Legions of Fire: Chapter Six

    Hedia twisted her left hand behind her back to rub between her shoulder blades. Her stool was backless, and the rough stone doorjamb provided support but not comfort.

    “Golden-throned Juno,” Alphena chanted. She held the scroll open to the light from the lamp stand beside her, but by now she must be reciting from memory. “Queen of the immortals, surpassing all in beauty; sister and wife of loud-thundering Jupiter, Goddess of Marriage. Grant my prayer for a worthy mate, thou glorious one whom men and gods reverence and honor, even as they do your all-powerful husband.”

    The girl had straightened as she recited the prayer; now she slumped again. She turned to Hedia, her face twisted with tired despair.

    “This isn’t doing anything,” she said, trying to raise her own spirits by getting angry. “We may as well go home!”

    “Not yet, dear,” Hedia said quietly. “It’s not even the middle of the night. We can’t set conditions of our own comfort on the will of the gods.”

    “Do you believe this?” Alphena demanded, waggling the scroll as if it were a baton. The layers of glued papyrus creaked in protest. “In Juno? In any religion?”

    Hedia laughed. “Daughter, if you mean as an institution, I’m not sure I even believe in marriage,” she said. “But marriage exists, and it protected me at one time. Perhaps another marriage will protect you.”

    She got to her feet. Instead of going to Alphena, she bent backward and massaged the small of her back with both hands.

    Hedia’s fingers were slim but strong; even so, she half-wished that she’d brought Balbo, the household masseur, in with her. He was a eunuch, so perhaps his presence wouldn’t make the rites vain . . . but on the other hand, this business would be boring and uncomfortable even if her back didn’t hurt, so there was no point in taking a needless risk for negligible gain.

    “As for the gods existing,” Hedia went on, “I have no idea. I know that if I strike steel on a flint in the correct fashion, though, I get sparks.”

    She crossed her hands before her and felt her expression tighten. “Generations of our ancestors have believed that this sort of divination is effective in bringing maidens into the state of marriage,” she said. “Therefore you will continue to offer a prayer to Juno while standing in a sanctified building, and I will remain here with you.”

    Alphena stared at her for a moment. Hedia stood erect. She offered a pleasant smile, but she was ready for whatever the response was.

    Instead of replying, the girl turned to face the goddess. “Golden-throned Juno,” she said. “Queen of the immortals, surpassing all in beauty . . . .”

    As Alphena read, Hedia walked over to her and put an hand on her shoulder.

    “Sister and wife of loud-thundering Jupiter,” Alphena said, “Goddess of Marriage. Grant my prayer for a worthy marriage . . . .”

    There was no response this time either. Shortly it would be the start of the third watch, midnight. Alphena would continue to pray till dawn if necessary, and Hedia would stay with the girl as a mother should.

    Nemastes and his magic might destroy the whole house of Saxa and the gods knew what else. Regardless, Hedia would be fighting all the way with every tool at her disposal.

    Hedia smiled and gave Alphena’s shoulder a slight squeeze. She wouldn’t have survived this long if she hadn’t been willing to fight powerful men.

 

---

 

    The temple servants inserted iron cramps into slots in the floor on either side of the mosaic cartouche. The tools were similar to what Varus had seen workmen use at construction sites when they muscled heavy blocks into place.

    “Ah — I can lend a hand,” said Corylus, his eyes swiveling from the servants to Priscus. He started forward without waiting for an answer.

    “Thank you, sir,” said Balaton, stepping toward Corylus as though he were going to meet him. It took Varus a moment to understand what his friend doubtless had realized instantly: that the servant was blocking Corylus away from the task. “We’re used to doing this, and it’s probably safer that we handle it alone.”

    Corylus flashed a genuine smile. “Right,” he said, stepping back with Varus and Pandareus. “If somebody slipped, the trap door might drop and be broken. Sorry.”

    Varus frowned in surprise. He asked quietly, “Corylus, would you have slipped?”

    Corylus grinned. “No,” he said, “and I wouldn’t have forgotten to breathe, either. But they don’t know that; and anyway, they don’t need my help.”

    Holding the cover up six inches above the floor, the servants walked it in unison toward the temple’s great doors. When they set it down, it was completely clear of the four by six-foot rectangle. Another man lowered his ladder into the opening, then slid it a finger’s breadth to the side so that the stringers locked into notches in the concrete sub-flooring.

    Pandareus and the two youths stepped to the edge of the opening and looked down. The vault was of considerable size. In the middle was a chest about three feet long and a foot and a half wide, much like the ossuaries into which Varus recalled that Jews and other Oriental races gathered the bones of their dead after the flesh had decayed. The civilized folk of Carce, like the Greeks before them, cremated their dead and stored the ashes in jars.

    This was something else, though. Varus shivered. He crossed his left arm over his chest; by doing that, he squeezed the ivory head against his breastbone beneath the toga.

    Priscus shuffled up behind them. “Master Corylus,” he said, “you look like a husky young fellow who wouldn’t mind catching a weight of fat if it slipped off the ladder.”

    “Sir?” Corylus said.

    Priscus chuckled like bubbles in hot grease. He said, “Go down into the vault and wait as I follow you.”

    “Here, I’ll go down with the lantern first,” Varus said to a servant with a light. It was actually a bronze oil lamp in the form of a three-headed dragon; each tongue was a blazing wick.

    He took the short pole from which the lamp hung without real objection; turning, he backed down the ladder. The servant looked at Balaton for approval, but Balaton was instead frowning at his own superior.

    “Lord Priscus,” said Balaton, “perhaps your guests would prefer to enter the vault by themselves? There’s no requirement that you go down with them, after all.”

    Varus reached the bottom of the ladder and stepped away so that Corylus could follow. When he raised the lamp, he saw that though the ceiling was low — it was no more than six feet above the floor — the vault extended ten feet on the short axis and twenty the long way. It was much larger than it needed to be to conceal the stone chest.

    “Balaton . . . ,” said Priscus, lowering himself carefully rung by rung on the ladder. “I’m a silly old man, but you are an old woman. I’ll be perfectly all right. You won’t let me fall, will you, Corylus my lad?”

    “No sir,” said Corylus, bracing himself to take the Commissioner’s weight if he slipped.

    Varus smiled faintly, visualizing his friend, answering the legate of his legion as ranks of Germans prepared to charge. Whereas Gaius Varus would be wondering what the commotion was about and why those blond men with bull-hide shields were shouting so loudly.

    Priscus wheezed coming down the short ladder, but the chief attendant’s concern did seem overstated. Shrugging to settle his tunic — although the commissioner was on duty, he was dressed for dinner rather than to carry out official business — he said, “When we consult the Books, we do it down here: the Books never leave the vault. And you may think I’m fat and awkward –”

    He laughed again.

    “– as well you might. But there are commissioners who are far more decrepit than I am, I assure you.”

    Pandareus was following Priscus into the vault with equal care. Varus bent to examine the stone chest, then thrust his left arm away so that he didn’t burn himself on the lamps he held. Corylus took the staff from him and hung the lamp chain from one of the hooks placed for the purpose in the low ceiling.

    Varus muttered thanks. He felt increasingly hot and uncomfortable. He doubted that was embarrassment: he was far too used to behaving in a fashion which those around him considered bumblingly incompetent.

    As they had every right to do. Priscus is old and fat, and I’m a bumbling incompetent. As well as being a bad poet.

 

---

 

    He squatted, keeping his shadow off the carvings on the side of the chest. It was limestone and not a particularly fine-grained variety at that, so the figures were necessarily crude. Nevertheless, they were powerful.

    In the center was a chariot to which horses were hitched in parallel; four of them as best Varus could tell by the additional grooves shadowing the outline of the legs of the animal closest to the viewer. The figure driving the chariot had a woman’s torso and breasts, but her head was that of a maned lion; bird wings sprouted from her back. A similar creature — sphinx? Gorgon? — ran on two bird legs in front of the team but looked back over her shoulder toward her fellow. The heads of all the figures were at the same height. Varus had seen similar bands of decoration painted on very old vases.

    “Sir?” said Varus, looking up at Priscus. Suddenly realizing that he was speaking to a man who was far his superior in age, knowledge and position, he wobbled upright as he would for his father. “Ah, Lord Priscus? Is this box Etruscan?”

    “You’ve got a clever one there, teacher,” Priscus said to his friend. Pandareus didn’t reply, but his smile was a trifle warmer than usual as it drifted toward Varus.

    “And yes, boy,” Priscus continued. “At any rate, it looks like Etruscan work to me, and early Etruscan besides. Which is just what I would expect, since I believe it’s the chest in which Old Tarquin placed the books after he bought them from the Sibyl. Do you know the story?”

    He thrust his finger toward Varus. “You, I mean. Since you’re a clever bugger.”

    I’ve been called worse, Varus thought.

    “Sir!” he said as though he were in class. “An old woman approached Tarquin the First, an Etruscan and the fifth king of Carce. She offered to sell him nine books of prophecies by the Sibyl of Cumae at the price of 300 didrachms. Tarquin refused to pay so much.”

    “So, boy . . . ,” said Priscus, leaning slightly forward and scowling. “Was Tarquin a fool?”

    This was like class! “Sir!” Varus said. “No, Tarquin was a tyrant and a foreigner, but he was reputed to be one of the wisest men of all time. The price, however, was enormous — particularly since Carce was then only a town and surrounded by powerful enemies.”

    He cleared his throat. Both Pandareus and Corylus were smiling smugly; they knew he wouldn’t embarrass them.

    And I won’t. Varus continued, “The old woman threw three of the books on the fire in Tarquin’s chamber. They were written on dry palm leaves and burned to ash. She then demanded the same price for the six books remaining.”

    “And?” said Priscus. He was smiling in satisfaction also.

    Varus rested his left hand on the stone chest, feeling the carvings beneath his fingertips. He knew the story well, as he knew many stories. Until this moment it had been a myth, but now in this place he could see Tarquin, his stern face lighted by sudden flare from the charcoal brazier which tried to warm the painted stone walls of his throne room.

    “Tarquin again refused the offer,” Varus said, “and the old woman threw three more books onto the fire. But when she offered him the final three books, Tarquin paid her the full price, 300 didrachms. The Sibylline Books have been the most holy treasure of Carce from that day to this.”

    “Very good, boy,” said Priscus softly, but he turned toward Pandareus. “A treasure too holy for me to display even to the scholar whose wisdom and knowledge I respect above that of any other man I know.”

    “If you don’t mind, old friend,” said Pandareus, “we’ll stay in this vault while I tell you some of my history.”

    “Sir?” said Corylus. “Should Varus and I leave?”

    “Not at all,” Pandareus said. “You’re welcome to hear, and for other reasons –”

    He turned his odd smile toward Varus.

    “– I particularly want Lord Varus to be present.”

    “Sir,” said Varus, lifting his head in acknowledgment. He wasn’t sure he’d spoken loudly enough to be heard. He didn’t suppose it mattered.

    “I’m a Melian by birth,” Pandareus said, facing Priscus and Corylus. His shoulder was to Varus, whom he seemed to be ignoring. “I went to Egypt, though, as a young man and spent a year in Alexandria.”

    “Melos?” said Priscus, frowning. He rubbed his chin with his knuckles. “I thought you were from Athens.”

    “Pandareus of Athens was a better name for a teacher,” Pandareus said with a hard smile, “than Pandareus of Melos, an island which was a backwater when Cadmus founded Thebes and hasn’t become any more important in the millennium since.”

    The others laughed. Varus felt warm and prickly on the inside of his skin. He no longer heard the chant that had been with him since the afternoon of his reading, but there was a keening at the edges of his mind. It could have been the wind, or perhaps a woman wailing in distant misery.

    “The Egyptians are a dirty people,” Pandareus continued, “and fond of superstition. But they’re an old race, and their land is very old. In Alexandria I met an Egyptian whose name was Menre. He said he was a scholar of the Museum and had been a student of Demetrius of Phalerum.”

    “That’s impossible, surely?” Priscus said. Corylus’ sharp expression showed that he was thinking the same thing but hadn’t wished to contradict his teacher. “Unless you misheard him?”

    “I did not mishear him,” Pandareus said, his smile slightly wider, “as you already knew. As for whether it was possible that Menre was a student of the man who advised Ptolemy to create the Museum three hundred years ago . . . I thought it very unlikely. I asked Menre to introduce me to his teacher, and he said he would when the time was right.”

    “And?” said Priscus.

    “I didn’t see Menre again while I was in Egypt,” said Pandareus. “I left for Athens a few months later and gained a name there. Including the name Pandareus of Athens.”

    The others laughed. Varus remained in his warm, prickly cocoon. He saw and heard everything that was going on in the vault, but he was miles and ages away from his companions.

    He reached beneath his toga and gripped the ivory head with his right hand; his left hand still rested on the stone box which held the Sibylline Books. He felt someone coming toward him through a tunnel of fog.

    “I hadn’t thought of Menre in decades,” said Pandareus. “I was quite satisfied with my life in Athens. The students who attended my lectures were of reasonable quality, the range of books which were open to me there was wider even than here in Carce — they’d been brought into the city by men who loved learning, not soldiers in armor like those who gathered the libraries of Carce.”

    “But the pay, my friend?” Priscus said.

    The teacher shrugged. His shadow quivered oddly, unpleasantly, on the wall of the vault.

    “The only men in Athens who are as wealthy as a Senator of Carce,” Pandareus said, “are Senators of Carce who’ve retired to Athens. Nonetheless some men of Carce send their sons to Athens still, as Cicero’s father and Cicero himself did, even though there are teachers at home equal to the best in Greece. If only because we recently were the best in Greece.”

    Varus watched him grin in profile.

    “And I will note,” Pandareus said, holding the smile, “that the rich and powerful of Carce are no more punctual with their sons’ school fees than their lesser brethren of Athens were. Your senatorial colleague Calpurnius Piso comes immediately to mind when I hear the words ’slow to pay.’”

    An old woman hobbled toward Varus. He watched his own body standing with his friends in the vault while with another part of his mind he waited for the woman. She wore a cowled gray cloak over a long tunic — an Ionic chiton — of bleached linen; her face was wrinkled and ancient.

    “But one night, in what must have been a dream,” Pandareus was saying, “Menre visited me. He told me I must go to Carce so that I would be on hand when I was needed at a great crisis of the world. In support of his demand, he showed me astrological calculations which proved the necessity beyond any doubt. The stars didn’t describe the form of the danger, however: only the fact that it was focused on Carce.”

    “All roads lead to Carce,” Priscus said, quoting the old adage. He was smiling, but there was no laughter in his expression.

    “Yes,” said Pandareus simply. “Or at any rate, mine did.”

 

---

 

    He turned his hands up as if to show that they were empty, then said, “And lest you ask, I didn’t remember a single one of the astrological alignments when I awakened — only that they had been convincing.”

    “Have you come far?” the old woman asked. Her voice was as thin and dry as the rustling wing cases of cicadas.

    “Mistress,” Varus said. “I’m in the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest. I haven’t travelled at all.”

    She laughed like silver chimes in place of the cracked tittering he had expected. “Do you think so, Gaius Varus?” she said, reaching out with her right hand. “Come with me and we’ll see what you say then.”

    Varus took the woman’s hand in his left. Her skin was like thin vellum, and the bones within were as fine as a bat’s. In the vault of the temple his body stood silently, touching the ancient stone box and gripping the ivory head beneath his toga.

    “My wife Claudia is an estimable woman,” Priscus said, “but she’s more superstitious than a kitchen maid just up from the country with her love potions and beauty creams. This is the sort of thing I’d expect to hear from her.”

    No one spoke. Priscus sighed and went on, “And I suppose if Claudia does describe that sort of dream to me in the future, I’d better listen to her. Since I believe you, my friend.”

    The commissioner’s voice trailed off, and the four figures in the vault faded into grayness. Varus and the old woman stood where they were, but fog rolled like a torrent beneath them. Low, blue-gray hills on the horizon swept toward them. From the top of one boiled the fog which covered the world beneath.

    “That’s Vesuvius,” Varus said. Who was the woman? Her fingers rested as lightly on his as a perching butterfly. “We visited Baiae when I was a child, my sister and I and our nurses.”

    He’d seen his father in Baiae one afternoon. He’d seen Saxa only rarely until he’d started secondary schooling when he was twelve.

    “I remember Vesuvius, the smoke coming up all day,” he said. “Just like that.”

    “Smoke, you say?” said the old woman. “Watch, Gaius Varus!”

    The top of the cone lifted off with a shuddering roar. Fireballs shot skyward, and a phalanx of lava gushed in all directions. The liquid rock was as orange as flame, but a sulfurous yellow haze hung over it.

    “Watch!” the old woman repeated in her terrible voice.

    Lava splashed and spread like water from a downspout. It reached an olive grove. The trunks of individual trees shattered as the rock lapped them. Severed branches fell onto the surface of the flow and were carried along by it. They blazed and dissolved until only black outlines remained, distorting slowly as the rock spread onward.

    “Who are you?” Varus said. Though he shouted, no human voice could have been heard over the volcano’s constant crashing thunder.

    A flock of sheep grazed on the middle slope of the cone. They blatted at the oncoming lava; then, individually and in pairs, they turned and began trotting downhill. The shepherd and his two dogs stared in wonder for a further moment, then followed the sheep.

    “Who?” Varus repeated.

    The woman laughed. The cowl covered her face almost completely, but he saw the gleam of her eyes. “Who I am isn’t important,” she said. “I’m too old to be important. You’re the only thing that’s important, Gaius Varus, because you’re the only one who can stop this.”

    The shepherd and his flock reached the edge of a knob, then froze in horror: bubbling lava had circled the knob to either side, racing ahead of man and sheep and closing to trap them. The shepherd threw up his hands. His dogs yapped and made short rushes but the glare of the rock drove them back each time.

    “How do I stop it?” Varus shouted. “No one can stop it!”

    The lava surged forward to cover the knob. The animals in its path, sheep and dogs and man, gouted steam an instant before their dried remnants burned in a bone-devouring fire.

    “Only you, Varus!” the old woman cried. “And if not you, then no one!”

    They had risen to a great height. The world was a globe, and fire was engulfing it. Varus saw the figures of squat demons with bodies of flame climbing from the pit of Vesuvius. They marched outward shoulder to shoulder, igniting animals and trees and the very soil itself into black ash which the blazing rock then covered.

    Varus pointed to the fire demons. He was shouting, but he couldn’t understand his own words.

    “You or no one!” said the old woman, and Varus awakened. His friend Corylus was shaking him back to his senses.

 

---

 

    Corylus felt uncomfortable. The air in the vault was still, but the lamp flames twisting at the corner of his eyes made it seem that the gryphon heads were moving. He clasped his hands behind his back to keep from twitching toward a spear or a sword hilt.

    “I don’t see that this brings us any closer to being able to examine the Books, though,” Priscus said. “I already trusted you, and your dream visit from an Egyptian isn’t going to help sway the Senate. I –”

    “And then a great river of blazing fire will flow outward,” someone shrieked. The voice was that of an ancient woman, but it came from Varus’ lips.

    He stood with one hand spread on the stone casket and other gripping the object he’d brought from where it hung on a thong beneath his toga. Corylus saw the wink of age-yellowed ivory within the cylinder of his friend’s fingers.

    “It will devour every place, land and great ocean and gleaming sea,” cried the voice. “Lakes and rivers and springs, the implacable Underworld and the heavenly vault — all will be consumed!”

    Varus’ stern, set expression reminded Corylus of a statue of a young Stoic facing execution. His eyes blazed, and his throat swelled with the power of the voice that issued from it. Corylus hadn’t seen him take a breath since he started his declamation.

    Pandareus watched intently; Priscus stood transfixed, his face pale and without expression. Temple servants ringed the opening of the vault, staring down in a mixture of terror and confusion.

    “All the souls of men will gnash their teeth, burning in a river,” cried Varus’ lips. “The world is brimstone and a rush of fire and a blazing plain, and ashes will cover all!”

    Varus was swaying. Corylus made an instant decision — he didn’t know what was happening, so he went to his friend. He took Varus by the left wrist and the right shoulder, shifting him back from the casket and the light.

    “Varus!” he said. “Wake up!”

    Varus slumped. His body had been rigid; now if Corylus hadn’t had his arms around him, he would have fallen to the floor of fitted stone blocks. His flesh was icy despite the warmth of the vault.

    “Lord Priscus!” called Balaton from the nave of the temple. “Should we come down?”

    Corylus glanced up, caught the servant’s eyes, and dipped his chin in negation. They didn’t need more people down here at the moment.

    Priscus took a deep breath. “Pandareus, you sly devil!” he said. “How did he do that? How did you do that?”

    “Not me, old friend,” said Pandareus. His smile was slight, but despite the pressure of events it was real. “And I don’t know precisely what Lord Varus did either. But I thought that if I brought him near the Books, perhaps something would happen.”

    Varus straightened. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely to Corylus. He squeezed his hand before they stepped apart. Probably they both were a little embarrassed; Corylus certainly was.

    They faced the older men. “Sirs,” Varus said. “I dreamed the way I did during my reading, but it wasn’t the same this time. I saw Vesuvius erupting.”

    He lowered his eyes and whispered, “It was terrible. Everything burned. People burned.”

    “So we gathered from what you recited to us, boy,” Priscus said. He shook his head in wonder. “Do you remember that?”

    “No sir,” Varus said. “I didn’t know what I was saying during the reading, either. What they tell me, what Corylus and Master Pandareus tell me I was saying.”

    “Sir?” said Corylus, holding the commissioner’s eyes. He was angry at being kept in the dark, because that was what it amounted to. Though he tried to control it, his tone was marginally stiffer than he should have been using while speaking to a venerable and exceptionally learned senator. “Please? What is there about what Varus said that made you ask Master Pandareus how he did it?”

    Priscus glanced at Pandareus, but before the teacher could respond he turned to the youths again. He gave them a crooked smile.

 

---

 

    “I don’t see any reason not to tell you,” he said, “given what just happened. Master Corylus, your friend just quoted from the Sibylline Books. Which he’s never seen and won’t be permitted to see until he’s been elected by the Senate to the Commission for the Sacred Rites. As I have no doubt he will be, in good time; but not till he’s my age or close to it.”

    “I assumed you would recognize a passage from the Books if you heard it, my friend,” Pandareus said. “I know and respect your memory.”

    Priscus sniffed, but he smiled also. “During consultations . . . ,” he said. He wasn’t whispering, but Corylus noticed that he pitched his voice a hair lower. “The Books are open. Any of the Commissioners could read them. Most of my colleagues don’t use the opportunity, so far as I’ve noticed, but I do and –”

    He smiled more broadly at Pandareus.

    “– as my friend suggested, I do have a good memory. I hope that I’m not generally a vain man, but I do pride myself on that point.”

    “Will you please explain to my students how consultations of the Books are usually made, Marcus Priscus?” Pandareus asked. He softened the formality of the request with a grin: the two old men really were friends. Their closeness went beyond mere respect and similarity of interests.

    “Why me?” said Priscus. “You’re their teacher, and you know the procedure as well as I do, don’t you?”

    “Perhaps,” said Pandareus, “but you, most noble Senator, are a Commissioner; whereas I am a foreigner, albeit a clever one.”

    It may be that the world is about to end, thought Corylus. These men fear it is, at any rate. But they’re quibbling over minutiae because they both love the details; and because nothing is going to make either of them show their fear by the way they act.

    “It’s simple enough, boys,” Priscus said. “There are three books of prophecies, each made from 61 palm leaves — written on one side only. When the Commission is called to examine the Books, we open them a page at a time and drop a ball from a tumbler just like the ones they use in picking trial jurors from the general panel. There are 182 white balls and one black one. When the black ball drops, we have the page. Then –”

    He shrugged.

    “– we draw lots again, the ten of us or however many arrived for the meeting. The one chosen points to a section of the page while blindfolded. We read that section aloud and decide what action the Republic must take in response.”

    Priscus looked at the three of them in turn. Corylus felt the weight of his glance: the Commissioner was no longer a fat old man and something of a buffoon.

    “I don’t mind telling you that I’ll be applying to the Senate for a formal opening of the Books,” he said, “on the basis of Gaius Varus here reading a passage through a closed stone box. That’s a greater prodigy than any calf speaking in the Forum, I think. And I witnessed it myself, so bugger what Saxa says — not meaning to be offensive about your father, boy.”

    “Sir?” said Corylus hesitantly.

    “Well, spit it out, boy,” Priscus said.

    Everyone was looking at him: his immediate companions and the servants watching avidly from above. “Sir,” Corylus said. “If you report to the Senate, they’ll know that you let us into the vault.”

    “Well, that’s what I did, isn’t it?” Priscus snapped. “I thought it was proper. If my colleagues disagree, they can order me executed for treason. But my oath is to the Republic, and I’ll report as is my duty even if that means being sewn in a leather sack and sunk in the Tiber. Do you doubt it?”

    Corylus stood straight. His arms were at his sides and his eyes were focused on a ring bolt attached to the wall directly opposite him for some unguessed reason. “Sir!” he said. “No sir, I do not doubt you.”

    “Army, is he, teacher?” the Commissioner said to his friend.

    “His father was, I believe,” Pandareus said mildly. “I need hardly say that he’s not what I expected from his background.”

    He coughed to clear his throat. “You may relax, Master Corylus,” he said. “Your observation shows a commendable concern for the wellbeing of Commissioner Priscus. He does not hold it against you.”

    “Bloody impertinence is what it was!” Priscus said, but then he looked at Corylus and grinned. “But you meant well, boy, and the fact that you realized that actions have consequences puts you ahead of most people. Puts you ahead of most of my senatorial colleagues, in fact.”

    He looked at Pandareus and said, “Are we done here, then? You’ve gotten what you came for, haven’t you? There’ll be a consultation of the Sibylline Books after all.”

    “We’re certainly done from my viewpoint,” Pandareus said, “but for my purposes there’s no need that the Books be opened formally. Master Varus has directed us to the threat; now we must deal with it.”

    Priscus had looked relaxed for a moment. Now his face became wary if not quite hostile. “Aye,” he said. “The Commission must deal with it, teacher.”

    “The Commission will meet, will it not?” Pandareus said. Corylus and Varus stood still, pretending not to be present. The servants slipped back soundlessly so that they couldn’t see or be seen by the nobles in the vault, though they were certainly still listening. “You’ll consider the prophecy and carry out various divinations to determine the proper response to it.”

    “I suspect the procedure will be much as you describe, yes,” Priscus said deliberately. “But though the methods by which the Commission reaches its recommendations aren’t precisely a secret, neither are they matters which I will discuss with anyone who is not already a Commissioner.”

    “Then we’ll pass on from that,” Pandareus agreed with a nod. “The recommendations themselves are matters of public record, however. In the past, the Commission has decreed sacrifices and public banquets, and occasionally it has summoned a foreign deity. I can imagine in this case that your colleagues might send a legation to the Brahmins of India and request that a company of them escort their fire-god Agni to a new temple in Carce.”

    “Your description of past history is of course accurate,” Priscus said. His words were clipped and careful. “I won’t speculate as to what the Commission might recommend in this or any other case.”

    “Of course,” said Pandareus. “You will work in your fashion, my friend, and I will work in mine. I’ll tell you frankly that I hope your method succeeds. Indeed, I hope that the Republic and the world have as much time as it would take for a Senatorial delegation to reach Barracucha on the Indus. I dearly hope that.”

    He thrust out his hand. After a delay of a heartbeat or perhaps two heartbeats, Priscus clasped it. The two old men hugged one another as fiercely as Corylus and Varus had done minutes earlier, then stepped apart.

    “Time to leave, then,” said Pandareus. “It must be close to midnight.”

    Priscus gestured him to the ladder. “Go on, and I’ll follow you,” he said. “Varus, you bring the lamp, and Corylus? I’ll want you ready to catch me if I fall, all right?”

    “Yes sir,” said the youths in unison. Corylus added, “But you won’t fall, sir. You’re not so decrepit as you pretend.”

    “Cheeky one, isn’t he, teacher?” Priscus said as Pandareus carefully climbed toward the servants waiting to assist him. “And clever. They’re both clever, as I knew from the fact you vouched for them.”

    “Master Pandareus?” Corylus said as Priscus mounted the ladder in turn. Pandareus tilted his head to look down.

    Corylus stiffened formally. “Now we know why you were sent to Carce,” he said. “If you hadn’t been, the prophecy wouldn’t have been heard in time.”

    If it is in time, he thought. May the gods grant that it is in time.

 

---

 

    “– even-as-they-do-your-all-powerful-husband!” Alphena said, racing through the last phrase because her throat was hoarse. She didn’t want to choke and fail to complete the prayer after she’d gone to the effort of speaking the first part.

    She turned to her stepmother, seated again. “Do you have more wine?” she said harshly. That was the only way she could say anything with her throat so raw, but she was tired and angry and she hurt.

    Hedia walked over, exchanging the vellum sheet for a different skin of wine than the one they’d drunk from earlier in the evening. Alphena took it gingerly and worked out the wooden stopper. She wasn’t used to drinking from a skin, and she’d managed to squirt her tunic once already.

    “I’ve found that success in life requires less brilliance than most people think,” Hedia said. “And a great deal more persistence. Tonight is an example for persistence, I’m afraid.”

 

---

 

    Alphena squirted wine onto the back of her throat, then swallowed — and coughed. “This is unmixed!” she said and immediately felt embarrassed. She knew she’d sounded accusatory, as though she was the kind of prude who would never drink unmixed wine.

    “Yes,” said Hedia with her usual cold smile, “and so is the third wineskin I had Agrippinus send along. I decided that if we had to stay the night through, we were going to need something to warm us. As well as soothing your throat.”

    “Thank you, stepmother,” Alphena said quietly. She took another mouthful, this time with greater care, and stoppered the mouthpiece. “I, ah, usually drink wine mixed. But this is good.”

    “By this time in the evening,” Hedia said, her smile broader and knowing, “the older heads will have left the dinner party, and those of us who remain will be drinking the vintage without water to thin it. I’ll take you with me in a year or two. After you’re properly married, of course.”

    Alphena felt her face twist into a grimace of disgust. I know the kind of party you mean!

    Hedia’s expression softened from the smirk of lust it had worn the moment before. “Here, dear, let me have some of that wine,” she said. She stepped close, but instead of taking the skin, she waited till Alphena handed it to her.

    She drank, watching the girl over the sack. The goatskin had been sheared and painted with a zigzag design that reminded Alphena of Moorish fabrics.

    When Hedia lowered it, she said, “I’m sorry, dear; I shouldn’t joke like that. Probably I’ve had too much to drink already.”

    Alphena turned her face away. She said, “It doesn’t matter.”

    Her cheeks were hot; with anger, she’d like to have said, but she knew that much of what she felt was embarrassment. I’m such a child! And she’s — she’s everything I’m not!

    “It matters quite a lot,” Hedia said. She set the wineskin on the floor, then put her hand on Alphena’s wrist. “Listen to me, dear. Don’t let anybody tell you how you must behave. Not your father, not me; and not your husband either, when you have one. You behave the way that’s right for you. However that is.”

    “I won’t have a choice when I’m married, will I?” Alphena said, hearing her voice rise. “And that’s what you want for me, isn’t it? A husband to take care of me and tell me how to behave?”

    “Look at me, girl,” Hedia said. She didn’t raise her voice, but it snapped like a drover’s whip. Alphena jerked her head around.

    “I’m proof that being married doesn’t turn you into a basin for your husband to wash his feet in,” Hedia said in the same harsh, demanding tone. “You father doesn’t treat me like a servant, and Calpurnius Latus didn’t either. Decide how you want to live your life and live it.”

    She unexpectedly hugged Alphena and stepped away. “Just remember,” she said, “that everything comes with a cost. Don’t cry to me if the cost of what you want is a high one.”

    In a still lower voice she added, “I hope for your sake that the price isn’t as high as what I pay.”

    Alphena shivered. The air was warm, but she had goose bumps on her arms for a moment. She held the prayer, but she wasn’t ready to resume the litany yet. She glanced at the stool.

    Hedia followed her eyes and said, “I should have had the servants bring another one, shouldn’t I? I said that we might have to spend the whole night here, but I suppose I didn’t really believe my own words.”

    “Hedia?” said Alphena, looking down at the floor of worn bricks in a herring-bone pattern. Would her father be replacing this too? “What’s going to happen about Nemastes? About all of it?”

    Hedia’s face went hard, then softened. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I hope we’ll learn enough to avoid problems. Perhaps Nemastes will go back to Hyperborea or wherever he really comes from. From the Underworld, I shouldn’t wonder.”

    Alphena looked up, surprised at the note of bitterness in the last phrase. The older woman ordinarily sounded cool and detached, even when her eyes said she was considering murder.

    Hedia laughed and gestured with her left hand, sweeping away the mood of a moment. “I’ve even thought of hiring a couple of your gladiator friends to deal with our wizard, dear,” she went on. “The trouble is, he seems to vanish into thin air except when he’s with your father, and I don’t want to risk an attack with Saxa present.”

    “Because he’d know it was you behind it?” Alphena said. Her lips were suddenly dry.

    “No,” said Hedia. “Because it wouldn’t be safe. Violence isn’t something you can control, not when it starts. I won’t chance Saxa having his head bashed in or taking a dagger through the ribs because of a mistake by some animal who can barely mumble his own name in Thracian.”

    She turned abruptly. “I need some wine,” she muttered. “Do you?”

    “I’ll drink some more,” Alphena said in a little voice. The night was pressing down on her. Not the darkness outside, but something much wider and much deeper than that.

    Hedia passed her the wineskin. Instead of removing the stopper immediately, Alphena said, “M-mother? What if Nemastes attacks you? He knows you’re his enemy, surely? He wouldn’t even have to hire somebody.”

    “You think he might try to strangle me with his own hands?” Hedia said. She chuckled. “Well, dear, this would be one answer to the problem.”

    She lifted the front fold of her chiton and drew a finger-length dagger. Its sheath must have been sewn into her cloth-of-gold girdle, where it was completely concealed by the loose linen gathered over her bosom.

    She slipped the knife back and let the chiton hide it again. Giving Alphena a cold smile, she continued, “But since Nemastes appears to be a man, there may be a simpler way to make him less threatening.”

    “Ooh!” said Alphena. “You would with him?”

    She’d spoken before she took time to reflect; and besides, she didn’t feel like pretending to be sophisticated. It was pointless with this woman. And the thought of that bald creature putting his, well, hands, on her was disgusting.

    Alphena thought that the response might be a peal of laughter; instead Hedia gave her a lop-sided grin. “You’re young, dear,” she said in a soft voice and a tone of what seemed to be affection. “If the gods are good to you, perhaps you’ll never have to learn more about the world than you already know. I hope that’s the case.”

    Alphena made a moue with her lips, then offered the wineskin to Hedia again. “Here,” she said. “I may as well say the prayer. Since we’re here anyway.”

    Hedia gave her the vellum, but she waved away the skin. “Just set the skin on the floor,” she said. “I’ll hold the lamp. This stand is too high for you.”

    She rose onto her toes to lift the lamp chain from the hook. Alphena’s body was turned toward the statue of Tellus, but she was looking back over her shoulder at her stepmother.

    A tremor shook the building. Dirt from the roof showered the interior. A body, either a cat or a large rat, fell from the rafters with a splop. Chittering, the creature scuttled into the shadows and vanished. Hedia kept hold of the lamp, but the bronze stand lost its balance and hit the floor with a clang.

    “We should get out before –” Alphena started to say.

    “Alphena, daughter of Gaius Saxa!” a voice boomed.

    Alphena turned. The statue of Tellus was staring at her. Its painted lips moved as it said, “Joyous news, Alphena! You are fated to wed Spurius Cassius and to reign with him forever in the Underworld!”

    Alphena dropped the page of vellum she was holding. She felt as though she’d been caught in a winter storm and covered with ice.

    “No!” she cried.

    A second tremor struck. A crack zigzagged across the brick floor. Roof tiles rattled hard together, shaking down chips of broken terracotta. The statue of Tellus toppled toward Alphena like a ten-foot club.

    Hedia gave a shout and leaped at the frozen girl. The statue smashed itself into dust and splinters on the floor beside them.

    “Come on!” Hedia wheezed. The women scrambled toward the door, holding one another’s hands.

    Together they slid the bar from its staples and shoved the door open. Alphena glanced over her shoulder as she stumbled into the babbling servants. Oil which had spilled when the lamp smashed began to burn on the bricks. The flames gave a hungry yellow light.