The Shadow of Ararat (91 page)

Heraclius' knights, screaming their battle cry, plowed into the running infantry. Galen closed his eyes for a moment, but the din filled his ears even so. A great wailing rose up. It was enough. He spurred his horse forward.

"All Legions, advance at a walk!"

The Western Legions surged forward, closing the trap.

"Lord of Corruption, I commit my soul to your keeping..."

Baraz shook his head. The Immortals had collapsed into a broad arc around his position at the eastern end of the plain. Scattered bands of Persians—horsemen, archers, spearmen—accreted to his banner like salt around a string suspended in brine. The rest of the field was a disaster. Tens of thousands of Persians lay dead and many more staggered south, heading for the chaos of the road, their formations scattered and broken. He could not make out Rhazames' banner in the middle of the field, and he was sure that Gundarnasp and all of the entire left wing of the army had been destroyed.

Now the Romans were redressing their lines. From where he sat upon his horse, he could not tell if any of the Roman cohorts had been destroyed. Soon they would march against him. Baraz beckoned his officers to him.

"This day is done. Send the men on foot ahead. Then the horse. The road south will be a charnel house. We will strike due east, through the woods to the shore of the sea and then south, back to Persian lands."

Baraz stared out over the field, his mind ignoring the windrows of dead, the wandering, riderless horses. The Roman army crouched in the middle of the field, a scaled and plated creature with myriad sharp spines. He shook his head, wishing for a fleeting moment that the King of Kings had not seized so greedily upon Dahak's power. If he had come to this field by horse, the advance of the Persian army would have been delayed into the spring, giving him time to flog the inexperienced men into some kind of army.

No matter,
he thought.
Chrosoes has made his throw of the dice and lost. Now if only I can escape this debacle with my own head intact!

He did laugh then, for the game of wits and skill that he embarked upon pleased him. The Immortals near him shuddered—the sound of such gay laughter in this place was madness.

Maxian and his followers entered the buried city by a hidden path. The Walach, at the bidding of Gaius Julius, had found a trail made by goats and sheep that entered the city from the north, winding its way through fallen palaces and ruined temples. The old Roman had been more than usually smug, noting that even wizards had to eat sometime. Maxian took his time, walking slowly, most of his mind submerged in the hidden world. Strange patterns and geometries filled the spaces between the buildings and even the sky above the city. The dead man had been right to counsel stealth.

The stock trail crossed a cracked mosaic floor, exposed to the sky by the collapse of the building that had once housed it. The Prince walked for a space on clouds and a brilliant blue sky filled with wondrous birds. Two of the Walach boys preceded him, sinking low to the ground, sniffing and smelling everything that they encountered.

Krista shadowed the Prince at his right shoulder. The homunculus followed, carrying the unconscious body of the Persian magician. Abdmachus had been a long time in yielding up the secrets of the ziggurat. Gaius Julius had emerged from the body of the engine with a sour, drained expression on his face and a carefully drawn map in hand. Khiron, though his chest and arms were covered with a network of fresh scratches and bruises, was unmoved. Alais had fairly glowed, her hair thicker and richer in texture, almost the color of molten gold. Krista wondered if the Prince had noticed.

The lush blonde and the rest of the Walach followed behind the homunculus, as quiet as fallen leaves. Krista moved as quietly as she was able, but anger simmered in the back of her mind at the effortless skill the barbarians exhibited. She felt heavy, weighed down by a light shirt of chainmail links that she wore strapped around her torso under the dark colors she had lately favored. The Prince seemed to move with the same grace now, though he had never shown an aptitude before. She stole a glance over her shoulder at Alais.

The Walach woman was watching the Prince with ill-disguised avarice. Despite the threat of imminent violence, Alais had chosen to dress herself in a tight-fitting leather top that revealed just enough of her figure to excite the imagination, silk leggings, high leather boots, and the heavy dark cloak. Krista sneered inside, ignoring the fact that she had worn similar outfits herself, though in slightly more fitting circumstances.

This isn't a summer party on the Seven Hills,
she thought,
someone will be dead soon... maybe a fat woman with no sense of style.

She missed the Duchess. Anastasia was so skilled with this kind of thing that were she here, the barbarian woman would have already fled in shame. The Roman woman smoothed her sleeves over the hidden shapes of the spring-gun and her knife. She still had some small consolations.

The lead Walach stopped, raising a hand in warning. Silently he pointed to the left, into a dark recess. The stock trail turned away to the right, into a high barrel-vaulted building made of thick courses of stone blocks with bricks laid in between. The smell of sheep and goats tickled the nose. Krista watched the Prince advance carefully and confer with the two Walach boys.

"Soon," Gaius Julius said in her ear, "there will be some blood spilled."

Krista nodded, turning around to keep the old Roman in view. The others had stopped, the Walach squatting, Alais drifting up to the Prince, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Gaius Julius met her eye and winked, his face holding back some suppressed amusement.

Krista's left eyelid flickered in anger and then she made a small smile. "You must be pleased, seeing battle again..."

Gaius Julius grimaced and shook his head.

"No," he said, "I never miss war. I miss the disputation in the Forum. I miss testing my wit and voice against others. This escapade has some intrigue, but little else... I used to say that war was the recourse of the defeated or the barbarian who knew no better. If you had to fight, you had already lost your case, you see?"

The Prince hissed at them and they turned. Maxian gestured toward the dark recess. One of the Walach boys was disappearing down the flight of brick steps hidden within its shadow. Krista nodded but then held back until everyone else had gone ahead. She took one last look around, starting with alarm when a white face appeared at the doorway of the barrel-vaulted building. Then she smiled and nearly laughed aloud.

A puzzled-looking goat stared after her as she turned and descended the stairs.

Krista hurried down the stairs. At last the staircase wound to a stop and a narrow corridor split off from it. She had to bend down to keep from bumping her head against the triangular roof. The Prince had stopped ahead, his face illuminated by a pale-green light. The others were kneeling on the dusty floor.

"Ahead of us," the Prince whispered, "is a wooden door. It is not locked, but there is a pattern on it. Khiron, take our Persian friend forward and use his hand to open the door." The Prince smiled, his green-lit features corpselike in the darkness.

"Beyond that door is a hall. I can smell smoke. We go to the right and head for the center of the chambers. The priests will come to me, or I will go to them. Then we will settle this dispute. Remember, we need to find the Sarcophagus—so take anyone that you find alive!"

He glared at the Walach and Khiron in particular. The homunculus met his eyes with an impassive stare. The Walach boys bobbed their heads in acknowledgment. Alais smiled, her lips softly moist. Krista checked the lacings on her boots and the tightness of the leather harness she wore around her slim waist. Fingers touched each weapon and tool in turn, ensuring that they were still in place. Khiron moved ahead to the door, the body of the Persian held limply in front of him.

There was a clicking sound and the door opened, flooding the dark passage with warm orange light from some hidden fire. Khiron cast the Persian's unconscious body aside and blurred through the opening. The Walach boys bolted into the chamber on its heels. Maxian moved forward but stopped, holding up a hand to prevent Alais and Gaius Julius from entering.

There was a savage howl and sudden screams from beyond the door. Men shouted and there was a clatter of metal and ceramics falling. The Prince, silhouetted in the doorway, raised his hand and thunder spoke, shaking dust loose from the corridor's ceiling.

The caverns under the ziggurat were ancient broad brick-lined passages with triangular ceilings. Maxian stormed forward through them, wrapped in smoke and fire.

Khiron's fingers dug into the dark wood of a door fifteen feet high in a wall of sandstone blocks each bigger than a tall man. Ancient oak splintered and snapped as his fingernails dug into the surface. The Prince stood back, his cloak furled around his shoulders, his eyes dark. The panel groaned as the homunculus put his shoulder and leg into it. Iron bolts quivered and then screeched in agony as they pulled out of the wall. The muscles in the creature's back bunched and strained under his mottled translucent skin.

The bar that held the great door closed creaked. Blood, thick and black, seeped out of the deep holes that the homunculus had gouged in the oak panels.

The bar snapped with a sharp report like an amphora dropped from a great height onto a marble floor. Khiron cried out, an animal shout, and tore the door out of the wall. With a heave, he cast it aside, crashing into a pottery statue of a long-dead king. Blue-white fire blossomed in the doorway and the homunculus staggered back, covered with licking flames and screaming soundlessly.

Maxian's face contorted into a grimace and he flared his hands out from his body, palms facing forward. The blue-white flame snuffed out, a candle plunged into deep water. Khiron collapsed to the ground, a puppet with strings suddenly cut. The Prince clenched his right fist and punched in the air at the door. The remaining panel boomed and then sheared out of the wall, sending fifteen-inch iron pins spinning across the chamber. The Walach boys ducked as the bolts flashed past. The oaken door spun away into the vast room beyond with an echoing roar and smashed into a flight of steps that occupied the far wall.

Krista picked herself up from the brick floor and shook her hair out of her eyes. Kneeling, she hurriedly rewove the braid that had come loose. The Walach boys had loped forward into the great chamber, but Gaius Julius' whistle had brought them back to heel. The Prince stood in the doorway, his arms held away from his body. Alais had moved to place the Prince between her and the room. Krista slid the long water-steel knife out of her forearm sheath for the first time. The metal gleamed in the ruddy light spilling through the doorway.

Flame roared and hissed in the great room, rushing up from two rows of pits along the walls of the chamber. Between each pit, statues of frowning men in long robes rose up to the murky roof. The men on the right-hand side were clean-shaven with high foreheads. The men on the left were scarred and ugly, their faces distorted with rage. The floor between the rows of statues gleamed with polished hexagonal tiles. The shattered door had sprayed wooden splinters and chunks of oaken panel across the space. At the far end, the entire wall was a staircase rising up to some other level, currently unseen.

The three old men who had confronted Gaius Julius on the ziggurat stood on the steps, the hot wind from the fire pits ruffling their beards. A few servants were arrayed at the base of the steps, though the scything door had pulverized two of them, leaving a bloody smear of limbs and intestines on the floor. The Prince descended the short flight of steps inside the shattered door, his own followers spreading out in an arc behind him.

Krista stepped through the door and slid to one side, vanishing into the murky shadows at the fringe of the room. While the Prince advanced slowly across the broad floor, she flitted through the space behind the statues, feeling her way through the darkness between bands of illumination. The rumble and roar of flames was constant, filling the entire vast room.

"We bade you leave this place." The voice of the walnut-hued man rumbled out above the hiss of flames. "Yet you come against us with steel and claw."

Maxian stopped, looking up at the old men. In the unseen world, each was a haze of brilliant, coruscating geometric forms. Patterns flowed into almost definable shapes and then contorted again. They were strong, but he could feel their fear through the barriers and shields they had raised against him. He wondered that there were so few of them. The chambers through which they had passed to reach this place, the sanctuary of the Fire Temple of Ahura-Mazda, were rich and vast. Hundreds of priests could have labored here, not merely three.

Your brother's war drew them away,
whispered his memory.
They are fighting in the north.

The Prince smiled.

"I sent my messenger in open embassy," he replied, voice echoing from the looming figures of the statues and the unseen, distant roof. "He was refused, and rudely too. I will not be denied, for what you hold you hold as thieves, stolen from its rightful place. I would look upon the face of the Conqueror with my own eyes. You cannot gainsay me."

The shock in the three men was visible even to Krista, who had reached the end of the room. A hidden stair rose up behind the last statue and she crept up it, her hands outstretched in the dark, feeling across the dusty bricks.

The eldest man sagged for a moment, then stood forward, his shoulders stiff. "It is our charge to protect that thing of which you speak. Many have attempted to divine its secrets and all have failed. You shall fail too, but we will deny you even the attempt."

The old man struck the stones under his feet with his staff, a sharp cracking sound. The others raised their hands and a buzzing moan echoed from their mouths. Maxian felt the hidden world convulse and quake around him. The floor trembled and the fire in the pits suddenly died. The Prince raised his hands and spoke three words.