Byzantium's Crown (33 page)

The great door creaked open into a wide hall bare of all furniture, deadfalls, or men-at-arms.

"This is too easy," Marcellinus whispered. "We enter, the door locks behind us, and the red empress sends in her killers."

"The door only locks from this side," said Nicephorus.

"I think it was left unbarred," Marric concluded. "If people win through to the palace, there has to be one last line of defense: nothing to harm friends, but something effective enough to take out some very stubborn enemies. I don't think we're going to face human adversaries here."

"What shall we face, my lord?" the soldier asked fearfully.

The man reminded Marric of himself, resenting the powers of the unseen world, fearing them, and finally beginning to adapt, to accept them and use them to protect himself.

"Feelings," Daphne spoke up. "They will . . . she will send emotions, our own emotions back at us." She snuffed her torch and joined Marric in the wide passage.

"Get back!" The place needed to be tested, and Marcellinus knew it.

"We haven't the time," said Marric. "How long do you think the mob will be held back?"

He strode down the hall. Waves of emotion battered him. First came lust, seeking to tantalize him, then to drain him, but he had known love and could not mistake one for the other. Ambition: but Marric was rightfully the emperor. He sought only to gain what was his. Rage followed, but his thirst for blood seemed to have fallen into the pit in his place. Grief followed, and it hit him hard. He had had no time to mourn Stephana's death. He slackened his pace. Tears he had thought himself unable to shed poured from his eyes. Uncertainty followed grief: his father's misgivings, the priest's concern, Alexa falling into the grip of dark magic. Who was Marric to think that he could prevail, or use the power in his blood without being corrupted by it? Hubris. Hadn't he felt like a god this evening in the Hippodrome? Look what it had cost him. Far better for someone like him to give up and mourn. That way he could do no harm. There was no hope.

No.

Marric would not let his grief destroy him. Stephana would not approve. And despair—the absence of hope—could not be trusted. If a slave, beaten, naked, and dying, could be restored to life and acclaimed as the ruler of Byzantium, there was always hope.

And if he had not summoned whatever magic he could to burn, to rend, to torment after Stephana had died in pain, then he would not.

The despair Irene sent back at him washed through him. Then it ebbed, a catharsis that reassured even as it purified. He would survive all the stronger for his doubts and errors. He reached the end of the hall, and turned to the people who watched him.

"Accept and master anything you feel," he called to them. "Just keep moving."

As Marric's companions crossed, the hall erupted into mass hallucinations. Its dark walls spurted imaginary Greek fire. Huns with arrows on their bowstrings galloped from side to side. Three pirates with scimitars tore a shrieking girl from her grandfather, then despatched him with one blow. The roughly paved floor seemed awash in blood. But the fire did not sizzle flesh, the child screamed soundlessly, and the arrows never whizzed out to pierce flesh.

Now Nicephorus extended his hands and summoned a pale golden light that wrapped about him and sent out tendrils to the others.

Do not run!

Marric wanted to shout it. If they panicked, they would slip in the imaginary blood; the arrows and flames would turn real and consume them. Already the fire licked nearer. Nicephorus was weakening from his efforts to protect their party.

Marric took a deep breath, attempting to visualize energy flowing from himself to the scholar. He concentrated on an image of Nicephorus standing firm, arms outstretched to protect his friends. With a glad cry, as if she woke from a nightmare, Daphne freed herself from the barrage in the hall. She walked up to the pirates as they tore the child from the old man again.

"That was years ago," she said. "I have done my grieving. Now I am free. I will pass here." She walked through the illusion and came to stand beside Marric. Taking his hand, she helped him aid Nicephorus as he guided Marcellinus and the soldier through the hallucinations. As they neared, the task became easier. Then the floor seemed suddenly to drop away, as the men relived how their comrade had clutched his throat and fallen into nothingness.

"Steady," Nicephorus murmured. Strength flowed out of Marric into him as Nico tensed for one last effort. Leading the others, he stepped out over the pit that seemed to yawn beneath his feet.

Marric demanded silently that he see paving stones there again instead of emptiness. Gradually the stones solidified. And they were across. Nicephorus slumped against the wall.

"I am sorry, Nico, that there is no time for you to rest," Marric said. "Daphne, help him along. Caius, the gates."

Ahead lay another corridor and a flight of stairs. Thea flung her arm about Nicephorus' waist and started toward it. Marric looked at the stairs. The instincts that had saved him tonight told him that they were clear, that all the killer illusions, all the traps lay behind them, not before them.

"I would prefer a human foe," said Marcellinus. "I shall rejoin my regiment at the gates."

"No killing!" Marric ordered. "Not unless you have no other choice." They were coming into the central parts of the palace now. The cut stone of the foundations was overlaid now by marble and travertine. Soon they would approach the royal suites. "Get moving," Marric ordered the commander.

"I'll send you reinforcements, my prince."

Marcellinus saluted, then left quickly. Now they hastened past an arcade that opened onto a garden. The east began to glow. After the stink of the underground ways, the air was very sweet. Overhead hovered the giant hawk. As the rising sun struck it, the hawk shimmered and altered shape. Now it was a phoenix, symbol of rebirth and a new age.

Now the doors through which they passed were silver. Lamps hung from jeweled chains, and the floors they crossed were gem-bright mosaics or Parian marble. Marric knew these halls well. He had spent his childhood in them. Near the shrine on the left, closer to the throne room down the hall—as a boy, Marric had particularly liked it because of its mechanical lions—was the suite his parents had shared. At least his father had never brought Irene to these rooms: her quarters, which were even more lavish, lay farther on. They were nearing them.

Slaves stationed nearby fled as the small company approached and they recognized Marric. They came to the door of Irene's suite. A soldier flung the door open, and Marric walked past him into the audience chamber.

The silver doors were balanced so delicately that Daphne could shut them, and did, before Marric had time to think of barring her entrance. This was no place for the child.

In arrogant declaration of Irene's usurped title, she had had the walls of her presence chamber newly faced with porphyry. It glowed crimson in the light of a tarnished polycandelon. On a massive table lay implements—a curiously shaped knife, its hilt wound with black and scarlet cords, candles wrought in forms Marric refused to do more than glance at, a goblet, and several books bound in yellowing ivory and old leather. He hoped it was simply leather. Behind him Nicephorus hissed in distaste and made warding off gestures.

Turning from that sinister table, Marric faced the woman who sat in an immense porphyry throne cushioned with scarlet. As he had seen her the night men had dragged him from his dungeon, Irene was garbed with imperial splendor. She wore an unbelted silk robe. Her long, lustrous hair hung down her back like a lavish cloak. On it rested the imperial crown, a gemmed circlet with fillets hanging from it. Marric longed to seize it off that unworthy head.

Irene's face was very pale. She sat immobile, as if the force of her tremendous will alone held some terrible shock in check. If she was countering the backlash of her deflected necromancies, she concealed her struggle superbly. Her eyes, black and far too bright, gazed out vacantly like an icon of a fallen goddess. Only her hands moved. They twisted a ruined collar of rubies and gold. The last time Marric had been in the same room as Irene, she had lashed him across the face with it.

Her immobility stripped the moment of anger or of triumph. Marric stopped at a distance from her.

"Irene."

Gradually awareness returned to the usurper's dark eyes. She withdrew from the trance she had entered to block their passage through the underground ways. She had been very beautiful once, Marric remembered. Now her olive skin was ashen, the full red mouth too dark, too bitter, and twisted from her night's failures.

"So you have come for revenge. Emperor, you call yourself." Her voice was pure vitriol. "And don't you just look it."

Marric's silken garments were marked with sweat and blood, and with grime from the passages. His cloak too was bloodstained and scorched by the fires through which he had run.

"Not for vengeance," he said, remembering Audun Bear-master. "I come for law."

Marric stood straight, almost at attention. When he had last been in this room, men had forced him to his knees before Irene. She had stood so close to him that he could smell the musk of her perfumes. As she had intended, he had trembled in hateful, involuntary response. Now as he looked at her, he felt nothing. He had passed through bloodshed, heartbreak, flame, and even triumph. Now remained only what must be done.

He was emperor. He must pronounce judgment.

"So righteous, are you not, with the blood on your hands?" Irene taunted him. "Or do you think that simply because you're a competent general, you can hold onto the empire? That takes more than strength of arms. Its enemies—"

"Your enemies." Marric cut through her words. "My father—whose memory you betray—held our neighbors in check. You outraged them and turned allies into enemies. You cannot hold what you stole, Irene. Give it up!"

"Before you snatch it from me? The empire needs far more than armies. It needs magic, which I possess. Test my strength, Marric. Come here and take the crown from me. If you dare."

Marric took a step forward, then paused. Irene looked drained of power. But it might be an act to make him approach her, touch her, and be blasted by the fires she could summon. He had diverted death by fire or falling in the arena, death by treachery or open attack tonight, and then run a magical barrage.

And I am no priest, he thought.

"Take off the crown," he ordered.

Irene laughed.

"Stand up!" ordered the armsman who had come with Marric, angered at hearing her defy his lord.

"No!" Marric shouted. "Don't touch her. She is dangerous, and once she was my father's consort."

Defying both men, Irene rose and came toward them. Worn and defeated she might be, but her body still possessed a sinuous grace she could use as a weapon.

"I should have an axe," she taunted Marric. "Or perhaps I could merely open my robe and lay claims of parentage upon you like some vulgar Clytemnestra. But I think it as well that you remain the only actor in the family. Such cheap theatrics, playing Apollo before the screaming mob. Will you shed my blood now? Beware, lest I summon furies of my own to strike you down!"

"You are not Clytemnestra. And I am not Orestes," said Marric. "Take off the crown."

"And then what? There is a mob outside. Of your rousing, no doubt. Will you give me to them?"

In a way Irene would accept that, would welcome a savage death as a sign of his failure to control himself. There were punishments for lack of control. He had felt them. If he failed now, he would pay later.

"Always destruction," he answered. "That is your way. The Varangians who might have held loyal to you and the crown you still wear are imprisoned by your orders. Now you have nothing beyond the choices I make for you."

He turned to Nicephorus. "Find physicians. This will not be a murder but an execution. For all the gods' sakes, Irene, you have been a queen. Die like one!"

"As your father died? How did your father die, Prince? Do you know?" Did you contrive his death too?" Marric had often tortured himself with that very question. This is for you too, my father.

Irene seemed to grow in stature. Then, as if the effort were too great, she dwindled. "I never came first with him, not I or my son. There was always the empire, or his love for you and that sister of yours. Even the memory of your dull mother."

Alexander had married her to keep watch on a treacherous minor sept of the imperial line. He had been right. He had paid for his rightness with his life. Then, maddened by her son's death, Irene had become like the tigress who kills a man once and then craves more and more human blood. And at the last, she had sought not love but worship. Her passions had destroyed her as surely as venom had slain his father. And the worship she gained was the terror men accord beings whose ways are incomprehensible, swift, and terrible.

"I killed your wench myself, you know," she said. "That mewling piece of sanctity tried to fight. She lacked the courage to kill."

His Stephana, dying in his arms. For an instant, anger rose in Marric's blood. Irene smiled, white teeth shining.

"That hurt you, didn't it? But you and Alexa murdered my son, didn't you? A life for a life."

Behind them the doors swung open. Nicephorus entered with two palace physicians. They hesitated, not knowing whether to acknowledge Marric or prostrate themselves before Irene. A guard gestured at them with a sheathed dagger.

"Poison," Marric ordered. "See that it is quick acting, and painless," A physician bowed, then started toward Irene's ritual vessels. "Stay clear! Those are hers. You cannot trust them."

"Get me a cup of wine," the man ordered Daphne. As she obeyed, they all stood waiting silently, except Irene.

"Another slave girl, Marric?" she goaded him again. "Whatever do you see in them? And when you could have had me."

"Alexa lives," he said. "As our father and mother intended, we shall rule together and heal this land."