Stars had begun to show in the darkening sky over the peaks of the mountains to the west of the city when Mohammed at last returned. He labored up the slope to the olive grove with a heavily laden horse in tow behind him and two bags thrown over his own shoulders.
"Ho, priest!" Mohammed said, wheezing with effort. "Take a poor working man's burden." He swung one of the bags off his shoulder and Ahmet caught it, grunting with effort. It was very heavy. Some of Mohammed's cousins ran up to take the other and the reins of the horse. The merchant straightened up and stretched his back.
"Ah, better, better! It's Shaitan's own pit of torments in there, I'll tell you. The place is a madhouse." Mohammed looked around, counting noses. Satisfied that everyone was present, he shooed his men away and crooked a finger at Ahmet. They walked together, away from the camp, up the slope to the top of the hill. A tumble of stones crowned the summit. Mohammed sat down on a flat rock and began unlacing his sandals. Ahmet sat nearby, his shape muted in the dim light.
"I looked for your friend," the southerner said, kneading his sore foot between powerful fingers. "But there are no Roman legionnaires in the city. There's every other kind of fighting man in the eastern half of the Empire down there, but no Romans. There are Arabs, Syrians, Palmyrenes—a whole host of Palmyrenes—Nabateans, Palestinians, Goths, Turks, Ethiops—but no Roman Imperial troops." Mohammed paused, looking off into the night, toward the bridge over the Baradas.
"If I knew no better, I'd say the city was a mutiny against the Empire waiting to happen, but every man's voice is raised against Chrosoes of Persia. I spoke with everyone I knew from the times I've been here before, and not one of them said that there were any Roman troops in the city. The governor maintains a civil guard, but—and this from my friend Barsames the glassworker—the two cohorts of the Second Triana that had been stationed in the city were withdrawn to Tyre on the coast almost a month ago."
Ahmet shook his head in puzzlement. "I don't understand," he said. "The quartermaster in Alexandria was quite specific that the Third had been sent to Damascus, along with another Legion."
Mohammed shrugged. "No matter, my friend, this man you seek is not here now. These Legions may arrive soon—that is a common rumor in the markets—but until then..."
Ahmet stood, his face filled with confusion. He paced around the cairn of rocks.
"I shall go to the coast then," he said at last. "To Tyre, or wherever the Legions are."
Mohammed turned a little to keep his friend in view. "This fellow, you are certain you must find him? Do you owe him so much?"
"Yes," Ahmet said in a sad voice, "I owe him a great deal. I doubt, no, I am sure that he does not know that I am seeking to find him. But I cannot countenance what was done to him, not and remain an honorable man." Mohammed spread his hands questioningly. Ahmet sighed and sat down, his head in his hands. "Weeks ago now I was a priest-teacher at a school in Upper Egypt. A school devoted to teaching the works and philosophies of Hermes Trismegistus and the other ancient savants. This school is moderately well known, and many rich families send their sons to learn the techniques and practices of the art of sight and power. I was the youngest master of the school, a teacher.
"Then one day a message came from the father temple in Alexandria that we had to answer an Imperial levy—a sorcerer of the third order must be sent to the muster of the Legions. The master of the school chose to send Dwyrin MacDonald, one of my students, to fulfill this obligation. I protested this decision, but Dwyrin was sent anyway."
Mohammed raised an eyebrow; he had guessed bits and pieces of his quiet Egyptian friend's background from the way that he spoke and how he thought, but he had never realized that he had been traveling in the company of a man who commanded the hidden powers. Inwardly he chuckled; he could not have chosen a better companion for the road!
"Did this Dwyrin not want to go? What did he think of it?"
Ahmet snorted in disgust. "I am sure that Dwyrin was elated to be so chosen—but, my friend, Dwyrin is, or was, a sorcerer of the third order in only the most flimsy legal sense. He is not even the best of my students! A boy of sixteen—with talent, yes—but nothing of the discipline of a master. Ah, I should have gone in his stead to begin with."
"You have masters of the art that are sixteen?" Mohammed's voice was confused.
"No!" Ahmet exclaimed in horror. "When the master of the school received the notice of the levy, he bade me take the boy to the hidden temple and initiate him into the mysteries of the third order—but he has not the training for it, not the discipline, not the patience! He has been opened to a world he cannot properly see, or control. He is still a child—a troublesome child—one the master of the school felt it best to be rid of, lest he cause more problems, but that is no excuse to offer him up as a sacrifice to the gods of war. He may already be dead."
Ahmet stared off, into the night, with blank eyes.
Mohammed clapped him gently on his shoulder. "So, you abandoned your position at the school to find him, then? What will you do if you do find him?"
"Take his place, I suppose." Ahmet's voice was low and filled with fatigue. "Join him and teach him what I can if they will not release him from his duty to the state. He was, he is, my student. I am responsible for him, for all his cheerful tricks and irreverence. He had promise, my friend, promise to be a fine young man with a good talent. He could have done many worthy things. I am sick to think of him dead in a field, entrails pecked by crows, because the master of the school found it convenient to dispose of a possible political problem without getting his hands dirty."
Mohammed laughed silently in the darkness. Was that not the way of the world?
"There is no more difficult path than that of an honorable man," he said in a portentous voice. "Ahmet, tomorrow we will take the caravan into the city and turn the glasswares and pottery over to the warehouse my wife's cousin's brother owns. Then my business will be done for this venture. I think that we should then make inquiries at the citadel to see if the Roman authorities there know the whereabouts of the Third Cyrene. Then you and I, if you will have my companionship on the road, will go and find your student and see about getting your honor back."
Ahmet glanced up. "A fine offer made to a man that you've barely known three weeks. Why would you do such a thing?"
Mohammed sighed, clasping his hands together in front of him. "You are driven by honor and your duty as a teacher. I am not driven by anything. I have a fine wife and a rich family in my home city. I could while my days away, and I have, in reading and philosophy. I have spent my time in the saddle too, raiding the oases and villages of the enemies of my tribe. I could play the merchant on the road, journeying to distant lands and cities, and this too I have done. My heart is hungry, and I have not found the thing to fill it. I am restless, my friend, and I want to understand all of this." He waved a hand to encompass the sky, the grove, the ground beneath their feet.
"I miss the comfort of my wife and our household, but something is still missing. So, I will come with you and see something, at least, that I have not seen before. Perhaps I will find what I am looking for! One never knows where he'll end up, setting out on an unknown road. Truth might lie around the next bend, or over the next hill."
—|—
In peaceful days, the markets of Damascus were filled with a raucous throng of thousands coming and going along the narrow, covered ways. Now, with tens of thousands of troops camped around, or in the city, it was worse. It took Ahmet three hours of pushing through congested streets filled with bands of armed men, rickety stalls, and the citizens of the city to reach the broad square surrounded by mighty temples and buildings of the state that marked the center of the ancient town. Once on the square, Ahmet was able to breathe again and walk at a normal pace. He headed for the imposingly porticoed front of the Temple of Zeus, which made itself unmistakable by towering over the entire square and every other building adjoining it.
He mounted the long tier of steps at the f
ront of the temple, passing by fountains set into the broad front that fed a series of shallow ornamental pools at the base of the building. The footsteps of many priests and penitents echoed off the high ceilings as he made his way into the dim recesses at the side of the central nave. There were a number of small offices there, and he walked along them after asking directions of a slave at the front of the temple. At the end, in a rather barren cell, he found the man he wanted to see.
"Master Monimus?" A slight man with only a trace of hair remaining on his head looked up from a low desk. Wooden scroll cases surrounded him like honeycombs, filled with burnished brass handles and well-worn wooden pegs. The priest's eyes were a merry blue, and his face, though deeply lined with age, seemed open and pleasant.
"I am Monimus," he said in a clear tenor voice. "Please sit. There is wine, if you are thirsty."
"Thank you, master. I am Ahmet of the School of Pthames in Egypt. I also serve Hermes Trismegistus."
Monimus bowed, still sitting, and poured two shallow cups of wine from an ancient red-black amphora. He passed one of the krater to Ahmet and sipped politely from the other. Ahmet sipped as well, then placed the ancient drinking bowl on the edge of the table. Monimus waited with the calm that all of the masters of the order seemed to assume as a matter of course. Ahmet cleared his throat, not sure how to begin, but he thought of how Mohammed would handle this and decided to plunge straight in.
"Master Monimus, I must beg your indulgence and ask two favors of you and your house here. I am on a long journey and I am afraid that I have not pleased the master of my school overmuch. He did not give me leave to undertake such an absence, and he may be most displeased with my hasty departure. Despite this, I feel that I should tell him where I am and where I am going, and why I left in such a precipitous manner."
Ahmet opened the heavy cloth bag that he had purchased in Gerasa and drew out a letter written on poor papyrus. He placed it on the desk between himself and the master. "If you could see that this letter reaches Master Nephet of the School of Pthames, near Panopolis in Upper Egypt, I would be grateful. My second favor is more pressing, though you may not know the answer. Has any news of the Imperial Legion called the Third Cyrenaicea reached you? I must find a man who is serving with it, but my last report held that it was coming here, and it has not done so."
Monimus sat quietly for a little while, his blue eyes considering Ahmet. The young Egyptian began to feel very nervous at the examination, but he remained still and did not fidget. After a time the Syrian priest sighed and picked up the letter from where it had lain on the desk.
"Of course I will see that this letter reaches your superior in Panopolis. I believe that I know this Nephet from my time at the sanctuary of the Order in Ephesus. He is a stern man, if memory serves, but he does care about his charges, and forgives. Of your second request, I can say nothing, for I know nothing of the matter. Every tongue in the city has the matter of the war against Persia upon it, but I have heard nothing that would indicate that the Imperials are coming here. Are you determined to find this man?"
Ahmet nodded.
The older priest picked at the edge of the letter, his face troubled. "You know of the levy upon the orders, of course?"
Ahmet nodded again, and something of the anger he felt must have shown through.
"Yes, an evil business," said Monimus, his voice quieting to a whisper. "Little good can come of it—yet it is a desperate necessity. You may not feel the tremors and echoes in far Egypt, but here, so close to the border, we feel the workings of the Persian mobehedan often—almost daily in the last months. The walls between our world and the others are strained and pinched. We tremble at the approach of each darkness of the moon, for then it is worse. They are desperate for victory. They are paying a terrible cost for strength to bring against Rome.
"If you go north or east, tread lightly. There are foul powers on the hunt in those lands."
Ahmet nodded again. He had been feeling a growing unease the farther north he had come with the caravan. The air seemed brittle and thin, the sun dimmer than usual. In his othersight, odd flickerings and half-heard voices filled the empty spaces of the desert. Lines of unexpected tension and force were gathering in the unseen world.
"Master, I will be careful in my travels." Ahmet bowed, his head almost touching the tiled floor.
Monimus made the sign of the god and watched the young man go. The sense of unease did not leave him. He turned back to the rolls of the Temple and the order for timbers to begin construction of a new lodging house behind the main building.
Mohammed was waiting in the shade of the great entrance hallway to the sanctuary of the Temple of Zeus, staring up at the giant marble figure of the god of storms. The Zeus reclined on poorly carved clouds, but his body was well cut, standing forth from the rock. One arm supported the god against the clouds and held a cluster of bronze thunderbolts, the other raised a torch of stone. Oil-fire gleamed on that sconce, casting flickering light on the ceiling of the temple. Under the wavering light, the skin tones and painted hair of the statue seemed close to life. Ahmet coughed politely.
Mohammed shook his head and looked around at his friend. Though his face was properly solemn for such a place, Ahmet could see that a huge grin was threatening to break out under the brushy black mustaches.
"Come," the merchant whispered in a voice quiet as a shout, "I've done well this morning!"
Outside, Mohammed fairly bounced down the steps. Ahmet lengthened his stride to keep up. The merchant bustled across the square, stopping only to purchase a wooden skewer with roasted meat on it. Chewing, he began talking to Ahmet.
"There will be a council of the chieftains and Princes tonight, my friend, in the Roman citadel. All of the lords who were summoned have arrived as of last night, and the governor has called this meeting to lay out the plans of campaign. There is no better way to find out where the Third is stationed, and where it is going to be stationed, than at this meeting. Everyone will be there, even the Princes of Nabatea and Palmyra."
"And how," Ahmet asked with asperity, "are we going to get into this conclave of the great?"
"Ah, my friend, that is the beauty of the thing. You are traveling with me, so these things are possible! As luck would have it, one of the bands of lancers that have been hired by the Palmyrenes are cousins of my wife's brother's wife's uncle. I convinced their war captain—an old rascal named Amr ibn'Adi of the Tanukh—that we should ride with them, and just by the by, attend the conference tonight as his aides."
"Oh," Ahmet said. "Do you usually get your friends into this much trouble?"
Mohammed laughed aloud at that. "Nay! All of my friends take great joy in my company—all of them say that I am the most interesting of men to be around! Besides, Amr ibn'Adi does not speak Latin or Greek—so you and I will have to translate for him."
—|—
Night in the streets of the city was almost as bright as day. Thousands of lanterns hung from the entrances of the market stalls and over the doorways of the houses. Torches ornamented the walls that enclosed private gardens. Parties of men, led by link-boys with burning wicks, moved through the streets, slowly converging upon the gates of the Roman camp that lay near the northernmost of the city's eight gates. The light glowed off low clouds that had gathered over the city in the late afternoon, bringing a cool rain to wash the streets.
Ahmet and Mohammed were among those who approached the gates, in the party of the desert chieftain Amr ibn'Adi. The sheykh was a villainous rogue with long curling mustaches and a salt-and-pepper beard who affected a ragged cloak and hood over his rich garments. His three bodyguards—the most allowed by the governor—held no such flimsy disguise. They were stout men with broad shoulders, plain weatherworn cloaks, and well-used armor and weapons. Mohammed, in turn, was dressed in a subdued red shirt, dark pants, and long cloak of white-and-green stripes. Ahmet, who did not account himself one for fashion, thought that his friend looked rather dashing in the outfit
—obviously his best, carried in a small trunk for just such an occasion. Ahmet owned no pretense such as this; he had cleaned his simple white tunic and robe before entering the city. He had his staff and the leather book bag that he habitually wore at his waist. He had tied back his long raven-black hair with two braids and a silver clasp.
The residence of the Roman governor was no more than a fortified Legion camp carved out of the buildings of the northwest corner of the city. Stout wooden and iron gates barred the way into the camp, watched by a band of slightly overweight men in ill-fitting armor. Ibn'Adi's party was halted by their commander, an elderly man with close-cropped white hair and a scarred face. The retired legionnaire searched them, even Ahmet's bag and staff, before waving them through into the camp.
Ahmet looked around curiously at the fired brick buildings, arranged in neat rows, with paved streets between them. Though there was every sign of the regular presence of a strong garrison in the city, it was obvious that all of these residences had been carefully closed up, their owners departed. Mohammed was looking around too, with a slightly puzzled look on his face. The broad street that led down the middle of the camp was busy, though, with parties of chieftains and their retainers in a broad array of desert robes, silks, linens, and partially hidden armor.
"Why have all these chiefs come to fight for Rome?" the Egyptian asked as he and Mohammed trailed along after ibn'Adi's ruffians. "Most seem to be bandits or vagabonds. I thought that the men of the frontier were at odds with the Empire."
Mohammed nodded, his face creasing in a sharp smile. "Few here love Rome, if any do, my friend. But near every man here knows that Persia is not better and perhaps worse. Under Roman rule, or Roman 'protection,' there is law of a sort. Under this King of Kings, this Chrosoes, there is no law. These chiefs are here to protect the rights and usages that they own today. With Rome, the way that things are done has not changed in hundreds of years. If Persia conquers these lands, everything will be different."
The Shadow of Ararat Page 36
