The Shadow of Ararat (46 page)

The boy took it, a heavy wooden thing, with a bent copper handle and bolts. It was almost empty, but he drank from it, heedless of the mud swirling at the bottom. The air leached any moisture from man or beast, making the taste of water an elixir. He put the bucket down. Two figures had appeared in the mouth of a street across the square. Dwyrin turned to face them.

Like the citizens of the city, they were completely covered by long desert robes—though these were pale baize and white. They bore no open weapons, but a sense of menace flowed forward from them like a fog. Dwyrin felt Colonna slide in behind him, and there was a
tink
of sound as the soldier swung his spear up. The desert men stepped out of the street, into the square, and stood aside from the opening. There was a sense of darkness there, filling the street. Dwyrin hissed in surprise.

"What is it?" Colonna whispered. "There's something there?"

Dwyrin raised a hand. There was something in the shadow of the street. Something lame and crippled but filled with bile and a seething, dark power. A hint of the smell of burned flesh reached the two Romans, even across the length of the square.

"Aiii... that doesn't smell good." Colonna shifted his stance, raising the spear into a throwing position. Dwyrin angled his own walking stick downward toward the flagstones of the square. Brittle red-black power trickled among the stones, and there was more in the deep blue-green of the well at his back. Using the staff as a focus, he began teasing the stones to yield to his will. It would not be much, but more than nothing.

The something in the street crept closer, its hate beating against Dwyrin like the heat from a bonfire. More of the desert men appeared. The power in the stones and the air and the water suddenly shifted its pattern, bending toward the mouth of the street like filings to a lodestone. Dwyrin began to sweat. The thing coming along the shadows of the street was very, very, strong. He prepared to let go the fire-spark that had swollen to an incandescent fury in his heart.

"Get ready," he croaked at Colonna. "Cover your eyes and hide behind me."

The rattle of a heavy chain falling, link by link, through a brass housing broke the tense silence in the square. The gate between the towers creaked and began to open. City men in dusky brown robes came out of the dark openings at the base of the towers and dragged the massive wooden doors apart. Dwyrin's eyes twitched back to the opening to the shadowed street. The desert men had faded back and were disappearing at a trot into the other byways opening onto the square. The bitter hatred of the lamed creature receded as well. There was the clatter of hooves on flagstones.

"Mithras bless us!" Colonna breathed, making the sign of the bull. A troop of Roman cavalry in short red cloaks and leather armor cantered into the square through the open gate. They were Eastern troops, with light bows at their backs and long spears set into leather holsters at their feet. The lead officer, a swarthy fellow with a bushy black beard, reined his horse in before the well. Dwyrin looked up at him, face pale and drained. For a moment the fire in his mind threatened to leap out and consume the officer staring down at him with a puzzled look on his face, but then, with an audible groan, the boy swallowed the whirlpool of flame and sagged to his knees in exhaustion.

Colonna grabbed his shoulder as he fell and propped him up. He smiled broadly at the officer and saluted. "Not used to the heat, sir, he'll be right with some more water."

Ahmet sat in the shade of an olive tree, his hat turned upside down in his lap. It was late afternoon on the hillside, and of all of Mohammed's men, only he was still awake. The others, even the guards, were sleeping in the shade under the trees in the grove. The camels and horses were grazing on the low grass between the trees. Even the flies were quiet, only a few buzzing around the Egyptian's head, and they were slow and lazy. He was eating an orange and putting the peels in his hat. From his vantage, he could see down the slope of the low hill to the gates of the great city. A pall of dust and smoke shrouded the road from the south. Ahmet finished peeling the fruit and popped a section into his mouth. Strong white teeth bit down and he savored the taste.

A river, broad and swift, lay between the hills and the walls of Damascus. Drovers on the road the previous day had named it the Baradas. Twin bridges, long wooden spans on great pilings of gray stone, arched over it, carrying the elevated road to the gates. A great bastion of towers and gates met the bridge there and gave entrance to the teeming streets of the city. Marshlands and water gardens surrounded the city on the southern and eastern sides, channeling all traffic onto the three raised roads that came to the gates from those directions. Ahmet was not impressed. Alexandria was ten times larger than this provincial town.

The road leading to the river remained a confused snarl, as it had been the night before. A constant stream of people was leaking out of the fastness of Damascus, heading south by foot, by camel, by horse, by litter, and by wagon. At the same time, bands of fighting men on horse and afoot were trying to move north. As Ahmet watched, another column of horsemen with brightly pennoned lance tips trotted past the base of the hill, forcing their way down the crowded road. A distant murmur of voices raised in anger drifted on the slow afternoon air. The armies of the Eastern princes were trying to get north of the barrier of the Baradas. Even the noblemen were backed up at the bridge.

Near dusk, the men roused themselves and began gathering wood for a fire. Ahmet stood at the edge of the grove, his hands clasped behind him, looking across the shallow valley toward the lights of the city. Great black and silver clouds of birds rose from the marshes and wheeled away across the sky, hunting for insects before nightfall. With the gloom of twilight creeping across the valley, the Egyptian could see the lights of encampments along the northern and western roads to the city as well. The pale sandstone walls of the old city were joined by new, bustling suburbs of canvas and wood.

Stars had begun to show in the darkening sky over the peaks of the mountains to the west of the city when Mohammed at last returned. He labored up the slope to the olive grove with a heavily laden horse in tow behind him and two bags thrown over his own shoulders.

"Ho, priest!" Mohammed said, wheezing with effort. "Take a poor working man's burden." He swung one of the bags off his shoulder and Ahmet caught it, grunting with effort. It was very heavy. Some of Mohammed's cousins ran up to take the other and the reins of the horse. The merchant straightened up and stretched his back.

"Ah, better, better! It's Shaitan's own pit of torments in there, I'll tell you. The place is a madhouse." Mohammed looked around, counting noses. Satisfied that everyone was present, he shooed his men away and crooked a finger at Ahmet. They walked together, away from the camp, up the slope to the top of the hill. A tumble of stones crowned the summit. Mohammed sat down on a flat rock and began unlacing his sandals. Ahmet sat nearby, his shape muted in the dim light.

"I looked for your friend," the southerner said, kneading his sore foot between powerful fingers. "But there are no Roman legionnaires in the city. There's every other kind of fighting man in the eastern half of the Empire down there, but no Romans. There are Arabs, Syrians, Palmyrenes—a whole host of Palmyrenes—Nabateans, Palestinians, Goths, Turks, Ethiops—but no Roman Imperial troops." Mohammed paused, looking off into the night, toward the bridge over the Baradas.

"If I knew no better, I'd say the city was a mutiny against the Empire waiting to happen, but every man's voice is raised against Chrosoes of Persia. I spoke with everyone I knew from the times I've been here before, and not one of them said that there were any Roman troops in the city. The governor maintains a civil guard, but—and this from my friend Barsames the glassworker—the two cohorts of the Second Triana that had been stationed in the city were withdrawn to Tyre on the coast almost a month ago."

Ahmet shook his head in puzzlement. "I don't understand," he said. "The quartermaster in Alexandria was quite specific that the Third had been sent to Damascus, along with another Legion."

Mohammed shrugged. "No matter, my friend, this man you seek is not here now. These Legions may arrive soon—that is a common rumor in the markets—but until then..."

Ahmet stood, his face filled with confusion. He paced around the cairn of rocks.

"I shall go to the coast then," he said at last. "To Tyre, or wherever the Legions are."

Mohammed turned a little to keep his friend in view. "This fellow, you are certain you must find him? Do you owe him so much?"

"Yes," Ahmet said in a sad voice, "I owe him a great deal. I doubt, no, I am sure that he does not know that I am seeking to find him. But I cannot countenance what was done to him, not and remain an honorable man." Mohammed spread his hands questioningly. Ahmet sighed and sat down, his head in his hands. "Weeks ago now I was a priest-teacher at a school in Upper Egypt. A school devoted to teaching the works and philosophies of Hermes Trismegistus and the other ancient savants. This school is moderately well known, and many rich families send their sons to learn the techniques and practices of the art of sight and power. I was the youngest master of the school, a teacher.

"Then one day a message came from the father temple in Alexandria that we had to answer an Imperial levy—a sorcerer of the third order must be sent to the muster of the Legions. The master of the school chose to send Dwyrin MacDonald, one of my students, to fulfill this obligation. I protested this decision, but Dwyrin was sent anyway."

Mohammed raised an eyebrow; he had guessed bits and pieces of his quiet Egyptian friend's background from the way that he spoke and how he thought, but he had never realized that he had been traveling in the company of a man who commanded the hidden powers. Inwardly he chuckled; he could not have chosen a better companion for the road!

"Did this Dwyrin not want to go? What did he think of it?"

Ahmet snorted in disgust. "I am sure that Dwyrin was elated to be so chosen—but, my friend, Dwyrin is, or was, a sorcerer of the third order in only the most flimsy legal sense. He is not even the best of my students! A boy of sixteen—with talent, yes—but nothing of the discipline of a master. Ah, I should have gone in his stead to begin with."

"You have masters of the art that are sixteen?" Mohammed's voice was confused.

"No!" Ahmet exclaimed in horror. "When the master of the school received the notice of the levy, he bade me take the boy to the hidden temple and initiate him into the mysteries of the third order—but he has not the training for it, not the discipline, not the patience! He has been opened to a world he cannot properly see, or control. He is still a child—a troublesome child—one the master of the school felt it best to be rid of, lest he cause more problems, but that is no excuse to offer him up as a sacrifice to the gods of war. He may already be dead."

Ahmet stared off, into the night, with blank eyes.

Mohammed clapped him gently on his shoulder. "So, you abandoned your position at the school to find him, then? What will you do if you do find him?"

"Take his place, I suppose." Ahmet's voice was low and filled with fatigue. "Join him and teach him what I can if they will not release him from his duty to the state. He was, he is, my student. I am responsible for him, for all his cheerful tricks and irreverence. He had promise, my friend, promise to be a fine young man with a good talent. He could have done many worthy things. I am sick to think of him dead in a field, entrails pecked by crows, because the master of the school found it convenient to dispose of a possible political problem without getting his hands dirty."

Mohammed laughed silently in the darkness.
Was that not the way of the world?

"There is no more difficult path than that of an honorable man," he said in a portentous voice. "Ahmet, tomorrow we will take the caravan into the city and turn the glasswares and pottery over to the warehouse my wife's cousin's brother owns. Then my business will be done for this venture. I think that we should then make inquiries at the citadel to see if the Roman authorities there know the whereabouts of the Third Cyrene. Then you and I, if you will have my companionship on the road, will go and find your student and see about getting your honor back."

Ahmet glanced up. "A fine offer made to a man that you've barely known three weeks. Why would you do such a thing?"

Mohammed sighed, clasping his hands together in front of him. "You are driven by honor and your duty as a teacher. I am not driven by anything. I have a fine wife and a rich family in my home city. I could while my days away, and I have, in reading and philosophy. I have spent my time in the saddle too, raiding the oases and villages of the enemies of my tribe. I could play the merchant on the road, journeying to distant lands and cities, and this too I have done. My heart is hungry, and I have not found the thing to fill it. I am restless, my friend, and I want to understand all of this." He waved a hand to encompass the sky, the grove, the ground beneath their feet.

"I miss the comfort of my wife and our household, but something is still missing. So, I will come with you and see something, at least, that I have not seen before. Perhaps I will find what I am looking for! One never knows where he'll end up, setting out on an unknown road. Truth might lie around the next bend, or over the next hill."

In peaceful days, the markets of Damascus were filled with a raucous throng of thousands coming and going along the narrow, covered ways. Now, with tens of thousands of troops camped around, or in the city, it was worse. It took Ahmet three hours of pushing through congested streets filled with bands of armed men, rickety stalls, and the citizens of the city to reach the broad square surrounded by mighty temples and buildings of the state that marked the center of the ancient town. Once on the square, Ahmet was able to breathe again and walk at a normal pace. He headed for the imposingly porticoed front of the Temple of Zeus, which made itself unmistakable by towering over the entire square and every other building adjoining it.