Queen of Kings (38 page)

Cleopatra's sorrow grew at the thought of Caesarion wandering alone through this Roman Underworld. Perhaps this was wrong, she thought with a flash of hopefulness. Perhaps he was in the Duat. He had died in Egypt. His mother was Egyptian. Perhaps it had worked the way it should have. Perhaps his pure heart had been weighed. Perhaps he was in the Beautiful West, safe there.

And so they went from the infants, and through the nameless suicides, through the court of Minos, where innocents executed on the testimony of liars were tried and tried again by juries of their dead fellows.

After days and nights of walking, Cleopatra and Antony passed into the fields of mourning, arranged like beautiful gardens with paths paved in tiny fragments of bone and blooming black roses and myrtle trees. Those who had died of love wandered here, brokenhearted and betrayed still, drowning in tears and inflamed by lust despite the blankness on their faces.

“Is this where you live?” Cleopatra asked Antony, and he shook his head, though his eyes, when she looked into them, seemed to slant away from her.

“We must go farther,” he said.

Cleopatra wondered how long they had been walking through the Underworld, and how long her body had been caged in the silver box above. She wondered what would happen to them when all this was finished. She could think of no happy ending.

He brushed his ghostly fingers over her skin.

“When the dead are called from Hades,” he said, “the living pound their hands on the earth so that we may hear them grieving us. When the dead are called from Hades, the living pour blood into the soil, so that we may drink of life. We thirst. We hunger. We are too far from the living in this place. The longer we stay, the more I fade, and the less I am Antony.”

He brushed his lips over her hand, and she felt a chill.

“You are still Cleopatra,” he said. “Still my wife, but I am of Hades now.”

Cleopatra looked at him, feeling her universe collapsing all over again. The gods of the dead held their citizens tightly. His skin, which had been brown with sun, was paler the longer she looked on him. She could see the trees through his breastplate.

“Then we must leave here together,” she told him. “Hurry. We must travel to the chamber where the gods dwell, is that not what you told me?”

“To Persephone,” he said, and his voice wavered. “We are running out of time.”

Cleopatra took his hand in hers and held it as best she could.

Together they ran through the ghostly battlefields of the improperly buried dead, where some men saluted him and other men cursed him.

Together they ran across roads of bone, and all around them, the world was winter, though in Rome the sun beat down on the city, and outside Rome, the countryside sweltered, the Slaughterer traveling from village to village, from temple to temple, killing and sending endless shades down from the summer and into the snow.

A
grippa and his small band of men rode south to Krimissa and to the temple of Apollo, dedicated in the time of Troy by the warrior Philoctetes. All of Italy was founded on myth, and when Nicolaus had told him the tale of what this place concealed, he'd nodded in recognition. He knew the story. It was part of the living and proud history of Rome, like the hut of Romulus.

Nicolaus was not with Agrippa's group. With a sword, the historian would be a danger to no one but himself. Instead, Agrippa had left him to watch over Augustus, enlisting the seiðkona as well. All that was necessary was that Augustus stay in the residence. The emperor was weakened by the potion he insisted on consuming. It would take little effort, even for a scholar and an ancient, to keep him stationary.

Agrippa held out little hope that anyone could keep Chrysate away from Augustus, but he hoped that Augustus might be tantalized by the historian introduced as a new biographer. The emperor fancied himself a writer of some skill, though he typically wrote only rhymes. Agrippa smiled in spite of himself, thinking of it as they rode around a promontory. He felt better, now that he was out of Rome. He was doing something about the problem. Never mind that he was the only one who was. At least Cleopatra was no longer under Chrysate's control. The room she was jailed in was lined at every seam with silver, and the box she was inside was wrapped in silver chain. Agrippa's most trusted men guarded it.

The Psylli had come to him before he left, and asked to go with him to Krimissa, but even after the battle at the Circus Maximus, he was no Roman soldier. Usem could not possibly be as well trained as Agrippa's own men, and he did not seem likely to follow orders. Agrippa had left him, instead, guarding the silver room. If Chrysate tried to use magic, Usem would know it.

At last, the temple was in view, and Agrippa's smile faded.

From below, the building shone in the late-afternoon sun, placed at the top of a spiraling cliff and nearly inaccessible by road. Agrippa looked up at it, nervous.

It was what he wanted, though, he could not deny that. He'd prayed for a solution, and the historian had given it to him.

Agrippa directed his company to wait for nightfall, and when it was fully dark, they rode hooded up the hillside, approaching the temple from the rear. The horses had to place their muffled hooves carefully, and a journey that under better conditions should have taken but a few minutes took well over an hour. The darkness was well used, however. Agrippa did not wish the temple's inhabitants to have advance warning of the soldiers' approach.

He hoped to do things peacefully, but he did not expect this would be the case.

The temple guarded a prize, or so Nicolaus swore. Weapons that would kill an immortal, that would fight against magic. They would be fatal to Cleopatra as well as to Chrysate. Chaos to fight chaos.

Agrippa adjusted his armor and ran his hand over his shaven head, smoothing nonexistent hairs. The horses crept onward up the hillside path, and the warriors of Rome sat tall in their saddles, the shine of their armor covered by dark cloaks. This was by no means the worst thing they had done in service to their leader.

Agrippa signaled, and his men dismounted to approach the gate. They ran their fingers across the stone wall, feeling for cracks in the mortar. One legionary began to climb, fitting his fingers into the stone.

A hoof slipped on a rock, and a ringing note sounded in the silence. Agrippa froze, directing his men to draw their blades.

After a few moments, a man opened the door slowly. This priest was not a problem, a crippled ancient with clouded blue eyes, but he was flanked by a younger companion, a dark-skinned man with a piercing gaze.

“I am Marcus Agrippa, and these are my men,” Agrippa announced. “We travel on behalf of the emperor.” They did not, of course. The emperor was in no condition to know anything about this journey.

“Greetings,” the younger priest said. “We've been watching you come up the hill since sunset. You do not travel as discreetly as you imagine.”

Agrippa straightened his shoulders. He was not as skilled as he had once been, or these priests were privileged with unearthly information.

“Your emperor calls on you,” Agrippa informed him. “He asks that you provide him a service.”

“We are simple men,” the priest replied. “We can set you a table with what little food and drink we possess. You are welcome to bed here.”

“It is not food and drink we require,” Agrippa said. “It is not sleep.”

The man looked steadily at him, a half smile on his face.

Agrippa began to wonder if he would need to kill him before entering the temple. He had no way of knowing how many were behind the walls, however. Such a killing might be less than advisable. He also had no idea of the whereabouts of the item he sought. It would be an unfortunate errand should all the priests become indisposed, leaving their treasure still hidden.

“No,” the man said at last. “Warriors of Rome, I see that you call for more than a meal. I see that you call for the impossible. Is that not what your emperor does? He plays with fire, does he not?” The expression on the priest's face was unreadable. Was he mocking the empire?

Agrippa was uncertain, but at last the priest opened the gate of the temple and beckoned them in.

“Welcome to our fire, then, meager though it be. Sheathe your swords. This is a sacred place, and there is no use for them here.”

Agrippa glanced up reflexively as he passed through the gates, and saw the arrows nudging out of windows and cracks in the rock. Bows aimed at him and his men. It was good that he hadn't acted in haste. They guarded their treasure. Agrippa felt oddly cheered.

He noted the muscles rippling in the arms of even the stable boy. He assessed the elder priest who'd first opened the gate and decided that perhaps the man was not as decrepit as he had initially appeared. The priest's walking stick seemed to conceal a blade, and the hunched posture he'd affected when opening the gate had evolved into a loose-limbed stride.

Agrippa pretended that he neither saw nor minded the villains aiming at him. He signaled silently to his men, and they rode into the temple grounds quiet, calm, and in absolute peace. They would act when Agrippa directed them and no sooner. These men were seasoned warriors, and they trusted their commander.

A marble statue of the warrior Philoctetes, grimacing in pain, the bow of Hercules in his hands, stretched over the entrance to the temple. The statue's leg was wrapped in bandages, and his wounded foot was raised off the ground. There was an inscription, which stoked Agrippa's heart into a secret, joyful fire.

Another statue was placed just inside the doorway, this one depicting the tremendous centaur Chiron, pierced in the leg with an arrow, his agonized face lifelike enough to startle the men as they passed by it in the near darkness. The centaur's blue glass eyes dripped marble tears as he tried to pull the arrow from his body. Agrippa shuddered as he passed beside it, feeling the unpleasant cool of the statue brushing against his bare arm.

The priests led the soldiers down a tight passageway and out into an inner courtyard where a table was already laid.

Agrippa smiled. His adversaries were charming. They seated themselves and beckoned for the small group of soldiers to join them. They took the first bites of the food, knowing that the soldiers would suspect poison.

Agrippa ate heartily. It was rare to be away from his commander. He found that he preferred it. Augustus had altered tremendously in the past months, and Agrippa mistrusted his friend's instincts. The food here was simple but good, and it reminded him of better days. He sat back from the table when he had taken his fill.

“You will give us what we came for,” he said, and moved his hand to signal his soldiers. He heard the sound of arrows being fitted, of bowstrings being drawn.

He then heard the rushing noise of an arrow flying. It embedded itself in the table, directly before his plate. It had not been shot to kill but to warn.

“Why should we surrender our holding to you?” the elder priest asked. His eyes were no longer clouded but bright.

“And why should I not kill you?” Agrippa asked the priest, pulling a concealed dagger from its sheathe against his thigh and swiftly drawing it beneath the old man's chin, not to cut his throat but to warn the other priests. Why did Agrippa's men not move? What delayed their hands?

A thin trickle of blood made its way down from the blade. A scratch.

It was then that Agrippa felt his own throat begin to constrict.

 

 

O
utside the temple walls, three men in homespun cloaks watched the gate. The smallest of the three fit his gloved fingers into the spaces in the stone. He hauled himself carefully up the wall, his muscles wobbling with exertion.

His companions, a younger man with ink-stained fingers and saddleweary thighs after three days' hard riding from Rome, and a tall man, his dark skin nearly invisible in the shadows, hesitated for a moment and then, breathing deeply, followed the emperor into the temple.

C
hrysate crouched on her haunches, nursing a flame and pinching a lump of beeswax in her fingers. Now that Augustus was finally gone, she was at liberty to cast the final portions of her love spell. Selene would relent. She'd already cast the rudiments, with the birds and flowers who sang for the child a nonstop melody, a trance-inducing chant, but Selene had managed to resist most of them. She would not resist this, and now that Chrysate had renewed herself, she was strong enough to perform it. She shuddered. It was exceedingly unpleasant that Augustus had seen her coming out of the cauldron, but she'd dealt with that well enough, throwing herself through the shadows and into his bedchamber, concealing herself there. The theriac had made the emperor uncertain. She'd merely emphasized it, and it had yielded a happy outcome. Augustus had left Rome shortly thereafter, no doubt because of his concern over his sanity.

Already tonight, Chrysate had slipped into the silver room, past the guards. The Psylli had been the only true barrier. Had he been guarding the room, she might have had more trouble, but he'd departed with Augustus. Now she had the silver box containing Cleopatra. She felt more confident by the moment. Why had she been so afraid? All she needed was Selene. It would work. It had to. For a moment, only a moment, but it was enough, she'd been able to see Hecate in the scry, chained still but stronger than she had been.