The Shards of Heaven

by Michael Livingston

  The big man smiled, nodded. “Just didn’t think today was a good day to die after all,” he said.

  Vorenus started to say something more, but Pullo had already turned to the rowers, his voice reverberating between the walls as he boomed orders on his way back toward the trap. “You call this speed? My one-armed grandmother can turn an oar quicker than you lot! Faster! Faster! You two,” he said to a couple of the watching legionnaires, “tell them to keep rowing for all they’re worth or I’ll come down and bust another head or two.”

  The two legionnaires saluted as he passed by. The third looked expectant. “Me, sir?”

  Pullo stopped at the base of the ladder, his first foot two steps high upon it. “With me, son. There’s sails to get ready. We’ve got a queen to catch!”

  20

  RETURN TO ALEXANDRIA

  ALEXANDRIA, 31 BCE

  Caesarion sat like a statue upon the throne atop the walls of the Lochian palace, the royal scepter upright in his hand, unfocused eyes stylized with black paint, the tall crown of a pharaoh perched atop his freshly shaved head. While his mother had been away he’d enjoyed the freedom to grow out his hair, but now that she was returning, he’d shaved it back to his scalp in accordance with custom. He would become annoyed with the practice, he knew, but for now, with the heat of the high sun adding to the heaviness of the crown, he was glad for the lack of additional weight on his head. Even with slaves steadily waving palm fronds around them, the air was dreadfully stifling. Helios, whose health had taken another downturn in the past week, had been too weak to handle it, so Caesarion had sent the grateful boy back to the cooler shade, along with the useless slaves and the rest of the platform party. Only Selene and Vorenus remained close to him now.

  For his part, Vorenus refused a seat, preferring to stand between the two remaining thrones despite the obvious discomfort of the wounds he wouldn’t acknowledge. “It’s hard to believe,” the old soldier said as another cheer went up from the throngs of people surrounding the harbor.

  Caesarion wanted to nod, but he didn’t dare do so with the tall crown on his head. There were thousands upon thousands of people in sight; seemingly the whole of the city had turned out for Antony and Cleopatra’s triumphant return. The wide surface of the harbor itself was awash with bright swaths of bobbing color where the cheering people had thrown flowers into the sea—to carpet the victors’ path home. It was, indeed, hard to believe. “They’ll know the truth soon,” Caesarion said. “The truth will come out.”

  “It’s known in whispers already,” Vorenus said. “News always flies ahead of the army.” He’d been back only a day—the stolen Roman trireme acting as a forward ship to inform the city of the pending return—and Caesarion was still having a hard time growing accustomed to the new tiredness in the older man’s voice. Much had changed in the months they were apart. He wondered if Vorenus felt the same way.

  “We’ve tried to keep it quiet,” Selene said, her voice stoic. That, too, seemed to have changed, Caesarion noted. Especially after what they’d learned from Didymus and Jacob. His half-sister seemed more and more a woman in a girl’s body, even if that, too, was changing. Sitting here now her upright bearing might as well be their shared mother’s as she sat in regal, divine impassivity and watched the lie unfolding below them. “But it won’t last.”

  Caesarion made a sound of agreement. “The traders already know of the defeat, and of Octavian’s movements east, cutting off our allies one by one. We’ve bought them off as best we can, but it’s only a matter of time.” From the corner of his eye, Caesarion saw Vorenus shift on his feet, and he thought he saw him wince. “Please,” he said, “I’ll have a chair brought up.”

  Vorenus shook his head, visibly stiffened. “Wouldn’t be proper,” he said.

  Caesarion let out a careful sigh, not breaking his impassive expression. Moving his eyes alone, he saw that Cleopatra’s massive flagship was crawling past the mountain-like lighthouse at the head of the harbor. The ship’s oars were in careful, patient time, and its decks were alight with gold and metals that shined in the sun. He had to fight back a smile. His mother had always been good at theater.

  The glinting of the ship hurt his eyes and he had to look away, not for the first time cursing the fact that they’d not had clouds this day.

  “Tell me again about the wave,” Caesarion said. “The one that destroyed the ships.”

  “Like the wrath of a god,” Vorenus said. “Unnatural. Like Neptune’s anger unleashed.”

  “Poseidon’s,” Selene said.

  “If you like, my lady,” Vorenus said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Poseidon’s Trident, Caesarion thought, sensing that Selene was thinking the same thing. Didymus said Juba was looking for it.

  “Some of the men are saying Octavian has the gods on his side,” Vorenus said.

  “I think not,” Caesarion said. “I think Didymus is right: there’s only one God. Didymus thinks He’s dead. Jacob thinks He’s just fallen silent. Either way, He has nothing to do with creation anymore.”

  “You think this wave has something to do with this man Juba?” Vorenus asked.

  “It might,” Caesarion said, glad that Vorenus didn’t ask whether he agreed with Didymus or Jacob. “He was looking for Poseidon’s Trident. Perhaps he has it. That’s not the biggest worry, though.” Since they’d found this moment of quiet solitude during the celebrations, Caesarion had been slowly explaining to Vorenus what they had learned in Didymus’ office. It helped to explain it to someone, he thought. And he trusted no one more than Vorenus. If anything needed to be done because of it all, Vorenus would be the man he’d call upon. It would’ve been Pullo, too, if he hadn’t been forced to remove the big man from his service when he’d arrived in Alexandria in chains. Better removed from service, though, than the public execution Antony had intended him to carry out. Caesarion hoped that Antony would accept Caesarion’s decision to exile the big soldier into Didymus’ care instead. He was just too good a man to lose. And he’d saved Caesarion’s life back in Rome, after all. It was only fair to return the favor.

  “You said something about the real threat being the Ark, and the possibility that Juba wants the ‘real’ Scrolls of Thoth, since they’re not what Didymus had originally thought,” Vorenus said, not bothering to cover up his obvious confusion.

  Caesarion actually cracked a smile before he remembered to erase the emotion from his face. The slow approach of his mother’s ship—during which he’d need to remain here—seemed interminable. “It’s all very confusing,” he admitted. “Jacob and Didymus had to explain things three or four different ways before we understood it all. I’ll try to explain if you’ll concede to a stool.”

  Vorenus agreed, and a flick of Caesarion’s wrist brought a slave scampering out onto the wall to receive the order to procure suitable seating for Vorenus.

  “Imagine trying to describe the Pharos lighthouse,” Caesarion said after the slave was beyond earshot once more. “On the ground it has a length and width, but of course it has a height, too. To describe it you’d need at least those three things. But that’s not enough, is it?”

  “I don’t understand your meaning, sir,” Vorenus said.

  “Well, the lighthouse changes over time, doesn’t it? Our grandfather replaced the statue of Poseidon at its top. That surely changed its height. And reinforcement at the base has changed its width, too.”

  “So you need to state the time at which you’re describing it. I see.”

  “Yes. Time.”

  “Fair enough.” Vorenus’ voice didn’t sound entirely understanding, but Caesarion knew the old soldier well enough to know that he wouldn’t continue the conversation if he wasn’t interested.

  “Didymus brought all this up when he suggested that we try to imagine one God, the creator of it all. God must, if He exists, live outside time. Above it, if you will, seeing everything that’s below just as easily as we can see a rock on the floor.”
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  “Makes sense, I suppose.”

  Caesarion heard the slave returning with a stool for the old soldier, though he couldn’t turn his head to observe whether it was a suitable one; the slave placed it, as was proper, just behind the line of the two thrones. Only by straining his eyes could he see the haze of Vorenus settling into a sitting position. Then the slave retreated, the shuffle of cloth indicating deep bows of reverence. Caesarion only barely contained the urge to roll his eyes.

  “Tell him about the angels,” Selene said when the slave had disappeared into the distance and it was safe to talk once more.

  “Angels?” Vorenus asked.

  “It’s a term from the Jews,” Caesarion said. “But we found it useful to talk in terms of that religion. It was easier that way with Jacob there. Angels are beings that are like gods to men, but are nevertheless creations of God, like us. They’re even supposed to appear like men, though of great beauty and strength. Like perfect beings.”

  “There’s something like this in other faiths,” Vorenus said thoughtfully.

  “I imagine so,” Caesarion said. “If there’s any truth in faith, Didymus pointed out, most religions should have at least a glimpse of it. We think these angels were among God’s first creations. They accompanied God and acted like His agents in the realms below Him—though you understand that ‘below’ is not accurate in a literal sense. Wherever God lives surrounds all of creation, in the same way a man on the first floor of the Pharos lighthouse is surrounded by the room around him, the vast height above him, and the passing of time that encompasses that in turn.”

  “It is, as you say, confusing,” Vorenus said, sounding amused despite the tiredness in his voice. “But I think I follow. These … angels would be like a guard assigned to one level of the lighthouse, who cannot guard the whole forever.”

  Caesarion hadn’t thought about it that way, but he decided the analogy fit fairly well—though he again managed to avoid nodding. “Just so, Vorenus. Now imagine that God lives at the highest realm of creation, and from there He can see everything. As Didymus explained it, for Him, past, present, and future would all be the same. So from His perspective nothing below Him would have free will. The only way for anyone to have free will, in other words, would be for them to be like God. Yet without free will God’s creation wouldn’t be truly alive. So He decided to give part of Himself to some of His creatures. This part, we think, is our soul. It is what then exists beyond our deaths, journeying up through the realms to that highest place where God dwells: the gift of true life, imparted through the gift of death, for only in knowing true loss can a being truly know love. At least that’s how Jacob explained it. The point is that God gave us the opportunity to become one with His eternity, to have the free will to live and love as we chose.”

  “Because God alone is capable of free will,” Selene said. Her voice sounded distant to Caesarion, and he longed to look at her. “So the soul is a portion of God.”

  “I think I understand,” Vorenus said. “And you believe this is true?”

  “You know me,” Caesarion said. “I’m stubborn about anything. But this makes some sense. We’re all gods in the sense that we all have free will. We do as we wish.”

  “And this one God just watches? Just sits and lets people kill each other?”

  “It doesn’t seem so,” Caesarion admitted. “What happened isn’t exactly clear—Didymus didn’t know for sure, and Jacob either didn’t know or wasn’t telling—but there was some kind of dispute among God’s angels about God’s desire to give us free will. Some of the angels may have refused because they did not want to see man become greater than they were. Some may have objected because they didn’t want to lose God.”

  The flagship of Egypt was close enough now to see the two figures lounged in luxury upon its deck, surrounded by wealth and slaves. Cleopatra and Antony were dressed as the victorious gods they pretended to be. Antony waved and smiled as the people ashore cheered and the men below the vessels deck pushed and pulled the long dipping and lifting oars. Cleopatra might as well have been made of rock.

  “But God’s will couldn’t be denied,” Caesarion continued, his voice sounding rehearsed even to his own ears. “The only way to make us truly free was to unmake Himself. So God sat upon His silver throne, and in a surge of power He destroyed Himself, unleashing what Didymus called the breath of God, which instilled true life in those creatures ready to receive it. The rest of God’s great powers—the powers He’d used to create us all—were infused into His throne, which turned to broken stones of impenetrable darkness. And where He had sat upon it, all that remained was a book, the real book behind the legend of the Scrolls of Thoth. God, Jacob says, created of Himself a Book of Life and Death, containing the fullness of His knowledge. It is said to be the most powerful object in existence, and it remains in the Heaven where God resided, protected by the angels who forever mourn God’s sacrifice.”

  “What of the angels who were against it?” Vorenus asked.

  “Eventually, war broke out among them all,” Caesarion replied. “They were divided over what they believed God’s plans were for creation. There were some, it seems, who desired to destroy man. In order to defeat these angels who had fallen away from God’s will, another group of angels used some of those power-filled fragments of God’s throne to create a gate down through the dimensions. In a terrible cataclysm, Jacob said that an angel named Michael, leading the loyal angels, forced the defiant angels into the void. Gehenna, Jacob called it. Hades is another term, I think. Some call it Hell. After the war was over, after the Fallen angels were banished, the loyal angels, who called themselves the Vested, determined that they’d try to unite all the pieces of God’s seat, to bring the powers of God together in order to find the God they’d lost.”

  “They tried to remake God?”

  Caesarion’s shoulders raised to shrug before his mind overrode the instinct. He slowly lowered them back into position. “Jacob said as much. I don’t know how that would happen. Whatever they tried failed, though: the throne shattered across creation, and these pieces of God’s strength—the Shards of Heaven—have fallen here, where they remain sources of enormous power.”

  New cheers went up, and Caesarion could see that the surviving ships of the fleet that had left with such high hopes were entering the inner harbor. He tried not to think about the wives and children who would count the ships and find that too few had returned, that the ships of their loved ones were gone to the deep.

  “There’s proof of this in the stories of these Jews?” Vorenus asked.

  “Some, but not all. Didymus found traces of the story in many places. It seems the truth was scattered in men’s memories, the details of what happened only available in bits and pieces that now need to be cobbled together. It’s like a big puzzle, with some pieces missing and others we cannot understand. I’m sure we don’t even know the half of it all still.”

  “You believe it, though?”

  Vorenus sounded, Caesarion thought, hopeful. He wanted to turn and look at him, but his mother’s ship was close enough now that she would see his fault for sure. Caesarion could see Antony very clearly now. The great general was still waving and smiling, but his eyes were sunken, and his smile was hollow. He looked … broken. Defeated. One of Cleopatra’s hands was draped over his elbow, clinging tightly to him. He wondered to whom she was giving strength. “I think I do,” he finally said.

  “I see,” Vorenus said. “And this truth is what Juba was seeking?”

  “Juba was looking for the Scrolls of Thoth, but whatever that book is, it is unreachable in Heaven. Only stories about it are here on this earth, whispers that survive in legends. What’s important here and now are instead those Shards of Heaven, those fragments of God’s power that made it here, to earth, to us. The first one arrived more than twenty-five centuries ago. That Shard has a special power to control earth and stone. It was used to build many great structures of the ancient world. Didymus think
s maybe this First Shard was taken to Sais during the Hyksos invasions of Egypt.”

  “The Hyksos?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Caesarion said. “It only explains how the Shard became associated with Sais.”

  The flagship was turning into the royal dock below the wall. The cheers were very loud. Antony stood and smiled up at him, and Caesarion fought the urge to smile back.

  “So is that Shard the Ark you’re worried about?” Vorenus asked. “The one you want to keep from Octavian and this Juba man of his? I thought that it was an object of the Jews.”

  “It became that, yes,” Caesarion said once his stepfather turned away to greet the servants and dignitaries lining the dock. Little Philadelphus was down among them, waving happily to his parents. When Cleopatra stood and actually waved back to her little boy, Caesarion was so surprised that he had to collect himself for a moment before he could answer Vorenus’ question. “Thirteen centuries ago, Pharaoh Amenhotep’s eldest son was named Thutmose,” he said, working hard to recall all the names Jacob and Didymus had given him. “His name means ‘Son of Thoth’ in the native tongue. He was the crown prince of Egypt, and he led the armies of the kingdom against the people of Kush, the kingdom up the Nile. He defeated them by marrying a Kushite princess named Tharbis. Perhaps through her influence, or through some other, Thutmose revolted against the religion of many gods held sacred in Egypt, and against his father. Somewhere, somehow, he acquired the Second Shard, which has power over water. He built a staff to hold it, to avoid touching it directly. He became, it is said, a Jew, and his name is known to that people as Moses. He returned to Egypt and took the First Shard from Sais, and he built a kind of box to hold it, which is what the Jews call the Ark of the Covenant. Thutmose took the two Shards and used them to cross the Red Sea and journey toward Judea, escaping Egypt and his father. The Jews who followed him established a kingdom there.”

  Vorenus made a sound of uncertainty in the back of his throat. “I know something of the Jews, but I know nothing about them having such great powers.”