He drove his sword into the air, listening to the cheers of his army as he rode from Rome, leading a legion of six thousand.
It was time.
The Palatine was nearly empty by the time the door of the silver room opened, and the princes looked up, startled by the light. They had been praying to the Egyptian gods, and praying for their mother, Alexander Helios leading Ptolemy. The elder held the younger in his arms on their pallet. The little one had been crying for days, and his brother did not know how to comfort him.
Since they had seen their mother captured in the arena, Alexander had lost hope. Still, they prayed for her. They prayed for their father. They had seen him, too. Somehow, their parents, who had been dead, were in Rome. Alexander promised Ptolemy that their parents would come for them. He promised Ptolemy that they would not die here.
He was not so sure of this himself. They were imprisoned. He could think of no reason for it, beyond that they had somehow become enemies of Rome. He spent his days and nights thinking of a means of escape. They could go back to Egypt. They could hide there, in Alexandria, until they were grown enough to do something. Then, he would try to make things right. He should never have trusted the emperor. Should never have marched in the triumph.
They heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside, and Alexander stiffened.
The door opened, and it was his mother, looking just as she always had. She put a finger to her lips to bid them be silent, but Ptolemy could not. He leapt up and ran into Cleopatra’s arms, already crying her name.
Alexander Helios stayed on the pallet. There was something about her that made him suspicious. He could not tell what it was.
“Who are you?” he asked, calling his brother back. “I don’t know you.”
“How can you say that?” the woman asked. “How can you not recognize your own mother?”
Alexander saw, in that moment, her eyes flash with a strange green glow. He saw her skin, shriveled. An impersonation. She clutched Ptolemy to her breast, and over the little boy’s head she smiled viciously at Alexander.
He had no choice but to go with her. He stood, pretending he believed her to be his mother. He had no idea what else to do. All he could do was follow Chrysate as she made her way out of the silver room, his brother clenched in her arms.
“Where are you taking us?” he asked, trying to keep his voice natural.
“I am taking you home,” Chrysate answered. “I am taking you to your family.”
21
The earth shook with the marching of legions, all moving toward Avernus. Messengers flew, whispering to centurions, whispering to generals, passing written instructions along with well-embroidered rumors. Horses, frothing, fell at the roadsides, shying at the strange snakes that coursed over the roads even in daylight. Their riders leapt off and ran on. Men marched onward, sweating and burning in the heat of summer’s end, their armor heavy, their swords sheathed and sharpened, their feet beating a deep track into the dust.
Usem rode unsaddled, his coral ornaments polished. His dagger gleamed, its metal darker and stranger than anything the Romans had seen before. All who looked on him felt uneasy. The man’s skin shone in the sun, and nothing about him was Roman. He wore something about his shoulders that sometimes was a leopard skin and sometimes was the night sky, and beside him, around him, a tornado traveled, cooling nothing.
The legionaries watched Usem talking with the whirlwind, heard her talking back to him, whispers carried on the breeze, pouring into their ears and eyes. The snake sorcerer rode beside the emperor, protecting him from unknown enemies, and the Romans, in spite of themselves, feared him.
With Usem and Augustus rode the emperor’s historian, his armor rattling and ill-fitting. The soldiers had expected Nicolaus to perform the role of a poet, reciting words of war at night, singing songs of courage by day. Instead, the Damascene was silent, and this made the Romans even more nervous than they already were.
Their commander, Marcus Agrippa, wore bandages around his calf, and his face showed pain as he rode. Those who served nearest him saw him unwinding his bandages and redressing his wound, and they reported that it festered, hot and red, unhealing. He would not let servants touch it.
Only Augustus seemed himself, though his eyes were bright with fever. He rode ferociously up and down the lines of marching men, shouting encouragements to the army, asserting that they would best an enemy they could not imagine.
At night, roaring could be heard, but it came from no clear location. The earth shook and then was stable again. The soldiers looked to the heavens, thinking of Zeus and wondering which side he was on, that of the emperor of Rome or that of the dead queen of Egypt.
The purses of old women and of augurs filled with coins as they interpreted omens for the marching armies. Overhead, eagles wheeled, and vultures, too, following the leavings of the army.
Agrippa and Augustus, Nicolaus riding beside them, arrived in Alba only to find that the legion that had been garrisoned there had already marched south. Augustus was delighted to see that the army had received their orders and traveled responsively, but Agrippa was uneasy. Perhaps it was the pain of his leg. Perhaps it was something more.
Their next station, Formiae, was similarly emptied of men. Agrippa had sent the orders ahead himself, had written the letters, and yet he mistrusted the quiet. The legion had traveled too quickly. Their dust should still be in sight. Augustus, on the other hand, was exuberant, sweating in the heat of the sun, singing in the cool of the night, reminded once more of his boyhood beside Agrippa, beside Julius Caesar, of the glorious times before he’d become truly Glorious.
At night, the sky filled with stars, and Augustus looked up at them, imagining himself stationed amongst the constellations. He imagined his own gods looking down upon his deeds, approving.
He would win this time. He would win. He had an army behind him and Hercules’ bow upon his back. Who knew what Rome would be when this battle was over?
Who knew what worlds existed to be conquered once Rome had beaten such an enemy?
Selene, in her litter, rocked down the dusty Appian behind the army, her eyes closed, her skin chilled. The seiðkona traveled with her, trying to draw her own strength together. She had so little now. Her time was nearly done.
As the legions marched into Avernus, Cleopatra waited. It was sundown, and the moon rose in a yellow crescent. She could smell the armies coming toward her. She could feel their footsteps and hear their lust for battle. She could feel Augustus and Agrippa.
She had not been in battle since Actium.
She missed Antony, their planning together, the nights before the battle had taken place. She missed her lover, her general, her partner.
She knew, though, that she would have to do this alone. He was gone, and this was her fight, not his. She would fight to save her children and Antony. She would fight to avenge herself upon the man who had taken everything from her.
She thought of Augustus’s heart, and of how it would feel in her hands. She could feel it beating, his excitement as he approached. She could feel Chrysate, too, traveling somewhere in the vicinity of the Romans.
She would finish her task. She would be damned after tonight, if she had not been before. Her ka, if she ever reclaimed it, would fall against Maat’s feather, and the Eater of Souls would take it. She prayed to her own country’s gods, to Isis, long-neglected goddess of mothers. To Thoth, for knowledge.
She prayed not for herself, but for her children, the one who was gone and the ones who still remained. Her hands, when she spread them before her, were tipped with the claws of the lioness. Her body rippled with muscles that were not human.
She could not feel Sekhmet, but she had become a version of her. She could feel herself forfeiting the parts that had been Cleopatra.
The whirlwind where her heart had been no longer disturbed her.
At last, the queen rose to her feet and began to climb the hill toward the crater’s mouth.
/> The armies of Rome had arrived.
She would meet them.
Chrysate had found a beautiful abandoned cave, and though it smelled of felines, of bats, and of something else as well, it would do. It went deep into the side of the rocks. It was cool and ancient, and the cool soothed her skin, chapped and burnt after days of travel. It had taken no small magic to conceal herself and Cleopatra’s children in the litter of a senator’s mistress, a woman she’d throttled just south of Rome. The elder child had fought her, tearing her skin and wounding her delicate flesh. Finally, after he’d managed to push the younger from the litter, screaming at him to run, Chrysate had been obliged to drug him. It had taken her a great deal of energy to lay hands on the small one, who was well hidden in the bushes, and he had kicked her and screamed that she was not his mother.
She found the entire thing wearing.
They’d left the slow-moving litter after a few days and traveled in the bed of a wagon, Chrysate’s skin parching beneath the cloth that covered her. By then her charges were heavy and dull-witted with potions and disguised with the witch’s ebbing magic. It had been no small labor keeping them with her, no small labor keeping them hidden.
She ran her fingernails over Alexander and Ptolemy. She did not care for children, particularly male children. There was no point to them, none but this.
They were her only currency now, but it was not time. Not yet.
22
Usem loped across the hill to where Augustus and Agrippa sat on horseback, their armor and regalia shining. The lines of Roman soldiers spread around them, each man perfectly distanced from the next, each man still and resolved. Waiting.
“If she is here, the battle will begin soon,” Usem said, looking at the position of the moon in the sky, and the emperor shuddered. “Do you remember my price?”
There was a light in the man’s eyes, an amber glow, and his teeth seemed sharper than they had before. The Psylli’s snakes twisted about his limbs, hissing at Augustus, their eyes, all of their eyes, directed at him. The wind twisted about him as well, passing over his sweating skin, and it chilled him.
“I do,” Augustus said. Peace for the Roman Empire would not be too great a price for this, he knew now. To be free of Cleopatra. To be free of witches and sorcerers.
“Then my family is at the ready,” Usem said, pointing to the horizon. “Remember. We must kill her. Not trap her.” The clouds were massed there, dark and full of lightning. As the Psylli pointed, Augustus watched horns appear on a cloudy skull, a cloudy tail lashing, a cloudy maw open in a roar. His warriors.
Augustus looked appreciatively at the lines, so measured, so plotted. What could resist the Roman army? Nothing.
The men were silent, watchful. Overhead, Augustus saw a bird flit across the sky, and the wind began to rise, touching each section of the battlefield.
A faint sound of drumming began to echo over the crater, and Usem’s head whipped around, searching the dark for the source. Nothing.
From far across the battlefield, there was a single sound, a roar, long and hoarse and primal. The legionaries shifted uneasily, looking blindly into the dark. Whatever it was, it was nearby.
Suddenly, though, all around the Romans, the night was alive with sparks of light. Augustus drew in his breath. What was happening? He felt surrounded, but he could not see what surrounded him. The light was cold and seemed unattached to any army. The sparks moved, slowly, encroaching.
On the crest of the hilltop, the darkness stretched into silhouettes, and the Romans gasped as one, disbelieving the shape of what they saw.
The moon came out from behind a cloud and revealed Cleopatra’s army.
Augustus was speechless.
The sparks of light were thousands of eyes reflecting like jewels. Cleopatra shone at the center of the line and the sound Augustus had thought was drumming, was not.
It was footsteps.
The earth vibrated with their coming. The queen was flanked by an army of animals. They covered the hillside like a carpet, no space between them. There were as many of them as there were Romans. Tigers and leopards and lions. A bull elephant, its tusks long and yellow. A rhinoceros. Everything the Romans had ever seen in the arenas, in marketplaces, in dreams, and in nightmares. Animals who had been captured and pressed into service. Animals who’d danced at dinners, fought with gladiators, and hungered for revenge from deep beneath the streets of Rome. They walked with one rhythm, and Cleopatra’s hands lay on the backs of two leopards, white beneath the moonlight, their coats spotted with darkness, their teeth bared. The ground swarmed, alive with rats and snakes.
“PREPARE FOR BATTLE!” Agrippa bellowed, and within moments, all the men were running, to their stations, running for their lives.
“You will give me my children!” Cleopatra shouted. “Give them to me, and I will spare Rome its army. Keep them, and you will all die.”
Her voice echoed unnaturally, amplified. Augustus could see the details of his enemy from his position. Her bracelets. Her tight linen gown unspoiled by these months, this year since she had been buried. He could see her curving body beneath the sheer fabric. She was a demon, he knew. He knew.
He could see the accursed silver box she carried in her hands. He could feel her breathing across the battlefield. Not human. Nothing human about her.
Augustus suppressed a sound as he caught sight of a crocodile clambering out of the water. Another. And another after it. The water roiled with their tails. Above the crater, the animals continued to come, eerily silent. No roars, no singing. They came as though they were ghosts, but they were not. Augustus could smell their hunger, the rich scent of the cats and the musky scent of the snakes. The moonlit sky grew dark with birds and bats.
“My children,” Cleopatra repeated. “You took my husband from me, and I will have my children back.”
“I will not give them to you!” Augustus shouted, finding his voice at last. “You are not fit to have them. Who are you to demand sacrifices of Rome? What you lost, you lost in war!”
Augustus felt all his men beginning to panic. He looked to Agrippa, and saw him making frantic gestures, instructing the men to hold their positions.
She was still too far from him to touch him. He was grateful for that. Not afraid, no. She was only an enemy, and there had been many enemies. His head wore the crown, and he knew that it was desired by every man who had ever walked the earth. And every woman, too. There was no one alive who did not want to rule the world.
She tilted her head, noticing for the first time the man beside the emperor.
“Nicolaus,” she said, and the emperor heard sorrow in her tone. Beside him, the historian moved uncomfortably closer to Agrippa. Augustus pushed him back into the shelter of the pavilion. He was derailing the negotiation.
“You lost your husband and your children when you lost your city, and you lost your city because you were not strong enough to keep it. You will surrender to me!” Augustus continued, looking into her dark eyes. He would kill her. He held the bow of Hercules behind his back, with its deathly poisoned arrow.
“Do you believe your own words?” Cleopatra asked him, her tone warning. “Do I look weak to you, Octavian? I am not the woman who lost a war in Alexandria. I am no longer Cleopatra.”
Augustus stood his ground. “You are nothing!” Augustus shouted. “You are a slave to this empire!”
Agrippa shouted a command, and the men of the Roman army marched forward around the rim of the crater in perfect formation, though their feet slipped and dislodged boulders at the crater’s edge. A man fell screaming into space, tumbling into the dark and sinking beneath the lake’s waters, weighed down by his armor.
The others of his line maintained their spacing. Their shields were raised to form a wall of metal before them.
Cleopatra merely raised her hands, and the sounds of her animals, heretofore silenced, ripped through the air. There was no line, and this was no normal battle formation.
In
stead, the Romans were faced with a mass of beasts, sleek and rough, fanged and tremendous. The lions and tigers roared, and gathered themselves into shining masses of violence, and the Romans felt their bodies liquefy in fear. What sort of war was this? They were not bestiarii. They had not been trained to fight animals, and their commander had not warned them that this would be the case. Still, they stayed in their lines. They looked neither to the left nor to the right. They kept their positions. They marched forward, their heads protected by their shields, hiding their fear. As long as they kept to their lines, nothing could touch them. They were warriors.
Several men whispered prayers.
The elephant, fled from an arena, trumpeted and reared onto its hind legs, silhouetted against the starry sky. A tremendous bear rose over the crest of the hill, looking into the midst of the army with dark, intelligent eyes. It tossed its head and bellowed, each fang as long as a finger.
A leopard, lean and bloodthirsty, lifted its lip and snarled as it came.
The queen marched toward the Roman line, her animals following her, their bodies moving as though powered by a single soul. Her eyes glowed with an unearthly light, and from his position, Augustus watched her, raging. What right had she to bring animals against him?
Augustus nodded at Agrippa.
“Archers!” shouted the general.
The archers, positioned behind the infantry, pulled their bows from their backs and fit the special silver-tipped arrows into them. Each man had been provided with a rich quiver full.
“Fool,” said Cleopatra quietly, as if to herself.
“Fire!” shouted Agrippa.
The men moved to draw back their bowstrings, but then stared at them, bewildered at the lack of tension in the strings, some sort of sabotage of their weaponry.
A rat leapt out of a Roman arrow case. Another. Soon, a swarm of rats covered the ground, and each of the Roman archers stood appalled, their gnawed bowstrings in their fingers, their bows useless.
Queen of Kings Page 34
