The Shadow of Ararat

by Thomas Harlan

  "Go with good fortune," she said, making the sign of Artemis to bid her well.

  Thyatis rose, bowing. "And you, my Lady." Then she turned, her hair glittering in the last rays of the sun, and went aboard the ship. Anastasia watched her ascend the gangplank and go forward to speak to the captain. The sailors began to untie the mooring ropes and unfurl the sail. The tide was beginning to run out.

  At last, with the purple of night spilling over the harbor, the Duchess tapped on the top of the litter, indicating it was time to go.

  Krista blinked and stirred beside her. "Time to go home, mistress?" Her voice was sleepy.

  "Yes, dear, time to go home."

  The slaves had roused themselves as well and picked up the litter poles with well-practiced ease, sliding it easily aloft. Then they trotted off down the street. The western horizon was a long smear of deep rose and streaks of gold. In the litter, Anastasia leaned against the frame, staring out at the dark houses as they jogged past on the road to the city. One long finger folded the corner of her shawl over and over, running the sharp edge against her thumb.

  I hope she comes home alive, she thought, letting a dram of the sadness that filled her seep out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Palatine Hill, Roma Mater

  It was full dark when Maxian returned from the Forum. He was tired and his temper had not improved with a long afternoon spent listening to Senators droning on about the will of the gods and the assurances of the oracles that the Emperor's campaign in the East would go well. Of late, he had been sleeping badly, with strange dreams troubling his few hours of rest. Despite his eldest brother's admonitions to take up the burden previously carried by de'Orelio, he had not done so.

  As he had planned, he had visited the Offices provided him by Temrys twice, smiled at their ostentatious decor and then left. The official staff and their careful watchfulness made the rooms useless for his task. He knew that Aurelian expected his aid and assistance, but instead his thought returned again and again to the dead craftsmen. He fingered the little lead slug in his pocket as he climbed the stairs to his apartments. He was accustomed to leaning heavily on the undefined "feelings" that were the tool-in-trade of the healer and the sorcerer. The feel of the matter of the scribes reminded him too much of both that dreadful night in Ostia and the experience in the temple at Cumae.

  There were forces at work beyond normal sight. He could almost discern them, walking in these ancient hallways. When the palace was almost deserted, as it was now with the Emperor and much of his court gone to Ostia and the great fleet, with only the sputter of the lanterns and the occasional sight of a slave, dusting or mopping the floors, Maxian could feel the weight of the years and the tragedies that had occurred here. From the corner of his eye, if he was careful not to look, the shades of those that had lived here and died here could almost be seen. When he had been younger and had first come here, they had been welcome; the dim outlines of old men, clean-shaven, fierce and proud. Those were the strongest, those who had ruled here in the long centuries of the Empire. Now, with his skills grown and matured, he could sometimes see the others—those who had died in violence, those who had died in childbirth, those who had wept, or laughed, or loved here. Even the stones whispered, trying to tell their stories.

  He stopped at the entrance to his apartments; a thin slat of pale-yellow light showed under the door. He had left with the dawn to accompany his brothers to the Forum; no taper or lantern had been lit then. He calmed himself, reaching inside to find the Opening of Hermes. Once he had done so, he drew the power of the nearest lamps to him, causing them to sputter and die. He placed a hand on the wall, feeling the room beyond. Three people waited within, none near the door. The room beyond was watchful, but not filled with anger or hostility. He tilted his head to one side, willing the sight away. It receded and he opened the door.

  "Gentlemen," he said to the three people within. "I trust you have something of importance to say to me. It is late, and I am tired."

  Gregorius Auricus nodded, standing to bow. At his side were two others; another of equal age, who Maxian realized with a start was the woman once known as Queen Theodelinda of the short-lived Lombard state. Emperor Tiberianus had perished trying to drive her out of northern Italy. The other he did not know.

  Gregorius gestured to his two companions, "Lady Theodelinda, an old friend of mine, and Nomeric, a fellow merchant, though he lives in Aquilea on the Mare Adriaticum."

  Maxian nodded in greeting at each in turn. Theodelinda bowed and Nomeric nodded. The Prince put up his cloak and hat on pegs by the door and went into the small kitchen off of the sitting room. The palace servants had delivered a tray of cold sliced meats, flat bread, cheese, and some little dried fish. A stoppered bottle of wine completed the dinner. Maxian picked up the tray and returned to the main room. Once he had seated himself and taken a draft of the wine, he picked up one of the fish and began chewing it. He gestured to Gregorious Magnus to have his say.

  "Well, my lord Caesar, I apologize for intruding on your solitude here, but some things had occurred to me since our discussion at the baths and I thought that I should share them with you. We shall not take a great deal of your time. I brought Theode' and Nomeric so that you would know the extent of the trouble that is brewing. I account them both good friends, though as you see, neither is a citizen. Theode' was spared in the destruction of the Lombard state, accepting an amnesty and taking up residence in the hill-town of Florentia. I made her acquaintance through letters. Nomeric at one time was the chancellor of the feodoratica of Magna Gothica in upper Pannonia."

  Maxian raised an eyebrow at this, for it was generally ill advised for members of the Imperial Household to be meeting at night in their chambers with high-ranking members of subject states, particularly Gothic ones. Gregorius, however, seemed to think that it was perfectly acceptable.

  "Nomeric, of course," the old magnate continued, "no longer serves the Gothic king, having retired from that duty. He is a, well, how to put it... an ambassador without credentials to the Empire." Nomeric, who had been carefully saying nothing, his face placid, cracked a tiny smile at this.

  Gregorius leaned forward on his walking stick. "I cannot expect that you will not pursue the matter of which we spoke earlier. In the course of such an investigation, you may find that you have need of monies that do not come from the Imperial purse. You may find that you need assistance, or help, or even protection. I have spoken with the lady, and with the gentleman, and they—and I—are willing to offer you our assistance, help, protection, and funds, if you will accept them."

  Maxian finished the last of the cheese, putting down the little paring knife. He wiped his lips on the sleeve of his tunic and cocked his head, saying "And in return, you expect that I will do what? Show you favors? Influence the law? Be the voice of your business concerns, your peoples, in the court? My brothers and I do not look favorably on those who attempt to bribe the officials of the state. Why, in fact, do you think that I will need help beyond that of the state?"

  Gregorius stood up, hobbling a little on his ancient legs, and walked quickly to the door. For a long time he stood next to it, listening. Then suddenly he opened it and stepped out into the corridor. He looked both ways, then returned to his seat, shutting the door. Tiny beads of sweat dotted his brow. "My apologies, my lord Caesar, but I am overly cautious. Theode', tell him what you think is afoot."

  Theodelinda glanced at Gregorius in concern, then turned back to Maxian. She had deep-blue eyes, almost the color of peat. Maxian struggled to focus his attention on her words rather than the thought of what she had looked like when young.

  "My lord," she said, "after the death of my husband Agilulph at the battle of Padua, I was among the captives taken by the Emperor. We all expected to be slain out of hand or sold into slavery, but Martius Galen Augustus came among us and made an offer of amnesty to each man and woman that would forswear arms and reprisal against the state. Our gratitude was great,
for we had come to your land as invaders and had hoped nothing less than to conquer Italy and make it our own. That the Emperor should show us some mercy made a great effect on me, even with the blood of my husband soaking my dresses. I took myself, along with those of my household who would follow me, and settled, as the venerable Gregorius has said, in the town of Florentia.

  "It may surprise you, lord, but Florentia, while small, is a center of trade and manufacture. In particular we are very proud of our textiles and weaving. My people are clever with their hands and I was able to start anew, as the matron of a business rather than the ruler of a people. We have prospered. We are not citizens, but we believe deeply in the just law of the Empire. Our fathers were barbarians, living in wood and forest, but that is not what we want for our children.

  "A strange thing has come to my attention, however. When we came to Florentia the textile fabricae there was not overly large, but it was doing well. The town bustled with business. Our settlement there, and our new business, only added to that. In the last years, however, we have attempted to better ourselves again, by adopting new practices suggested by my sons and daughters. All of these efforts have failed. Of my eleven sons and daughters, only two remain alive, and one is crippled by the fall of stones from the construction of the temple of Hephaestus.

  "For a long time I was sure that these 'accidents' were the work of our rivals in the dyeing and weaving trades. But then I learned that the same kind of accidents had befallen the other families as well. At last, driven to extremes by the calamities, I went into the hills and sought out a wise woman who tends a shrine at Duricum. I spoke to her of our plight and she laughed, saying that I should go home and worship the gods in the manner of the fathers of the city. When I pressed her to explain, she pointed to my garments and said that if I dressed in the manner of the founders of the city, the accidents would stop."

  Theodelinda halted for a moment and reached into a carrying bag that lay at her feet. From it she withdrew a length of cloth and passed it over to Maxian, who took it with interest. It was amazingly supple, with the finest weave that he had ever seen. A delicate pattern of images was worked into it. Unlike the moderately rough woolen gown and robe that the Lombard lady now wore, this was almost like silk.

  "What is it?" Maxian asked, laying the cloth out over his knees. The feel of the fabric drew his fingers irresistibly.

  "We call it sericanum, it is a weave and a fabric that my daughters devised after I managed to procure, with the help of Gregorius here, several bolts of finished silk. It is marvelously smooth, is it not? Almost like silk, but not quite. Of course, it is made from wool and flax rather than the dew caught in the leaves of the mulberry tree."

  Maxian glanced up at the jest but saw that Theodelinda's eyes were filled with pain rather than humor.

  "Your daughters are dead, then," the Prince said. The elderly lady nodded. "If I understand the thrust of this conversation, all of those who participated in the manufacture of this cloth are dead. Leaving you with almost nothing of what you started."

  A great pain washed over Theodelinda's face, but she said, "Only gold remains. I am still rich, though my house is empty."

  "Is this all that remains of the cloth?" the Prince asked.

  "No," said the quiet raspy voice of Nomeric. "That is from a new bolt of cloth. It was woven no less than four weeks ago. The weavers, at the last report, are still alive, even hale and hearty."

  Maxian slowly turned, his eyebrow raised in question. The half-completed theory that he had been slowly working on shuddered in his mind, and various bricks threatened to fall out of it. "How, may I ask, did you accomplish that?"

  Nomeric smiled and deferred to Gregorius. The old man coughed, then shook his head.

  Nomeric steepled his fingers, gazing at the Prince over them. "The manufacture is in a holding of my family in Siscia. In Magna Gothica."

  Maxian turned to Gregorian in puzzlement, saying "I fail to see the connection."

  Gregorius nodded and cleared his throat. "Siscia is the city the Goths built as their capital after the peace of Theodosius. It is a Gothic city, under Gothic rule, with Gothic law. It is, so to say, not a Roman city. There is no... Imperial presence there. Do you see my meaning?"

  Maxian leaned back on his couch, rubbing the side of his face. With his other hand, he toyed with the length of cloth. He thought now that he saw what Gregorius was driving at. "By your logic, then, if the investment that our mutual British friend had made had been undertaken outside the borders of the Empire, it would have been... successful."

  Gregorius nodded, tapping his walking stick on the mosaic floor in excitement. "That has been my thought for some time! You see then, my young friend, why you may need help from outside the state?"

  Maxian nodded, lost in thought.

  —|—

  Gregorius and his companions left long after midnight. Maxian was even more exhausted than before, and now he sat on the edge of his bed, the room lit only by the light of a solitary wax candle. On the little writing desk next to the bed lay a package of items that he had gathered. He knew that he should wait until the next day, after he had slept, but the curiosity that had been gnawing at him would not let him wait. He unwrapped the cloth of the package; inside were several items—a swatch of the sericanum that Theodelinda had left, the tiny lead slug from the house of the scribes, a boat nail from Dromio's workshed in Ostia. Each thing he placed on the floor at the foot of the bed in an equal triangle, then he settled himself on a quilted rug from the chest. He considered calling for a servant to summon Aurelian to watch over him while he was meditating, but then put the thought away—his brother was busy enough and Maxian, really, had nothing to tell him yet.

  He arranged himself, sitting cross-legged, and then began breathing carefully, in the manner that he had learned at the school in Pergamum. After a moment the room began to recede from his vision, then there was a sense of slippage and the vision of coarse stone and wood was gone. In its place dim shadows of the wall, the bed, the door remained, but each was an abyssal distance filled with the hurrying lights of infinitely minuscule fires. Maxian calmed himself further, letting his mind discard the illusions that his conscious mind forced upon the true face of the world.

  All sense of matter was shed, leaving only these tiny rivers of fire tracing at impossible speeds the outlines of the chair, the writing desk, and the three things on the void-surface of the floor. Maxian focused his sight upon them, seeking to find their resonance. The lead slug expanded in his sight, becoming impossibly large. The whirling motes that formed its surface, to his first sight so heavy and solid, to his second a ghost, and now, to the third, nothing but emptiness filled with a cloud of fire, parted. There was a sudden sense of dissipation, and Maxian stumbled in that strange realm. Something beyond the matrix of the lead slug was suddenly drawing him, tugging at his perception and even his essential self.

  Maxian willed his sight to fall back, to resume the greater vision apart from the distracting detail that formed the slug. Now he could see the resonance that echoed and impinged upon the tiny weight of lead. Wonder at first, and then a numbing horror, pervaded his consciousness. The slug, the cloth, the nail were the center of a maelstrom of forces. Dark energies of corruption and dissolution spiraled out from them, flaying at everything they touched. Now that he was aware, Maxian felt them pricking at his own core of being, like a cancer, eating away at his own strength and vitality.

  A curse, he thought wildly, some malefic power summoned by a great sorcerer! I must destroy these things immediately! The urge was so strong that he almost cast off the meditation right there and ran with the objects out of the room. But his inner calm held, and Maxian realized with a start that his own thought and will were being bent by the forces that were collecting in the room. Destroy them, the vortex whispered, smash them, burn them up.

  With a great effort, he called up the Shield of Athena, as had been taught him in his first days at the school of Asklepiu
s in Pergamum. By this means, all dire forces could be turned away from the body of healers, allowing them to engage a diseased or corrupted form and perhaps, if they were very lucky and skilled, drive from it the deadly humors that arose in men and ate away at them from within. A shining band of blue-white flickered into being around him, struggling against and finally severing the tendrils of night-black that had been digging into his self. Immediately he felt better, his mind clearer, his thoughts ordered and his own again.

  Now he made a curious discovery, seeing the strength arrayed against him. The three objects on the floor were not the source of the corrosion that still flashed and burned against the flickering blue-white shield. Rather they had drawn it, like a shark is drawn to blood in water or the wolf to the wounded in the flock. As he watched the weave of the cloth began to unravel, breaking down into single strands, then to wisps of fabric. It will be utterly gone in a day or two, the Prince thought, marveling at the power of this curse. Even the lead of the slug and the iron of the nail were deforming under the crushing power of the black tendrils. What can give it such awesome strength? A feeling of familiarity tugged at his thought, something he had seen before...

  Ignoring the three tokens for the moment, Maxian gave his thought flight and rose up in vision through the wooden timbers that made the roof of his apartments, through the floors above and then into the night sky over the Palatine and the city. From this vantage, the city was a pulsing sea of light—the people, the buildings, the river, all shimmering with their own rivers of hidden fire. And through it all, Maxian was stunned to see the blue-black power rise, swirling around his rooms at the palace like a whirlpool. The curse rose from the very stones of the city, from the sleeping people, from the statues of the Forum and the sand on the floor of the Circus.