Queen of Kings (39 page)

Chrysate sculpted the wax into the form of a young girl, her bosom and waist newly curving but her limbs still childlike. She entwined a long black hair into the figure's flesh, twisting the strand about the figure's wrists, and binding them behind the girl's back. She sang as she did this, a wordless incantation in a voice by turns rough and silken.

When the figure and spell were nearly complete, Chrysate pulled a golden pin from her braids and stabbed the doll through the heart. It opened its waxen mouth and gasped. It stretched out its waxen arms and writhed on the floor, pinned like a butterfly.

“
No love but mine
,” Chrysate said in Greek, stroking the figure with her fingertips. “
No heart but mine. No mother, no father, no husband, no lover.”

She caressed the doll, and the figure arched like a cat under her touch.

“None but I will have you,”
Chrysate told the figure.

The witch stabbed it through the heart once more, and the figure curled about the pin, clutching the metal to her breast. Chrysate smiled. Spells such as this one had many purposes, all of them sweet.

 

 

C
leopatra's daughter woke suddenly from dreams of flower-strewn fields. The flowers had been the color of smoke, and the grass like sharp reeds. She'd walked barefoot up a long cliffside path, her eyes on the dark entrance to a cave high above her. On her right, the ocean had crashed against the rock wall, splashing her feet with foam.

The curtains blew in a breeze that came drifting, warm and scented with perfume. There was a pain in Selene's heart, and she lifted her fingers to touch her chest. There was nothing to be felt on the skin, but deep inside her was a hot, searing feeling, as though her heart were being torn in two. The pain faded even as she touched it. A dream, then. Just a dream.

She turned her head, hearing a sound. A chanting close by in Greek.
“No heart but mine.”
The whisper made her skin prickle.

Someone was in her chamber.

She sat up in bed, but even as she did so, she knew she had been mistaken. Her eyes were fully open now, and she could see the corners of her room.

She lay back, strangely uneasy, and gazed at the bouquet on her bedside table, the most glorious flowers she had ever seen. They had never wilted but seemed as fresh as the day she had received them, the first day she met the priestess.

She'd been apprenticing with Chrysate now for weeks, chanting songs of Hecate in the priestess's chambers, and all the time wondering where her parents were, what Chrysate had done with them. Her escape into Rome after the events at the Circus Maximus had not been successful. By the time the centurion had found her, she was hungry and scared and ready to return to the Palatine. She knew the priestess had captured her parents, knew that Augustus had tried to kill her mother, and yet she could not bring herself to sorrow. Selene, daughter of a queen who'd taken power not so much older than she was now, found herself wanting to turn back into a child. Chrysate daily took her hand, taught her new language, sat opposite her, peering into her face, smiling.

The flowers turned back into birds as Selene looked at them, and the birds fluttered about her chamber, singing a sweet, lulling song.

She could almost understand the words they sang. Almost.

“It is time,”
she heard.
“Come.”
Then it became a simple melody again, but she was already out of bed, making her way down the corridor in her nightgown. The birds accompanied her, a singing cloud rising toward the arched ceiling of the corridor, then swooping to the floor.

She raised her hand to tap on Chrysate's door and found it already open. There were candles lit, and she could smell the priestess's perfume.

Selene pulled aside the curtains of the priestess's bed and saw only the silken coverlet. She touched the soft impression where her friend's body had been. The place was still warm. She turned back to the table, where the birds were congregating.

There was a silver box on it. Selene recognized it from her home. Isis and Dionysus together, the gods of her parents. She took a step toward the table. Then another.

She ran her fingers across its embossed surface, feeling her parents' faces in the silver. She'd seen Chrysate capture her mother within this box, and her father come from inside it, bowing to Rome. Her parents, she thought, dizzy. She was no one's daughter.

Selene fit her fingernails beneath the lid and began to pry at it.

“Princess,” said an amused voice from behind her.

Selene turned, hiding the box behind her back as quickly as she could.

“I couldn't sleep,” she lied. “They sang to me all night.”

She gestured at the birds, but as she moved her hand, they transformed into flowers again, hundreds of them dropping from the ceiling and onto the carpet. Selene caught a soft pink petal in her hand and crushed it in her fingers. She could smell the scent of roses everywhere now. The petals continued to fall, until they covered her bare feet.

“You should not touch things that belong to others,” the priestess said.

“I only wanted to see it,” said Selene.

“Give it to me,” said Chrysate.

Selene kept it behind her back, holding it tightly in her hand. She could not let go of it, even as she walked toward Chrysate, basking in the glow of the woman, her heart pounding as she came closer to her.

Chrysate's eyes shone with love, like Cleopatra's should have, like Antony's should have, and Selene felt herself pulled. Still, she held the silver box.

“You must undress now for the ceremony,” Chrysate told her, and Selene did so. She undid even the band of linen about her chest, spinning as the priestess took the end of the fabric.

She unclasped the pin that tied her robe about her shoulder, and was left naked.

Her parents should have protected her from all of this, she thought with some deep part of her mind, and yet here she stood with the box that contained them in her hand. She could throw it into the fire. They could die. They were supposed to be dead already.

She thought of her mother, spinning in the arena, on fire. She thought of her father, wavering, half visible, calling her mother's name.

Somewhere the birds were singing, and if there was a strange pain in Selene's heart, a tearing feeling, a piercing feeling, she could forget that and inhale the incense that burned and the perfume that Chrysate was anointing her with. She could smell the flowers, and something darker. The petals reached up to her thighs now, drifting softly around her.

They burned slightly on her skin, but she was grateful for that as well. She felt as though she might sink beneath them. Chrysate removed her opal ring, and placed it on Selene's left hand. It flashed a thousand colors, shining in the lamplight.

The knife the priestess brought from her robes shone as well, a lovely thing, tooled metal with a handle in the shape of a hound. The blade was long and very sharp, and Selene appreciated that as she gazed upon it.

It was a perfect thing.

A
t long last, Antony and Cleopatra came to a crossroad, where the path divided between the domains of the blessed dead of Elysium and the screaming laborers of Tartarus. At the crossroads, there stood an iron tower rising as high as the sky. Cleopatra looked to her husband.

“Are you certain?” he asked.

“We are here,” she said.

“Yes. Ready yourself.” He hesitated for a moment before putting his hand on the door and opening it.

Then, the only sound in the world was the sound of a creature unspeakably enormous, hissing and spitting in the darkness.

“We must not stop here!” yelled Antony, grabbing her by the hand, nearly snatching her off her feet, but the creature had already sensed them. Cleopatra felt something pass behind her ankles, and suddenly she knew. It was all around them. Antony drew his sword.

“Run when I tell you to run. The door to the throne room is on the other side of this.”

She could hear its coils rattling across the stone, endless looping lengths.

“A serpent,” she whispered.

“No longer,” said Antony. “A shade.”

It whipped toward her face and Antony shouted and slashed at it, but his sword went through its body. All Cleopatra could see were eyes, hundreds of them, glittering in the dark.

“Cut off one head, and two grow in its place,” she murmured. “The Hydra.”

“It has died a thousand times,” said Antony. “Each time one of its heads was cut off, it went to Hades. Now all of its dead selves are here, guarding the doorway to the gods. Only one of the heads is immortal, still living.”

He lashed out, slicing at another striking head. Cleopatra readied herself to run, but then something changed.

The monster was no serpent.

“Stop!” Cleopatra screamed.

It was Selene's face, appearing out of the dark, her eyes shining, her cheeks rosy. Her child.

Cleopatra took a step forward, and as she did so, Antony's sword slashed forward across Selene's face, leaving a long wound.

Cleopatra tore Antony's sword from his hands and, in moments, had him on his knees.

“How dare you—”

Selene's mouth opened, wide and shocked, and Cleopatra reached for her.

Selene hissed.

Antony looked up at her, his eyes sad. His skin was nearly transparent now. She could see the wall through his heart.

“We have to go through the beast,” Antony said, and stood, reaching out his hand for his sword. Cleopatra found that she could not let go of it.

Hissing and spitting came from the dark behind her. Cleopatra's head spun to the side to track the Hydra's location, and when she turned back again, there were two Antonys.

“Don't trust him,” Antony said.

“No,” Antony said. “Don't trust
him
.”

She still held the sword. The coils of the Hydra slipped past her calves. The invisible areas behind the serpent sparked with intelligence, with evil, and she heard the shifting of the monster's bones. Her two husbands looked pleadingly at her. One of them stood.

“Follow me,” he said, but she would not. “You know me. I am yours.”

“What are the words?” she asked, her voice scarcely loud enough to be heard. She took a step toward him. He was her husband, surely. His face filled with love for her.

“Te teneo,”
said the other Antony.

The false Antony before her hissed, darting forward, venom dripping from his jaws, his mouth open for Antony's throat. Cleopatra lunged forward and threw herself upon the serpent. A scalding drop of something landed on her arm, and she gasped at the sensation, a blistering fire that did not go out but spread, and lit her fingers like torches.

She screamed in agony, and her husband grabbed her and pulled her from the serpent's clutches, heaving open the door that led to the lords of Hades, a door gilded with dark metal, glowing with moonstones and black diamonds.

Silence closed around them, a sense of tremendous space, as though they had stepped behind a waterfall and into a cavern. Cleopatra put her hand out and felt Antony beside her.

Only then did she open her eyes.

 

 

T
heir thrones were as tall as buildings, and their robes held the night sky in their folds. In the apex of the chamber's ceiling, a crescent moon glowed feebly. Cleopatra looked up, shuddering with the pain of the Hydra's venom.

Persephone's stony features danced with shadows. She was lit with the cold light of a phosphorescent sea, but her lips were those of a young and beautiful girl, and her eyes shone like the oil the Romans had poured over Cleopatra. Stars hung in her long, twisting hair.

Antony pushed Cleopatra forward.

“I bring you a queen of Egypt,” Antony said.

Cleopatra hesitated for a moment, and then bowed her head.

The goddess bent forward, slowly, and scooped Cleopatra and Antony up in her hand.

“We greet you, queen of Egypt,” Persephone said. She moved her fingers so that her husband could view the two small figures on her palm. “We greet you, though you do not belong in this place. You are not living. You are not dead. We have not seen one such as you here before. The way is hard, and it is not a place most choose to enter.”

“And you? Are you not a king?” The Lord of Hades had a face carved in granite. His voice shook the walls of the chamber, and boulders fell from the ceiling and rolled across the floor.

“No,” said Antony. “I am a soldier.” He stopped, stammering. “I
was
a soldier.”

Persephone smiled. In her other hand, she held a piece of gleaming black fruit. She put the fruit to her lips and bit into it. Her teeth were pearl white and shone in the dim light of Hades. The fruit dripped crimson juice.

Cleopatra felt a pang of sudden hunger, the first since she'd arrived in the Underworld.

“Well, soldier. Citizen of Hades. What is it you wish? Do you petition for your release? We cannot send you back to the land of the living with your companion. She no longer dwells there.”

Antony looked at Persephone.

“I offer myself,” he said. “Her soul is tied to an Old God. She cannot die, and she does not live. You may use me however you choose. I was a soldier, and many of my former men dwell here. I would organize an army in Hades. Or send me to Tartarus for your amusement. Do with me what you wish. I only ask that you help her regain her soul.”

Cleopatra was horrified. “He is not an offering,” she cried. “That is not what I want!”