The Legions of Fire (17 page)

“The man was Nemastes the Hyperborean,” Pandareus amplified in a dry voice. “He claims to be a wizard, and unfortunately I fear that he's telling the truth.”

He leaned forward slightly to catch Varus's eye. “Lord Varus, now you.”

Varus said nothing for a moment. Corylus squeezed his friend's right knee. Varus started and his eyes opened wide. He gave Corylus a shy smile, then said to the commissioner, “Sir, I remember starting to read but nothing more. I thought I saw men on an island, but I must have been dreaming.”

He cleared his throat and looked down, then added, “Pandareus tells me
I tore my manuscript up, but I don't remember that. I'm not sorry, though. I'm not a poet.”

“Lord Varus, you had something in your hands after the reading,” Pandareus said. “I don't believe it was a piece of your manuscript that I saw when your sister awakened you.”

Corylus saw his friend's eyes open wide. His hands twitched together—only slightly, but toward the lump in the middle of his chest. It was barely visible beneath his toga.

“Sir, I don't remember anything,” Varus said. The words might have been true, but they didn't respond to the question. “Please, won't you tell Lord Priscus what really happened, since Corylus and I can't.”

Did Pandareus notice? Regardless, he nodded and said in his usual calm, precise fashion, “The room became dark. The walls vanished, but before that the designs painted on them seemed to come alive.”

He quirked a smile at his friend. “The tiny figure of Apollo on the panel behind Lord Varus began to play his lyre, I think in the Myxolydian mode. I regret that I wasn't close enough to be sure, because I know music is a particular interest of yours.”

“Perhaps we can repeat the experience with the two of us closer to the wall,” Priscus said. He joked in an easy tone, but his expression was firm. “How long did the business last?”

“There was more,” said Pandareus with a slight smile. “The floor appeared to become a pit. Figures crawled up the sides toward us.”

“Figures?” Priscus repeated. “Not humans, then.”

The teacher shrugged. “I would be very surprised if they were human,” he said, “but they weren't clear enough for me to be sure. Spirits, let us say. Demons, to use the Greek word.”

“Indeed,” Priscus said softly. “And is there more?”

“My sister slapped me,” Varus said, surprising Corylus and apparently the other men as well. “I didn't know that, but I felt it—”

He managed another shy smile and touched his left cheek with his index finger. Corylus had noticed when they met tonight that there was still a little swelling.

“—when I woke up. The room was just like it was before I started reading. So that must have been the end.
I
was the cause.”

“I don't imagine that Lord Varus was the cause,” Pandareus said before anyone else—including Varus—could speak further. “That he was the
primary target of magic is likely enough. But the important point is that the omen was real and threatening. The sort of threat that requires that the
Sibylline Books
be consulted.”

Corylus let out his breath in a gasp; he hadn't known that he was holding it. Varus closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with both hands, then looked around at his companions again.

“This occurred in Saxa's dwelling,” Priscus said. His face gave no hint of what he might be thinking. “Will he support a request to the full Senate? Because you already know, my friend, that I won't violate my oath.” His smile was wry. “Even if Balaton would permit me to.”

The servant stood against the east wall, motionless as a caryatid. His eyes were fixed on the light sconce across from him, and he didn't appear to have heard what was being said.

Men like Balaton—men like Pulto—trusted very few leaders, but they would follow those few into death or worse. Corylus was quite sure that Balaton trusted Priscus … as he should, because Priscus would always do his duty.

“I'm quite sure that Saxa will
not
support such a request,” Pandareus said. “I fear that he has stepped into dangerous territory, under the sway of Nemastes the Hyperborean.”

Priscus looked at Varus. Varus hung his head and muttered, “Yes sir, I'm afraid that's true. All of it.”

“A Hyperborean,” Priscus said in a musing tone. “A foreigner.”

“Yes, my friend,” Pandareus said; he wasn't agreeing. “A foreigner like myself.”

Priscus snorted. “Not like you,” he said. “But I won't even ask the Senate if Saxa would oppose the request. I trust you, but my colleagues would not.” He shrugged. “More fools them,” he added. “But that's not a new thought.”

Priscus had been leaning forward slightly on the couch. He didn't stand, but his back straightened and he was suddenly a very different man. He looked at each of his three visitors in turn, then said, “Master Pandareus, my true friend: though the world should end, I will not violate my oath. I cannot unlock the chest until I am ordered to do so by the Senate.”

“I understand,” the teacher said, lifting his chin in agreement. “May I ask a favor, though? It's on behalf of the Republic of which I am a resident if not a citizen. May we enter the vault, all of us together? I don't intend
that the chest be opened, but there are things which I believe we may learn in its presence.”

Priscus remained still for a moment. Then he grinned and said, “I don't see why I shouldn't help three scholars with a matter of antiquarian research. Balaton, fetch the—”

But two servants were already bringing a ladder out of the alcove where the stools were kept; two others were walking toward the cartouche which covered the vault. Balaton's grin was even broader than his master's.

A
LPHENA SCOWLED
. Because she'd chosen the forward-facing seat, the lamps on the front corners of the litter lighted her face but left her stepmother in darkness. All she could see of Hedia was a slimly aristocratic shadow.

And Alphena had
picked
this seat. She'd done it to herself, as she always seemed to do. No wonder Corylus ignored her!

Agrippinus had claimed the bearers were a matched team of Cappadocians who had been working together for over a year. The majordomo had doubtless made a comfortable commission on the deal, but as with other business entrusted to him, it had been handled very well. Despite the size and bulk of this litter, Alphena found the ride the smoothest of any chair she'd ridden on.

“Alphena,” said Hedia, her teeth brief gleams in the shadow, “I'm worried that before long someone will inform the Emperor about Saxa's activities.”

“Father's done nothing wrong!” Alphena said, shocked out of sad musings about cosmetics. She didn't know anything about making up her face, and she could scarcely ask Hedia. “My father would never plot against the Emperor!”

“Of course not,” Hedia agreed, speaking calmly instead of raising her voice in response to Alphena's shrillness. “But I'm far less sure about what his friend Nemastes is doing. Nemastes is certainly acting to his own benefit, and I would be greatly surprised if his plans would benefit anybody else. Do you agree?”

Alphena felt fear wash everything else out of her mind, the way the surf swept over the battlements children built in beach sand. “Father could never be tricked into anything disloyal,” she said. “He's a senator! No grubby foreigner is going to fool him!”

Even in her own ears, the words sounded dismal and silly. Saxa was a very learned man, but he had no common sense at all. And Nemastes might have bewitched him, stolen his soul with a poppet of wax or whatever Hyperboreans did!

“We're going to scotch Nemastes if we can, dear,” Hedia said. “You and I and our friends. But if we don't succeed, I hope that you'll be able to escape the wreck under the protection of a powerful husband.”

Alphena jerked upright. Her hair, in a bun to cushion the weight of a helmet, brushed the canopy. She opened her mouth to shout an objection … and closed it.

In a tiny voice, she said, “Hedia, I don't want to get married. But I'm afraid.”

“Yes, dear,” Hedia said. “We're both afraid, and so is Anna. I suppose the men are afraid also, though no doubt being men they'd bluster and deny it. But we have to look ahead and prepare.”

The litter bearers were singing a low-voiced chant that kept their pace even. Was it Cappadocian? But it might simply be nonsense syllables to fit a rhythm, not a language at all. It was hard to tell what was chance and what held real meaning in this world.

“I hope Father …,” Alphena said miserably, but she let her voice trail off instead of finishing the foolish sentence. Saxa wasn't going to come to his senses. He'd never shown good judgment in the past, and now that Nemastes had his claws in him there was even less chance. If Saxa was to be saved, the rest of them were going to have to do it.

The litter turned sharply; the bearers slowed to negotiate piles of building materials which spilled out from either side. Hedia leaned forward to see, giving Alphena a look at her profile in sharp silhouette.

Father didn't show good sense except perhaps when he married her,
Alphena thought. Though she would
never
say those words aloud.

The bearers stopped, then lowered the vehicle to the pavement. “The Temple of Tellus, noble ladies,” said the deputy steward in charge of the escort. “Your destination.”

Alphena started to get out. Servants congealed about her, three or four of them.

“Get away!” she shouted. “Haven't I told you I'd have you whipped if you tried to hand me out of a vehicle again?”

There was a brief bustle. Servants stumbled into one another or over
piles of construction supplies. Alphena got out and only then realized that the men she'd driven away weren't those who'd attended the litter: these had come from staff of the temple.

They were in front of the Temple of Tellus. It was a modest structure, but the grounds in which it stood were as extensive as those of more impressive, newer buildings. To make room for heavy wagons, the wall around the temple precinct had been knocked down to either side of the gate.

Alphena maneuvered away from a collection of stone cylinders, column barrels which would be fluted and set here at the site. They would replace the temple's four existing wooden columns. The originals couldn't possibly have survived three centuries, but until now the replacements had also been wooden. Those had been stuccoed to look like stone, but that had flaked off in the decades since they'd been placed; rot and wormholes now marked the bare wood remaining.

Farther back in the yard were heaps of bulk materials. On the other side of the vehicle were smaller piles of the tiny cut stones sorted by color; they would be laid into a floor mosaic. There were timbers, too, but in the shadows Alphena didn't know whether they were for scaffolding or were building materials.

“Good evening, noble ladies!” said a corpulent stranger who bowed to Hedia. Unlike the temple servants, he wore a toga. “The Temple of Tellus is honored to have you! I'm the chief priest, Gaius Julius Phidippides. I own the laundry three doors down on Sandalmakers' Street and the building next door to it besides.”

Servants from Saxa's household were shoving the outnumbered temple personnel back. Alphena stepped to the other side of Phidippides to protect him from the same treatment. She shouldn't have shouted at the temple servants; that was what was making her escort so violently zealous.

“The temple is open?” Hedia said coldly. “And move away! I assure you that I could see quite enough of you from two paces distance.”

The priest was a freedman. He must have been made a citizen by Augustus—formally Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus—because he wasn't old enough for his patron to have been Augustus's adoptive father, the conqueror of Gaul. Alphena had already learned that these were the sort of people who made a point of their importance to the Republic. Hedia, a born aristocrat, treated Phidippides' fawning pomposity with contempt.

The priest backed off hurriedly, stumbling into a pile of clay and barely recovering. It would be fired into roofing tiles here on the site; that avoided the heavy breakage certain if tiles were transported by wagon through the streets of Carce.

“Yes, of course, your ladyship!” he said with nervous brightness. “Come right this way, please, right this way.”

The household servants formed a double line to protect the women. Protect them from the temple personnel, as best Alphena could tell, but Phidippides' staff
had
been pushy at the start. They excluded the priest also, but he trotted on the other side of the deputy steward while continuing to chatter brightly toward Hedia.

Temple servants threw the double doors open. There were lighted lamps within, but attendants from both establishments brought in additional ones.

Alphena looked around. The Temple of Tellus was dingy. Of course the objects dedicated to it, particularly the pair of huge elephant teeth, had been removed to Saxa's house for safekeeping, but the floor was of bricks worn hollow, and the walls were coarse tuff which hadn't been sheathed with colored marble or polished limestone.

The ten-foot-tall wooden statue of Tellus had been repainted within the past few years, though not with any great skill. Her right forearm was lifted with the palm turned out; her left hung stiffly at her side. The whole figure—head, limbs, and torso—had probably been carved in one piece.

“I wonder, Lady Hedia?” said Phidippides in a wheedling voice that put Alphena's teeth on edge. “I discussed with your noble husband the Senator the idea of replacing this statue with a modern one of bronze. Do you know if he—”

“Take the matter up with someone who cares, Master Laundryman,” Hedia snapped. “Now, leave my daughter and myself. At once!”