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

by Michael Livingston

  A man had to trust in his friends, have faith in his love. Pullo believed that.

  Vorenus and Juba did not stop running, so Pullo turned to join them, pushing his broken body beyond its thresholds of pain to keep up as they passed the corpses of the men he killed and moved through the open processional gate in the wall that cordoned off the summit.

  Behind them, there was an inhuman shriek.

  “The demon,” Vorenus said. “I think she’s coming.”

  Pullo’s lungs burned, and his muscles ached, but his old friend seemed tireless as a new-blooded young man. He didn’t pant in the high air. He didn’t twitch as his old legs fell on the rocks and the impacts shivered up through his old joints. He ran as if he were jogging, as if he could double the pace and leave the other men far behind.

  “And the Romans,” Pullo heaved, “will already be halfway through the city.” He had to take three more long strides down the steps before them until he had breath again. “I’m sorry, Vorenus. I don’t know what to do.”

  Vorenus nodded in the moonlight, an effortless gesture. “The horses,” he said.

  There were horses at the base of the stairs that led to the summit. Clambering down to them, Pullo was tempted to close his eyes against the pain of his broken body—but he knew better than to tempt fate on an ancient stone staircase.

  At the foot of the stairs, the three men found their horses. Vorenus was the first one mounted. “Which way?” he asked, looking between the path down to the east—past the tomb where the Ark had been kept, the closest path to their home—and the path to the west—which rose up past the twin obelisks on the ridgeline before descending down to the wadi that led from the Siq down the colonnaded avenue past the great god-block of the temple of Dushara toward the west wadi or the main gate of the city.

  Pullo painfully heaved himself up and into the saddle of the largest steed he could find. “Romans are to the west,” he panted.

  “East, then,” Vorenus said, and before Pullo was even settled in the saddle his old friend was pulling his horse around to the rise up to the obelisks and the trail to the Siq beyond them.

  * * *

  The Romans were indeed coming. Pullo heard their trumpets all the way down the trail, and between his heaving breaths he’d tried to point out to Vorenus how their enemies were closing in. They were pouring over the mountain behind them, and they were charging through the fires in the city ahead.

  Lucius Vorenus—who suddenly seemed half his age—only nodded and drove them on and on.

  They reached the Siq without incident, but while they’d not encountered the enemy, Pullo knew it was only a matter of time. A fight was inevitable.

  “Where now?” Pullo asked. He pointed southeast, up the Siq. It was a narrow path, and it led away from Petra, away from the Romans. “That way?”

  “Exactly what they’ll expect,” Vorenus said, frowning in the light of the crescent moon. “We can’t outrun them.”

  Juba was looking the other direction, back into the city. He was holding something, Pullo realized. A book. He was holding it to his chest as if it was the most precious thing he knew. The Numidian nodded his head toward the colonnade somewhere in the darkness ahead. There was the sound of battle there. “I have another way,” he said, and he pulled the book from his chest to toss it to Vorenus. “I need the Shard,” he said. “I saw you take it.”

  Vorenus caught the book. Then, after a moment’s pause of reflection, he threw the Water Shard to Juba. “Lead on,” he said.

  Juba took a firm hand on the reins of his horse, and then he kicked it to the north and west—toward the colonnade and the center of Petra.

  The city was filled with the smoke of the burning fires, and the shapes and sounds of war melted in and out of that thick and choking fog. Dorothea had said the Nabataeans would make their stand along the colonnaded street that split Petra in two, and now the three men were riding hard down that road between them. Like men running on the vanishing land between two colliding waves, they pushed to stay ahead of the worst of the fighting that was collapsing around them. The columns that lined the street swept to either side.

  In the lead, Juba surged his horse to the left as a line of armed Nabataeans charged out from the smoke between columns to their right. Arrows thrummed in response, rippling through the churning fog.

  Juba pulled back to the center of the road. The fighting appeared and disappeared. Phantasms of men in combat.

  Pullo looked back. He could see that at least a half-dozen Romans were falling in behind them. “There’s no time!” he shouted. “The city gate will be blocked!”

  “That’s not where we’re going!” Juba shot back. The Numidian pulled close beside Pullo, and he tossed his reins to the massive man. Pullo caught them, confused, but pulled them tight with his own, ensuring that Juba’s steed kept pace with the hooves of his own horse.

  The Numidian had pulled the Water Shard into his hands. “Into the wadi!” he shouted. And then he was focusing on the black stone.

  Around them, wisps of a new fog arose and coalesced and knotted. Strand by strand, they built into something bigger and stronger.

  A storm was beginning to rise once more over Petra.

  This time, though, it did not arise upon the mountain above the city. It formed up over the slopes of the mountains on its north side. Cloud threaded into cloud, wrestling in the smoke-filled sky, and lightning broke in jagged scars across the suddenly starless heavens.

  “You’re doing this?” Vorenus called out.

  Juba nodded, looking up for a moment at what was coming into being. “I’m trying,” he said over the pounding of the horses. “But it’s weak!”

  “Weak?” Pullo asked.

  “The Shard,” Juba replied. “It’s dying.”

  Pullo nodded, though he had no idea what it would mean for a Shard to die and how that could be so.

  Juba had closed his eyes again, gripping the Shard. His brow was tensed with concentration, and Pullo felt a sudden chill in the air.

  Then, behind the cold, came the rain.

  It hit them like a descending wall—a furious deluge that was gray and hard.

  Almost immediately, the street was flooding. The horses were kicking through water. If there were sounds of battle still, Pullo could not hear them.

  Juba took back his reins from Pullo, still keeping one hand on the Shard. Then he led them on. The horses were straining. And the rains were falling around them as if a great window to the waters above the sky had been thrown open.

  The mighty block of the temple of Dushara arose in a hazy shape to their left, then they were darting to the right—hurtling down a ramp of stone to the muddy cart path that turned and dove into the tighter canyon walls of the west wadi.

  The torrent of rain was pushing countless little falls of water off the rocky hillsides, and the once-dry riverbed was rising fast.

  Pullo glanced over his shoulder and saw that the Romans had fallen back, but they were still coming. Eight of them, he thought, just at the edge of his vision.

  Pullo was certain he’d trodden all of the paths around Petra over the years. He knew where they were headed, and he was sure Vorenus knew it, too: Juba was leading them to the thin little path that was scratched out of the canyon side, leading north to Bayda. It was a gamble, but it was a good one.

  The path twisted and turned down the wadi, passing terraced vineyards. Pullo was counting them in the moonlight, and he was already slowing his horse when he saw Juba pulling up on his reins just short of the looming darkness where the canyon floor suddenly dropped out in a kind of massive step.

  Vorenus had pulled up short, too, and he immediately tried to cross the roaring, rising water of what was now a river in the middle of the canyon. The horse shied and reared in the rain, refusing to go in.

  “Damnit!” Vorenus shouted, dismounting.

  Pullo and Juba got down, too, trying to lead the horses by the reins. None would budge.

  The riv
er was coming so hard that Pullo wasn’t sure if he could cross it himself. But if it was lower—“Stop the river!” he shouted to Juba. “Just a moment!”

  The Numidian was squeezing the stone in his hand, as if some final drop of its magic might be had. “I can’t!”

  The horses were wild with panic. Pullo looked back, expecting to see the Romans bearing down upon them. Instead, he saw a thrashing wall of water. And above it, a fast-clearing sky as if a veil was being lifted.

  “Turn it!” Vorenus shouted. He was holding the Book to his chest.

  Juba had stopped squeezing the Shard. It now seemed nothing more than a simple rock in his hand. “It’s dead,” he said. His head rose toward the coming flood and the newly visible moon. “I’m sorry,” he said, tears in his eyes. “She’s gone.”

  The unnatural wave slammed into them. And just as they were ripped from their feet—just before the wave sent them hurtling out into the void beyond the wadi cliff—Titus Pullo grabbed the two men into his mighty arms and pulled them as close as he could.

  Then he tried, as he fell, to watch the stars coming out from behind the clouds.

  One by one by—

  30

  MIDNIGHT ON THE MOUNT OF GOD

  PETRA, 4 BCE

  Miriam had awoken in pain, in shock, and in confusion. Something had happened to her. Something had violated her. She was alive. But something was truly and deeply wrong.

  She’d found the Shard in her chest. Warm and throbbing and alive. She’d felt her miraculously healed belly. Warm and throbbing and alive.

  Wrong. Wrong.

  And then, through her haze of revulsion and terror, she’d at last blinked up to see Abdes Pantera—her love—struck across the face by the demon that Selene and Lapis had called Acme.

  The blow sent him sprawling sideways across the broken pavement stones that lined the ground. There were bodies there—dead Roman legionnaires—and Pantera fell over them. His head struck rock. The demon laughed, high and cruel. “Run, Father!” she sang into the dark. “I’m coming!”

  The sight of Pantera falling cut through everything else Miriam had suffered. She winced, slid herself up onto her elbows.

  Acme wasn’t far away. The demon’s back was turned as she leered over the fallen archer. The nails upon her hand were wet. “First you,” she whispered, and her song sounded no longer sweet but thirsty.

  “Stay away from him,” Miriam said, and with every word there was a new strength, a new power, pushing out into her limbs. Life. More than was possible, more than any human vessel should hold. It was surging in her, muscles twitching in readiness.

  On the ground beside her was a breastplate. The middle of it seemed to have been burned out, leaving a gaping hole as wide as her hand. She reached out and picked it up. The breastplate seemed light as air in her grip.

  Acme paused, still looking down at Pantera. “Little girl, is that you?”

  “Leave him alone.” The voice was hers. The urge was hers. But the words seemed to slide into her from a second mind. She rose to her feet. Ready. Resolute. Unflinching. “Never again will you touch him, Fallen.”

  The demon’s laugh was soft and mocking as she turned around to face her, but when she saw Miriam, the laugh choked off in what could only be shock. “It cannot be.”

  Miriam found herself smiling. She felt taller, older, wiser. “You belong to the shadow,” she said.

  “Cannot be,” the demon whispered.

  Miriam took a single step forward, her fingers tensing on the broken metal plate in her hand. “It is.”

  The demon started to step backward, then seemed to catch herself. “Just a girl,” she said, but her voice was unsteady.

  “Come and see, Fallen.”

  Acme hissed, teeth baring, and she flew forward.

  With a calm focus—something beyond instinct informing her actions—Miriam flipped the breastplate up into the air between them, her right hand gripping the other side as if she intended to use the hollowed armor as a small shield.

  The demon was reaching out, long-fingered hands clutching for her throat and face, and Miriam bent forward and down, catching Acme’s extended right hand in the hole of the breastplate. Her muscles flexed, twisting, and she snapped the demon’s wrist in two.

  Acme shrieked as she fell away behind her, staggering to keep her balance as she pulled the shattered limb back to her body. The movement pulled the breastplate from Miriam’s grip, and it clattered to the ground.

  Miriam glanced over at Pantera, saw with relief that he was moving. Then she came around to face the demon again, entirely unarmed now, and she saw that Acme had somehow stumbled across a sword on the ground. She’d swept it up in her left hand and held it forth. The blade was beautiful, Miriam saw. The sword of a Caesar. The point that flashed at her was steady and sure.

  “I’ll take these odds,” Acme said, grinning.

  “I wouldn’t,” Lapis said, and she drove a blade into the demon’s back.

  The demon shrieked, but she staggered forward away from the strike, rushing at Miriam.

  “Sword!” Pantera shouted.

  She glanced back, saw that Pantera had retrieved a gladius from one of the dead men. He was kneeling, one hand to a bleeding wound on his head, but their eyes met. He threw the sword up into the air.

  Miriam spun, dancing beneath the midnight moon, her arm reaching out into the darkness to catch the weapon.

  When she came back around, the demon was there. Miriam’s blade met the side of hers and glanced it off target. Acme’s thrust plunged across Miriam’s shoulder, gashing her to the bone, but Miriam’s point ran true. It caught the demon just below the breastbone, and Acme’s momentum ran it through her to the hilt.

  The demon coughed, eyes wide.

  With strength she didn’t know she had, Miriam shoved Acme back off her, twisting the blade as she pulled it free. For a moment they faced each other, the girl and the teetering, gasping demon. Miriam looked down at her shoulder, saw it knitting itself back together. Then she looked up, took a deep breath, and with one fierce swipe of her blade took the head off the demon.

  For a moment there was silence upon the summit. It was the High Place of Sacrifice, she saw. But it had changed. She had changed.

  She was Miriam. And she was not Miriam. What had happened?

  Miriam felt her breathing, steady and sure, and she tried to take solace in that.

  Looking beyond the corpse of the demon, she saw that Lapis was running toward something, and Miriam looked over to her right. Two men were there, desperately trying to hold down a third.

  Miriam strode to them—passing by a lifeless lump of obsidianlike stone in the middle of the broken courtyard—and she saw that the third man was a Roman. There was a ring on the ground, with the same kind of blacker-than-black stone that was embedded in her chest.

  “Help them!” Lapis cried out.

  And so Miriam swung down with the butt of the bloodied sword in her hand, striking the Roman on the back of the skull and knocking him out.

  Lapis fell upon one of the two men, embracing him in relief. “Thrasyllus,” she gasped. “Gods, we’re alive. We’re alive.”

  The other, an older man with silvery hair, rolled off the unconscious man with a panting sigh. He looked up at Miriam. “I’m Didymus.” He saw the Shard in her chest, and his eyes widened—not in fear or even surprise, but in curiosity. “And you … are interesting,” he said.

  “You’re the librarian,” Miriam said.

  Didymus nodded.

  Miriam used the sword in her hand to point at the man she’d knocked out. “And him?”

  “Ah,” the librarian said. “That would be Tiberius, adopted son of Augustus Caesar and heir of the Roman Empire.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  Pantera came stumbling up behind her. “Miriam, are you all right?”

  She turned, fighting back tears as she embraced him. Whatever had happened, her love was still hers. “I’m fine,” she sa
id, knowing as he gripped her tight that her love was still true even if her words couldn’t face what had happened right now. There’d be time. Time enough for tears and whatever else was to come.

  The sound of horns and battle and alarm came up from the city below. They all stood and looked down at Petra. Part of the city was in flames, and from the haze of smoke they heard the sound of battle.

  “Miriam,” Didymus said. “We can’t stay long. The Romans will come.”

  Pantera nodded against the side of her cheek. “He’s right.”

  Miriam swallowed hard. She turned back to Didymus. “Vorenus says you always have answers.”

  The older man smiled gratefully. “I’ve always tried.”

  “I have to know what’s happened. Why are we here? Where are my uncles? The Shards—the rest of the Shards—where are they?”

  Didymus took a deep breath and then filled in what he could as quickly as he could. The others helped. How Selene had put the Aegis upon her and died. How the Romans had come back and taken them all. How they’d brought the Shards here, used Life and Aether to control the men whose lives were used to bring forth the energies of the Shards. He told how the gate to heaven had been opened and how Acme had come back with a Book that Juba and Vorenus had taken.

  When he told her how some of the Shards had fused when the gate was broken, Miriam walked over to touch them and found the lump was indeed dead. Earth, Air, and Fire were no more. The Ark was gone forever. She didn’t know whether she should be relieved or dismayed.

  Finally Didymus looked over to the ring on the ground. “That’s the Seal of Solomon, the Shard of Aether. It’s what allowed them to disappear in one place and reappear in another. Vorenus took what remains of the Trident. Which leaves, I assume, Life,” he concluded, nodding at the stone in her chest.

  “Can you explain this to me?”

  “I’d hoped you would tell me,” he said. “But I promise you I’ll do all I can to help us find out together.”

  Thunder cracked in the distance, and they all turned to see that a terrible storm had broken in the night sky above the northern edge of the city. It was sudden and powerful and utterly unnatural.