The Gate of fire ooe-2

by Thomas Harlan

  "Has our brother returned?" Galen whispered out of the side of his mouth as his Imperial party entered the temple. Ranks of praetorians lined the portico, their armor gleaming and bright. The clang of their salute, mailed gloves on cuirasses, was sharp as he passed between them.

  "No," Aurelian whispered back. "He came to see me a month or so after you left, saying he had struck upon some secret business he had to deal with. Then he vanished."

  Galen bent, kneeling, and bowed his head before the statue of the King of the Gods. At his side, staunch Aurelian on his left and the white-haired Gregorius Auricus on his right, his companions knelt as well. Outside, in the bright sun, the voices of the crowd were raised in song.

  It was the first time Galen had ever felt that Rome was a city filled with people. For seven years it had seemed a half-empty tomb, inhabited only by the shades of its residents and the echoes of memory. Today, riding in the white chariot through the avenues, seeing the endless lines of people thronging the streets and alleyways, their voices cheering him as he passed, at last he saw the city that had raised an Empire. At last, after years of struggle, it was alive.

  "Has there been sign of him of late?" Galen worried at the question of his missing brother like a dog with an old bone.

  "Sign-no, but rumor? Yes. The Duchess sent word to me no more than a week ago that one of her agents had reported that our little piglet had returned to Italy and was hiding out in the hills above the city. I sent men to investigate, but I have not heard what transpired. The Duchess and I are meeting in a few days."

  The praises of the priests ceased and the Pontifex Maximus came forth, holding aloft the signs and symbols of his office. Incense drifted around him, making white trails that tracked into the dim recesses of the vault that towered above the great statue of the god. Around the fringe of the temple, a thousand acolytes and priests bowed their heads. Galen, seeing the movement, composed his face and did the same.

  "The omens are good!" the voice of the Pontifex rang throughout the temple. "The gods are pleased. Let the Imperator enter his city."

  Galen stood, his knees sore from so much kneeling and the long, slow ascent of the steps of the temple. He turned, clasping his brother's wrist with his right hand.

  "Well met, brother." Aurelian smiled back, his broad grin shining in his face. "This is a doubly joyous day!"

  "Come," Galen said to the assembled host of priests and his Legion commanders, "let us proclaim the celebrations."

  – |"They will drink and carouse and dance and sing until the day comes again," Aurelian said, still smiling, as they stood on the balcony of the Severan Palace at the south end of the Palatine hill. A hundred feet below, in the long rectangle of the Circus Maximus, great bonfires were burning. The sky above was clear and dark, scattered with stars and Venus, bright on the horizon. But below, amid the smoke and fume of hundreds of roasting cattle and swine, the populace of the city celebrated the return of their Emperor and of the Legions, victorious against an ancient enemy.

  Galen answered with a nod, leaning against the marble balustrade of the balcony. Here, safe at the heart of his domain, he had released his men from the long discipline that had held them in check from the sack of Ctesiphon. Finally they could celebrate their great victory, spend some of their loot, drink and tell tales of their valor and bravery to wives, barmaids, and maidens. Across the whole city, in every public place, the Emperor's purse was open, filling the bellies of the citizen and the slave and the visitor with wine and bread and hot pies and roasted flesh from every kind of creature. Below, in the circus, with its great doors flung open, the men of the Legions held forth-seeing their families again, meeting old friends and new. For this whole day and night, the city reveled in triumph.

  "Maxian came to me in Albania," Galen said, turning to his brother with a pensive face. "All unbidden, he appeared-a ghost in black and gray-as I sat in my tent late at night, working. He was so thin and worn looking! Have you ever seen him in such a state?"

  Aurelian shook his head in negation. He was disturbed more, now, by the pain in his brother's voice.

  "He told me a tale," Galen said, "an impossible fancy. But he believed and asked me for my help. I could not believe it… it seemed so fantastical!" The Emperor's voice faded to a whisper.

  "What happened?" Aurelian was staring at his brother with unaccustomed concern. Though the brothers had bickered and quarreled over the years-even fought on occasion, when they were in their cups-none had ever refused another's plea for help. The bonds of family ran that close. What would pater et mater think if they fell out among themselves? "What did you say to him?"

  "There were harsh words," Galen said in a small voice, refusing to meet his brother's eyes. "My guardsmen took him away to sleep-he was so tired! I was sure it was fatigue that made us quarrel. But then morning came and he was gone. Not even one trace of him remained. Aurelian, he was a ghost…"

  Aurelian shook his head and took his brother by the shoulders, shaking him lightly. "The Piglet will come back," he said softly. "He always does, beard half grown in, stinking of wine. Put those thoughts aside for now; today is the day of your victory, of your triumph. Listen to the night, to the cheerful songs of men who you led to victory on a foreign field. Hear the city rejoicing."

  Galen looked up and sighed, then ran a thin hand over his face. "It was very fine to ride in that chariot and hear the adulation of the crowds. It was a good show today."

  "But, brother-no races? No gladiatorial games or elaborate staged battles in the Coliseum? No munera to please the gods?" Aurelian was grinning, but puzzlement marked his bluff, open face.

  Galen shook his head, pursing his lips in a quiet smile.

  "My gift to the city is the safe return of these men. Besides, any eager senator can put on a giant octopus and shipwrecked Numidian fishermen show in the Flavian. This does not obscure the joy a mother feels to see her son come home again, alive and whole."

  The Emperor turned, putting his back to the railing. Above him, he could see the courses of the Capitoline ablaze with light. Every window held a lamp, and the lines of the rooftops were shining with torches and lanterns. The whole of the city, sprawling away behind him, was glowing. Rome could be seen, he was sure, from a hundred miles away. A breeze off the mountains ruffled his lank dark hair, and the Emperor signaled to one of the slave girls loitering just out of earshot. "Vidia, bring us hot wine, please."

  The girl bobbed her long blond hair and hurried off, her short skirt showing fine pale legs.

  "I am not an emperor given to excesses, my brother, you know that!"

  "True," Aurelian said, shaking his shaggy head, "but it strikes everyone as odd that you do not lavish such gifts and exhibitions upon the city as others have done in the past." Aurelian avoided mentioning the other words he had heard: miserly or cheap or penurious.

  "Let them think it odd," Galen growled, finally rising to his brother's bait. "In another time the Emperor would have unleashed each and every man in the army-their shoulders bent with the weight of their looted coin and jewels-all willy-nilly upon the city in a storm of debauchery. Half the army would be drunk and useless for a month from it. And all that silver and gold would be gone from each soldier's purse in half the time. Prices would rise, driven by such an influx of coin, and the poor man in the street would be pinched worse than ever."

  Aurelian frowned and scratched his nose. "That has been the tradition," he allowed, and took a goblet from the tray that Vidia had brought. "Why meddle with tradition? It pleases the men, and the innkeepers, too!"

  "That is so," Galen said, taking the other goblet. The surface of the wine, a deep red Falernian, was steaming in the cool air, and he drank thirstily. It had been hot work, riding in the chariot through all the winding ways of the city, passing through each square and market, so that all could look upon him and his men and see that Victoria had graced Rome with her favor again. "But it would not please me, nor you if you thought beyond the next horse race o
r bottle of wine. I have held back each legionnaire's share of the booty from Ctesiphon to place in the Treasury. A third of that sum due each man will be paid out to them when they leave Legion service as an addition to their honesta misso. For many, that will double the coin they would receive on their discharge day. Another third will be paid out over time as a supplement to their pay. The last third, they have today, to spend in the fleshpots and tavernae and baths."

  Aurelian shook his head. He did not see the point.

  "You have ruled the Empire in my name for nine months now," Galen said, an acerbic edge coming into his voice. "Surely you have noted the volume of coin that passes through the Treasury just to sustain day-to-day operations? Yes? Good. I tell you this: The loot our army has brought home is enough to pay for a hundred and sixteen days of Imperial operations, a staggering sum. And that is the Imperial share! The share due the men in the Legions accounts for another hundred days' worth. Now, think of the price of bread or wine today in the marketplace. If I allow all that gold to flood into the Forum Boarium and the brothels and the shops on the Porticus Aemilla in one huge wave, prices will rise like the chariot of Apollo. That, my brother, will make the cost of daily operations for the fisc rise as well. A hundred and sixteen days will become eighty, or sixty."

  "Oh," Aurelian said, at last comprehending something of what his brother was saying.

  "So," Galen continued downing the last of the wine, "we do not spend all this bounty at once. Instead, we stockpile it in the Treasury and we spend it a bit at a time. The third share that each legionnaire will receive in his pay will take two years to pay out. A sufficient span of time, I think, to dilute the effect on the price of bread. I have other plans for the Imperial share, but it will not be used frivolously or extravagantly."

  "Of course not." Aurelian sighed. "Never extravagant… you'll not raise a triumphal arch for this, but repair a mile of road or a bridge instead."

  "My very thought." Galen snickered, putting the wine goblet aside. "Though I had my heart set on dredging the big harbor at Portus, and perhaps-if your heart can stand the excitement-restoring the old military highway through the Alpes from Mediolanum to the Lacus Brigantinus."

  Aurelian made a sour face at this, and looked away in a feigned pout.

  Galen clapped Aurelian on the shoulder in great good humor and turned again to look out upon the city, bright with celebration.

  – |Dawn was near when Galen made his way, at last, to his rooms in the Severan wing of the palace. He was bone tired and feeling the effects of too many goblets of wine and too many garlic prawns in pepper aspic. Guardsmen in red cloaks and burnished steel breastplates opened the doors to his chambers and saluted as he passed in. The rooms were dark, barely lit by a single oil lamp that burned on the mantelpiece of a fire grate. One window was open a little, letting in a cool breath of night air. The breeze stirred the gauzy curtains that hung around his bed. It was a huge old thing, with heavy carved wooden pillars at each corner holding up thick beams of aromatic Mauretanian cedar. Once it had stood in his father's bedroom in their family home in Narbo. The door to these chambers, first built by Emperor Alexander Severus, had been specially widened to get it in.

  Galen, feeling much like an overworked shopkeeper at the end of a particularly grueling day during the holiday season, kicked off his boots and pulled his tunic over his head. His entire body ached, and the beginnings of a blinding headache were lurking behind his eyes. He slumped, his head in his hands, and considered calling for one of his servants to rub him down before he went to bed.

  "Husband?" A faint whisper from the vastness of the bedclothes caught his attention.

  "Helena?" Galen turned, surprised. He had not received a letter from the Empress in weeks, the last coming from her villa at Catania. No one had said anything about her being in the city. Yet here she was, turned on her side, staring at him with sleepy dark brown eyes. "What are you doing here?"

  "Waiting for you… I fell asleep, though."

  Galen slid under the heavy covers, feeling the glorious sensation of a freshly made bed with clean sheets at the end of a taxing day. Unexpectedly, Helena moved to press herself against him, curling around his arm and side. Her sleek dark hair tickled his nose. Nonplussed, for their last parting had been particularly bitter, he slid his arm around her and held her close. She sighed, holding him tight, and the intimacy of their embrace tickled at his heart. He had a sudden, dreadful, premonition. "Helena, are you well?" The Empress had never been a healthy woman, suffering from the cough in her youth, and prone to colds and summer flu. Galen's mind, still wound up from the long, busy day, spun in a thousand directions, finding nothing but disaster in any path it followed. "Are you sick again?"

  "No, husband." There was an odd tone in her voice. With another woman, one less given to the furious single-minded pursuit of her interests, he might have thought she was laughing at him. But Helena had never mocked him. "Did you miss me while you were in the East?"

  Galen made a rueful face, though she could not see it in the darkness. "Yes, I did. I regretted the words exchanged at our last parting."

  She snuggled closer, running a hand across his chest. Galen caught it and brought it to his lips.

  "Did you get my letters?" She was still almost asleep.

  "Yes… but I thought you might take me to task again, so I did not read them. I wanted to see you myself, to apologize."

  "Do you mean," she said, rousing herself from near sleep, "that you take back calling me the 'failed broodmare of a dynasty'?"

  Galen flinched, feeling the echo of terrible anger in her voice. "I do," he said, kissing the crown of her head.

  "Good," she said, putting her head back down on his chest. "Because it's not true anymore. I am a successful broodmare."

  A bright light seemed to fill the room, blinding Galen for a moment as his normally quick mind processed the incongruous comment. It did not seem to match up with any previous conversation.

  "What?" Somehow it was all that he could manage.

  "I became pregnant the last time that we lay together," Helena said, raising her head again and enunciating carefully. "I bore you a son, a healthy son, three weeks ago."

  "You did?"

  "I did. He is here now, in the palace, in the care of domina Anna from your house at Cumae."

  "I have a son?" Galen was puzzled; why did he keep repeating himself?

  "Huh. As brilliant as ever. Go back to sleep."

  Galen lay in the darkness, wondering if there could be a more perfect day in all the history of the world. Eventually, without noticing it, he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Hill Above Palmyra

  "There!" Zoe gasped in exhaustion as she hauled herself up over the last pitch of rock. Negotiating the glassy lip of the waterfall had been a tricky piece of business. Two great sandstone boulders towered over her, jutting from the side of the dry canyon like the pillars of a temple. Under them was a little shade, and she collapsed into it, ignoring the pain of long scratches on her arms and legs, and the parched feeling in her mouth. Sitting, she untangled the cord of her broad-brimmed straw hat from her neck. The canyon fell away below her, lit by the unceasing sun and shimmering with heat. Acres of tumbled stone and cracked tumulus lay below her perch, bare and dry. The canyon bottom itself wound down out of the barren hills that crouched above the city, a narrow thing carved by intermittent rains. Thornbush and gnarled little trees clogged the stream bottom, making passage up it almost impossible. But she had come, following the faint trail of many men over sand and rock.

  It had led her up here, to these sentinels on the mountainside. A hundred feet below she had found a lost buckle, still relatively new, and it had pointed her into this draw that plunged down the side of the mountain. On the gray-green trees that clung to the rocks she had found the marks of cord and the knives of men. Something heavy had been dragged upward, carried in a sling of ropes. It had come here.

  There was a s
crabbling sound on the rocks below her, and she leaned out, seeing that the old man had finally made his way up to the base of this little cliff.

  "Wait," she called down, beginning to uncoil a rope from around her slim waist. "I'll make an anchor."

  "Good!" floated back the reply. The old man sat down on a stone at the base of the waterfall, wiping his brow with an ancient and foully stained cloth. His desert robes had suffered, too, in the climb up out of the canyon bottom. He had preferred to wear the full kaffiyeh and robes and camel-boots that were the garb of the desert tribes. He and Zoe had argued, in the early morning shadows, under the ruin of the Damascus gate. She had chosen to wear a light cotton kilt and tunic, her legion boots, and her gear slung on leather belts around her waist and over her shoulder. He felt it was unseemly to go into the hills in such a state. She had overruled him.

  Now he panted in the heat, below, while she felt fried like a griddle cake in a pan, above.

  "What do you see?" the old man shouted.

  "The two stones," she called back, "and a hidden place between them."

  She thumbed the waxed plug out of one of her waterskins and took a long drink from it. The water had been cold when she had filled them from the cistern under the city, but now it was lukewarm and smelled faintly of sheep. Odenathus had urged her to take one of the copper Legion canteens with her, but it was heavier than this with all that weight of metal. Her cousin had barely marked her going-he and his mother were locked in one of their endless arguments about how to rebuild the city.

  Zoe did not care. The city was dead to her. They could clear the debris from the cisterns and open the streets again, even restore the Temple of the Four Gods, or the plinth of Bel, but it would not bring back the bright, glorious city of her youth. That was dead. This dark man, this Lord of the Ten Serpents, had smashed it down in the wake of Rome's betrayal.