Snapping for a serf, Zelos demanded a note be flown to Aztlan. Dion, the inheritor, was the new chieftain. “Can anyone guess what this inferno has done to the produce?”
“As of this moment, there is no produce. There are no people.”
“By Apis stones, brother, 23,000 people dwelt on that island! Do you tell me that not even one person still lives?”
Nekros shrugged. “The reports are preliminary. I can tell you no more.”
Zelos raked a hand through his hair. This was the worst imaginable disaster. Two clans wiped from the face of the empire within weeks. Please do not let this be an omen, he thought.
The sound of footsteps echoed in the archway of the cavern. The brothers turned as one and stared at the woman who was standing there. “I thought I saw your ship,” Zelos said.
“I sent a warning to Chieftain Bacchi,” she said. “He chose to ignore it.”
“He may have received it too late,” Posidios said, turning to the woman. “Greetings, daughter.”
Sibylla halted, her green eyes widening for a moment. “Greetings, uh, Posidios,” she said quickly. “Bacchi ignored me.”
“Welcome to Paros, niece,” Nekros said. “You honor us with your presence this black day.”
She snapped her fingers and a scribe ran forward, offering a clay tablet to each of the three men. “Based on preliminary reports, most of the island is either ravaged by fire, which is still burning on the northeastern side, or is submerged in mud slides, which ran from the reservoir on the slopes of Mount Zelos to the valley, washing out hundreds of homes, produce, and most important, people.”
The three men exchanged glances.
“Where are you getting your information?” Posidios asked.
She stepped closer, and Zelos noted with appreciation that his niece Sibylla had become a desirable woman. Her glance was anything but warm, however, and she seemed discomfited beneath her capable veneer. “When I realized that the chieftain had ignored my request, I inquired of Atenis owing to her proximity.”
Nekros laid his tablet on the stalagmite that served as a table. “This is a thorough inquiry. It is a great sorrow that Bacchi did not heed your word,” he said gravely.
“Regardless of what Bacchi did or did not do, people are trapped, homeless, starving, and dying of thirst. We need to get to them.”
“The island is dead,” Zelos said.
“It is not.”
Posidios and Nekros both looked at her as though she’d lost her wits. To contradict Zelos, Hreesos? “You are the clan chieftain and ruler of the empire,” she said to Zelos. “You must certainly realize that the most vital possession these clansmen had was knowledge. If the vines are demolished and the fields laid waste, still, with the experience these people have, you can reclaim some of what has been lost. Quickly.” Sibylla was now almost face-to-face with Zelos. Her voice sharpened. “However, if these people die, their expertise will be buried with them.”
“It would be an expensive salvage operation,” Zelos said.
“Not to mention dangerous,” Posidios added.
She turned to him. “I am willing to take that risk, but time is essential.” She looked back at Zelos. “May I get started?”
“Tell my scribes what you need,” Zelos said. “Report to me tonight with the results.” He caught Posidios’ disturbed expression and wondered what it meant. Zelos might have to endure his arrogant niece’s demands about this, but he would see that she was properly humbled on his couch. Posidios grinned farewell as Zelos dismissed her. “Until our eyes hold you again, dear Sibylla.”
She looked uneasy, and Zelos laughed.
DION SHIFTED. The woman’s bony hip dug into his side and he turned over, catching the other woman’s hair, his fingers still twined in it. The boy had fallen asleep at his feet, his hands cupping the redhead’s breasts, his mouth open and warm breathed on Dion’s thigh.
Unwilling to awaken his partners, unsure as to what had happened, Dion gingerly pulled away from the three sleeping figures. His mouth felt as though it were filled with sheep’s fleece, and the top of it zinged with pricks that both tickled and hurt. Flagons of wine, empty, some overturned, were scattered on the floor and tables. Pots of poppy had turned to gray ash, and the kreenos pods that … he couldn’t remember her name or title, had brought, were piled into a pyramid.
Okh, by the stones of Apis, being decadent was hard work.
Unsteadily he got to his feet. Bodies—dancers, students, clansmen and others whose clothing was missing, making them hard to identify—sprawled around the perimeter of the room. The smell of vomit reeked as he rubbed a hand over his face and hair, and he realized it was himself.
Dion picked up a cloth from the floor and wrapped up in it, dizzy and nauseated from bending over. His head throbbed and his nostrils felt as though an Egyptian had tried to embalm him, pulling his brains out through the passages.
Sunlight pierced the linens on the windows, and Dion turned, feeling watched. He waved at the woman in the doorway, then remembered he was holding his kilt on and grabbed for it. Selena smiled and nodded her head.
“A curse on you for looking so alive this morning,” Dion grumbled, wincing as the words banged in his head, making it ache more.
“How many times have I seen you like this?” his clan sister Selena responded. “You have entertained and woken with the scent of a thousand men and women. What are you seeking, Dion?” The differences between them seemed amplified and unfairly exaggerated this morning.
Unlike him, filthy and fog headed, Selena was responsible, the inheritor to the Cult of the Snake. One of his sisters by Zelos, she served reason where he served passion. Her only lusts seemed to be power and knowledge. Though she was strikingly attractive, she was also strangely asexual. It was an irritating trait this early in the morning, especially when he couldn’t even recall the night before. Dion groaned and deliberately dropped the kilt. “No rebuke this morning, Selena. I cannot bear it.” He glanced behind her. “Is the passageway clear?”
“Given your present appearance, I doubt even you would be chased and adored,” Selena said. She held out the hooded robe draped over her arm. “Nevertheless, I am prepared.” Dion stepped over a sleeping girl and let Selena settle the robe over him. “Zelos has sent you a message.”
Dion halted, nausea, headache, and nakedness forgotten. “Zelos? What does Pateeras want? Where is he?” Dion was certain the Golden Bull had been at the feast the night before, but feasts often seemed one long meal with only breaks in between, rather than separate days.
“Bathe and dress first,” she said, leading him out of the chamber.
The sun was only slightly farther in its journey when Dion emerged from his chambers, clean, shaven, coiffed, and dressed. Selena sat in a stone wave-backed chair, staring out the window and eating nuts, one after the other, as though she were in a trance. Her eyes were enormous in the pallor of her face. “Selena? Sister?” She turned, and he saw that tears had streaked the kohl around her eyes, that nail marks marred her cheeks with angry stripes.
“It is gone, Dion,” she said brokenly. “The clan is destroyed.”
Dion tried to smile; surely it was a jest. Another attempt to get him to accept the responsibility of his clan and stop acting as if every woman were his first Coil Dancer. Another attempt at persuading Dion to leave Daedalus and his wild inventions alone. To embrace his heritage, which meant concentrating on the sugar level of the grapes, the necessary mulches for the vegetables; negotiating and selling within Aztlan. Yet he was chilled. “Tell me.”
“I read a message addressed to you. It said there were fires in every field. Thousands of homes burned, the aqueducts smashed and left to flood those fields lying fallow. Cities flattened.”
He sat down slowly. Naxos. “The clanspeople?”
Selena chewed on her lip, shaking her head soundlessly. “Submerged, devoured by Apis. Men, women, children.” She paused. “The chieftain is dead.”
As i
f he were looking through a prism, Dion saw the man he had been forever altered. With dizzying speed the existence he had known was mutating like one of Spiralmaster’s experiments. For just a moment, he saw his whole life.
Fathered by Zelos, his mother murdered by Ileana. His infant self had been taken to a remote cave on Nysa, an islet off Tinos. He’d been raised by the wolves expected to devour him. Sibylla had found him, more than half-wild, and tamed him. As they matured, they had journeyed to Caphtor, Alayshiya, Troi, Hattai, and beyond. He had reveled in every pleasure he could imagine. Finally he had returned to Aztlan, accepted to wife golden-haired Kassia and the seal of his authority.
Her death had reduced the tattooed lines around his fingers and wrist to fruitless decoration. The death of his son, a tiny babe unable to breathe, had rendered all else pointless. He had rejected everything, leaping back into physical pleasure. Best to enjoy life while one could, for it ended brutally, he reasoned. At the end, you held nothing. His cousin Bacchi had taken his place as chieftain.
Now, the destruction of “his” people, a term he’d not considered for summers. “How many survive?”
“I know not.”
“Who did this?”
Selena rose. “The earth. Apis leapt, destroying everything.”
“Why do we worship such a brutal god?” Dion whispered. Selena cried quietly. He blinked and snapped for bearers. “I go to Naxos.”
“First, Zelos would want you to have this.” Selena picked up a cloth-wrapped parcel. Heart beating unsteadily, Dion knelt before her. The heavy gold seemed like fetters. The seal of the Clan of the Vine: his seal, his birthdate, his birthright.
“You are entrusted with the life, welfare, and productivity of the Clan of the Vine,” Selena intoned. “Their blood is yours; you are defender and cultivator, you are mentor and chief. Seek the welfare of your people, your land, and the betterment of Aztlan.”
Dion stared at her bare feet, the tips of her toes painted scarlet.
“What say you, Dion Dionysus, Clan of the Vine?”
He fumbled for the blade at his waist. He’d made vows before and broken them. However, he had not made them in blood. This action would irrevocably change his life. He rose to his feet and drew the knife across his palm, a slash of fire. But it was nothing compared to the flames that had consumed his land. He rubbed blood on both sides of the black blade, then swiped a streak across Selena’s dry lips. “I swear to be defender and cultivator, I swear to be mentor and chief. I swear by the Triton and the Vine.”
After rubbing his own blood across his lips, he and Selena kissed. A sacred vow; he would be accountable to her, and she would be his conscience. She wrapped his hand in linen as he washed his blade.
“May Kela’s grace guide you until my eyes hold you again,” she said as he ran down the hallway to summon a ship.
SPIRALMASTER POURED CAREFULLY, steadying his arm as he forced his limbs to measure the liquid and powders. The disk mold was shallow and round, a common shape in Aztlan. Annual charts were scored on disks, tile typing in clay. Astrological charts, farmers’ almanacs, and simple things like recipes were kept in this fashion. This disk was a recipe of sorts, he thought with a low chuckle.
A recipe for life. His eyes filled with tears, the symbols of man, plant, and animal indistinct. It was too late for so many; and this would be the end of Zelos, too. How Spiralmaster had hoped to change things. Perhaps Apis had read his intentions and thus the plague?
But it wasn’t a plague. It didn’t strike indiscriminately, it didn’t appear to be infectious. It was methodically picking out Zelos’ hequetai, the Clan Olimpi. Who knew how many of the Scholomancers had it? He thought of those he considered sons. Were they ill? Would they be able to survive this and see Aztlan through to another time?
With a twitch of muscle, Spiralmaster turned to the table on which the disk rested. There, hidden among the signs in the sky, rising from the end of the Great Year and through the seasons, he hid the formula. His legacy to Aztlan.
Who could succeed him?
Whom could he trust with this? Who had no clan allegiance, no stakes in the internal rumblings of the empire? He turned the wheel again, his palsied fingers slow to press the characters into the drying clay.
“My master?” a woman asked.
Spiralmaster dismissed the Kela-Tenata. She left reluctantly, vowing he would do himself harm. Silly nymph, did she not realize he wouldn’t survive the day? He pressed the figures in.
Fumbling within his sash, Imhotep pulled out the stones. With trembling fingers he asked the question foremost in his mind and tossed them. His rheumy eyes couldn’t catch the rapidly flashing letters. But he felt them pierce his soul, a fatal blade.
“F-L-E-E-D-E-S-T-R-U-C-T-I-O-N.”
His fluttering hands stopped the stones, sending one skittering across the floor, the other clenched tightly in his fist.
“My master?” an unfamiliar voice said.
Imhotep jerked, lifting his finger just in time to not ruin his disk. “What do you want?” he asked, glaring over his shoulder.
An Egyptian faced him.
Imhotep had fond recollections of Egypt, a world so different yet similar to the one in which he’d chosen to live. The pristine white clothing and carefully ordered paintings of his heritage were far removed from the chaos of Aztlantu art and costume. The many gods, the hierarchies of priests, the society’s rigidity, compared to Aztlan’s two gods, the clarity of the clan structure … he would have said the purity of the people, but it was no longer the truth.
Spiralmaster studied the Egyptian before him. He was an unlikely specimen of a land crippled by famine; he was tall, healthy, and his eyes were clear yet strangely vulnerable.
This man had nothing to gain, and nothing could be taken away. He’d lost everything; it was written in his gaze.
“Who are you?” Spiralmaster asked.
The Egyptian crossed his chest and began to speak in Aztlantu. Fluently. The words he said were arrows, sinking deeply in Imhotep’s mind.
“For many generations, as long as Aztlan followed the divine nature within, you were obedient to the laws and well affectioned toward the God who gifted you, whose seed you were, for you possessed true and in every way great psyches, uniting gentleness with wisdom in the various chances of life and in your interaction with each other.”
Imhotep hardly dared to breathe.
“But when you began to ignore the divine laws within you, and your base nature gained the upper hand, you then, being unable to bear your fortune, behaved unseemingly, and grew visibly debased, for you are losing the fairest of your precious gifts; and to those who have no eye to discern true happiness, you appear glorious and blessed at the very time when you are full of avarice and unrighteous power.”
“How can you say these things? What do you know?”
“They were revealed to me. Warnings have fallen on deaf ears repeatedly. I am but another cautionary word from a Pateeras who seeks your best future,” he said, inclining his head.
Pain seized Spiralmaster’s skull, a vise tightening over his ears and temples. He held out his shaking hand. “Put on the tiles! Quickly! Type what I say! I have waited for you!” The Egyptian placed the tiles on his fingers. “The swallow,” Imhotep said. It took the man a moment to find it, but he did, pressing it firmly into the clay. “The leopard skin.” The Egyptian found one tile. “Nay! That is the bear skin. The leopard skin,” Laboriously Cheftu typed in the remaining few symbols needed for the disk.
“Where did you come from?” Spiralmaster whispered. He could feel his lungs congesting.
“Egypt.”
He looked at the man more closely. “Where did you truly come from?”
The Egyptian’s expression faltered, and he spoke slowly, as if realizing the words as he said them. “I am a student of the Scholomance’s legacy.”
“Be certain the library is saved,” Imhotep said. Loss of the knowledge was his worst fear. “We are a rotting
corpse in Aztlan, only our bones will tell our story. Help me to my couch.”
The Egyptian’s hands were sure as he led the Spiralmaster to lie down. He gave him some water, checking for temperature, swelling. His questions were intelligent, but so misguided. “This is how it strikes,” the Spiralmaster wheezed. “The body does not rally. Where did you learn Aztlantu?”
“I do not know it,” he said defensively.
“Then what are you speaking?” The color drained from the man’s face. Imhotep chortled. Aye, this was the one. As Spiralmaster he had no more time. Already delirium ate at his mind. “Take the disk and guard it with your life. It carries the answers,” he gasped out around his pain. His throat was closing, and he felt his lungs stretching for air, even as his legs began spasming. “It will be a sign that you are the new Spiralmaster, inheritor to the Clan of the Spiral.”
“My master—”
“Help us outlive the prophecy, survive these trials. Save Aztlan from ignominious destruction. We are dancing into our graves.”
“What prophecy? Who will believe me? I am a foreigner.”
Spiralmaster snapped weakly for a serf. “A quorum! Now!”
“My master, the brothers, chieftains Sibylla, Atenis, all are away at Naxos,” the serf said.
“Find everyone else. I need them here immediately,” Imhotep said, and Cheftu heard the metal of command in his voice.
He was speaking, understanding, Aztlantu? Cheftu shivered. He’d just started speaking, repeating the words flowing from the scroll in his mind. He’d given no thought to language. What had made him quote Plato he didn’t know. His words to the citizens of mythical Atlantis applied to this culture and time, even though Cheftu had read them three lifetimes ago.
Imhotep’s words finally penetrated. “Did, did you say Sibylla?” Cheftu asked, unable to help himself. Surely, please God, in this scattered country Sibylla was a common name?
“Aye. Chieftain of the Clan of the Horns and an oracle, also.”
Mon Dieu, please, no! Cheftu thought. She was the first, the only woman he had heartlessly left after loving. His stomach tightened, and he feared he would regret his behavior. “What prophecy?” he asked the aged man as he rested.
Shadows on the Aegean Page 23
