by Casey Lane
What hours of ecstasy are we ignoring for this goblet-related lunacy? I wondered.
Sabine peeked at Egnatius and the others, too. But she didn’t even purse her lips or shake her head the way she usually did after seeing such displays. She merely stepped resolutely ahead, steady-eyed, until we came to a mural of some dancing fauns on a wall. Trompe l’oeils were popular in those days: illusions appearing real enough to fool an onlooker. Almost like a mortal form of glamour. This one looked like the fauns could’ve taken us by the hand at any moment to join their merriment. I squinted at it. I’d been in Egnatius’s house so often, I knew it as well as my own. Yet, I didn’t recall ever seeing this mural before. It must have been new.
With one last glance to make sure we were alone, Sabine closed her eyes, murmured some words, and waved her hands over the mural. My own eyes bulged to see the mural melt away—and the wall with it. I’d seen Sabine perform magic before, of course. But this was different. We stepped into a room that was unfamiliar to me. Once inside, she waved her hands where the mural had been, and a stone wall appeared behind us. She cast a ball of light so we could see in the darkness. It wasn’t a large room; perhaps ten feet by ten feet. Its smooth walls on all sides had neither doors nor windows.
“What is this place?” I whispered to her.
“I created it,” she replied simply. “To hide the chalice from Egnatius, and from whoever else might come looking. At least until I can understand the accursed thing.” That was when I saw it.
In the center of the room, on a podium, stood the chalice. It was about eight inches tall, and, as far as I could tell, looked to be pure silver. An etched leaf and vine wound its way around the stem and cup. I walked up to the chalice and peered inside it.
“There’s still wine in here,” I said. The red liquid was darker than most wine. “How can there be any left, if the worshippers drank it all?”
“They didn’t,” Sabine answered. “They only managed small sips before going into that strange state I described. There was a good portion of it left, as you can see.” I reached toward the chalice.
“Don’t touch it!” Sabine snapped. I blinked at her and dropped my hand back to my side. She’d never been so harsh with me until this evening, not in all our decades together.
Sabine took a deep breath. Her next words were softer, though no less grave. “I still don’t understand what it is. Look in the chalice again. Can’t you see the magic swirling within? Can’t you feel it?”
I stepped forward and peered into the chalice again. This time, I tried to use my magical senses, not just my sight. Then, for the first time tonight, I understood a little of what Sabine meant. A sort of wave came over me. Something thick and heavy, teeming with magic. Like humidity mixed with black smoke. I close my eyes and inhaled.
“I can,” I replied. “But I don’t know if it’s something to be feared. I do get the sense it’s as old and powerful as you say. No doubt a foreigner—fresh from a ship—brought some new potion to enliven the mind. Perhaps it is just an exotic form of wine.”
“Your senses deceive you, Titus. It is not wine, but blood.”
My mouth hung open. “Blood? Whose blood?”
“I don’t know. But not a mortal’s, or a witch’s either.”
“I thought you said it was wine.”
“That’s what I thought, at first. The mortals who partook of it acted drunk, as if it were the most potent wine they’d ever tasted.”
“Did you taste it?”
“Of course not! Gods only know what it would do to creatures like us. And you must promise me you’ll never try to, either.” Apparently, my answer was not quick enough. “Promise me, Titus!” she urged.
I put my hands up in surrender. “I won’t, I swear!” I promised over and over. This was mostly because I hoped it would grant me entrance to other rooms Sabine alone held the key to this night—ones not built of mortar and stone. “But how do you know it’s not wine if you didn’t drink it?”
“There are spells one can use to determine the components of liquid. You know them—I taught you. I simply took a few drops from the chalice and performed them.”
“All right, then, but I still don’t see why you’re so animated. Odysseus himself was said to restore a minute amount of life to the souls he consulted by offering them blood to drink.” I looked on the chalice with renewed interest. “With any luck, this is something similar.”
“Be that as it may,” Sabine said, “we should not experiment with it until we know more.”
“As you wish, my love. Did you ask the worshippers where they acquired it?”
“By the time I realized what it was, their state precluded them from answering logical questions. It was like trying to get a straight answer out of Egnatius when he’s drunk.”
“Speaking of which,” I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind and nibbled her ear, “perhaps that is a situation we might take advantage of. Right here, right now, in fact.” I slipped one hand inside the front of her stola. “Did it not occur to you that you’d inadvertently created the perfect place for an assignation? We should have thought of this years ago.”
Faster than I thought possible, Sabine twisted herself out of my grasp. Her eyes blazed with a fire I’d never seen before as she glared back at me.
“You forget, Titus. Carna rules the heart. And goddesses of the heart are not to be trifled with.”
“You are the only goddess of my heart,” I protested. I was laying it on thicker than usual, but what did it matter? The sooner I flattered and soothed Sabine, the sooner I could enjoy her charms.
“That may not be enough to save us now, Titus,” she said ominously. She stared at the chalice. “I cannot help but feel this potion is like the ill wind that blows no good. Something come to warn us of imminent disaster.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Now, you’re just being morbid.” I confess, I was beginning to feel the same way. It was obvious she wasn’t going to bed with me that night. “There’s no reason to believe this chalice is a harbinger—of doom or otherwise.”
“Perhaps not, but something is coming, Titus. I don’t know what, but I know it will be . . . permanent.”
Chapter Six
You all know what happened next.
Vesuvius did not erupt that night, of course. Even the most casual student of history knows that. But in the months between that fateful day and the festival of Carna, Sabine obsessed over the chalice. She tried to find out everything she could about it, work magic on it, track down its worshippers. But they seemed lost to the wind—dead, or unwilling to be found. Hordes of people traversed in and out of Pompeii every day, especially during festivals. It was possible those who drank from the chalice were only passing through the city.
As Sabine requested, I did not make another attempt to drink from the chalice myself. There was no sense in going back on my promise to her. One, she was no fool, and would find out. Undoubtedly, she had magical wards on the secret room that would let her know of unauthorized entrance. Two, I didn’t care about the chalice as much as she did. So, it held a magic liquid. If it didn’t lead us to more of our own kind, what good did it do me? Besides, I was on and off campaigns that summer; I hardly had another chance to steal a glimpse of the silly thing. Let it be Sabine’s pet project, then, I thought. With any luck, it would keep her occupied—and maybe even happy, after a while, if she could figure out what its power meant.
Perhaps it would even cure this ennui or whatever it was that had her in its grip of late. I certainly hoped so. Ever since she acquired it, she’d been more fretful and aloof, withdrawing from me even during our brief visits together. But then, perhaps I should not have been away so often. If only I’d spent more time with her.
If only I’d known.
My hands—like everyone else’s—were trying uselessly to cover my head from the rain of fire bearing down on us. I kept thinking that, if we just waited long enough, Vesuvius would stop. She would cease he
r angry screaming and have mercy on us all. I later learned that hot ash and rock fell for roughly eighteen hours after the eruption. That added up to about sixty feet of debris in total: the height of a five-story building.
So, Vesuvius was not stopping. My backs of my hands were a mess of raw, red marks. It was growing harder to breathe, the hideous stench of sulfur still poisoning the air. The screams continued all around me, and I looked frantically to the left and right. But my eyes met only creatures even more pained and terror-stricken than I was. I kept running until I didn’t see them anymore.
What was it Sabine had once told me? You could toss around bonfires as if they were marbles, if you wished.
I stopped in my tracks. Maybe I could stop Vesuvius. Calm her roaring, douse her rage. I was a fire witch, after all, was I not?
I glanced around and saw I was standing in the center of the Forum. My body was between two stone bases—several feet high—whose statues had never been replaced after the earthquake of 62. I had no memory of how I got there. The Forum was barely recognizable, anyway, with columns and facades crumbled onto one another. Half of one side of the arcade had collapsed. And the entire square was empty. I could hear the echoes of shouts and screams on the streets surrounding it. Everyone had fled this place. They’d gone home to try to salvage their families or belongings, or had taken one look at Vesuvius and elected to run, run, run.
I turned toward the volcano, my back to the heavily damaged Temple of Jupiter. With arms splayed by my sides, I stared the mountain down, felt the weight of its power wash over me. For a moment, I hesitated. Then, I set my jaw, and sent all my magic toward the furious, shrieking Vesuvius.
I could feel the volcano fighting me. As I tried to deflect the ash still firing at my body—at everyone’s—she struggled, gnashed her teeth, tore her hair. She wanted to suffocate me; I could feel her earth magic filling me like stone. My legs were as lead; a heaviness crawled into my chest. Keeping my arms in the air was like trying to balance a building on my shoulders. Fire and ash and wind blew my tunic all around, shredding parts of it. I let out a guttural cry, clenched my fists, pulled them down. I would bottle Vesuvius back up if it was the last thing I did. I would be the one.
And it was working. My fire magic was winning. I could see, on the horizon, clouds of smoke and trickles of red were slowing down. My legs felt lighter, then my chest, then my arms. Rivers of veins lit up the sky. Later, scientists would credit this to electrically charged clouds causing a lightning storm. But Vesuvius and I knew the truth. It was really my magic. It had always been me.
But then, something happened. Vesuvius, in a surge of white-hot rage, sent another blast of fire magic up from her bowels.
I saw it coming straight toward me.
My eyes bulged. Fool. I had thought to wrestle Vesuvius’s magic back into the earth. Now, I saw I had become her magnet, drawing all her wrath toward me. An enormous fireball—bigger than Egnatius’s entire atrium—was bearing down in my direction. I took several steps back, but the ball of fire was growing larger, and not just because it was getting closer. Now, it was almost the size of the Temple of Jupiter. There was no possible way to control it. It was too big, and Vesuvius too angry. It would have taken an army of fire witches to turn it aside, if that. I was trapped. There was nowhere to run.
No no no no no. The sound was deafening as the fire roared toward me, a tornado made of impossible light and heat. The last thing I remember is being thrown backward, slamming into the stone base behind me. My head hit first, and the rest of my body must have followed and slid down. I say “must have,” because after I felt my head crack, everything went dark.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious. It couldn’t have been that long; I could still hear the screaming of mortals all around me. I tried to stand, but the pain in the back of my head blinded me. I closed my eyes and leaned on the stone base with one hand as nausea rolled in waves inside me. I opened my eyes. Behind me, the Temple of Jupiter was an empty shell. The roof had blown away, or been obliterated. Only a few of the entrance columns remained, splayed out like fingers roughly chopped off at different lengths.
It went past me, I realized. The ball of fire didn’t hit me directly. It sailed overhead and grazed me. But I had little time to thank the gods for their mercy. I knew my injuries were grave. I reached around and touched the back of my head. I barely laid a finger on it, and the pain came again, like a thousand knives piercing my brain. Another wave of nausea hit, and I doubled over, clutching my stomach. With great effort, I managed to stand again.
The shoulders of my tunic were drenched with blood. That my head was bleeding came as no surprise; the blow would’ve splattered a mortal’s brains all over the travertine. What was surprising was that it wouldn’t stop bleeding. I tried to will magic into my body, to heal it. In agony, I could feel the plates of my skull shift, reaching for one another. But they barely touched before shrinking back again.
I tried a second time, a third. I was drenched in sweat from the effort. Each time, the pain was so great, I was left gasping. My lungs clutched for breathable air in the thick, hateful fumes around me. I coughed and coughed. My body shook with great, ugly hacking noises as my stomach spasmed. The pain felt like Vesuvius itself. Like my head exploding.
But it was no use. The wound would not close. My skull and Vesuvius had that much in common. I’d used up too much of my magic—nearly all of it—on that last spell. That was why my body couldn’t repair itself. Sabine had warned me of this. How illness and injury could wreak havoc with a witch’s body if they weren’t careful. Now, I was able to appreciate her warning—at the worst possible time. The volcano was belching smoke and death just as enthusiastically as before. I had to get inside, somewhere.
As I walked, the vertigo was like a sadistic bully. Like the older slave boys I grew up with, until I learned to put them in their place. It felt like there was one on either side, pushing me into the waiting, laughing fists of another, who pushed back just as hard. I was jostled violently between them, the road rising and dipping, coming up at different angles to meet me. But I couldn’t let myself fall. If I did, I might not get up. I would lie there, like so many others, forever entombed in ash.
Fool. I cursed myself again as I stumbled along the road, trying to avoid the panicked imbeciles crashing into me. I should’ve known better. Stop Vesuvius? No man could control that evil woman, and no witch, either. What hubris leads us to believe we can steer the gods? Today, one of them had struck us down with little more than her poisonous breath. If only I’d saved some of my magic—just a portion—I might’ve been able to put out the other, smaller fires all around me. To stop them from spreading. But there were too many, and everything was burning, burning. My own element had turned trickster, betrayed me.
I thought being immortal meant I had all the time in the world. Now, I knew that was a lie. Fate can snatch opportunities from our open palms as surely as she does from humans’.
I was not going to be able to stop Vesuvius. No one was. Pompeii was going to be gulped down, one last swig of wine at a feast before blowing out the final candle. Everything I cared about was going to be extinguished. Everyone. In that moment, a single thought filled my mind. A single name only.
Sabine.
I have no idea how I made it to Sabine’s house in the state I was in. Magic, force of will . . . these things battled over which would sustain me. Flying was out of the question. The only thing worse than stumbling through Pompeii’s buildings would be to careen into them, courtesy of vertigo. In my panic, hideous scenarios danced and dangled before me like smiling, jerking marionettes. Sabine was trying to stop Vesuvius. She’d failed to stop Vesuvius, and the volcano claimed her. She was searching as frantically for me as I was for her. She’d fled without me.
Another thought flashed through my mind as I combed the streets. Sabine had fastened me to her side just as surely as Circe did to Homer. She might not have used a spell or charm, but the effect was
the same. I was incapable of leaving Sabine. Me, who, from the moment I was born, would do anything to anyone to ensure my survival. But getting out of Pompeii now, without knowing what became of her, was unthinkable. Even if it meant I died.
This was about two or so hours after Vesuvius erupted, though I will gladly employ the cliché here to say that it seemed an eternity. Because it was. The streets were emptier now than they were before. But this did not mean they were easier to navigate. Mounting piles of ash made it impossible to open doors. It was difficult for people to run, and that same ash quickly buried those who fell.
Overturned buildings blocked the roads; the streets were a sea of broken stone and splintered wood. The huge bodies of animals, horses and oxen, lay extinguished in an ocean of gray powder and fire. A thick layer of ash formed on the remaining rooftops; I heard the shrieking of those both inside and outside the apartments as roofs collapsed under the weight.
I was surprised to find Sabine’s house still standing, though I knew not for how long it would remain that way. The proconsul was one of the most important men in Pompeii; it wasn’t surprising his home was solidly built. But the doors were blocked by triangular mounds of ash. I had no choice; I’d have to make an attempt to fly. I fixed my eyes on the roofline, took a deep breath, and launched myself into the air.
I made it over, but faltered at the last second, catching my sandal on a jagged piece of broken tile. My heart leaped as I almost stumbled and fell back onto the street, so weak from loss of blood and magic. Still, I managed to right myself. Out of habit, I glimpsed down and over my shoulder to see if anyone had spotted me. Then, I then realized it didn’t matter. If anyone was shocked at the sight of a man flying through the air, their incredulity would soon be swallowed by the greedy wrath of Vesuvius.
I jumped down into the courtyard, now a lake of ash. I landed harder than I expected. I felt the shock of it through the ash to the ground below. The pain told me I nearly broke my ankles. It reverberated all the way to the wound in my head, bringing fresh waves of nausea. This would never have happened if I’d been at full strength, full magic. I looked around. The fountains had stopped running. Statues were knocked over and partially submerged in ash, as if trying to swim free. One could not make out where the hedges and paths had been.
