Shards of Empire

by Susan Shwartz

  An answer struck Leo like a blow to the back of the head: whatever power lay beneath the surface of the earth had to be female. Why else would Meletios cast out the old nuns? Why else would the valley teem with female idols? Why else would the faces of the women painted on the stone be scratched out?

  Why else would it have drawn Asherah, and drawn him to her?

  The power had to be female. And he had sworn to protect the way within to it.

  Leo groaned. Instantly, his men, half of them only boys, clustered about him.

  “Hold off, you men,” Ioannes commanded. “Let my lord breathe.”

  Gently, Theodoulos ran his fingers over the back of Leo's skull. “Not broken,” he murmured. “The Turk knew what he was doing.”

  Ioannes blessed himself. “I hope so.”

  Leo grimaced. That hurt too.

  Theodoulos held a water-bottle to his lips. It smelled of goat, but the water could have come out of an Emperor's goblet, so welcome was it. He gulped avidly, then forced himself to stop.

  “How much do we have left?” he asked.

  Theodoulos shrugged and put away the bottle. Might as well let him guard it. “You needed it, sir. We'll find more.”

  “Keep it down,” Leo cautioned. “They may still be up there. And there might be some way they can hear what's going on.”

  Ioannes shook his head. “I made them move further down.” He gestured into the darkness of the unlit tunnel that stretched behind them and before like the belly of some great serpent. “I was afraid of the noise. So I stayed behind to find out. You can hear from below. You can see, too.”

  Kemal? No matter how cunningly he had struck, Leo thought he would have heard Kemal scream if the Turks tortured him.

  Ioannes grinned, his teeth bright in his dusty face. “I heard scratching and banging on the church's walls. Kemal let them see him, and they all laughed. Then they all rode off.”

  So Kemal had been spared! That gave Leo a little more hope.

  Bracing himself against Theodoulos, Leo struggled to sit up. The cave whirled about him, then steadied. So did his stomach. Good.

  He glanced at the torch. Now, he could bear its light. His head wasn't broken. He remembered how it felt from last time.

  As he made it to his feet, supported by both youths, he could hear his men gasp in relief. One or two muttered prayers that echoed in the passageway. It was dusty here: warm, not dank.

  And it had to lead to somewhere.

  “Let's go,” he ordered.

  Ioannes moved to Leo's side, holding aloft the torch. Their feet scuffed up ancient dust as they walked. Not knowing where they went, his soldiers marched. Each bore fresh torches. Almost none of them had water. The passageway widened into a tunnel and ran from there into what seemed like forever.

  Hours ago, they drank the last of their water. Now they had to fight not to think of the thirst that teased at their awareness and that would soon fight to rule them. They trudged down the endless dry passage, without even a gurgle of water in the stone beside them to torment them with the hope of drink. They would bless Malagobia now, with its deep wells, but where did it lie, and how could they find it?

  Leo had one hope: that this underground path, cutting below rocks and hills that a surface road would have to circle, shorten the distances between town and town.

  That hope had better prove true. Thirst, unlike bleeding, was a very painful death.

  Speak to the rock; strike the rock; and find water in a desert? Meletios had been the holy man, and Meletios would have died in terror had Leo not released him.

  The tunnel sloped downward, running at that lower level in what felt like a straight track for a long time. Here were no wall-paintings, only the unevenness of rock hewn by hand and hardened by fire. From time to time, the earth trembled.

  Hours ago, they had given up looking at the cave's ceiling as if their eyes could harden the stone and bear it up, should the incalculable weight of rock above take a fancy to crash down upon them.

  Kemal had had the right of it after all. What was written was written. And Theodoulos too was right when he prayed for peace in the valley of the shadow of death.

  Abruptly, a gust of wind blew across their faces. The guttering torch that Ioannes had been nursing, since who knew how long their supply would have to last, flared up, then out, in a gout of stinking smoke. That left them in the dark. Ioannes cursed once, fumbling for flint and steel and one of their supply of torches. Someone else laughed a little hollowly into the darkness.

  A small farmer named Petros dropped his spear, fell to his knees, and cowered, covering his face. Theodoulos limped back and laid his arm over the older man's shoulders, easing him back up onto his feet. The boy was doing surprisingly well down here. Leo would almost have thought it were his native earth. Meletios had probably had him crawling through these tunnels from the time he was old enough to walk ... no ... limp ... no, forget that. His limp was less of a weakness than the other man's fear.

  The others stopped, blinking somewhat. One or two leaned against the rock wall, pressing their brows to the damp stone as if that might assuage their growing thirst.

  They had reached not just a bend in the tunnel, but an actual fork in the road. And it surprised them that this underworld could hold any direction but straight ahead.

  Now, which way should they go? One path, the one on which they had been marching for what felt like forever, led downward, the other along the way they had come. In the instant before the light blew out, Leo had even fancied he saw it turn slightly upward.

  Downward: Leo remembered the old stories, that linking the underground cities was a maze of tunnels, all of which, ultimately, met in a central treasury. Desire flared in him to know the truth, to explore, to see.

  The upward path was the obvious choice. If he were building this maze, he would construct it with blinds and false turns, to trap the overconfident and the merely unlucky.

  But above them, under the sun, the Turks invaded with fire and sword, and time was wasting. Time was wasting down here, too. One could not drink gold or jewels, or eat them. If too much time passed as they wandered in the entrails of the earth, they would lie here until they died. Leo shut his eyes.

  It was not prayer that he called upon, but instinct. The land had spoken to him before, the land and its hauntings. Now, he had taken over the guardianship of the ways from Meletios. In obedience, he had killed the good old man, whose blood had splashed upon the altar guarding the ways as well as upon Leo's hands. That all ought to count for something, he told himself. Shouldn't it?

  If he could only see! If only he could see the land above him as clearly as he could see the folds and chisel marks of the tunnel's roof!

  He heard Ioannes mutter satisfaction. The torch caught. Light again flickered in a protective circle around Leo and his troop.

  He tried to remember how the roads ran. As above; so below. But, outside the realm of philosophy, matters were never that simple. If only he had some map, or some way of retracing his steps! He wanted to be able to sit down and think it out, perhaps send out a scout or two. Someone coughed. Leo's tongue swelled in his mouth. They would only become hungrier and thirstier, until thirst crowded out hunger, crowded out sanity, crowded out life.

  Finally, because no choice was a choice only to die hard where they stood, Leo pointed toward the tunnel leading upward. “Perhaps it will bring us to the way out,” he croaked. His mouth felt as if he had licked the cave walls clean. His throat seemed to shut.

  They turned and climbed. After an hour or so longer, the way grew steeper. The stillness that had oppressed them since they began their march seemed to fade somewhat. Now, not only Leo's head hurt, but his ears.

  “We're still climbing,” Theodoulos whispered.

  “Tell me what I don't know,” his friend grumbled back.

  “The air's different,” Theodoulos said. “I can feel it.”

  The passage narrowed. Soon, they would walk only two abr
east, then, one at a time; and then, they would have to edge sideways.

  Ioannes put out a hand to steady himself as well as his friend. “I just found a torch-holder.”

  So this place had been known, prepared. Please God, it wasn't a blind.

  That reassurance came just in time. Now the footing grew even more difficult. The passageway became an uneven stair, with the steps cut at long intervals. They breathed in gasps and took turns boosting Theodoulos up each step. The boy's leg must ache like fire, but they had no time to rest and rub the aches out for him. A mist hung over their eyes, and the blood pounded in their temples from the effort.

  The air grew cool, then moist. A gust of wind, heavy with blessed dampness, swept over them. Quickly, Ioannes shielded his torch against his body.

  He set it down, propped against a rock wall, and turned to give a hand to the next man up.

  “We're through,” he muttered. “Theo, do you have any idea where we are?”

  Theodoulos, chest heaving, head down, paused for a moment before the others boosted him upward. He crouched on the ground, hands rubbing at his weak leg. “There ... should be some sort of peephole...” he gasped.

  Blind Meletios had been, but he had thought to teach his servant how to spy out the underground ways. What else had he taught him?

  When Leo pressed, Theodoulos recoiled. “That's all I can remember now.” He shuddered. “Sometimes, he made me walk in the dark. If I called him, he would not come. He said I had to learn how to find my way, just as he did.”

  Leo ran his hands over the rough walls. A fissure in the stone, yes. He leaned close and found himself peering upward into an enclosure little different from the tunnel in which they stood. An empty enclosure.

  “Hide the torch,” he ordered. They would not dare to clamber blind into the upper air. And when he emerged from the underground ways into the kind of cell he had been cutting for himself out of living stone before Asherah changed his world for him, it was with sword in hand.

  They had emerged into one of the rock pipes that played such weird music when the wind blew across the plain. The dark distant horizon alarmed Leo. Meletios’ blood and the flight beneath the earth must have worked some spell: Leo did not belong out here, he thought. He ought to retreat back to the ways below. He had been sealed to them, he belonged to them, not to this frightening horizon.

  No wonder Meletios hated to leave the valley and feared to leave the entrance to the paths of which he had been the guard. He had passed his tasks—and his fears—on to Leo.

  So, it was Leo's turn to defend his charge. And he must defend Asherah, who, even at this moment, could be found if he only knew how to search for her in the underground ways.

  Whatever he must do, he would need water and food if he were to live long enough to do it. And light to traverse the ways beneath the earth.

  Leo made himself step to the entrance and glanced out over the plain. It was full night here, as it was in the ways below. That much of a reassurance he had. He squinted. The sky was dark, the horizon even darker: dark of the moon, thank God for the people in the caves huddled anywhere near Nordbriht. In one or two places, he could see light. How strange to see light that was not torches: the lamps of a farmhouse accounted for one spots of light; the uncontrollable brightness further down what had to be a road was, most likely, a fire set by raiders. Even as he watched, the flames seemed to sink, a beast that had killed, crouching to feed.

  Where there were raiders, there was likely to be plunder. Something might even be left over from that farm's destruction. And there would be water.

  In silent accord, they set out across the surface of the world. Leo went last of all, almost frightened by the wide land. What coward am I? he demanded of himself and forced himself to his proper place at the front of the tiny group.

  The house they found was in ruins, the stable even worse. The horses, of course, were gone. But an outbuilding held supplies. Petros, wise in the ways of farmers, kicked through a charred wall.

  “Almost always works with tax-collectors,” he muttered with satisfaction. It had worked with the Turks too. In this hiding place, they found hardened bread that had gone unnoticed, even a skin of wine. They would be able to eat now, with enough to take away into the caves. What the Turks had not taken, Leo and his men did. Perhaps hearing the sounds of men, a goat wandered back. One of the farmers milked her, a taste of incredible luxury after so long beneath the earth. Best of all, outside, they found a well. Scraps of wood to make torches were, unfortunately, all too easy to find. Leo took careful note of the house and its location. God send that one day, Leo could repay these people for their involuntary kindness.

  Ioannes flung out an arm, indicating the trackless night and the vast horizon ahead of them. Even the snow capping Mount Argaeus seemed blackened. Leo glanced back at the rock chimney from which they had emerged. He wanted to return, to climb back down into the safe channels beneath the earth. Venturing out on that plain, he would feel like a bug upon a stone table: how pathetically easy to squash them, petty and visible as they were.

  He should not abandon his charge—and the paltry army he had made from farmers, nobles, veterans, and merchants was clearly his charge. Equally so were the cave passageways. What to do, what to do? Oh God, his head would split.

  Prudence rescued him. One man might cross the plains, or perhaps two—say a man and a boy, almost turned man. A troop, however, on foot or on horse, would draw the Turks’ attention—and they were not Kemal, to crave it as a ruse.

  There would be other exits from the passageways in this land. And it might be—temptation swept over Leo like a dark tide—that he would even find the road that led to Asherah's sanctuary.

  “I promised the old father I would guard these ways,” Leo began hesitantly. “Somehow I feel as if I'd be breaking my word if I left them right now. If we all go, we'll be too conspicuous once dawn comes up. Theodoulos proved it once—Turks sometimes don't bother with one or two men who look poor and helpless enough. It's a calculated risk, however...”

  You give your orders; you don't ask. He could hear his uncle Andronicus’ voice, imperious, if not Imperial. His uncle had enjoyed telling him that he was no sort of soldier. But he was soldier enough to worry about his men, not betray them. So he would ask, rather than command, in a place where he could not lead.

  Theodoulos’ mouth opened to volunteer. Leo shook his head. “You, I need. If your master ever gave you any hint how to navigate that maze, I want to hear it. You sit and try to remember.”

  “I can't.” Theodoulos’ voice cracked. “I'm not fit. The sisters found me when I was a baby. Even then, I was crippled—maybe that's why my ... my parents threw me out. Father Meletios was a priest before he lost his eyes, but me? You could dream of it, but I, brought up in the valley, couldn't even try to be a priest. I'm not whole. And now, you want to depend on me ... I just can't.”

  Ioannes knelt beside Theodoulos, who sat and shook. Make it right, his gaze demanded.

  Leo knelt too and took the lame boy's shoulders between his hands. Theodoulos flinched, as if expecting to be shaken.

  “The stone that the builders rejected,” Leo quoted. “Remember that. You must be our cornerstone now. I will not let you fail.”

  The boy sagged against Leo's shoulder. He tried to make his grip sustaining, tried to make himself look strong. He was making it up as he went along, and he only hoped it was good enough.

  Theodoulos pushed free and sat up. Good enough for the moment, then. Leo could run to the next problem. His eyes met those of Ioannes. So young the boy was. Had Leo been that young, even before Manzikert? He didn't think so. It must have been exposure to the City. Ioannes was older in years than Leo's friend Alexius; but it was easier to think of Alexius as a man and an equal than Ioannes, whose courage and endurance Leo had tested.

  I hate to ask, he thought.

  But Ioannes offered.

  One of the men from his land spoke up too. Ioannes jerked his
head around. Petros’ offer violated generations of farmers’ instincts to keep their heads down and let wars and the demands of soldiers sweep by them whenever they could.

  Leo nodded.

  “Take Petros with you.”

  “He does know the land better than I,” Ioannes admitted, the desire for help, companionship warring with his evident desire to protect one of his own. Let the boy see that taking Petros with him would save the man another journey underground. Every step that Petros took beneath the earth was a soul-deep battle: if Leo could spare him that, even open battle might be a better fate for a man as frightened as Petros of the ways below.

  “I'll try to rejoin the troop,” Ioannes spoke up. “I'll tell them that you are circling about and will join up as soon as you can. And I'll warn them of the double game Kemal is playing. God forbid he pay with his life for saving ours.”

  Leo clapped him on the shoulder before he and his man went out into the dark. Good lad. What an officer he would have made. There was no time or strength to waste precious moments blaming himself for not going with them. The dark was calling him back. It might even be that he could travel faster and more quietly under the earth.

  Leo insisted Ioannes and Petros take the best of the supplies, repeated his instructions, and clapped both of them on the shoulder. Then he and the men who would accompany him back into the dark saluted Ioannes and Petros. For a long moment, they watched the two trudge down from the rock onto the plain until rocks and darkness hid them.

  Then they turned back toward the steep passageway to the road below. The path was straight and steep. One turn, then another to make certain that any glimmer of light did not pierce the spy-hole Leo had used; and they lit torches and proceeded through the darkness, silent except for their own footsteps.

  How long had they wandered beneath the earth? Leo wondered.

  It was not that the travel was so arduous. Any one of them, even Theo, had climbed steeper slopes, had wriggled through narrower passages (including the passage through which each one of them had struggled to be born), had borne heavier loads.