The Dark Lord

and support.'

'My assistance,' Gaius said, 'is only what you deserve, for such loyal service.'

All three men nodded and Gaius saw honest appreciation in their faces. With the collapse of the Eastern Empire, a huge flood of refugees hurried west. Rome was crowded with out-of-work ministers, logothetes, clerks and their families. The soldiers were immediately incorporated into the Western Legions, but everyone else was having a difficult time just finding food to eat and a place to sleep. As it happened, Gaius Julius had recently invested in blocks of apartments, warehouses, taverns, smithies, brick factories and all manner of other businesses. He could easily find lodgings for a few dozen Easterners at loose ends. Better, he had plenty of work for men like these three.

Gaius clapped a hand on Sergius' shoulder and looked down into the main hall of the Curia. 'As it happens, my friends, I have great need for men who are swift and alert. Do you see that young man—the dark-haired fellow in the first row—sitting by the graybeard?'

Both Nicholas and Vladimir peered down through the screen.

'Yes,' Nicholas said, squinting between the marble legs of a titan wrestling a giant serpent. 'Thin-faced, long hair tied back, looks like he hasn't sleep in a week?'

'The very fellow.' Gaius said. 'His name is Maxian Atreus, the youngest brother of the Emperor Galen. He is a... powerful... young man, but not in the way most people think. He is also my patron, even my friend.' Gaius Julius stopped, thinking about what he had just said. Is that true? Sometimes it seems that the boy is barely aware of me, as if I were a chair or a table. Does it matter? I am alive!

'As you might imagine, he has enemies.' Gaius chuckled suddenly. 'Some of them are very beautiful. He needs bodyguards and I think the two of you will do well in such a post.'

'Bodyguards?' Vladimir's nose wrinkled up and he ran long sharp nails through his beard. The Walach seemed displeased by the prospect. 'Don't the Praetorians handle such things? As the Faithful Guard did in the East? This sounds like a lot of standing around inside...'

'Sometimes.' Gaius spread his hands, indicating things were different in the West. 'I will surely sleep sounder at night if I know he has guardian spirits to watch over him. He has been attacked at least once before, and came close to death. Things would turn poorly for everyone if he were to die now.'

Nicholas looked intrigued, thumbs hooked in his belt. 'What kind of beautiful enemies does he have?'

Down on the floor of the Curia, Gregorius rose and spoke to the crowd. The other senators took the cue to sit and listen. Gaius Julius felt the pang of regret again—why couldn't he be the one to speak? The one to stand at the center of all attention, the world turning on the lever of his actions? He stifled the feeling, contenting himself with being the playwright, not the pantomime.

'Watch,' Gaius Julius said, his expression changing subtly. All life seemed to leach out of him. 'You will see more than you desire. Not all our enemies are fair to look upon.'

—|—

Maxian felt his gut twist at the realization he would have to stand and speak. He didn't expect to be so nervous, but this was the Senate! The faces in the hall blurred into a mass of indistinguishable white ovals. Why can't Galen do this? He's the Emperor...

Suddenly a memory swam up out of the past and into waking thought. He was in the great teaching hall of the Asklepion, below the hill of old Pergamum, and a stocky, brown-bearded priest was speaking. Tarsus—his old friend, his teacher—was explaining a simple process all his students were to learn, a mnemonic pattern to induce a settled, focused mind. Maxian felt calm flow over him, just remembering the voice like a soft murmur in his ears. The words and the mental pattern became clear in his thoughts and the prince felt his anxiety fall away.

—|—

'Fellow senators,' Gregorius said, looking about with a stiff, grim expression. 'We must agree, and swiftly, to give a man the power of the custos magus imperium. This man must be a powerful wizard and we, the Senate, as guardians of the people, must trust him to defend Rome.' The old man's voice rose sharply and some of the younger men in the back rows, who had been falling asleep in the heat, jerked awake in surprise.

'In a simpler time, we would summon the magister magorum of the Thaumaturgic Legion before us and anoint him with this post. But these times are not simple. I have already spoken with old Gordius and he has declined this duty. A new man must be elevated to the custos.'

Gregorius paused, leaning on his cane, drawing a breath. He was tiring rapidly with the effort of trying to convince so many, all at once. 'Is there a man we can trust with this task? A man strong enough in the hidden arts to pit himself—with hope of victory!—against the darkness Persia has summoned up?'

One of the older senators stood up abruptly, disgusted. 'Get on with it, Gregorius! We've listened and listened, while you wend and weave—get to the point! If you've a candidate, set him before us!'

Gregorius smiled genially and waved for the senator to sit down. 'There is something you must see first, my friends.' The old man turned, his white beard bristling out. He made a sharp motion to the Praetorians loitering at the back of the hall. 'Close the doors! Clear the gallery! What now transpires is for the Senate alone.'

There was a commotion in the vestibule where a huge crowd of clerks and aides lolled about, eating sausage rolls heavy with garlic and oil, chatting in low tones while the senators declaimed in the main hall. The Praetorians herded everyone out with the butts of their spears and the main doors were closed with a dull thud. More soldiers cleared the gallery; the complaints and cries of protest were muted by the marble screen. When, at last, silence had fallen and the centurion in charge of the guard detail signed to Gregorius that everyone had been herded out, the old senator turned to Maxian.

'Fellow senators, I have brought a young man before you. He has seen our true enemy and he has, by his own skill and power, lived to bring us warning. This—for those of you who have not gotten out of your wine cups enough to know—is the Caesar Maxian Atreus. My lord, would you tell us what you faced in the ruins of Constantinople?'

Maxian stood up and the unsteady roiling sensation in his stomach was gone. He felt rather light-headed and perfectly calm. At the edge of his vision was a storm of color, like blowing snowflakes in every imaginable hue and shade. With an effort, he focused on the physical reality around him, allowing the faces of the senators to become solid again.

'I will do better than tell, good Gregorius, I will show you.' The prince raised his hand and at the center of the hall a mote of light sprang up over the mosaic plains and mountains of Anatolia. For a moment the little ball spun and hissed, lighting the dark corners of the Curia and throwing long shadows behind the senators. A mutter of fear and surprise rose from the assembly.

'I entered Constantinople, Senators, even as the great gates fell, broken by a power far beyond anything I have ever felt before. Something rose up out of the earth, under a baleful sky, and tore down the gates and sundered the walls. I raced across the city, hoping to forestall the doom rushing over the city, but I was too late.'

The glow swelled and then passed away, leaving the hall dark. Even the light of the late afternoon sun, which should have fallen in long, slanting beams through the high windows, was absent. Only a faint spark remained, drifting over the map on the floor, illuminating—by turns—mermaids and ships and cities and mountains. The slow movement ceased, spinning slowly over the coast of Morea, and then the light unfolded, growing huge, and in its depths; fire and smoke and the distant, muted screams of the dying and the dead.

'I came into the forum of Constantine, from which the Easterners count the miles, and there, clad in night, I saw...'

...a deserted street under a black and starless sky.

Maxian steeled himself, his face settling into a tight mask as visions of defeat welled up in the light and his shadow image struggled in the broken city against an unimaginable enemy.

'...this was how I left Constantinople, in ruins, a broken wasteland.' Maxian dropped his hand and the phantasm passed, light streaming in once more from the windows. A thousand throats gasped for air, for every man had been holding his breath in horror, and a complete, stunned silence filled the hall.

Maxian sat down, sweating again, his pulse racing. Even the simulacrum of his battle against the Persian was far too real. Again, he summoned up the calming meditation and settled his mind. When he was aware again, Gregorius was standing in the open space, leaning on his cane, watching the assembly slowly regain its color. A