“Whatdo you want?”
Theman paced around the courtyard, studying stone walls, looking overthe charcoal and candles Gaius had laid out. “That’s not the question.The question is this: What do you want?”
Hiswords held a largeness, a vastness to them that expanded far beyondmere sound. They spoke to the depth of Gaius’s anger, his urge to grabKumarbis’s skull and smash it against the wall. To break everythingthat would break, to shatter it all. But a dozen skulls would notsatisfy. And rage was unbecoming to a soldier of Rome.
Hesaid, “I want to see how much of the world I can change with myactions.”
“Change?”Lucien said. “Or destroy? I see what you’re doing here—this isn’tchange.”
“Destructionis a kind of a change.”
“Soit is.” His pacing brought him in a spiral to the middle of thecourtyard. To the candles, the charcoal, the wax tablet with thesymbols Gaius had copied for practice. The precious lamp. For a moment,he was afraid Lucien would break it. That he was some crusader who hadsomehow gotten wind of his plan.
Lucienhad just tossed a two-thousand-year-old vampire out on the street.Gaius was fairly certain he wasn’t powerful enough to stop thisman—this whatever-he-was—from doing whatever he wanted.
Lucienturned to him and stopped smiling. “I know your plan. I support yourplan. Be my general, Gaius Albinus. Gather my army for me. And you willhave power.”
“What. . . what army?” Gaius asked.
“Oneslike you. There are more than you think, and by rights they shouldserve me. Also the werewolves, the demons, the succubi—”
“Werewolves?”
Luciensmiled. “You’ll meet them soon enough. Use that army, destroy what youmust. And hand it all over to me at the end of days. Agreed?”
Acause to march with. Gaius had missed the structure of direction, oforder delivered for a righteous cause. And here this man appeared. Thiseasy, smiling patrician with an answer and quip for everything. Gaiuscould see a moment, some years or decades—or even centuries—in thefuture, when Lucien would turn his back on him. Literally throw him onthe street as he had done with Kumarbis. This man used and disposed oftools as needed.
Butat least Gaius understood his role here.
Lucienoffered his hand. “Come, my friend. I can make sure your talents don’tgo to waste.”
Steppingforward, Gaius placed his hands between Lucien’s and pledged hisloyalty. He was surprised at how warm Lucien’s skin was against his ownchilled, bloodless hands. As if the man were made of fire.
Andthen he was at the door, a light of victory in his face. “Good journeysto you, until next we meet.”
“Whenwill that be?”
Lucienshrugged, his lips pursed. He might have known, he might not have.Maybe he wanted to keep secrets.
Gaiussaid, “Then I will simply go on as I see fit. Gather this army for you.Gather power.”
“Andthis,” Lucien said, “proves that I have chosen well this time. Vale, my Dux Bellorum.”
“Vale,” Gaius said softly, but the man was alreadygone.
Gaius had work to do.
He assumed that Kumarbis still rested in Herculaneum. That he had somehowfound a safe place to sleep out the day, as he had every day for thelast however many hundreds of years. Gaius couldn’t confirm this, andhe had no desire to waste time looking for the old man, however much athread of worry tugged at him. That thread was false, and Gaius owed itnothing. But the suspicion determined the target of his strike. Of hismasterpiece.
Thenext night, he woke at dusk and gathered his tools: flint and steel,chalk and charcoal and ash for making marks, candles for light, his ownwill for power. The lamp to ignite it all. He slung the bag containingeverything over his shoulder, wrapped his cloak around himself, andtook the road out of town.
Somehalf hour of walking brought him to a field where goats grazed in theday, at the foot of the great mountain Vesuvius. The eaten-down scrubgave him a surface on which to write, after he kicked away stones andgoat droppings. The open space gave him a vista in almost everydirection; the lamplight of the towns along the coast; the bulge of themountain blocking out stars behind him. He had some six hours of nightin which to work. He moved quickly but carefully—he had limited timebut needed perfection.
Oncehe began he could not stop. No different than any other campaign march.He cleared a space some twenty cubits across. Marked the center with astake. Then, he began writing in powdered charcoal carefully poured outfrom a funnel.
Thefirst circle of characters was an anchoring to drive the spell deepunderground, hundreds of feet, to the molten fissures that fueled themountain. The next ring of symbols built potential, stoked fires thatalready existed within the mountain. The third ring directedthose energies outward. Then the next, and the next. Thirteen layersof spells on top of the work he’d already sealed within the lamp. Thecasting took all night. He almost wouldn’t have time before the sunrose and destroyed him. He didn’t think so much of the time thatpassed, only of the work that needed to be done, methodically andprecisely. The good work of a Roman engineer.
Thethirteenth circle, the outermost ring, was for containment, protection.The power he raised here would not dissipate, but would instead burstout at once, and only at his signal. As great a show of power as anygod could produce.
Adeep irony: magic provided him with the knowledge that gods did notoperate the Earth and Heavens. A volcano’s fury was not the anger ofVulcan making itself known. No, it was a natural process, pieces of theworld crashing together and breaking apart. The resulting energiescaused disasters. Sparks from the striking of flint and steel, writlarge. The fires of the Earth bursting forth under pressure.
Magicdidn’t create. It manipulated what was already there. Placed the powerof the gods in human hands. Or vampire hands.
Atlast the text was done. The moon reached its apex; dawn approached.He had finished in time, but only just. He went to the center of hisgreat canvas and placed the lamp.
Theobject served as a focus and a fuse. A battle of primal elements andenergies, a physical poetry. Words only captured a shadow of the trueforces. Many languages, symbolic conventions, all of them together werestill an
