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

by Michael Livingston

  As soon as the door shut behind, Antipater stepped forward. “What is the meaning of this, Mother?”

  The woman rushed forward to embrace the heir of Judaea, who stiffly welcomed it, as if he was embarrassed to show affection to her in front of Tiberius.

  As they embraced, Thrasyllus ran through the shelves in his mind, trying to think if he knew her name. He had been around his former teacher long enough to know that Didymus, standing beside him, was doing the same. When his own shelves of knowledge came up empty, he leaned toward the librarian to ask, but already old Didymus was leaning over to whisper the answer. “Doris,” he said, his voice barely audible. “First wife of Herod.”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Doris said to her son. “Did you not get my letter? I told you to stay in Rome.”

  “I received no such letter.”

  One of the demons—Antiphilus, the one that Antipater so often called a friend—floated around the side of the room, taking deep breaths of the air as if he was scenting for something. The demon they called Bathyllus stayed beside the door, near Tiberius and the two scholars.

  Finally releasing her son, Doris shivered, though she gave no indication that she might wonder why the room had suddenly chilled. She turned to Tiberius and made an extravagant bow. “Lord Tiberius,” she said. “I welcome you to Judaea.”

  “You knew of our coming,” Tiberius replied.

  “My spies at the port. As soon as I heard I rode out to meet you. I had to bribe the guards for this chance to meet. I fear I can do little more.”

  The eyes of Tiberius were even darker than usual. “What does Herod know?”

  Antipater’s face was flushed with confusion, as if he still hadn’t put together the picture of the puzzle that was so readily apparent to everyone else in the room. His mother turned to look at him with a look like pity. “Your uncle is dead,” she said.

  “What? How?”

  “His wife,” Doris said. The old woman glanced back at Antiphilus, who’d taken a position behind her. “She poisoned him.”

  “Unfortunate,” the demon said in reply. “That poison was intended for Herod. Her husband was to give it to him.”

  “Well it seems he learned that his wife was unfaithful to him. He threatened to tell Herod everything. So she killed him.” She glared at Antipater, whose face had gone slack. “Couldn’t keep your prick out of the wench, could you?”

  Antipater opened his mouth to reply, but Tiberius cut him off. “Herod knows of Antipater’s involvement?”

  “The wench told all,” Doris said. “But my once-husband doesn’t want to execute yet another son. He doesn’t want to believe her.”

  Tiberius pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully.

  “Am I to be arrested?” Antipater asked his mother.

  “You’re to be taken before Herod under guard.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Conspiracy. For now. You are to answer questions.”

  “Then we may yet proceed,” Tiberius said to Antiphilus.

  The demon’s eyes were blank as lifeless stones. But he nodded. “If the king has no certainty, he will surely not make an arrest. We can still proceed.”

  Antipater brightened up. “And if he thinks I’ve not done it—”

  “He is quite certain you did,” Doris interrupted. “He simply lacks evidence.”

  Evidence. Thrasyllus stared, thinking. If Herod had evidence of what Antipater was doing, he’d be arrested. Herod would live. And the plan of Tiberius and the demons to get into the temple and find the Seal of Solomon would be thwarted. But what evidence was there?

  “We will still proceed,” Tiberius said. “You’ll deny all, Antipater. And you, my lady, will keep far away from the court.”

  “I am already banished from Herod’s presence,” Doris said.

  “Good,” Tiberius said. “And we will proceed. We brought more poison in case the first was not enough. It will suffice.”

  “I still don’t understand why we can’t use the Roman forces to help?”

  “Because they are in Damascus under the command of Varus, and he only desires to keep the peace.” Tiberius looked hard at Antipater. “You and I know there will be rioting when Herod is dead, of course. Varus will do his part when that time comes. His legions will be summoned, and they will be brought to bear to restore order, beginning with the Temple itself.”

  “The Temple?” Doris asked.

  “It’s the heart of the city.” The tone that Tiberius took made it clear he thought this the most plain of facts. “No, more than that. It’s the heart of the faith of the city. It is Jerusalem’s soul. It must be protected.”

  Antipater chewed on his lip, then nodded. “Of course,” he said. “The Temple above all must be secured.”

  “Precisely.” The son of Caesar beamed like a proud father. “You’ll make a fine king. And Varus will do it when the order comes. But he will not want to put his men in harm’s way without such a need. He doesn’t want Herod dead. He won’t understand how much better things will be with you upon the throne. Your father has had his time.”

  “My father is mad.”

  “I agree. It’s remarkable that you’ve survived. He’s killed how many of his sons?”

  “Two,” Doris said. She looked as if she might spit. “And a wife and her mother.”

  “Truly mad,” Tiberius agreed. “But Varus is a general. Politics don’t concern him. When the time comes, he will do what needs to be done, but the less he knows the better. We will proceed as planned.”

  “Everyone will suspect you,” Doris said to her son.

  Antipater grinned. “We have letters to say otherwise.”

  Letters! Thrasyllus suddenly took in his breath. Didymus turned in his direction, but no one else seemed to have noticed.

  The astrologer’s mind raced as the others plotted the death of a king. He remembered now. The demons had spoken at Rhodes of the letters that they had forged to frame Antipater’s rivals. If he could get those letters, he’d have evidence of Antipater’s plans. That would be enough for Herod to arrest him. Surely. But even if Thrasyllus managed to get ahold of them, how could he, a foreign astrologer under constant watch, get them to the king of Judaea?

  One step at a time, he thought. Didymus had taught him that when he’d first come to the Library. Any complex problem could be resolved once broken down into its component parts. One step at a time.

  The letters would be in the carriage. The carriage was outside.

  So that was the first step. Get out of this room.

  Thrasyllus swallowed hard, took a breath, and then quietly turned toward the door behind him. The demon they called Bathyllus was there dead eyed and pale. The astrologer fought down revulsion, and instead tried to look scared and weak. It was, he thought, not hard to do.

  “I need to go to the latrine,” he whispered.

  The head of the demon rocked to the side, as if asking a question.

  Thrasyllus shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I need to relieve myself,” he said. “It isn’t far. And I’ve nowhere else to go. Nowhere to run.”

  The eyes of Bathyllus were blank. Not for the first time, Thrasyllus felt the sharp awareness that matters of living men and women were of no concern to the demons. Whether he lived or died or pissed himself on the floor simply didn’t matter.

  Thrasyllus set his fear into a kind of panic, and at last the demon nodded a single time and then stepped aside.

  The astrologer let out his breath in genuine relief, then whispered his thanks as he walked past him, opened the door, and stepped outside. Didymus watched him go with a quizzical look on his face, but Thrasyllus didn’t dare chance telling him of his plan.

  Back out in the sunshine, Herod’s guards were waiting, milling about outside. They looked up at him, saw who he was, and then returned to talking among themselves. It clearly didn’t take long to dismiss him as a threat, Thrasyllus observed.

  It was true, he supposed. He was no one imp
ortant. He was no great man. He’d lived a life of regrets. And it was true, too, that he’d always been a coward. Maybe he still was. But even a coward could strike his blow, he thought. He’d made it out of the house. The next step was to find the letters. Then get them to Herod somehow.

  The wagon was to his right, drawn up against the side of the little home. He took two steps in that direction before a small voice in his mind noted that the door had not immediately shut behind him. He stopped in his tracks, scuttling the dirt beneath his feet and holding his breath as he turned about as if looking for the latrine. As he did so, he saw that Bathyllus had followed him outside. The demon was quietly shutting the door, and it was turning its pale head in his direction.

  The astrologer saw, too, that the latrine was on the opposite side of the house from the wagon, far to his left.

  Gritting his teeth in frustration, knowing he had to keep up the charade, Thrasyllus spun on his heel and strode in that direction, hurrying as quickly as he could.

  Chancing one last glance over his shoulder before he entered the little stone building, the astrologer saw that Bathyllus did not move from his position by the door where the others were talking. From there the demon could still measure what was happening inside, while keeping a clear eye on the door of the latrine. Thrasyllus smiled at the hideous thing, once more showing his gratitude, and then he was inside.

  The latrine was typical of most that the astrologer had seen in the empire of Rome: like the baths, it was one of the few places where the entire cross-section of society might be found, passing time as equals on the privy. The building was simple in form. It had only a single, square room. A basin of water for the washing of hands was set against the back wall opposite him, sitting stale and quiet. To either side of that, lining the walls left and right, were the seats of the Roman latrine itself: a long, low bench with regular hand-breadth slots in its top and front—places for men to stand or for men and women to sit. Thrasyllus could hear the slow burble of hidden water within the bench, slowly seeping the human waste downhill to a deeper cut in the earth where it would be someone’s foul job to collect it.

  There was a man sitting on the bench, relaxed as he relieved himself, and he opened closed eyes when Thrasyllus entered. He nodded at him as if in welcome.

  The astrologer managed a quick smile in return, but already he was looking around in increasing desperation, searching for some way to proceed yet finding none. Aside from the door the astrologer had entered, the only accesses in or out were two squat windows on the walls to his left and right: big enough to allow a cleansing breeze to pass through the otherwise fetid air, but high enough to still provide privacy for those in the latrine.

  Thrasyllus hurried to the one opposite the man, being careful not to step into one of the dank privy holes as he hopped up onto the stone bench. He reached up the wall, desperately trying to reach the window, but it was several inches too high.

  The other man said something in a language that the astrologer could not understand, though he was relatively certain the man was asking what on earth he was doing.

  It was a question whose answer Thrasyllus didn’t know. He jumped, scraping his fingers along the stone lip of the window. They came away dusty. There was no way he could grip well enough to pull himself through, even if he had the strength to get up.

  “Leaving?”

  Thrasyllus spun in fright at the voice, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the older scholar backlit as he stood against the doorway. “Can’t explain,” the astrologer said. He’d never told Didymus about the letters. There simply wasn’t time. “But trust me.”

  The head of the Great Library of Alexandria looked over to the other man in the latrine, who was looking both confused and concerned, and he gave him the slightest of nods. Then he hurried over to the wall where Thrasyllus was and put one leg up beside his. He intertwined his fingers and braced them against his knee, making a kind of step. “Up and out,” the astrologer said. “Hurry.”

  Thrasyllus started to lift his foot into Didymus’ hands and brace himself for the jump. As he did so, the older scholar looked back over to the third man in the room and said something to him in his language. The other man chuckled and nodded knowingly.

  “What did you tell him?” Thrasyllus asked.

  “Told him your wife beats you and you’re trying to get away to pay a debt.”

  Thrasyllus shrugged. “I do have debts,” he said. And then together they were lifting and jumping and he was up and out the window, scrambling down off the wall outside.

  “I’ll try to delay them,” he heard Didymus say. “But be quick!”

  The astrologer didn’t need to be reminded. He was already moving around to the back of the latrine, peering around the corner to see if he could see anyone. Satisfied that he was out of view from the front of the little house where the others were, he scampered through the dirt as quietly as he could, darting between walls and wagons until he reached the corner of the house.

  Through the open window at the back of the house he could hear them talking inside. Antipater was complaining about the failure of his aunt to poison his father. Tiberius was scheming for the future, for their latest plan to murder Herod.

  The demon Antiphilus was close. Thrasyllus could feel the presence of him in the abrupt chill in the air. He’d scented the air back in the room, and for all the astrologer knew it would only take a single sniff for him to realize that Thrasyllus was outside where he wasn’t supposed to be. He had no choice, though. It was a risk he would simply have to take.

  Crouching low, moving slower this time, Thrasyllus crept across the building below the window, holding his breath when he heard the voice of Tiberius growing louder.

  He reached the corner. Peeking around it, he saw the carriage, sitting unattended in the middle of the street that ran there. Then, glancing back, he saw the head of Tiberius just coming into view at the window. Swallowing his gasp, Thrasyllus spun around to the side of the building and sprinted for the door of the carriage.

  * * *

  He hurried as fast as he could, but by the time he was reaching the latrine he could hear Didymus talking to the demon. Coming around the last building, Thrasyllus could see that the two of them were out in the middle of the street. Didymus was on the ground, holding his ankle and complaining that he’d twisted it on one of the little stones there.

  It wasn’t much of an excuse, but it had Bathyllus delayed for the moment as the creature turned its black eyes from the door of the latrine to the man moaning at his feet.

  The astrologer bolted across the open space to the back of the latrine building. There was a short ladder there, meant for helping with the process of cleaning the privy, and Thrasyllus quickly propped it up against the wall below the window and clambered up and in.

  The third man was gone, and the latrine was empty as he dropped down onto the seats. Then he jumped down, his feet hitting the tiled floor in the same moment that the shape of the demon filled the bright doorframe.

  The astrologer smiled in genuine relief, nodded, and then straightened his clothing. “I had to go,” he said.

  Bathyllus said nothing, but moved aside when Thrasyllus approached. The astrologer tried hard not to hold his breath as he stepped back into the street and began walking back toward the little house. He felt the eyes of the demon following him intently.

  Didymus was still sitting in the road, and the astrologer stooped to help him up. As he did so, he pulled the little bundle of letters from his pocket and pushed them into the librarian’s stomach. Surprised, Didymus fumbled with them for only a moment before burying them away from sight.

  “To the guards,” Thrasyllus whispered as he pulled the older man to his feet. He nodded to where one of them was already walking over to see if he could help. He kept his voice low, but it was full of his every desperation. “To Herod.”

  9

  THE BLOOD-RED MOON

  RHODES, 5 BCE

  For
all that she had cried since leaving Mauretania, for all that she had despaired over leaving Juba and her beloved Ptolemy behind, Selene felt something of her sorrows melt away as she climbed up to where the Colossus of Rhodes lay fallen, half buried in the night-dark hillside upon which he’d once stood. It felt at last as if she was doing something good, as if she might make some small measure of peace with the wrongs she felt she’d committed.

  Hidden from view between the great trunks of the statue’s broken legs, the queen of Mauretania slipped her traveling bag into a shadowed recess where one of the bronze plates of the Colossus had been twisted open against the ground. Then, looking around to be sure she was alone, she pulled the Palladium of Troy from a small satchel at her side.

  The little statue had been as tall as her forearm when she’d stolen it from the Temple of the Vestal Virgins in Rome. The top third of it was gone now—broken when Tiberius had raped her on the Roman frontier at Vellica. Now the black stone once hidden at its center was exposed, allowing her to directly access its otherworldly power to control Air.

  It had been years since she’d touched the power, and she hesitated to do so now. The last time they’d tried to use the power, at Carthage, they had brought together all four of the Shards in their possession—the Palladium and its power over Air, the Aegis of Zeus and its power over Life, the Trident of Poseidon and its power over Water, and the Lance of Olyndicus and its power over Fire. They had hoped to control the combined Shards, but instead it seemed as if the power they’d unleashed had held a will of its own. Through Juba a gate to Hell had been opened, and three demons had been unleashed upon the world. Her friend Isidora had died to close that gate. Juba’s life had nearly been lost, too.

  Selene shivered, remembering the smells of death and burned flesh, before she managed to shake the dark thoughts away.

  Gods and demons didn’t matter right now, she tried to tell herself. All that mattered here was the raw power, and her ability, she hoped, to control it once again.

  Selene stood, rocking her shoulders and resettling the weight of the metal breastplate that she wore beneath her loose-fitting dress. It was the armor of Alexander the Great, but far more than that, the black stone mounted at its center marked it as a Shard: the Aegis of Zeus, with the power to control and extend and preserve Life—as it had for Alexander, and as it had for her husband, too.