The Realms of God--A Novel of the Roman Empire (The Shards of Heaven, Book 3)

by Michael Livingston

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  For Samuel and Elanor,

  who are every reason

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are the usual suspects to thank: Kayla and the kids, my parents, and of course Catherine Bollinger, who is an extraordinary beta reader and a fine gardener. My family and my friends were always there when I needed them—thanks, Kelly!—and I’m enormously pleased to work with some truly talented people at Tor. I owe you all so much.

  I need to give thanks, too, to the men and women around the world who have done so much not only to preserve the remains of the past but also to understand them. Ancient sites like Petra and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, ancient writings like those of Celsus or Josephus—all of the many disparate parts of our human cultural heritage from which I have cast this story—are available only because people give their time, money, and energy to keep them so.

  Last, to all the readers and reviewers who loved The Shards of Heaven and The Gates of Hell, your positive encouragement and enthusiasm has been fundamental to making this third volume happen. My thanks to all of you.

  PREFACE

  The Shards of Heaven series, of which this is the third volume, is a historical fantasy. As such, its story is intended to fit within the bounds of known history wherever possible. What happens within these pages is inspired by real events happening in real places to real people. In Jerusalem, the tiled floors in a hidden chamber below the Temple are real. In Petra, the High Place of Sacrifice, the carvings in the Small Siq, and even the obelisks are real, as is the special tomb that is today known as the Tomb of the Roman Soldier. The revolt of Herod’s slave Simon was real. Abdes Pantera was a real Roman archer. And Miriam … well, let history judge.

  The reader wishing a basic understanding of the facts of history as they pertain to the characters herein should consult the glossary at the end of this book.

  Men create gods after their own image—not only with regard to their form, but with regard to their mode of life.

  —Aristotle

  PROLOGUE

  THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES

  RHODES, 5 BCE

  Thrasyllus leaned against the broken foot of a bronze giant and stared out at the harbor of Rhodes. The harsh calls of seabirds swirled around him, and the sky was wide and a darkening blue as the sun drifted toward the west. Beneath it the water was full of sails—fishermen, traders, mercenaries, and more—all moving, all bending this way or that upon the salt-thick breeze of the sea. Closer, along the water’s edge near the gates of the city, a boy in rags was begging the dockworkers for something to eat. They appeared to be laughing at him.

  Though Thrasyllus was looking away, he felt Lapis move her head to look up at him from where she was sitting on the steps near his feet. “My love?”

  They had arrived more than an hour ago, carried by the tall masts of a transport ship that they’d boarded in Athens. Before that it had been a long voyage from Mauretania—across nearly the full length of the Mediterranean Sea—and Thrasyllus was more tired than he remembered being in many years. He was certain she felt the same, though she didn’t question him when he suggested they climb up here to stand beside the ruins of the ancient statue. She never questioned him, not since he’d saved her life in Alexandria all those years ago, not since they’d fallen in love: the once-prostitute and her former client. A match, he thought, that ought to have been written in the stars.

  It wasn’t, though. He’d read them every morning and night while he’d tended her back to health—and afterward, too, when they learned day by day and month by month how to live past their past. Never had the signs spoken of it.

  He was forty years old now. Old enough to know that love, as it happened, didn’t work like that.

  Why he’d suggested that they wander up onto this hillside, to the wide stone platform upon which the shattered fragments of the Colossus remained, Thrasyllus wasn’t really certain. But he did know why his wife had followed him, why she sat quietly upon the steps below him while he stood lost in thought. Lapis loved him. And though Thrasyllus had seen many wonders in this world across his four decades, he’d found that the power of her love was far more wonderful than anything he’d ever known.

  Indeed, her love made the ruins of the bronze monument that dwarfed them both seem somehow smaller and less significant, no matter how mighty it had once been. The Colossus had once towered over this city, after all, and Thrasyllus could only imagine what a magnificent sight it must have been. What had its metal eyes seen before it collapsed, he wondered? What great men had looked up at its height, at the seabirds that turned in circles around it like a squawking wreath? What riches had passed before the glinting light of its brows? What navies had it watched draw forth to war?

  He himself had never been to Rhodes, so all he’d known of the bronze giant had been from spare descriptions in books or awed accounts on travelers’ tongues. Many of them spoke of how the Colossus had once stood over the harbor, and somehow Thrasyllus had gleaned from such descriptions that it had stood astride the waters, one foot upon either shore of the harbor’s open mouth. The truth, he could now see, was that while it had looked over the busy harbor it had done so from the hillside above the old city. His mistaken assumptions made him ponder what false impressions other people had of Alexandria, where he’d lived so long before: how did they describe the Great Lighthouse that watched over its harbor, or the great tomb of Alexander the Great in the city center? And how did they speak of the Great Library, where he’d grown up in the tutelage of some of the finest scholars in the world?

  He’d not been to Alexandria in twenty years, not since he’d fled the city with the beautiful girl, Lapis, who’d become his wife. Thinking of it now, he wished that he could return there. No matter the perils that they’d faced in Alexandria, anything would be better than going to meet Tiberius.

  “My love?” Lapis repeated.

  Thrasyllus turned to look down at her, felt his heart thrill at the sight of her. The planets didn’t align to speak of it, he thought with a smile, but such feelings were without doubt. “We need to go, don’t we?”

  Her green eyes warmed with a kind of regret. “I think so,” she said. “The day is late. You probably shouldn’t keep him waiting.”

  Thrasyllus nodded in agreement, but still he looked back to the sky and the birds.

  The summons of the son of Caesar could hardly be denied, but that didn’t mean that he was anxious to answer it. There had been too many stori
es about Tiberius of late. The adopted son of Augustus had long had a reputation for being a sullen and emotional man, but it was said he’d grown even darker in spirit since politics had forced him to divorce Vipsania five years earlier and marry Julia, the only blood child of Augustus. The new marriage had cemented the position of Tiberius as Caesar’s presumed heir, but it had brought him little joy. Julia was widely reported to take lovers upon the most passing whim, and the delicate dance of Roman politics clearly didn’t fit well with his sensibilities. Only months ago, Tiberius had abruptly retired from Rome, going into what many were calling a self-imposed exile in his secluded villa on Rhodes.

  There were quiet whispers, though, that the decision of Tiberius was something more than mere disgust at his wife’s promiscuity or his annoyance at Rome’s intrigues. He was seeking something, it was said. Information. And he was questioning astrologers in order to find it. What it was he sought, no one seemed to know, but the astrologers were being summoned to Tiberius’ villa outside this city—and many were not returning.

  Thrasyllus watched a bird pause, fold its wings, and dive like a falling spear into the waters of the harbor. He sighed.

  “You’re right,” he finally whispered. “We should start up.”

  He held out his hand and helped her to her feet. Tiberius’ villa was not far.

  Gathering up their things, they once more beheld the happy harbor. Then hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, through Rhodes they took their solitary way.

  * * *

  A slave met them on the steps of the portico outside the villa of Tiberius. He was a short man with wide shoulders and a flat, brooding face who only grunted when Thrasyllus announced his name and his summons. Then the slave turned and led them, with no formality and hardly a look back, into the expansive home.

  The villa was hardly as opulent as some of those he’d heard of in Rome—it certainly paled in comparison to the royal palaces in Alexandria that he’d occasionally had opportunity to visit alongside Didymus, the head of the Great Library and personal tutor to the children of Cleopatra in those faraway days. But from the marble tiles and mosaics on its floors to the stern statuary and delicately tended plants that dotted its clean halls the villa nevertheless spoke of its owner’s vast reserves of wealth. It was, Thrasyllus observed, very different from the world he and Lapis had joined in Mauretania. There, even in their royal halls, King Juba and Queen Selene had worked hard to keep such extravagance to a minimum. The money, Juba was fond of saying, was better spent on those things that helped the city at large: aqueducts, drainage systems, and better roads for the travel of merchants.

  What Thrasyllus felt here was quite the opposite. It was the need to impress and overwhelm. It was disgusting in its way, but it was also the reason Lapis had so vigorously insisted that she come along. She’d never seen anything like this world, and he would do and give anything to see her happy. That’s what love was.

  Taking a turn, the slave led them out into a large open atrium. The garden there was carefully manicured around a fountain at its center. The waters burbled as they passed by, the slave winding them back toward the rear of the building.

  There were some of the usual sounds of a household at work around them. Pots being cleaned in the kitchen. The feet of servants shuffling from one room to the next. Livestock being brought to the barn. And, growing louder the farther they walked toward the back of the villa, the sound of threshing.

  No, Thrasyllus decided. Not threshing. It wasn’t the sound of feet stomping on grain, separating the fruit from the chaff. The blows were heavier, harder, a sound he couldn’t place but which sent a foreboding tremor over his skin.

  He looked over to Lapis, but she was gazing in smiling wonder at the statue of a Roman god that stood amid the plants. Thrasyllus looked, too, and he saw that it was Mercury, the wing-footed messenger who flew between the realms of gods and men. In his hand was his caduceus, the staff of his authority, entwined by two coiling serpents.

  Thrasyllus felt his heart skip a beat. He’d seen a staff much like it, twenty years earlier, in the ancient temple of Carthage. That had been the Trident of Poseidon, one of the Shards of Heaven. It controlled water. Juba had used it with the other Shards in his possession, and with their power he’d opened a gate to some deep hell and brought demons into the world.

  Thrasyllus fought down the surge of memory. Even now not a week could pass without him waking in cold sweat at the thought of that night. Juba had lost the Trident to the demons, along with another Shard that controlled fire. They’d escaped only with the Shards of Air and Life: the Palladium of Troy and the Aegis of Zeus. They’d escaped and locked them away, never to be seen and never to be used again.

  And here the memory returned in the hands of Mercury, herald of the gods, the one who passed between worlds.

  It was a sign, and Thrasyllus had only just begun to contemplate it when the slave they were following led them through an arched passageway flanked by guards, then out of the atrium and into an open portico where Tiberius, the adopted son of Augustus Caesar, was lounging on a bench overlooking the darkening sea, watching the beating of a naked man.

  The man being beaten had liver-spotted skin and white hair, and he was clearly older than Tiberius, who himself had only a few lines of gray running like silver threads through his still thick hair. The old man was naked, his leathery limbs outstretched like those of a starfish, affixed by ropes to the pillars at the portico’s edge. A thick leather gag had been wrapped around his mouth to mute his cries, and another slave was patiently striking his back with an even thicker leather strap. The old man was facing Tiberius, his eyes wide in muted and exhausted horror, the bruises and welts hatched across his chest marking the procession of his suffering. Another man was sitting at the other end of Tiberius’ bench, and he let out a chuckle as the next blow came down.

  Thrasyllus froze and felt Lapis do the same beside him. The slave that had led them through the villa walked on to where Tiberius was outstretched upon cushions. As the man who might be Caesar lifted a red apple to his mouth and took a bite, the slave leaned over and whispered something in his ear.

  Tiberius nodded and chewed. The slave stood aside and looked up to beckon them forward.

  Thrasyllus exchanged a nervous glance with Lapis. The look of wonder in her eyes had been replaced with outright fear. He smiled as best he could, as if he could reassure her despite his own fright, and he unobtrusively signaled for her to stay where she was. Though she appeared to be petrified, she managed to nod.

  “Lord Tiberius,” Thrasyllus said, taking three steps forward before bowing low. “I was grateful for your summons but can see I’ve come at an inopportune time. Perhaps if I returned—”

  “No, stay,” Tiberius said over his shoulder. He took another bite of his apple and chewed as a fresh blow thudded into the man straining before him. Caesar’s son swallowed, rubbed his wrist across his mouth. “You’re a hard man to find, Thrasyllus of Mendes.”

  “I did not intend to be so.”

  “I think you did. By all rights you ought to have been in Alexandria, working at the Great Library. But you’ve not been there in quite some time, it seems.”

  “Yes, my lord. I am in the employ of the king and queen of Mauretania.”

  Thrasyllus saw that the shoulders of Tiberius shook a little at the word, but whatever it was that shocked or angered him, he was quickly in control of himself again. “A shame,” he said, “to have someone of your skills hiding away in that dusty corner of the empire.”

  “My lord, I—”

  “Since … what has it been? Twenty years since Carthage?”

  Thrasyllus was sure that he could feel Lapis tensing behind him—she’d known his nightmares, known his terrors—and a bead of cold formed along his own brow despite the warm air. He opened his mouth, knowing that he needed to reply, yet certain he had no words to say.

  “But you’re here now,” Tiberius continued. “And I’ve been looking
forward to this meeting. Very much.”

  Another blow came down, and Thrasyllus felt his stomach lurch at the look of pain on the older man’s face. “Surely I should come back—”

  “I said to stay, astrologer. And stay you shall.” Thrasyllus heard movement behind him, realized that some of the villa’s guards were moving closer to be sure that the will of their master was carried out. “Besides,” Tiberius continued, “this concerns you, too.”

  Tiberius waved his hand and the beating stopped. In the silence, Thrasyllus heard Lapis sob. He wanted to rush to her, to seize her in his arms and somehow run away with her, shielding her from whatever horror he’d walked into, but he didn’t dare move. He didn’t dare imagine what would happen to them if they tried to run.

  “I don’t know this man.” Thrasyllus heard his own voice tremble and crack even as he tried to feign confidence.

  “No, I suspect you do not.” Tiberius threw his half-eaten apple out into a bush. Then the son of Caesar stood and half turned so that he could look between the astrologer and the bound and beaten man. “Thrasyllus of Mendes, court astrologer to King Juba and Queen Selene of Mauretania, may I introduce Syllaeus of Petra, the chief advisor to the late king of the Nabataeans. I say ‘late’ because Syllaeus here poisoned him, did you not?”

  The bound old man shook his head in anguished denial, the gag preventing him from speaking.

  The other man with Tiberius, still sitting, leaned into the bench so that he could look over it at Thrasyllus. He had a thick beard of dark hair sprinkled with gray and the look of a man from the east. “He always says this,” the man said, smiling.

  Tiberius shrugged. “So he does,” he agreed. “Thrasyllus of Mendes, this is Antipater, the son and sole heir to the throne of Herod the Great. He’s taking Syllaeus here to Rome.”

  Though the astrologer’s mind was a blur of questions and facts—Herod was king of the Jews, he knew—he was still coherent enough to bow. “My lord,” he said.