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

by Michael Livingston

  “The symbol of the Jews,” Thrasyllus had whispered to Didymus, who only nodded as they watched, flanked by Roman guards, feeling both fascination and increasing helplessness, as the demon who called himself Antiphilus approached the symbol and bent down to kneel over it.

  In Jerusalem, the demon had broken the tiles to reveal the hidden secrets beneath—including the Seal of Solomon itself. Here, he seemed to be reading something. As he did so, he pointed first to the northwest corner of the paved court, to one of the five waist-high stone slabs around the space—the one closest to them. “Fire,” he said.

  The demon Acme floated there, moving sinuously, and she smiled over at the two scholars nearby. Thrasyllus trembled, but all Didymus could feel was the chill of her presence and the unmistakable sensation that he was in the presence of something purely and undeniably evil.

  After she placed the Fire Shard upon the designated slab, Antiphilus once more looked down to the symbol on the ground. He pointed next to the northeast corner slab. “Air,” he said.

  And so it went. The broken stump of the Palladium was placed where he directed. The Seal of Solomon came next, placed on its slab midway along the eastern side. Then the Trident of Poseidon, on the southeastern slab. The Ark of the Covenant was placed on a larger slab to the southwest.

  Antiphilus turned at last to the two Romans who stood a little ways in the dark with their companions, holding the litter between them. From their vantage point opposite the paved summit, the scholars still could not see who it was upon it. “Life,” he said, and he pointed directly west, to the stone altar close beside him. “Place her there.”

  Her? Didymus strained to see who it was, hoping it might be Selene, but it was a younger girl he did not know. She was alive, but she appeared to be unconscious. There was a breastplate upon her chest that he had not seen in the flesh since Juba had worn it on the day Alexandria had fallen.

  The two Romans moved up the steps of the raised altar and set the litter down where Antiphilus directed. Then they walked away to join their comrades, who were gathered on the south side of the paved area, beside the small square pool.

  At last, Antiphilus stood. Acme floated up beside him, and Tiberius stepped out to join them, too. “Is everything as it should be?” the son of Caesar said.

  “Air makes Fire,” Antiphilus said, pointing around at the Shards on their slabs. “Fire makes Earth. Earth makes Water. Water makes Life. And Life makes Air. Earth unmakes Air, Air unmakes Water. Water unmakes Fire. Fire unmakes Life. Life unmakes Earth. And Aether binds all in one.”

  Tiberius nodded at the girl on the litter. “And her?”

  Antiphilus cocked his head at her, as if observing some foreign thing. “She will have her use. Put the others in position. One man to each of the rest of the artifacts.” To Didymus, his voice was a poisonous song, but he could see no hesitation about acceptance in the hollow eyes of Tiberius. “Tell them not to touch them until my command.”

  “And then?” Tiberius asked, his voice an almost pathetic, needy whimper.

  The demon turned its black, emotionless eyes toward the son of Caesar. “Then we will see their use,” it said.

  25

  UP IN FLAMES

  NORTH OF PETRA, 4 BCE

  Teetering between the craggy heights looming up to his left and the canyon plummeting down into the shadows to his right, Juba winced in both pain and fear as the donkey beneath him skittered on the thin wisp of trail. The beast, seemingly undisturbed, fumbled for a moment before it gathered its hooves beneath it. It snorted, bowed its head, then plodded forward.

  Ahead, Abdes Pantera—the young Roman archer who’d nearly killed him and then saved his life—held the leather lead of the beast and was doing his best to hurry it up the angled scar that they were following across the mountainside. If he was concerned about the fact that death seemed to be only a single misstep away, the young man didn’t show it. He was, if anything, in fine spirits as they made their way through the midnight darkness beneath a crescent moon.

  “You’ve taken this route before?” Juba asked.

  “No, my lord.”

  Juba tried to sigh, but it came out as a gasp when the donkey’s weight shifted unexpectedly beneath him. He choked off the sign of agony until the shock of it wore off. He’d soaked through more bandages than he could count on the torn-up left side of his body, and he was suspecting that the current set was nearly spent, too. In that regard, it was probably a good thing that it was dark. “You don’t need to call me that,” he said when the wave of pain finally passed.

  “You’re the king of Numidia, yes?”

  “We aren’t in Numidia.”

  Pantera shrugged. “Blood is blood,” he said. “Doesn’t matter where you are, my lord. And it’s no trouble to me. Just so long as you don’t think I got you the donkey in devotion.”

  Juba couldn’t see the young man’s face, but he imagined that he was smiling. The archer seemed to be a genuinely kind man. In the brief minutes they’d all been together it was clear that Lucius Vorenus had trusted him, which for Juba spoke volumes. Selene, after all, had spoken of Vorenus in such glowing terms that Juba had at times wondered if the legionnaire had ever been real at all. If Vorenus trusted him, then Juba would trust him. And certainly he’d earned that trust and more by first hiding him when they saw Tiberius and then announcing that he’d bring Juba to Petra, to his Selene. It was an act of abandonment from his post and his duty, a betrayal of Rome and the legion that would be repaid—if it was discovered—with death.

  “I still don’t know why you did it,” Juba said.

  “Because you can hardly walk,” Pantera replied, his tone making clear how obvious this fact was. And it was true: with Juba’s wounded left side leaving him able to only shuffle at best, Pantera had decided to steal transportation almost immediately. Amid the chaos of the legion departing the castle at Karak, the archer had slipped in and grabbed the strongest-looking beast he could find. Juba had ridden it down the King’s Highway and then through the small Petra suburb of Bayda to reach this little-used back route into the mountain city. They’d wanted to do everything they could to escape the attention of the Roman legion that was marching ahead of them. The Romans would have men posted on the main road, Pantera was certain, but none of them would know of this hidden trail.

  “Not the donkey,” Juba said, patting its neck gratefully. “Though stealing it was a crime. I’m asking about helping me at all. They’ll kill you if they find out.”

  Pantera looked up at the stars for a moment. Then he seemed to let out a light laugh. “It’s the usual story,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Did it for a girl.”

  “A girl?”

  The archer glanced back over his shoulder to grin. “Surprising?”

  It was Juba’s turn to chuckle. “Not what I expected, I suppose. But I’m not one to judge. That’s why I’m here, too.”

  “The lady Selene. I only saw her for a few minutes, but she seemed like a good person.”

  “The best,” Juba corrected.

  “So you really love her?”

  “She’s my wife.”

  Pantera’s steps hesitated for a moment, as if he was choosing how to respond. “I guess … growing up I heard that people like you don’t marry for love.”

  Juba felt his back stiffen instinctively. “People like me?”

  “Rulers,” Pantera clarified.

  “Oh,” Juba said. “Well, that can be true. Sometimes the powerful marry for power or alliances, for riches or appearances. But I’d hardly say it’s true for everyone.”

  “So you married Selene for love?”

  The mention of her name brought fresh longing into Juba’s heart, and he smiled. “Not at first. Caesar married us for his own ends. But we grew to love each other.”

  Pantera nodded thoughtfully, and he and the donkey trudged on in the darkness for several minutes. Juba did his best to resituate one of his bandages as
he balanced on the animal’s back.

  “Do you believe in love at first sight?” Pantera finally asked.

  Juba chewed his lip on the thought for a moment before answering. “I suppose I do. Is that what you have waiting for you?”

  Pantera’s head shrank down slightly, as if the archer was embarrassed. “I think so. I mean, I met her and felt something at once. It was like a thunderbolt from the sky. But that just seems silly.”

  “Love is never silly,” Juba said, looking upward at the moon.

  “But I’m so young,” Pantera said. “I’ve experienced so little. To say I love her … Do I know enough to even know what love is?”

  Juba smiled. “Love isn’t one thing. And it isn’t the same in the beginning as it is in the middle or the end. It’s a journey. The best kind of journey, in fact: one that changes you both together. So no, you don’t know what love ‘is’—and neither do I. We are learning what it can be. And if you know enough to wonder if you know enough to be in love … well, you’re ready for it.”

  Pantera nodded once more, and his posture relaxed. “I do love her,” he whispered. “Whether we’re ready or not.”

  “Love at first sight,” Juba mused. “I wouldn’t change a thing about what I have with Selene, but that must be an amazing thing. I’m happy for you.”

  Pantera glanced back over his shoulder and smiled in gratitude.

  The trail they followed clung to the steep slope rising to their left like a precarious shelf, and it had been rising slowly as they’d moved south. At the same time, Juba was noticing that the opposite wall of the deep valley was growing closer as the minutes passed. “How far?” he asked.

  “To Petra? Not much further.”

  “Is the city at the head of the valley?”

  The Roman archer’s head bobbed in the light of the crescent moon. “Essentially. There’s a cliff at the head of this wadi. Then a few farming terraces. The path becomes more like a road there—broad enough for a cart. Just beyond that it cuts into the bigger valley where Petra lies.”

  Juba nodded, though Pantera wasn’t looking. If it wasn’t far, then Selene wasn’t far. And that gave him comfort. “So who is yours?”

  “Mine?”

  “The girl. The one you love. The reason you’re risking everything for me.”

  “Ah.” Pantera let out a long breath, as if he was savoring a memory. Juba knew that feeling all too well. “Her name is Miriam,” the younger man said. He spoke the word like it was a precious, perfect thing. “Vorenus is one of her two uncles.”

  Juba smiled. “Vorenus likes me. You like his niece. So if you help me—”

  “It’s like I’m helping her, too.”

  “And getting into the good graces of her uncles.”

  “Something like that.”

  “A good plan,” Juba said. “You’re a good man, and I’ll tell them so.”

  Pantera paused to look back and nod his chin in acknowledgment. “Thank you, Juba,” he said. Then, before the king of Numidia could respond, he turned back around and started the donkey forward with a grunt. “It’s not far now,” he said.

  * * *

  The walls of the deep canyon had been continuing to tighten when it abruptly bent eastward and suddenly there was, as Pantera had hinted, a large step in the wadi floor: a cliff that cut across its head from wall to wall. The heights of the mountains to either side remained high and steep, but the thin path they’d been following was no longer scraped from the side of a rocky slope, hanging over a void of darkness. Instead, it angled out to meet the top of the cliff, where it joined a wide path alongside a riverbed that had only a trickle of water running along its center. When the rains came, Juba imagined, far more powerful waters would be rushing down through the wadi, and they would make for a most spectacular sight when they launched themselves off that plummeting point.

  The terraces there were thick with vegetation, and Pantera whispered how it was at one of these that he first saw Miriam, the girl he loved.

  They followed the wider cart path as it meandered east, and soon the Roman archer brought Juba into the wide valley of the city itself. The city was asleep beneath the stars, and the paved, empty streets sped their pace as Pantera led them by twists and turns to the house of Miriam and her two uncles. They didn’t know where Vorenus and the others had been taken, but they strongly suspected that the Romans would keep such prisoners in their camp just outside the city. So the plan, such as they had one, was simple. They would make their way in secret to Pullo, Miriam, and Selene. Together they would find a way to free their friends and then flee the mountains.

  It was a good plan. And Juba felt his hopes rising with each step they took closer to the house.

  Then they smelled the smoke.

  Another turn, two, and they came around a corner to see that the house Pantera was leading them to was on fire. Flames weren’t visible yet, but a thick smoke was billowing through cracks in the wooden shutters that covered the windows.

  The door, they saw at once, was barred shut from the outside. And there were two Roman centurions standing in front of it. One of them, Juba saw, had his wife’s satchel. They were facing the door, torches in hand, and the one with Selene’s satchel seemed to be laughing as he reached his brand forward and set it to the wood.

  Juba said nothing, but he reacted at once. He kicked his one good leg into the side of the donkey. The creature startled forward, hooves clattering on stone. Pantera, who’d had the lead, let go of it and spun out of the way. Bouncing, still kicking to spur the little beast onward, Juba struggled for a moment to find and pull the blade from his side. He was halfway to the two Romans when at last his hand gripped it and pulled it free. All he could think about was how Selene—his Selene—might be inside. How these men wanted to see her burn.

  The centurions turned. They saw Juba and shouted, and the younger of the two—the one who’d set fire to the door—bolted upright and started to draw his gladius.

  A whistle sang past Juba’s head, his hair flicking across his face as the arrow sailed past him and ripped through the neck of the other centurion. Blood sprayed into the smoke like a misting rain.

  Juba rumbled forward like a madman, teetering on his donkey with his sword pointed forward like a short lance. The donkey, smelling smoke and blood, brayed in fear and yanked its head sharply to the left. With no lead in hand, no means to turn the beast back, Juba simply launched himself off its back, aiming as best he could for the remaining centurion.

  The Roman spun his arms around like a windmill, trying to land a strike on the hurtling man, but Juba fell through the swirl and buried his blade in the man’s gut before tackling him to the ground.

  The centurion screamed and slashed, but Juba ignored the pain of his side—surely all his wounds had reopened now—as he reared his blade back and jabbed it blindly into the man’s chest.

  The man coughed and then went limp.

  Moving as quickly as he could, Juba rolled himself off enough to reach for Selene’s satchel. He flung it open, but it was empty. The Palladium wasn’t there.

  Looking back to call for Pantera, Juba saw another Roman, a rough-looking centurion this time, running around the corner of the burning house with his gladius ready in his grip.

  Three steps, Juba thought, his mind absently measuring the distance between them. He’d never get his sword around in time. And even if he did, a one-armed man on the ground had little chance against such a foe.

  The Roman made it two steps before he gasped loudly and pitched forward onto the stones just feet from Juba. There was an arrow in his back. Its feathers seemed to be twitching as they pointed heavenward.

  The Roman wasn’t finished, though. He heaved himself up into his elbows, and Juba began trying to pull his blade from the dead man beneath him. It was stuck, and as the Roman looked up, he sneered at Juba with a look of powerful hatred.

  Then Pantera rose up out of the dark behind him like a ghost. He planted his feet on either s
ide of the man’s back, nocked another arrow, then drove it down into the back of the man’s skull like a spike.

  Dear gods, Juba thought.

  Pantera was fluid in motion. He stepped back over the man, his bow returning to his back even as he ran back to the doorway. Flames were roiling up the wooden face, but Pantera ignored them. With a cry, he launched his body into the burning wood and crashed through it into the smoke and flame beyond.

  Juba worked his blade free, then dragged himself into a kind of crouched position. It wasn’t much, he knew, but he might be able to slow any other Romans who might appear.

  The open door had fed fresh air to the flames, and they had already climbed the outside of the windows and were jumping to nearby structures. Neighbors were running out from their homes, and though he could not hear what they were saying over the sound of the roaring, cracking flames, he was certain that people were shouting for water. He was certain, too, that the house was near to collapse.

  At last Pantera reappeared. He was dragging an unconscious woman out into the street. Coughing, he pulled her over to Juba, who saw that it was Lapis, the wife of Thrasyllus. Even as Pantera let her go, Juba leaned over to listen at her chest. She was breathing.

  The light from the fire blinked out, and Juba looked up to see that a massive man had momentarily filled the fiery doorway. He lurched out into the night, and as the blazing light returned Juba saw that he was heavily scarred, like a patchwork man—and that Lucius Vorenus was limping out at his back.