He’d seen this before.
Cheftu closed his eyes, reliving the pain and pleasure of that moment. He and Chloe, together on their wedding couch, savoring the newness of each other. Skin sliding on skin, their mingled scents … then the knock at the door and his loyal slave holding out a handful of this stuff. A powder was falling, he’d said, causing weeping wounds.
Volcanic ash.
Cheftu blinked as his vision became flat, filled with the falling gray. He could feel it accumulating on the deck around his sandal-shod feet. It retained a small element of heat, and he heard the Mariners mumbling among themselves. They had quickly adjusted their shields so that the rowers were protected.
He wished he understood Aztlantu.
Soon he was pressed into service, helping to clear the deck so the weight of the ash didn’t send them to the bottom of the sea. It was too dense to see, and Cheftu blindly scooped and threw—over the side, he hoped. The wind was so loud, licking the ash into dervishes, that he could hear nothing.
Except the crack of wood shattering as the mast was struck by lightning.
The thunder masked the cries of sailors crushed beneath the flaming upper mast. Fire consumed the wooden ship in a terrible frenzy. They were going down.
Tongues of flame engulfed the deck, and the wind carried away both cries and commands. Cheftu looked around for escape. The rest of the mast fell, creating a curtain of fire dividing the ship and casting a hellish glow on the screaming sailors and tossing waves. Men jumped overboard, their bodies living torches. Others hacked away madly at the wooden planks. Cheftu grabbed his bitumen-covered reed trunk.
The sound of splintering wood muffled the whip of waves, wind, and the boom of thunder. Cheftu felt the deck shift beneath him, and he fell, sliding for cubits. He reached out for something to grab, but the ship was tilting too quickly. The roars of the bulls in the hold made the boat vibrate.
Another crack and the ship split in two. The ash was blinding, clogging his throat and nose. As he covered his mouth, the ship shifted and Cheftu was thrown from the deck into the sea.
White water closed over his head.
Cheftu came up gasping, coughing, narrowly missing being hit by a plank. With powerful kicks he swam away from the burning wreckage, hauling the few bodies he saw onto his piece of wood. He pounded backs and breathed into men’s mouths, making them cough and sputter and come back to life. He’d been a physician before, but the modern skills he’d learned from Chloe gave him the appearance of a god now.
Relinquishing his piece of wood to the four men clutching it, Cheftu swam across the dark sea toward the other bobbing heads.
It was raining paste made of ash and water, and Cheftu knew they wouldn’t be able to breathe for long. The night was black, pelting them, and Cheftu couldn’t even see the horizon. Would they just let the tide take them? Holding on to a new buoy, Cheftu joined the Mariners in kicking away from the wreckage and heading gods only knew where.
They sighted land about the time the sky began to lighten. Cheftu’s legs trembled when they finally walked up on the beach. For decans, they fished people from the sea.
Cheftu pounded another Mariner’s back until he vomited up seawater, coughing and wheezing. He’d just washed in on the tide. Cheftu next walked down the hard pebbled beach and assisted some other sailors. No one had seen the commander, and seven others were still missing. Aztlantu Mariners trained well, though. The men knew these waters and could easily find an island with fresh water. Unless of course, they were wounded. Cheftu learned through halting Aztlantu that if a Mariner could not swim back to his ship, he was declared dead.
Cheftu masked his expression at this statement of Aztlantu callousness.
Ignoring the thanks he received, he moved to the next group, setting a broken arm and checking on the unconscious cabin boy.
Cheftu climbed up to the cliff that overlooked the beach and the rest of the island, a cheerless expanse of gray. He stared out at the water. Ash floated atop the waves, obscuring their brilliant blue. He knew of no term for “volcano” in Egyptian or in Aztlantu. Where was the eruption?
The birds in which the Aztlantu put so much store had been released as the ship was hit. Even now, the Mariners assured him, Aztlantu were on their way to rescue them. A group of men had hiked into the interior of the island in search of fresh water. Another contingent had begun repairing the small boat that buoyed many of them up last night.
The bulls were lost. Cheftu winced as he thought of the terrified animals fighting against their greater weight, going down in the hull of the ship. He hoped the Aztlantu Council would not hold Egypt responsible. The ship they’d been sailing on was Aztlantu, the storm was no one’s fault, but it was impossible to predict the Aztlantu reaction.
Cheftu watched as one of the men staggered to his feet. Several of them seemed to have seawater in their ears; their balance was uncertain. One seaman seemed on the verge of collapse. Cheftu frowned; perhaps the Mariner had received some type of blow during the wreck and it had … had what? Those who were disoriented had neither wounds nor any other visible injuries.
Dehydration, Cheftu surmised, looking out on the beach. The sun was almost obscured by clouds of ash, and each man had tied a cloth over his nose and mouth to breathe. His gaze moved over the laid-out bodies of the sick. Cheftu closed his eyes as a wave of dizziness swept over him. Deliberately he swallowed, intent on staying upright. Dehydration and exhaustion. The dizziness passed and Cheftu tried to concentrate.
Why was he here? If his calculations were correct, he was in the Middle Kingdom. Why?
He stretched. Why here, in the Aegean Sea? With this Aztlan empire he’d never heard of outside Egypt? A missing culture. The idea was somehow familiar, but he was too weary to pursue it. Slowly he clambered down the bluff, brushed off his dingy kilt, and adjusted the pack on his back.
Frantic shouts drew his attention, and he ran around the foot of the bluff to the open beach. Two of the sick Mariners were fighting, their hands locked around each other’s throats. Cheftu shouted for assistance as he tried to pull them apart. The one being attacked was blue, unable to breathe, but holding his hands around the other’s throat with an uncanny, fever-driven strength. Both were big, sinewy men, and Cheftu couldn’t break their grips.
“Somebody help me!” he shouted, looking for a way to separate them. “You idiots!” he yelled in Egyptian. “You kill yourselves on your deathbeds? What madness is this?” He raised a piece of driftwood and brought it down on both their heads.
Hands still around each other’s throats, the men fell, unconscious. The other Mariners watched wide-eyed, muttering about Cynaris and Batus. Cheftu gestured for the men to be laid on the sand. With a grim expression, Cheftu lashed their hands and feet together. If they died, they would be freed, but they were not allowed to kill each other. Not in his infirmary—even if it was just a beach!
NIKO STOOD OUTSIDE SPIRALMASTER’S LABORATORY DOOR. His hands were clammy, he couldn’t ever recall being so excited. He’d run to his mentor as soon as he’d been assured that the young woman would survive. Blood poisoning had set in through her wound, and Niko was ashamed to admit he’d not seen her hand. Or, rather, not seen the stub where her hand had been. Now she slept easily. She had fought the infection well, and Niko had finally felt free to leave her side.
What would the Spiralmaster say about the stones? What mysteries could they learn from this god, together? Niko stepped in, and Imhotep turned to him. In these past weeks, the Spiralmaster had aged a dozen summers. The normally well-groomed man was in stained linen, his face unshaven. “My master?” Niko said questioningly.
Spiralmaster’s side seemed twisted, and Niko was dismayed at how slowly and awkwardly the man moved. Niko took a deep breath, then announced, “My master, I found the stones.” From each side of his kilt he pulled a stone.
The white one.
The black one.
Spiralmaster looked at each one, rubbing bent fingers
over the etched letters.
“Do you know how they work?” Spiralmaster’s words were so slurred that Niko had to ask three times before he could understand his mentor’s query. What in the name of Apis had happened?
“Aye,” Niko said, shaking his head. “If you look closely, you see that each mark is lined with gold, to catch the light. Ask the question and the answer is spelled out.” He assumed Spiralmaster knew the ancient language, though Daedalus had been Niko’s instructor.
Imhotep looked at the stones. “The elixir,” he mumbled.
Niko tossed the stones. No light caught the engraved letters. “Perhaps the question needs to be rephrased,” he suggested.
Imhotep leaned against the table, muttering about the elixir.
Niko was shocked to see his master, his clan chieftain, so helpless. What had happened? What went wrong? Imhotep was shouting, “Elixir!” and Niko threw the stones. Again, no answer.
“Is there an elixir?” he asked.
Nothing. Perhaps the question wasn’t specific enough.
Be specific, Niko thought. “Is there an elixir for immortality?”
He threw the stones and frowned at the response before remembering to translate it into the common language. He looked up at Imhotep, his face frozen with incredulity. “There is an elixir,” he said.
“Ingredients,” Imhotep mumbled.
“What are the ingredients?” Yet what good was this question without a literal and fluent understanding of the ancient tongue? As he expected, the stones gave no answer but lay silent.
A summons at the door, and Niko hid the stones. A serf informed them that another of Zelos’ hequetai were ill.
Imhotep paled and Niko led the elderly man to his bed, appalled at the fragility of bones he felt beneath Imhotep’s clothing. What was happening to his master? The Spiralmaster was muttering, agitated, yet Niko couldn’t understand a word he said. He put the stones within reach of Spiralmaster, one on each side of his couch.
“Ingredients!” the older man shrieked.
“Ask the stones, my master. I do not know what they are. Two clicks will be nay, three will be aye.”
“You know this how?”
“It is the language, my master. Three consonants and a vowel are an aye, two consonants only for nay. Count the clicks for the answer.”
Niko closed the door at Spiralmaster’s command to be left alone. Something was wrong with him; gods knew what it was.
YOUNG SEA URCHIN, IMHOTEP THOUGHT, listening to the boy’s steps on the staircase. So these were the great legacy of Iavan’s god? Imhotep squinted, trying to make out the letters. He bellowed for a serf to get him more light. Even with a torch above him, Imhotep could not read the sacred writing.
Should he take them to Kela’s temple? Or perhaps the Pyramid of Days? His mind was cloudy. Imhotep touched the glass vial before him. A liquid moved in it, an important liquid, but he couldn’t remember what it was.
He scooped up the stones in one trembling, lined hand and was slowly putting them in his side pouch when they began to move. Imhotep opened his palm and saw them twisting and turning, blinding him as light caught the silver-and-gold letters.
“What is in the recipe?” he asked the stones. He tossed them and got no answer. “Is water in the recipe?”
Nay.
Okh! This was how to do it! He had to pose aye/nay questions. Imhotep snapped for a scribe and began to ask the stones about ingredients.
Decans later Spiralmaster glared at the stones, frustrated by their apparent inability to speak beyond “aye” or “nay.” Time was running short for Hreesos, for Imhotep, for them all. He needed the answers the stones could give him.
Through the stones, he now knew his elixir was one ingredient short.
Which ingredient was the query.
Painstakingly Imhotep listed every element he had, rolling the stones and reading the answer. “Nay. Nay. Nay. Nay.” His scribe long since dismissed, Imhotep racked his tired brain. So close, by Kela, so close! Wearily the old man tossed the stones again.
Nay.
He named another herb.
Nay.
Another.
Nay.
Another.
Nay.
Spiralmaster sighed and moved on to another list. He must find the last ingredient! They could not fail this close to the finish! He turned the leather page and resumed his questioning.
The stones resumed their negative responses.
Nay.
Nay.
Nay.
“What can we do to save our people?” he asked rhetorically, throwing the stones. They clattered repeatedly. What did that mean, eee?
Numbness stole his breath and pain squeezed his head. Imhotep’s hand went slack, the stones sliding across the painted floor in two directions, the imprinted letters dancing on the tiles.
“F-L-E-E!”
Y’CARUS MOVED STIFFLY ACROSS THE SLOPING DECK. Without thought he helped raise the sail, the nearby conversations and timekeeper’s drum low throbs against his pain. Neotne. Just saying her name was like the scrape of a blade. He looked across the sea. Though it was far away, the vision of the smoldering island was clear in his head.
As though a giant had cleaved it with a blade from above, Delos Island was torn in half. Where once the main street had run past the shops of weavers, dyers, and merchants, now a deep, jagged hole, half-filled with houses and bodies, cut through town. Lashed to flood levels by the sea, the river had submerged those who did not die in the quake.
Or in the fires.
Y’carus shook his head in absentminded agreement with some lesser Mariner’s inquiry, the man’s words lost in Y’carus’ memory of the lava flows. Like uncoiling serpents, streams of molten rock had slithered from the peak to the shore. When Y’carus had first heard of the eruption, he’d pushed himself, his ship, and his crew to the farthest reaches of their endurance.
Still, he had arrived too late.
They’d landed on the island at night, shocked silent by the view of the mountain, glowing red and black like the wood of a banked fire. They couldn’t get to the shore; the harbor was clogged with debris, including bodies.
With a small rowboat he’d landed, commanding his men to pick up any survivors and take them to safety on the neighboring island of Paros. Y’carus couldn’t help but think the safest place of all was the sea. The islands were suspect now; friend or foe?
Past sea skirmishes had not prepared him for the sights of destruction and loss. Though lava had ceased to flow, it covered everything, so hot that the hairs on his legs were singed from walking by it.
Shapes bulged out from the mixture of mud and rock. Y’carus could make out the forms of women and children—caught in the savage rush to the sea. The stink of roasted meat hung in the air. Above it all was silence.
Nothing lived in this once crowded city.
He’d gone toward the house of his bloodparents, but he could not get close. The building was indiscernible from another dozen like it. All of them had been flattened, moved, and submerged by heated earth. Y’carus roamed past lush green gardens now buried under glowing red rocks; a river silted motionless by ash and debris. He stumbled silently, hurting so badly that he could do no more than put one foot before the other.
After his search he walked to the tip of the island, the last spot of green—the meeting point with his ship.
The few who’d survived the horror were gathered there. Most were naked, some burned so badly that they glistened as though covered in oil or grape juice. These people were dying slowly, their mouths, tongues, and throats so burned, they could scarcely breathe and swallow. One person, he couldn’t identify gender, had rasped, “Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty.” When Y’carus brought water from a nearby well the person had choked on it and died in Y’carus’ arms.
He tightened the appropriate ropes, his thoughts on Arachne. Help had arrived from the empire—a belated sacrifice of men and material. Four ships of fleeing survivors
had made it to Naxos, Clan of the Vine, nearby, and another three shiploads of Arachne survivors had been pulled from the sea.
No dyers among them.
Y’carus answered questions from the crew, doing his tasks while inside he smoldered just as the city now did. Hreesos Zelos had declared the clan dead—for certainly the sheep, the looms, the ships, and most of the citizens who worked them were dead. And that was that. Thousands were lost, and the empire tallied, weighed, and sailed past. Now it appeared the island was falling into the sea. His precious Neotne, encased in a sarcophagus of angry rock, would sink beneath the waves.
The Scholomance must have realized the eruption was coming. The Cult of the Snake oracles must have known! Obviously neither cared about a small clan—not enough to warn the clansmen.
He pulled out his blade, polishing the bronze with the edge of his cloak. The empire was falling. It had forsaken him. He’d spent his life at sea, trusting that the empire would care for his family while he was away, protect his loved ones even as Y’carus protected the empire.
He had been deceived.
“Master?”
Y’carus looked up. His second in command stood next to a tall man whose features were nearly indistinguishable beneath a covering of ash. Poor shipwrecked fools, he thought.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The man frowned slightly, then spoke in broken Aztlantu. He introduced himself as Cheftu, an Egyptian guest. Y’carus called for the fleet log and saw that Cheftu had been on one of the three boats sailing to Kallistae from Egypt. A guest? Y’carus realized the man was a hostage.
“The Apis bulls, they were drowned?” he asked.
It took the Egyptian a moment to reply.
“Send a swallow, find out if the other two shipments arrived,” Y’carus instructed his scribe. “I am Y’carus, commander of this ship,” he said. “Welcome.”
The Egyptian bowed in his foreign way, and Y’carus began to move away.
“My … master,” the Egyptian said.
Shadows on the Aegean Page 18
