Alexandria (55 page)

Sprays of flowers line the corridor, with hand-made trinkets and effigies and arrangements of votives, melted down to hardened puddles of wax on the floor. A spry little housemaid curtsies past the armed sentries and leaves her small offering at the King’s chamber, a scented wreath that she pins to the middle of the ornate wooden door. She lingers for a moment, hoping to feel some wisp of his great presence as he communes with the forces of the Beyond.

He has not left his chamber in days. He lies in trance-like repose, overseeing from vast distances the safety of his men in the field and beseeching a higher authority to shine a favorsome light upon their victory—or so his followers have been told. None would know with certainty, for they have not seen him since the Sons of the Temple left on their journey to some faraway city days ago.

In truth, he sits quietly before the fire. Scattered about him are the accumulated treasures of his ventures—decayed mementos from a bygone era, frail writings he has perused a thousand times.

He beseeches nothing.

Offers no cosmic protections.

Lingering doubt makes ravenous consumption of his mind. To stand is agony. To eat is torture. Lustful vulgarities offer no pleasure. To live as a man is anguish, and he wonders how any of the others tolerate it. He tries to imagine the glory he will feel standing atop a mountain of ancient ways, when the lore of Alexandria is brought back to the Temple and bestowed upon him—yet some mental pestilence still worms its way through his brain. He settles back, with his relics spread across his lap, and watches the flames lick the edges of his sandstone mantle, wondering if perhaps he has made a horrific mistake.

A scuffling in the corridor rouses him ever so slightly. A woman’s voice calls to him through the door.

Ezbeth.

She argues with the sentries, and more voices join the fray. Dread seizes his heart, fearing that they’ve realized his shortcomings and come at last to lock him away in the pit of his own devising.

A single knock clicks off the redwood door and a struggle ensues.

Arana steps numbly to the door and opens it.

“There you are
,” she seethes. She is in the grips of the sentries, her loose gown hanging amiss from her bony old figure.

A bevy of onlookers stands gathered on both sides, taking shy steps backwards as their King moves into the corridor. The sentries offer quick apologies and Arana waves them away and squares himself against Ezbeth.

“What do you want?”

“We have come to ask that you release them.”

Arana settles on the small alliance and they wilt under his gaze. Old Karus is in the back, darting his eyes to the ground, with several housemaids, tears welling up, and two of his own warriors. Eriem bites his lip and swallows hard.

“She set you to this?” he asks them. “You follow
her
now?”

They offer no reply.

“They agree with me,” says Ezbeth.

Their sadness bites at him, and for a fleeting moment he nearly concedes. He longs to put everything back just the way it was and continue on as before, happily loved and cherished. Ten dissenters, he counts, and wonders how many more are afraid to show their faces. Strangely, his love for them has not faltered—even now he is staggered by the purity of it. Whether they requite or not has become irrelevant in these late days, and if fear should be mingled with their love’s return, then the needful sacrifice must be paid. It is the cost of tranquility.

“What you’ve done is cruel. They don’t deserve this. Please. Release them.”

“No,” he says by rote.

“Your father would be ashamed of you.”

Arana cinches up the loose folds of her gown and thrusts her back against the stone wall, hard enough to bruise the hard bone of her skull.

“My father’s whore
,” he breathes into her ear.
“That’s all you ever were. You have no right.”

“Arana—”

He presses his thumbs into the hard ribbing of her throat and her eyes flutter wide open, hazel and bloodshot, with the faintest specks of cerulean blue around the irises.

Infinite shame befalls Karus as he watches and does nothing.

“If you love them,” he tells her, “if your loyalty is with them, and not the Temple, then you can die with them.”

He releases her and she keels to the ground, grasping her throat. He motions to the sentries and they brace her up gently and take her away.

“My offer stands,” he tells her brittle alliance. “Would anyone else like to join her?”

Karus hobbles back and the housemaids turn and scurry down the hall.

One steps forward.

“I’ll go,” says Eriem.

“Here,” says Hargrove, “let me hand it up to you.”

Jack reaches down, grabs the scope, and lays it gently off to the side, then offers his hand back to Hargrove. He grips it and pulls himself onto the rock ledge, his hands shaking slightly.

“Getting old,” he says.

Sajiress and Denit have already moved ahead, perching on a thin trail that leads to the top of the rise. Jack slings the case over his shoulder and claws his way up the densely grown path, Hargrove following after, taking his time and picking footholds carefully. When the grade flattens, they crawl prone on the ground through the bushes and weeds, looking for a clearing.

“Ellah
,” says Sajiress, flagging down the others.

They shimmy over to the alcove he’s found and nestle in beside him. The rear corner of the Temple juts out from the low hill where the amphitheatre lay, still hazy in the morning fog.

Hargrove’s eyes light up, lost in the bizarre beauty of it. He sees his brother in every line and detail.

“All right,” he sighs, “let’s see what we got here.”

He takes the case from Jack and unscrews the end cap and withdraws his telescope. Denit makes a canopy of low-hanging branches to shield the reflection, then Hargrove hunches down and lines up his sight. Through the circular lens, he sees simple folk muddling about the grounds, coming and going through the Temple’s broad door. He scans past the edge of the reflecting pool, off toward the ruins, and narrows on the line of warriors guarding the perimeter.

“Here,” he says, and passes it off to Sajiress, then draws from his jacket the folded map that Jack drew. He compares the map’s features to the landscape surrounding them and finds it accurate. “Arana lives at the top?”

“Yeah, up there.”

“That’s the chimney you used?”

“The one on the corner. You can’t see it from here.”

“Ah. They’ll have it blocked off by now, anyway, if they’re smart.” Hargrove drums his fingers and traces his eyes across the crooks and lines, deep in study, jotting down notes and symbols on the map. “Is there a quick way to get down into that valley?”

“Have to hike the hill behind those homes over there.”

“Mmm. Not much cover.”

“It’ll be easier at night,” says Denit.

“Yeah, I think so. We’ll set up down there, down in the rubble of that old town. You remember what we talked about, Jack?”

“Yes.”

“We can draw them out, and we can get you in, to a certain point… and then it’s up to you. You’re the only one that knows his way around in there.”

Jack nods. He looks down at his hands and finds them trembling.

“We’ll go at sundown,” Hargrove says finally. “Let’s get ready.”

They hike down the small hill and head back to their camp. Denit and Hargrove break off with the men from the outpost and begin dividing up the black powder from Denit’s saddlebag into polite little mounds on the surface of a flat rock. Jack sits on the ground with Sajiress, circled around by the fighters from his tribe, and he proceeds to lay out the plan in miniature using found objects and lines drawn in the dirt, looking like they’re playing out some minor children’s game for amusement. One of the tribesmen mechanically strops his blade against a stretch of leather, diligently watching the little game of chance take shape. Jack moves their tiny rocks with cold deliberation, his heart pounding.

Sajiress takes in the crude depiction of their strategy, then looks at Jack and points to his head.
“Eyah.”

In Jack’s mind he sees spirit eyes, and he scolds himself for ever cowering in their presence. He has known the truth throughout, only lost sight of it for a time. These are not supernatural wraiths he will face, manifesting from thin air—they are mortal men who bleed and die when shot through the heart. Jack has known this since the age of twelve.

The tribesman places the freshly sharpened blade in his hand, the one Lia had given them, and he rises and moves down to the water’s edge. Sajiress and several of his men follow suit. They stand in a line looking out at the peaceful bay. Jack scoops his hand down into the water and splashes it on his head, then works his fingers through his wet brown hair and begins to saw off great clumps of it with the knife. When the length of it is trimmed, he drags the blade across his scalp and pares off the stubble, then turns to Sajiress and hands the knife to him. Sajiress kneels over and studies his shadow on the ground. His head is so abundant with hair that he hardly knows where to begin.

Lia gallops alongside Marikez, a long metal-tipped spear braced against her saddle. She looks longingly at the river, remembering the times she spent there as a child, when her family and close neighbors would journey away from the village and camp out under the stars.

“Are you okay?” asks Marikez.

“I’m fine. Just thinking. My old home is near here.”

“The home you lost?”

“It’s just over that hill, in the forest.”

Marikez looks to the west, where the redwood forest looms nobly, rising out of the foothills like a drove of aging sentinels.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“You miss it?”

“Every day.”

“I can’t imagine…”

“I hope you never have to.”

“It will happen. We’ll lose our home someday, too. Though for different reasons.”

“Why?”

“Our river is dying. Without good trade, we wouldn’t eat. We have two more good decades, maybe three. Probably we should have moved long ago, but we have very old roots there. My mother, Maya, she was a good woman, but stubborn. Refused to give it up, even the years when our water ran dry.”

“Where will you go?”

“This valley doesn’t seem such a bad place. Maybe here. I don’t know, really. It’s up to our people.”

They trek through the lonely cities along the bank, where flocks of birds use the tilting gridiron as enormous aviaries, their squawks and chirps echoing through the hollow of the boulevard upon which they ride. Marikez turns his attention to a strong-looking woman named Rosa, planning out their next stop. Lia rides forward and takes the lead. The wind whips braids of hair across her face as her horse beats the path ahead.

The trail slips away from the river and cuts left, through a cavernous runway of sinking skyscrapers. She looks back at the resilient people who’ve joined her cause, feeling a heavy responsibility for each of their lives.

Ahead, a metal framework lay sprawled across the roadway like the fossilized spine of some prehistoric leviathan. They slow their progress and start single file up the easiest path over the blockage. As Lia’s horse minces down the other side, a scream rings out behind her.

She canters ahead and turns her horse, and back across the fallen wreckage one of Marikez’s men slips off his mount with an arrow in his chest. Marikez and Rosa bound off the rubble next to her, then wheel around to see the rest of their caravan bunching up at the mouth of the slender passage.

“Take cover
,” shouts Marikez.

More arrows zip through the air. One punches into the ground at the feet of Lia’s horse and it rears back frantically and she fights to settle it.

“Over there,” she cries, and bolts across the roadway toward the slanted opening at the foot of a great structure. She ducks beneath the fallen pillars and shelters inside, Marikez and Rosa right behind her. Outside there is another scream and the commotion stops suddenly. Marikez drops off his horse and creeps toward the opening, then risks a look back toward his riders. Three lay dead a ways down the road and the others are absent from view. He draws his bow and trains it along the black window openings, waiting for motion or a sign from their attackers. The horses snort and shuffle into a corner, seeking a way out.