Maxian struggled to rise and managed to get up far enough to lean against the plaster wall. "The Histories say that he was adopted by you, made your heir. He used your name, in part, to make himself Dictator of the city. You must remember him—Gaius Octavius. Your sister's daughter's son."
The dead man stared at Maxian with something like shock on his face. He rubbed the back of his head, then turned around and paced to the window. There he turned back again, his hands on his hips. "Octavian? That mousy little sycophant claimed to be my heir? A colorless, mewling senatorial lickspittle? All he did was follow around on my heels, snooping. I surely left no will naming him my heir..."
Abdmachus laughed. The dead man was beside himself with disgust. Maxian was more serious. The dead man continued to curse luridly, until at last he ran out of epithets.
"Whether you made out that will or not, it was presented to the Senate in your name. After a civil war he became Emperor," the Prince continued with a weak voice. "The first of many. Under his supreme rule, the Republic became a shell, and the Empire came to rule the world. It was in his time that this curse that you see reflected on the faces of the citizens began. We think, Abdmachus and I, that it was intended to protect and sustain the state and that for a long time it did. But the world is changing and the state, because of this curse, cannot change with it. The people are the ones who are suffering. The state remains, but it is becoming more and more rotten. Great changes must be made to cure this ill."
The dead man had barely heard anything that Maxian had said. "But what happened to Marcus Antonius? What happened to my supporters? Marcus should have followed me as Dictator—he was well beloved of the people! The Senate would not stand for an Emperor... did the wars continue, did Rome bleed still more?"
Maxian sighed. It was going to take a long time to bring the dead man up to date on the doings of the city and the Empire... If only his head did not feel like it was being crushed in a vise. The dead man began pacing restlessly. The nervous energy in that spare frame only made the pain in the Prince's head worse.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Spice Road, Near the Wadi Musa, Theme of Arabia Felix
The tall Egyptian was walking along the bottom of a streambed when a bandit came rushing out of the deep purple shadows under the rocks.
A steep-sided valley soared on either side of him, littered with giant red sandstone boulders, bigger than houses. The sun was setting behind him as he trudged up the long incline, filling the western sky with a vast swathe of gold and saffron. In the wild hills of the Ed'Deir night fell quickly, replacing the searing heat of the day with chill cold. Sand and gravel, as red as the sky behind him, crunched under his feet. Ahmet had come a long way, from the upper Nile, to Alexandria, then by felucca to the Nabatean port of Aelana. The port was bustling with merchants and traders shipping cargoes from the Sinus Arabicus—that narrow sea that bounded Egypt on the east. The few coins that remained in his wallet after the trip from Alexandria were insufficient to purchase a camel in that bustling port. So he had walked.
He knew that he was only hours from the "hidden" city of Petra, nestled in these barren hills in a close valley. But he had not gotten there yet. His mind was weary and he did not recognize the slap of sandals on the smooth sandstone until it was almost too late.
The bandit was swathed in dark cloth and only his eyes glittered out of the head wrappings. He swung a long staff tipped with a nine-inch iron blade. Ahmet sprang back and the iron rang on the stones. The bandit said nothing but slashed again with the pole-arm. Ahmet dodged to the left, gasping for breath. His blood filled with the rush of fear; the narrow canyon and the lambent sky receded from his vision. Only the sharp tip of the spear filled it. The bandit lunged again, and Ahmet darted to the right. The bandit cut low and the iron bit into the side of the Egyptian's leg. Pain sparked and there was a roaring sensation in the priest's mind. He jumped inside the reach of the spear and lashed out with a knotted fist.
The blow took the bandit in the side of the head, rocking him back. Ahmet followed with a kick to the stomach and then wrenched the spear away from the man as he fell back with a choking cry. Without thinking the priest reversed the pole-arm in one motion and struck downward, all his weary rage behind the blow. The iron sank deep into the bandit's chest, like a knife into heavy bread, and then grated against the stones. The bandit twitched and spasmed around the blade pinning him to the sandy floor of the streambed. Grimacing, Ahmet jerked the blade out of the man. Blood sluiced from the weapon, spattering on the ground.
The priest stepped back, the spear raised, and he looked around. The air, now filling with the dim of twilight, seemed preternaturally clear. Shuddering, he took a series of deep breaths and calmed his heart. His racing pulse subsided. He might have friends, he thought. His focus turned inward for a moment, and he let his awareness expand to cover the great stones, the walls of the canyon, the scrubby gorse and bent little trees. There was no one else. A mournful owl called in the distance, hunting for its prey.
Ahmet shook his head and bent down over the dead man. He said a prayer to guide the soul of the bandit to the Great River and the Judges. Then he took the knife and wallet the man had at his waist and strapped them to his own kit. The body he rolled up in the desert robes and carried into the deep shadows. He found a crevice in the rocks and pushed the body into it. He gathered rocks in the darkness and piled them at the entrance. There was a little flash of soft light as he placed a ward to keep animals away from the body and ensure its rest.
Then he continued up the canyon. Above him, in the arc of sky that was not obscured by canyon walls, the firmament of heaven was filled with a thousand stars, all bright as jewels.
—|—
Two hours after full darkness, Ahmet climbed the last switchback of the trail at the head of the Ed'Deir and came over a lip of rock and into the valley of the city of Petra. The valley rose up in a bowl, away from him, filled with the lights of lanterns and torches. Hundreds of houses climbed up the terraces of the city before him. Above them the crags of the mountains rose, a great palisade of stone cupping the city in stony fists. There was no moon, and the gleam of the house lights cast a soft glow into the haze that hung over the city. He stood at the entrance to the canyon, leaning against his staff. From a great height off to his right, there was a blaze of firelight on the mountaintop. As he stood in the darkness at the edge of the city, he could hear the murmur of thousands of voices raised in song. The citizens were singing in the High Place.
The streets were empty and the houses shuttered and locked. Ahmet wandered for another hour before, on the far side of the city, past the dark and empty amphitheater, he found a caravansary. Beyond the squat stone buildings, a dark cleft opened in the mountains and a stream flowed out, gurgling and chuckling to itself in the darkness. Ahmet rapped on the door with the head of his staff. Eventually a small slot opened and a tired-looking man with mussed dark hair and a pale, angular face stared out.
"Good evening," Ahmet said. "Do you have room for one more traveler tonight?"
The innkeeper looked him up and down, then peered out of the slot up and down the street. It was empty and a lone man, dressed in the garb of an Egyptian priest, stood before him. The man shut the covering over the view-slot and slid back the bolts on the door. Ahmet bowed and stepped inside. The innkeeper rubbed sleep from his eyes and led the Egyptian into the common room on the right side of the atrium.
"Rooms we have," he said, over his shoulder, "a solidus a night. There's cold stew on the fire and water in the bucket. Wine is a copper a mug, if you want it."
"Thank you, no," Ahmet said. "I do not drink wine."
The innkeeper grunted and pointed up a flight of stairs on the far side of the common room. "The third door on the right, past the landing. You have it to yourself for tonight."
Ahmet nodded his thanks and shrugged off his shoulder bag and parcels onto a table near the fireplace. He counted out a solidus in copper from his wallet an
d gave it to the innkeeper. Then he drew out the scabbarded knife that he had taken from the bandit and gave it to the innkeeper.
"A bandit attacked me in the canyon outside of town. Only one. This was his. Perhaps the civil authorities should check into it."
The innkeeper raised an eyebrow and examined the blade, turning it over in his hands. "He dead?"
Ahmet nodded and took his bowl and a spoon made of carved horn out of his satchel. He went to the fire and began scooping cold lamb stew out of the iron pot.
The innkeeper put the blade back among the priest's things. "I'll tell the prefect in the morning. If the fellow is dead, there's little use of rousing anyone tonight."
The innkeeper went back to bed, turning down the wick on the one lamp near the entry door. Ahmet sat and ate his stew in quiet solitude. The water was tepid and smelled of smoke, but he drank deep from the bucket as well. After he was done, he said a short prayer to the hearth gods for finding safe haven for the night.
"Are you a priest?" A sleepy voice came out of the dimness on the other side of the bulk of the fireplace. Ahmet turned slightly. A man had sat up from lying on the bench behind the other table.
"Yes, of the order of Hermes Trismegistus. I am Ahmet, of the School of Pthames."
Even in the dim light of the single lantern and the embers of the fire, Ahmet could see the flash of strong white teeth nestled in a dark beard. The middle-aged stranger swung off the bench and came to sit opposite the priest on the other bench. He was dark-skinned, whether by the sun or birth could not be told. He had a strong nose and a noble chin and forehead. A neatly trimmed beard and mustaches graced his face. Long dark hair was tied back behind his head. He was dressed in the tan-and-white linen robes of the desert tribes south of the Nabatean frontier.
"I am Mohammed of the Bani Hashim Quraysh. I am a merchant on my way to Damascus."
Ahmet smiled back. He did not need his othersight to see that the merchant was a bundle of barely repressed energy. His handshake was firm and direct. "Well met, Mohammed of the Quraysh. I am also on my way to Damascus."
Again the smile in the darkness. "To many men, I would say that traveling alone on these desert roads is a chancy business. But I heard you speak with the innkeeper and you seem a man capable of taking care of himself. I wonder..."
"What?" Ahmet said, his voice filled with amusement. It seemed clear to him that the Southerner had been watching and waiting in the darkness, making up his mind about what he was going to say. Despite the Arab's direct, even rude, approach, he found himself liking the irrepressible fellow.
"I wonder if a priest that is quick with his hands, and wit, would consider traveling with a merchant on his way to Damascus. By the look of your cloak and sandals, you have no camel or horse. You're walking and it's a very long road to Damascus from here."
Ahmet nodded, impressed at the keen eye of the merchant. "I just came from Aelana. It has been slow going."
Mohammed nodded, quite pleased with himself. He reached into his robes and pulled out a finely tooled leather pouch. Tiny ivory clasps held it closed. He unsnapped the top and shook out several silver coins into his palm. "Ten solidii—if you will accompany me and my men to Damascus and help protect the caravan. Before you ask, I will tell you—a priest is good luck and these are dangerous times, particularly on this road."
Ahmet eyed the coins on the tabletop as if they were asps. The vows of his Order urged poverty and a simple, even rustic, life upon the priests.
You've already broken those vows once, said a little voice in his head, coming here, looking for the boy.
He reached out and turned one of the Roman coins over. It was newly minted. On the face, the stern visage of the Emperor Heraclius, on the obverse, the sigil of the mint of Palmyra and a smaller inset of a woman in a crown. He picked up four of the coins and pushed the others back.
"I will accompany you as far as Gerasa—I am looking for a missing friend, and I do not know if they have gone as far as Damascus."
"Good enough for me," the merchant said. The Southerner pushed his chair back and gathered up the other coins. "You're tired, I think, so sleep in. We won't leave until late afternoon tomorrow at the earliest. I have a cargo of myrrh to load and pottery to sell. Ask the innkeeper where I am, he'll know."
Ahmet nodded his thanks and put the heavy coins in his wallet. The merchant gathered up some things from the other table, one of them a heavy papyrus scroll. Ahmet raised an eyebrow at the sight.
"What are you reading?" he asked as the merchant finished gathering his things.
Mohammed looked down and laughed softly. "A gift from a friend. You will find that I am a questioning man—always wondering about this thing or another. I was pestering him with questions about the way of things in the world and he gave me this. To my thinking, he hopes that I will read it and bother him no more. He calls it the torah. It is a holy book of his people."
"He is a priest, then," Ahmet said.
Mohammed nodded. "He calls himself a teacher, but I think that you are right." He looked down at the scroll case. "It was a princely gift. I will have to find something as good, or better, to give back to him when I return to the south."
Ahmet rose as well, his supper done.
"Good night, Mohammed," he said. "Perhaps on the road to Gerasa, we can discuss the way of things."
The merchant nodded, smiling, and went up to his room.
—|—
Morning came and with it a great racket in the street. Ahmet dragged himself from the soft bed with great reluctance. After four days of sleeping on stones in the wilderness, the comforts of the caravansary were welcome indeed. He rubbed at the stubble on his chin and pushed the shutter on the deep window embrasure open. In the street below, hundreds of men and horses were milling about.
Soldiers, he thought. A cavalry regiment.
They were dressed in desert garb and light armor, with lances and bows. Eventually order was imposed on the unruly lot and they trotted away up the narrow canyon that the stream came out of.
When he had reached Alexandria on the trail of the boy, Dwyrin, Ahmet had found the Greek city in an equal uproar. The canals and harbor were clogged with barges, dhows, and great triremes. The Roman Legion that was stationed in Egypt was being withdrawn to fight against the Persians, and tens of thousands of men were on the move. It had taken almost three days to find and see the quartermaster in charge of the levy of new troops. Then Ahmet, to his dismay, had learned that the boy had not reported in at all.
Much of his small store of coin was expended in getting the chief scribe at the prefect's offices in the New Palace to find out where Dwyrin's unit was heading; the Third Ars Magica, a component of the Third Cyrenaicea Legion, was being loaded aboard ship to sail to Sidon on the coast of Phoenicia. If the boy was not on the rolls in Alexandria, perhaps he had met with his unit already and was well away from the city. Non-Imperial shipping to the embattled coast of Syria was nonexistent, and he could not well take passage on a troop transport. He had made his way back to the inn on the southern canal. Several sailors had been in the common room, and discussions with them had led Ahmet to take a ship back down the Nile to Heliopolis and then go by camel to the burgeoning port of Clysma on the Sinus Arabicus. Everywhere he had traveled in the lower delta, the Roman army and its auxillia was on the move.
So too here, in Petra. After shaving and performing his morning rituals, Ahmet went downstairs and found that the cavalrymen had eaten all of the breakfast save a few day-old rolls and a little porridge. He sat in the corner, where the Arab merchant had sat the night before, and ate the spare meal. After he was done, the innkeeper stopped by his table.
"Master Mohammed left a message for you. He is busy all day but will return in the evening and hopes to depart at first light tomorrow."
"Thank you," Ahmet said. "If it is not impolite to ask, where are the soldiers going?"
The innkeeper grimaced. His son was among the regiment that had finally march
ed away after leaving the common room and the grounds littered with debris. The worry the departure caused was doing him and his nervous stomach no good at all. "There is fighting in the north, in Syria Coele. The Persians are going to try to take Damascus. So all of the 'allies' of the Eastern Empire are sending men to fight at Damascus and stop them."
Ahmet cocked his head to one side; the townsman seemed displeased by this. "Stopping the Eastern devils would protect all of Arabia and Petra, would it not?"
The innkeeper snorted derisively. "You mean keep it safe for Roman taxation and Roman law! There is a Roman peace, true, but it is a cruel peace if you ask me. We are an 'ally' of the Empire, yet their tax collectors pinch us as fiercely as any Imperial province. Their gods are placed over ours, their language at the expense of our own. The young people—they think of themselves as Romans, not Nabateans."
Ahmet nodded politely. It would be the same if Persia conquered the Arabian provinces, save that with the Persians rode darkness. He shuddered in the cool, dim room. The priests of Hermes Trismegistus hewed to a moral code—one fiercely enforced by the masters of each school—and were very careful in their exercise of the powers of the unseen world. But the stories out of the East, from the Persian capital at Ctesiphon and beyond, did not relate any such restraint. The mobehedan of the Sassanid Empire consorted with demons and devils; they indulged in the necromantic defilement of the dead, they sought power at the expense of their own souls. Even in the placid sun of upper Egypt, the masters of the order would often wake, trembling, at the dark of the moon as the distant echoes of horrific practices in the East troubled the ether.
No matter; he would find the boy and return to the school. Though Ahmet thought that he understood his own purposes well, in truth his mind was a whirl of conflicting desires and intents. He really did not know why he had fled the school, simply that it was no longer the place for him.
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