The Shards of Heaven (32 page)

“You said something about the real threat being the Ark, and the possibility that Juba wants the ‘real' Scrolls of Thoth, since they're not what Didymus had originally thought,” Vorenus said, not bothering to cover up his obvious confusion.

Caesarion actually cracked a smile before he remembered to erase the emotion from his face. The slow approach of his mother's ship—during which he'd need to remain here—seemed interminable. “It's all very confusing,” he admitted. “Jacob and Didymus had to explain things three or four different ways before we understood it all. I'll try to explain if you'll concede to a stool.”

Vorenus agreed, and a flick of Caesarion's wrist brought a slave scampering out onto the wall to receive the order to procure suitable seating for Vorenus.

“Imagine trying to describe the Pharos lighthouse,” Caesarion said after the slave was beyond earshot once more. “On the ground it has a length and width, but of course it has a height, too. To describe it you'd need at least those three things. But that's not enough, is it?”

“I don't understand your meaning, sir,” Vorenus said.

“Well, the lighthouse changes over time, doesn't it? Our grandfather replaced the statue of Poseidon at its top. That surely changed its height. And reinforcement at the base has changed its width, too.”

“So you need to state the time at which you're describing it. I see.”

“Yes. Time.”

“Fair enough.” Vorenus' voice didn't sound entirely understanding, but Caesarion knew the old soldier well enough to know that he wouldn't continue the conversation if he wasn't interested.

“Didymus brought all this up when he suggested that we try to imagine one God, the creator of it all. God must, if He exists, live outside time. Above it, if you will, seeing everything that's below just as easily as we can see a rock on the floor.”

“Makes sense, I suppose.”

Caesarion heard the slave returning with a stool for the old soldier, though he couldn't turn his head to observe whether it was a suitable one; the slave placed it, as was proper, just behind the line of the two thrones. Only by straining his eyes could he see the haze of Vorenus settling into a sitting position. Then the slave retreated, the shuffle of cloth indicating deep bows of reverence. Caesarion only barely contained the urge to roll his eyes.

“Tell him about the angels,” Selene said when the slave had disappeared into the distance and it was safe to talk once more.

“Angels?” Vorenus asked.

“It's a term from the Jews,” Caesarion said. “But we found it useful to talk in terms of that religion. It was easier that way with Jacob there. Angels are beings that are like gods to men, but are nevertheless creations of God, like us. They're even supposed to appear like men, though of great beauty and strength. Like perfect beings.”

“There's something like this in other faiths,” Vorenus said thoughtfully.

“I imagine so,” Caesarion said. “If there's any truth in faith, Didymus pointed out, most religions should have at least a glimpse of it. We think these angels were among God's first creations. They accompanied God and acted like His agents in the realms below Him—though you understand that ‘below' is not accurate in a literal sense. Wherever God lives surrounds all of creation, in the same way a man on the first floor of the Pharos lighthouse is surrounded by the room around him, the vast height above him, and the passing of time that encompasses that in turn.”

“It is, as you say, confusing,” Vorenus said, sounding amused despite the tiredness in his voice. “But I think I follow. These … angels would be like a guard assigned to one level of the lighthouse, who cannot guard the whole forever.”

Caesarion hadn't thought about it that way, but he decided the analogy fit fairly well—though he again managed to avoid nodding. “Just so, Vorenus. Now imagine that God lives at the highest realm of creation, and from there He can see everything. As Didymus explained it, for Him, past, present, and future would all be the same. So from His perspective nothing below Him would have free will. The only way for anyone to have free will, in other words, would be for them to be like God. Yet without free will God's creation wouldn't be truly alive. So He decided to give part of Himself to some of His creatures. This part, we think, is our soul. It is what then exists beyond our deaths, journeying up through the realms to that highest place where God dwells: the gift of true life, imparted through the gift of death, for only in knowing true loss can a being truly know love. At least that's how Jacob explained it. The point is that God gave us the opportunity to become one with His eternity, to have the free will to live and love as we chose.”

“Because God alone is capable of free will,” Selene said. Her voice sounded distant to Caesarion, and he longed to look at her. “So the soul is a portion of God.”

“I think I understand,” Vorenus said. “And you believe this is true?”

“You know me,” Caesarion said. “I'm stubborn about anything. But this makes some sense. We're all gods in the sense that we all have free will. We do as we wish.”

“And this one God just watches? Just sits and lets people kill each other?”

“It doesn't seem so,” Caesarion admitted. “What happened isn't exactly clear—Didymus didn't know for sure, and Jacob either didn't know or wasn't telling—but there was some kind of dispute among God's angels about God's desire to give us free will. Some of the angels may have refused because they did not want to see man become greater than they were. Some may have objected because they didn't want to lose God.”

The flagship of Egypt was close enough now to see the two figures lounged in luxury upon its deck, surrounded by wealth and slaves. Cleopatra and Antony were dressed as the victorious gods they pretended to be. Antony waved and smiled as the people ashore cheered and the men below the vessels deck pushed and pulled the long dipping and lifting oars. Cleopatra might as well have been made of rock.

“But God's will couldn't be denied,” Caesarion continued, his voice sounding rehearsed even to his own ears. “The only way to make us truly free was to unmake Himself. So God sat upon His silver throne, and in a surge of power He destroyed Himself, unleashing what Didymus called the breath of God, which instilled true life in those creatures ready to receive it. The rest of God's great powers—the powers He'd used to create us all—were infused into His throne, which turned to broken stones of impenetrable darkness. And where He had sat upon it, all that remained was a book, the real book behind the legend of the Scrolls of Thoth. God, Jacob says, created of Himself a Book of Life and Death, containing the fullness of His knowledge. It is said to be the most powerful object in existence, and it remains in the Heaven where God resided, protected by the angels who forever mourn God's sacrifice.”

“What of the angels who were against it?” Vorenus asked.

“Eventually, war broke out among them all,” Caesarion replied. “They were divided over what they believed God's plans were for creation. There were some, it seems, who desired to destroy man. In order to defeat these angels who had fallen away from God's will, another group of angels used some of those power-filled fragments of God's throne to create a gate down through the dimensions. In a terrible cataclysm, Jacob said that an angel named Michael, leading the loyal angels, forced the defiant angels into the void. Gehenna, Jacob called it. Hades is another term, I think. Some call it Hell. After the war was over, after the Fallen angels were banished, the loyal angels, who called themselves the Vested, determined that they'd try to unite all the pieces of God's seat, to bring the powers of God together in order to find the God they'd lost.”

“They tried to remake God?”

Caesarion's shoulders raised to shrug before his mind overrode the instinct. He slowly lowered them back into position. “Jacob said as much. I don't know how that would happen. Whatever they tried failed, though: the throne shattered across creation, and these pieces of God's strength—the Shards of Heaven—have fallen here, where they remain sources of enormous power.”

New cheers went up, and Caesarion could see that the surviving ships of the fleet that had left with such high hopes were entering the inner harbor. He tried not to think about the wives and children who would count the ships and find that too few had returned, that the ships of their loved ones were gone to the deep.

“There's proof of this in the stories of these Jews?” Vorenus asked.

“Some, but not all. Didymus found traces of the story in many places. It seems the truth was scattered in men's memories, the details of what happened only available in bits and pieces that now need to be cobbled together. It's like a big puzzle, with some pieces missing and others we cannot understand. I'm sure we don't even know the half of it all still.”

“You believe it, though?”

Vorenus sounded, Caesarion thought, hopeful. He wanted to turn and look at him, but his mother's ship was close enough now that she would see his fault for sure. Caesarion could see Antony very clearly now. The great general was still waving and smiling, but his eyes were sunken, and his smile was hollow. He looked … broken. Defeated. One of Cleopatra's hands was draped over his elbow, clinging tightly to him. He wondered to whom she was giving strength. “I think I do,” he finally said.

“I see,” Vorenus said. “And this truth is what Juba was seeking?”

“Juba was looking for the Scrolls of Thoth, but whatever that book is, it is unreachable in Heaven. Only stories about it are here on this earth, whispers that survive in legends. What's important here and now are instead those Shards of Heaven, those fragments of God's power that made it here, to earth, to us. The first one arrived more than twenty-five centuries ago. That Shard has a special power to control earth and stone. It was used to build many great structures of the ancient world. Didymus thinks maybe this First Shard was taken to Sais during the Hyksos invasions of Egypt.”

“The Hyksos?”

“It doesn't matter,” Caesarion said. “It only explains how the Shard became associated with Sais.”

The flagship was turning into the royal dock below the wall. The cheers were very loud. Antony stood and smiled up at him, and Caesarion fought the urge to smile back.

“So is that Shard the Ark you're worried about?” Vorenus asked. “The one you want to keep from Octavian and this Juba man of his? I thought that it was an object of the Jews.”

“It became that, yes,” Caesarion said once his stepfather turned away to greet the servants and dignitaries lining the dock. Little Philadelphus was down among them, waving happily to his parents. When Cleopatra stood and actually waved back to her little boy, Caesarion was so surprised that he had to collect himself for a moment before he could answer Vorenus' question. “Thirteen centuries ago, Pharaoh Amenhotep's eldest son was named Thutmose,” he said, working hard to recall all the names Jacob and Didymus had given him. “His name means ‘Son of Thoth' in the native tongue. He was the crown prince of Egypt, and he led the armies of the kingdom against the people of Kush, the kingdom up the Nile. He defeated them by marrying a Kushite princess named Tharbis. Perhaps through her influence, or through some other, Thutmose revolted against the religion of many gods held sacred in Egypt, and against his father. Somewhere, somehow, he acquired the Second Shard, which has power over water. He built a staff to hold it, to avoid touching it directly. He became, it is said, a Jew, and his name is known to that people as Moses. He returned to Egypt and took the First Shard from Sais, and he built a kind of box to hold it, which is what the Jews call the Ark of the Covenant. Thutmose took the two Shards and used them to cross the Red Sea and journey toward Judea, escaping Egypt and his father. The Jews who followed him established a kingdom there.”

Vorenus made a sound of uncertainty in the back of his throat. “I know something of the Jews, but I know nothing about them having such great powers.”

Below them, a causeway was being drawn out from the deck of the ship to the dock. Cleopatra and Antony were standing now arm in arm as they started toward it. “Jacob didn't want to admit the truth that Thutmose and Moses were one and the same,” Caesarion said, “or that the Ark derived its powers from a Shard, but he did so under the questions of Didymus. He couldn't deny the truth. For the same reason, he admitted that the Ark is no longer with the Jews in Jerusalem. It hasn't been for many hundreds of years.”

It surprised Caesarion that Antony wasn't barking orders as soon as he set foot on the docks. Had the defeat so crushed him?

“So where is the Ark now?” Vorenus asked.

“We don't know,” Caesarion conceded, letting his frustration with the fact show in his voice.

“The Jew didn't know?”

“Jacob admitted, as Didymus had already discovered, that he's descended from those who removed the Ark from Jerusalem,” Caesarion said. “But he insisted that he didn't know the exact whereabouts of it now. How the Second Shard got into Juba's hands he didn't know, either, though he was very insistent that we cannot allow him and Octavian to get hold of the First.”

“Why?” Vorenus asked. “I've seen enough of the power of the Second Shard—as you call it—to think it the hand of a god. What difference a bit more?”

“This is the crux of it, Vorenus. The Shards are the result of the attempt to remake God, remember? If a man were to gather them together once more, he might be able to reach Heaven. He might even succeed where they failed and become God.”

Cleopatra and Antony disappeared from sight below them, and Caesarion heard the sounds of servants and priests approaching to take him and Selene to meet their parents. He felt like throwing his damnable scepter at the priests, but he knew, with regret, that he'd just hand it over.