy, standing in the latrine with a dragon writhing in her hands, begging to be released.
And so, looking up, she released it.
The sides of the latrine buckled and broke inward as torrents of air were suddenly sucked into the space. They shoved upward, like a massive battering ram, and the thin planks that made up the roof splintered away, hurtling up high into the night.
The wind died down. Selene panted, grinning. Somewhere in the distance she heard the shouts of the men at the gate watchtower.
Let them stir, she thought. I’m going to go rescue my husband, and I’m not going that way.
And with that, staring up into the starry void, Selene called down the power of the four winds, and she took flight.
* * *
From far up above, invisible agains
t the blackness, Selene soared in silent circles above Vellica.
She cried as she flew, not in tears of rage or anger or pain, but in tears of sorrow and hope. Her mother, Cleopatra, had ruled on Earth as the physical embodiment of Isis, and upon her death she had intended to take her place within the heavens, ruling unto eternity among the stars with her husband, Osiris. It had been a beautiful story once, but Selene had learned too much to think it true. Her parents were simply dead. Dead like the one God who was the only true God there had ever been.
Only now Selene was among those stars herself, like Isis upon her kite wings, trying to bring her husband back home. And she felt her mother with her. And her father, too. They weren’t gone. They were here. They were in the wind. She felt as if with only a little more power she could reach out and touch them, bring them back, and enfold herself in their loving arms once more.
Just a little more power, she thought. I could conquer death itself.
Against the far horizon to the east, the sky began to glow with the fire of dawn. Reluctantly, as if pulling away from a dream, Selene shook herself into the present and circled lower toward the lingering shadows, closer to the still-slumbering hillfort.
The guards on the walls brushed hair from their eyes as the wind passed over them, but no one gazed upward and saw the girl in flight.
Selene held herself amid the air above the center of it all, slowly turning and watching the few people moving as they came and went in the pre-dawn. What she was looking for, she didn’t know. Certainly she didn’t expect Juba to be held out in the open. But she hoped to spy some clue as to where he was, some sign of what she might do.
She knew she ought to be more tired. She ought to be exhausted, given the amount of power that was coursing through her. But the steady warmth of the Aegis against her breast made her feel as if she’d never been more alive.
At last, just as the sky was growing light enough that she feared she would need to fly away, Selene saw something that could help her: Corocotta’s little slave girl, hobbling between buildings on her way toward what Selene could only imagine was their own latrine: a small building against the outer wall not unlike the one she’d just left behind in the encampment.
The Gates of Hell Page 19
