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

by Michael Livingston

  Overhead, the stars were going out, one by one. At the eastern horizon, the disk of the sun had finally cracked over the edge of the earth. It was a new day.

  After a minute, Miriam suddenly stirred in Selene’s arms. “What’s that?” she asked, straightening up.

  “What’s what?” Selene let go of the younger woman and turned east to where Miriam was looking. There was a great wall of rugged peaks there, a jumble of cliffs and crags and sparse trees clinging to life on the edge of oblivion. Selene saw nothing else.

  But then there was a strange flash of pale blue light against one of the hillsides that stretched along the side of the road that the legion had taken, a tiny burst of color in the shadows of stones. It snapped into being, but before Selene’s eyes could focus upon it, the light was gone. “I don’t—”

  It flashed again, the same light coming alive only to consume itself at the very moment of its birth. But this time it was closer. And a heartbeat later, it had popped again, a bubble of the same pale blue that flashed in and out of existence again. Closer still. Ever closer. Tracing a line across the hillside above Petra like a lightning bug skipping across the mountains, moving at impossible speed.

  Miriam had pulled away in her curiosity, but now her body language had turned to concern. She had a bow on her back—the same she’d used to threaten Selene—and she was pulling it free. “What is it?” she asked again.

  Selene didn’t know. But whatever it was, it was coming. Fast. And she was almost certain she knew where it was headed.

  One hand fell into her satchel. The other reached out and urgently gripped Miriam’s arm. “Do you trust me?”

  The younger woman looked back and forth from the popping light to the woman she’d only just met. After a moment, she nodded.

  “Good.” Already Selene was feeling the coiling of air around them, the staggering power that was so much stronger in this place—strong enough, she hoped, for both of them. She pulled Miriam closer even as she stepped forward and embraced her with one arm. “Then hold on to me. Whatever happens, don’t let go unless I tell you to.”

  The power coiled, tightened, tensed. Selene closed her eyes to concentrate on it, to accept it and make herself one with it. Somewhere in the back of her mind she made a prayer.

  “What are you doing?”

  Selene opened her eyes. “We’re going to fly,” she said.

  Miriam’s eyes were wide, but something like a smile was at the corner of her mouth. She gripped herself to Selene’s chest—saying nothing of the thick breastplate there—and she nodded, as if their taking flight was the most natural thing they could do.

  And so, as the last of the stars went out in the sky above, they did.

  17

  THE FIRST ATTACK

  PETRA, 4 BCE

  Titus Pullo tried not to think about how he once would have bounded down the rock-hewn steps from the summit. Age did that to anyone, he supposed, as tasks once simple grew harder with the passing of years. It happens to everyone, Vorenus had told him more than once.

  No doubt it was true. Vorenus was usually right about things. But that still didn’t make the awareness of his own failing body any easier to accept.

  His breathing wasn’t labored as he reached the wadi floor and the path began to level out. He took some solace in that, at least. His lungs were still strong.

  Not the rest of him, though. The pain was near to constant now, though he’d managed to hide it well enough from Miriam. Even Vorenus, close enough as they were, wasn’t aware of how deep the veins of agony could course through his legs and back.

  The good priests in Alexandria had done the impossible in saving his life. The explosion he’d set to help Vorenus and Caesarion escape from Juba and the Romans that morning had ripped the flesh from his back. The rocks that had fallen had crushed and broken the bones of his body. They’d saved his life. They’d given him a new chance to be something, to do something, but no one could have truly put him back together again. Some days were better than others, but no days were painless now.

  The moment he’d seen Vorenus again on that canal of Alexandria, though, was the moment he’d stopped caring about all that pain. It was the moment he’d decided that if he was meant to wince through life, he’d be happy to be living out those days—however many there were—with a man that he truly loved at his side.

  Which was probably why he felt more tired tonight. It wasn’t the climb up and down the mountain. It was the fact that Vorenus was gone.

  Pullo sighed, and he instinctively looked down the wadi, over the lights of Petra, at the dark and hulking wall of the mountains north of the city. Somewhere beyond them was a road, a cloud of kicked dust. Somewhere beyond them was another old man, not so broken as he was, but still hiding his own aches and pains, marching along with one eye on the road and one eye on Miriam’s Roman archer.

  He and Vorenus had talked a lot about what to do with the young man. For months they’d seen the two of them dancing about one another’s feelings, and it was that dance more than anything else that had convinced them that the archer’s intentions were good. After all, Vorenus had once said, Pullo had never taken so long to woo a girl in his life.

  Pullo smiled at the memory.

  As he did so, upon the distant mountainside, something flashed.

  A light. The thin color of a clear blue sky. Like a circle unfolding itself in the dark, it twisted into being for a moment, and then all again fell into shadow.

  Pullo stopped and stared.

  In the same spot it flashed again, but this time in reverse: a light seemed to open in the dark, as if the cover had been pulled from a lit lamp, but in an instant the light folded back in upon itself. It consumed itself, and it was gone.

  Pullo chewed on his lip, wondering what it could have been. A shepherd after an errant animal, his light seen between rocks?

  It could be. But then Pullo had never in all his years seen a light twist like that. Never.

  It wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural.

  Pullo started to walk again. But faster this time.

  And then the light twisted into being once more. This time it was closer. So Titus Pullo ground his teeth against the pain and started to run as fast as his crippled body would let him.

  The Ark wasn’t far. The path down the wadi wound between tombs and courtyards, and Pullo had walked it often enough to know exactly when it would come into view.

  When it did, he saw that the blue light had arrived first. It flashed into being on the path beside the door of the walled courtyard in front of the tomb. Pullo instinctively lifted his arm to shield his eyes from the bright surge of light in the shadowed canyon. When he lowered it again he saw that the light was gone, but the space was hardly empty. There were four people standing there now. Suddenly. Impossibly.

  Pullo thudded to a halt in surprise.

  The mysterious strangers were looking at the tomb where the Ark was hidden, but at the sound of his lumbering footfalls one of them turned in his direction.

  In the shadows Pullo could hardly make out any of their features, but he knew one of the four was a man from the sound of his voice. It had the high, whispering quality of a song, but it was unmistakably male. “This is the place? You are certain?”

  “Yes,” one of the others replied. This one was female, with a voice that was sweetly sibilant, like a seductive serpent’s. “Inside.”

  “Open the door,” the first replied. “Use Fire.”

  There was a sound of movement, and one of the four made a whimpering sound of pain and exhaustion.

  Pullo reached into his robes for the gladius that was always there. At the sound of it coming free, the one who had turned in his direction cocked his head, a look of curiosity.

  “Very well,” said the one who seemed to be in charge. “You can kill him, Bathyllus. But be quick about it.”

  The figure who had been looking at him pulled away from the others and framed himself in the path as if he meant to
block Pullo’s advance. The man’s movements were liquid smooth, slow but purposeful.

  The one who had spoken had already turned back toward the door of the tomb, as if the order to kill Titus Pullo was enough to know it done. “Burn it,” he said.

  Pullo hadn’t fought since Elephantine. Twenty years, was it? And that had been with Vorenus at his side. But he knew the feel of the weight of the gladius in his hand. He knew the steps of the dance of killing a man. He’d done it enough.

  The conditions might have been different over the years, the enemies might have had different faces, but in the end the deaths were all the same. It was a simple thing to do. A blade was a blade. And a man was a man.

  One only needed to start to see it done.

  He looked up, ready to use this blade to kill this man, and in that moment one of the three huddled figures in the dark screamed in a horrible wail of agony—a sound that Pullo had never heard in the wars of men. And in the same instant, in the same heartbeat, a boiling jet of liquid fire erupted from them. It struck the door of the courtyard around the tomb he and Vorenus had bought. It struck, and the door and part of the wall exploded up and away in a thunderous storm of rock and molten flame.

  Pullo was flung backward into the steps behind him, the air bursting from his lungs.

  He hit the stone hard. The world spun. He heard an inhuman screech of glee over the ringing in his head and the tumult of destruction.

  Fearing an immediate attack, Pullo kicked himself to his left and instinctively tried to scramble to his feet. But his legs didn’t bend beneath him like they once did, and his feet failed to find purchase on the stone. In the end he only spun around and over onto his side, looking back down the path from which he he’d been thrown.

  The man facing him had hardly moved, but the others had. As Pullo stared, feeling terror for the first time that he could remember, the three figures had slid into the smoke around the gaping breach in the courtyard around the tomb of the Ark. They were gone.

  Pullo planted his hands on the dusted ground and heaved himself to his feet, desperate to move, to fight, to stop them. Only then did the last figure he was facing advance.

  It did not walk. It glided forward, almost as if its feet did not touch the ground, and the cloak about its body hung unnaturally still. Pullo felt a sudden chill that pierced his clothing and skin and his very bones.

  Earlier that night, Selene had spoken to them of demons. She’d told them of the pit from which they’d arisen. She’d told them of their power and their hunger. She’d told them to be very, very afraid.

  And Pullo was. He now knew what he faced.

  The demon floated closer. Menacing. It raised its hands to reveal long fingers the color of pale marble. Pullo swallowed hard as he took his stance, trying to ignore new pains in his back and hip. Trying to steady the blade in a hand that wanted to shake from his cold fear. Wishing he had Vorenus by his side.

  For how could a man defeat a demon? How could he possibly do it alone?

  The demon, almost as if it sensed Pullo’s doubt, hissed and swept toward him. Pullo, with no choices left, roared and lurched forward on his hobbled legs.

  The demon was too fast. It shifted through the space between them with blinding speed, grinning, swimming around him in a kind of circle, toying with the bigger man as he struggled to keep his stance. When Pullo finally lunged at it, the demon slid around the blow and left him teetering off balance. Then it spun behind him, and with a calm precision raked its too-long nails across Pullo’s right shoulder.

  Pullo screamed and threw his weight backward, hoping to slam the demon into the ground, but already it had slipped away. Instead of striking a blow, Pullo just fell awkwardly to the ground. And before he could rise up to defend himself, the demon had floated over top of him. Its foot crushed down on Pullo’s wrist, and for all the bigger man’s strength he could not move it.

  The demon bent at the waist. It smiled as it did so. Its teeth were a perfect row of white the color of bleached bones, and when it opened its mouth it spoke with the fetid air of death and decay. “I will taste you before you die,” it sang.

  It raised up—as if it was stretching its limbs before it began the process of rending his flesh—and in that instant an arrow slammed into its shoulder.

  The demon hissed, an angry, wounded sound, and it stepped off of him, looking up.

  A powerful wind kicked down, staggering the demon and spitting dust into Pullo’s eyes.

  It passed over them both, and when it did so—like goddesses descending from the heavens—two women fell out of the sky and onto the still-standing wall of the courtyard. The light of the dawn was upon them.

  Miriam was already fitting another arrow to her bow. “Get off my father,” she said.

  18

  THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE

  JERUSALEM, 4 BCE

  The storm didn’t so much form over the city as it appeared there—a sudden column of roiling and swirling black cloud, flashing hot and angry. Beneath it, the deluge was just as swift—a torrent of water rushing down like a window had opened to heavens of water above.

  People screamed and fled, or fell to their knees in worship. To them, it was retribution for the desecration of sacred space by the Romans upon the Temple Mount. It was the coming of a god.

  Juba did none of those things. He knew the truth. No god had come to Jerusalem.

  The moment he’d heard that Romans had marched upon the Temple, he was almost sure he could guess what was happening. He was already nearing the foot of its high walls when the storm had appeared above.

  So while the rest of the city stopped or recoiled in terror from what was happening above the Temple, the king of Mauretania saw the terrible storm and began to sprint against the tide, speeding his way to the wide southern steps. If the Trident of Poseidon was on the Temple Mount, then Tiberius had to be there.

  And maybe Selene, too.

  Juba had cursed himself a thousand times since the day Selene had left, since the night the demon had attacked him. Every time he looked into a mirror and saw the scars etched across his face—or instinctively tried to lift his left arm and found it near useless—he remembered the despair he’d felt, and he was ashamed.

  He had failed his love that day. He had failed her and he had paid for it in blood. The arm would never be right again. The scars upon his face might fade, and eventually he could hide most of them within his beard when it grew back—the surgeons had been forced to shave it all off to tend to the cuts—but he would forever feel the wounds and know they were there. And it was right that it was so. He had failed her, and justice demanded a payment for that failure.

  So be it. He would carry that shame just as he carried the marks of his wounds.

  But he had also made another decision that night. He would no longer despair. Whenever he thought of the shame, whenever he thought of his wounds, whenever he thought of what horrors might stand before Selene … he forced himself to remember how the she-demon who called herself Acme had bled.

  He’d felt her blood on his hands. He’d seen it mixing with his own upon the tiles. She could bleed. She could die. And past the despair was the courage to fight to see it done.

  Selene had found that courage before him.

  He had given his orders to his stewards. He had seen to the care of his son. He had bought passage on the fastest ship he could find. He only hoped he was not too late to do his part. He had no weapon beyond a dagger and a short sword—and only one good arm to use either—but even if his part was to die distracting a demon long enough for Selene to kill it, that would be enough. It would mean he tried. It would mean he fought.

  His arm was near to limp, but as he ran up the steps of the Temple Mount he was pleased to learn his legs were still strong. He took the stone courses two by two, bounding his way past those who’d fallen prostrate or were moving in the other direction.

  Thunder was everywhere. Deafening him to the screams he saw on faces fleeing fr
om the unworldly vision. The concussive forces of each pounded on his chest like a drum, as if determined to drive him back.

  But he pressed on. As the sky flashed black to yellow to white to black again, he pressed on. As he struck the wall of rain and could hardly see ahead, he pressed on. Though the waters pouring down the steps threatened to take his feet out from under him, he pressed on.

  And then, all at once, the rain stopped.

  Juba looked up. The column of black that had churned into sudden existence above the Temple Mount was spinning itself apart from the inside, dissipating into vaporous tendrils that were stretching out as the dense cloud dissolved. The thunder had stopped, too, and with it gone there was an eerie silence upon Jerusalem.

  Something flashed in the corner of his eye. Juba turned to look, and he saw four figures huddled together near the edge of the cleansing pool—figures that he was certain he’d not seen before.

  Three of them were peering upward at the clouds, and his own gaze instinctively followed theirs. Then, when he looked back down again, they were gone. They’d disappeared. As if they’d never been there.

  He shook his head even as his mind tried to filter what he’d seen. He’d seen them only for a moment, and he felt like he knew them, but none of them was Selene.

  Turning back to the Temple Mount, he ran on, ducking into the doorway of a columned hall along its southern side. Men had been fighting here, he could tell—Romans and Jews were dead each by each upon the ground—but none were fighting in this moment. They were either cowering or gathering themselves to their feet in still-stunned awe.

  Juba ignored them all. The storm had been gathered about the Temple ahead, and he ran there, weaving between the statues of men prostrate or turned in wonder.

  He was halfway to the beautiful Temple itself when he saw two figures limp out from a ruinous hole in the side of its walls. One of them was Thrasyllus, and the other was a man he’d not seen in years, his arm under the astrologer’s shoulder, half dragging the younger man toward a gate in the lower wall around the inner complex.