The Dark Lord

stained walls. In happier times, they would have gleamed violet, sparkling in wit or delight.

Now she had seen too much, lost too much. Despite Betia's best efforts, her eyes were smudged and dark, revealing exhaustion and despair. The Duchess looked away from the ruins, driving away fond memories—idle summer parties, long twilit dinners, the intoxicating aroma of jasmine and orange and hyacinth in the spring—and looked out across the rumpled, tormented plain towards Vesuvius.

The mountain loomed, dark and shrouded with smoke. Jagged and broken, its smooth flanks rent by the vomitus of the earth and terrible mudslides. All the land around its feet—once some of the richest in Campania— was abandoned, haunted, dangerous in poor weather. Anastasia sighed, thinking of the wealth destroyed and the Imperial resources now consumed, trying to set right the wound. Gold and men and time were desperately needed in the East, where disaster tumbled after disaster like a summer flood.

Anastasia felt old and tired. With an effort, she walked back to the horses they had ridden down from Rome and sat—ignoring the damage to the dark gray silk and linen of her stola and cloak—by the roadside. The gentle cream-colored mare bumped her with its big nose, and Anastasia responded by rubbing its neck. The horse was disappointed—no apples, no biscuit were forthcoming.

'Someone was here.' Thyatis appeared out of the twilight, long bare legs streaked with charcoal, strapped sandals black with ash. 'There are many bodies among the ruins, all burned or rotted. A young man in boots came into the little house by the garden and rooted around. They may have taken something away—but the light is failing and the signs were unclear.' Thyatis squatted down, peering at the Duchess, who had her head buried in her arms.

'Are you sleeping?' Thyatis brushed the Duchess' hair with the back of her hand. 'Shall I carry you back to the city?'

'No.' Anastasia's voice was muffled, hidden behind her round white arms and the huge pile of curls Betia had pinned up in the morning. 'I will be fine.'

'Surely,' Thyatis said gently, her voice soft. 'Come on, stand up.'

Anastasia allowed herself to rise, thin white fingers standing out in the gloom against Thyatis' darker skin. 'Have you seen enough?'

Thyatis looked back at the ruin, now all but hidden in shadow. Beyond the hill rising above the villa, the sky was still bright, filled with glowing orange thunderheads set against an overarching field of sable and purple. High up, out over the sea, long thin clouds gleamed like bars of molten gold. Here, in the hill's shadow, the villa walls gleamed like phantoms in the dim light. She felt drained of the nervous energy that had driven her down from Rome in such haste. 'Yes, I have seen enough.'

'What will you tell her?' Anastasia removed her veil. In the twilight, she did not need to protect her pale skin. 'What can you say?'

'Nothing.' Thyatis' jaw clenched and she began to make a chewing motion. Then she stopped, aware of the nervous tic. Instead she captured the big stallion's traces and pressed her hand against his muscular shoulder. 'I dreamed... I dreamed she was drowning, her face was in the sea and there were flames and lights upon the water. I think she is dead, and I hope—no, I pray to the gray-eyed goddess—they are together, with Nikos, and the others, and every man who followed me into death, in the golden fields.'

Anastasia nodded, though her face was almost invisible, only a pale white shape in the gloom. 'You believe in the gods, then. You think there is a life after this one. A place without care and suffering, in Elysium and the gardens of the blessed.'

Thyatis snorted, swinging up onto the horse. She leaned over and helped Anastasia onto the mare. 'I hope, Duchess. I hope. Do you?'

'No.' Anastasia arranged her stola and cloak to cover her legs, then twitched the reins. The mare, amiable and hopeful, turned away from the ruins and the blackened trees and began to clop down the hard-packed road leading down the hill. 'I think there is only a black void, a nothingness. But that too is free from the weight of this world.'

Thyatis said nothing, and the stallion followed the mare down the road and towards the distant dim lights flickering in the ruins of Baiae.

—|—

The night deepened, yet Thyatis did not feel weary. Her exhaustion lifted as the heat of the day faded. The horses were happy to set an easy pace and the two women turned north, on the road towards Rome. The wasteland stretched away into darkness on either side. Without the lights of farmhouses, or inns, it seemed they rode on the mantle of night itself. A small paper lantern, carrying a candle inside a screen, hung from the end of a long pole in front of Thyatis' horse. In that pale, flickering light, they kept to the via. The land was quiet and still, lacking even the whisper of night owls or the chirping of crickets.

The clop-clop-clop of the horse's hooves seemed to carry a great distance.

A mile marker passed, a granite tooth momentarily visible on the roadside. Then another.

Thyatis stirred, uneasy. Her thoughts turned to the face of her enemy and she felt anxious. Time was slipping past, invisible grains spilling from a phantom glass. She looked over at the Duchess, who rode with her head bowed, cowl drawn over glossy curls. Thyatis wondered, suddenly, if all these deaths lay as heavy on the Duchess as in her own mind.

'My lady?' Thyatis' voice was faint, and she coughed, clearing her throat.

Anastasia raised her head and turned. In the faint candlelight, only the pale oval of her face was visible, the cloak, the horse, the road all swallowed in darkness. Her dark eyes did not catch the light and Thyatis felt a chill fall over her. Had a ghost ridden up beside her, some spirit of the dead? Had Shirin come up, a distraught soul lost in the darkness? But the sound of the horse's hooves is real!

Thyatis blinked, and saw a tired smile on the Duchess' face.

'I am still here,' Anastasia said, softly. 'My own thoughts are weary and far too familiar. What troubles you?'

'The prince.' The redheaded woman's face tightened unconsciously. Her shoulders stiffened and she sat up straighter in the saddle. 'I have sent my dead to the blessing fields with great sacrifice—twenty men, or more, I offered up to the hungry spirits on the arena floor. Red blood was spilt, ghostly bellies filled and their way lighted in the darkness. That sacred duty is discharged—but he still lives, in all his monstrous power, still young and hale. I must kill him, I think. But I cannot see how...'

Anastasia brushed a curl from her face. She seemed relieved, her mood lightened. 'Do not trouble yourself with the prince. More urgent matters press us—he has sworn himself anew to the Empire, to serve his brother. We will need his strength against Persia.'

Thyatis' eyebrows rose in surprise and she turned in her saddle, staring at the Duchess. 'Do not trouble? He is monstrous, foul, a necromancer—the murderer of tens of thousands of citizens! We ride in devastation of his making! These things you declared yourself—when you set me upon him, a hound upon his fox, with strict orders to murder him by any means at hand.' Thyatis stopped, unable to continue. The enormity of the prince's crimes rendered her speechless.

'I know what I did.' Anastasia looked away, out into the night. 'It was very foolish. I acted rashly, without consideration. Fear drove me, and you see this'—she lifted a hand—'is the result.'

Thyatis reached over and took the reins of the mare. Obediently, the horse stopped, shaking its head in question. The redheaded woman leaned close, her face stricken. 'Are you mad? This is the prince's doing—he was on Vesuvius for a reason—he is a monster.' Thyatis stopped, a suddenly clear, terrible thought forcing its way into her consciousness. 'No...'

Anastasia's eyes were still in shadow, but Thyatis felt the pressure of their gaze. 'Yes, daughter. You have read the reports from the East; you have listened to the tales of those who escaped. A thing has risen up—something inhuman, insatiable, so far beyond the prince's blundering crimes as a man is above the worm. By the gods, child, the entire Eastern Empire has been shattered like a clay cup! The West is still weak, our numbers depleted by plague. Already, we have lost two Legions at Constantinople—'

'Oh, this is foul!' Thyatis ripped the cloak away from her shoulders, suddenly flushed with sweat. Her stallion started to buck, then danced sideways, disturbed by the violent motion. 'Now the fair, pretty prince is an ally, a tool, a weapon against the Persians? What of all the Roman dead? Does all this'—her finger stabbed out into the dark—'mean nothing to you? Prince Maxian is a murderer—where is Roman