The Dark Lord

The grin faded and the old priest leaned even more wearily upon his cane. 'I have felt the power—the destroyer—moving in the hidden world. It is a black sun, swallowing all light. Many here, I am sure, have had troubled dreams of late—strange visions, seductive promises, disturbing vistas of dead drowned cities and lost realms. This—if you have not the wit to ken it yourselves!—is the work of the enemy. He seeks to frighten or seduce us.'

The old priest met Aurelian's eye with his own bright gaze. 'Nephet of the house of Horus the Strong will stand by you, Pharaoh. We are few and weak, perhaps, but we will not flinch aside from battle, or flee. Long ago, at the beginning of days, Lord Horus strove against such an abomination as this... he won through. I pray that we can do the same, though our strength is much diminished.' The priest paused, laughter in his eyes. 'So many centuries of Roman peace have made us weak!'

The Roman prince nodded, some small hope welling in his chest. Then he looked upon the faces of the others and saw naked fear, or avarice, or anger... anything but honorable assistance. Aurelian kept his face still and unrolled a scroll his aides had prepared. Very well...

'Each temple,' he began in a carrying voice, 'will be assigned to a Legion...'

CHAPTER FOUR

The Ruins of Baiae, Below Vesuvius

A patch of grass remained, on a hillside facing away from the mountain. Vesuvius still loomed in the eastern sky, a vast smooth cone, but her tapering green crown was gone. Now a jagged summit smoked and fumed, sending up a thin, constant spiral of ashy smoke into a blue Campanian sky. The slopes, once lush with orchards, farms and vineyards, were black and gray, scored by massive mudslides. Snaky black trails of hardened lava spilled from the flanks of the volcano, puddling down onto the plain below.

On the grass, a young woman was digging in the rich, dark earth.

Beside her, wrapped in woolen sheets, were four small, twisted figures. The homespun was caked with ash and soot. Tiny charred, blackened feet poked from beneath the cloth. This slope—turned away from Vesuvius— had escaped the billowing clouds of burning air, the waves of poisonous vapor and fiery meteors, which rained such destruction upon the land below the mountain. Just over the crown of the hill, lined with skeletal, leafless trees, was a sprawling villa. The children had been sleeping in the great house when the volcano woke in darkness and exploded with such terrific violence that ships at sea were swamped by the shock in the earth and nearly everything within a hundred miles of the mountain had been smashed down, burned and then suffocated by choking, invisible vapors. The roof of the villa had been stripped away by howling wind and the interior had burst into flame. All four children died almost instantly.

The young woman was digging in the black soil with a spade taken from the gardener's cottage behind the villa. The grass—puzzlingly green and living amid the ruin surrounding the hill on all sides—parted under the metal edge. The woman's lithe, muscular arms were smooth and brown. A mane of black hair, shining like ink, was tied behind her head in a ponytail. A traditional Roman stola and gown was neatly piled beside her on the grass. For the moment, she was digging in her under-tunic, ignoring the sweat matting the thin cloth to her back.

Shirin had placed her children—these tiny bodies—in the care of a dear friend who had promised them safe haven in a dangerous world. Her shoulder muscles bunched as the spade cut into the earth, turning up grass roots and fat earthworms and tiny black beetles. Shirin had trusted her friend's judgment and sent her children to be hidden from the agents of the Emperor of the East, Heraclius, who had designs upon the mother, but no regard for her two little boys and two little girls.

The first grave was finished: deep enough to keep dogs away, long enough and wide enough for the curled-up, charred body of a nine-year-old boy. Shirin stood up, wiping her brow, and stepped aside two paces. The edge of the spade bit into the earth again. Heraclius had promised Shirin in marriage to his brother, Theodore, as part of a greater prize—the whole of the Persian Empire. Not two days ago, in the half-burned, but still bustling port of Misenum, Shirin had learned both Heraclius and Theodore were dead, Persia restored and the Eastern Empire in ruins.

So the lord of heaven gave, and the lord of heaven took away.

Mechanically, she lifted blocks of turf away with the spade, then began to dig out the soil below. This grave did not need to be so big, only enough to hold the corpse of a six-year-old boy who loved bears and horses and a drink called cold-water-with-ice. Shirin's arms and shoulder burned with effort, but she continued to dig, her mind carefully empty. In the end, there had been no need for mother and children to be separated. The attentions of the Eastern Emperor were diverted by the revolt of the Decapolis cities, even before Shirin's children reached Rome.

They did not have to be dead. She did not have to be alone. Her dear friend did not have to be a monster.

Shirin finished the second grave. Sweat stung in half-healed wounds across her back and side. A thin golden chain slithered on her neck and the heavy egg-shaped ruby hanging between her breasts bounced each time she drove the spade into the ground.

When Vesuvius erupted, she had been on the deck of a merchantman in the great half-circle of the bay. A wave rolled up out of the deep and smashed the Pride of Cos onto the shore. Shirin leapt from the ship, taking her chances in the midnight sea. Something struck her, leaving long cuts on her back, but she was a strong swimmer and managed to reach the pebbly beach alive.

By great good luck, an offshore wind followed the great wave, driving the choking air away from the beach. By the time Shirin had crawled out of the surf, the sea was filled with corpses. The strand was packed with stunned people, the citizens from the beachfront villas and little towns dotting the rim of the bay. Flames filled the night and the people watched in silence as their homes burned furiously. The sky billowed with huge burning clouds, streaked by plunging comets trailing sparks and fire. Shirin, bleeding, staggered south along the beach, wading at the edge of the surf, pushing her way through drifting bodies. The water thrashed with violence—great gray-bodied sharks tore at the dead, jagged white teeth sparkling in the red air. It seemed wise to flee the glowing, thundering ogre of fire filling the eastern sky.

The third and fourth graves were still smaller. Both of her girls had been little sprites with curly dark brown hair, like their father. Shirin, arms caked with ash and loam, laughed bitterly at the thought of dead Chrosoes, king of kings of Persia. He had been an Emperor too and he had been cold in the ground for more than two years. She felt nothing, thinking of him now, though she had loved him dearly in life. His passage into madness had suffocated their love. Shirin grimaced. The spade clanged against a root. Relentlessly, she hacked away, metal biting into the soft yellow wood. The blows echoed up her arm, but she was young and strong and her back had healed well.

Royal Ctesiphon seemed like a dream; a faint memory of luxury and glorious splendor. Today, under this bright sky, sweating, digging the graves of her own children, her marriage and husband were distant phantoms. Memories of her youth were brighter, as clear as a swift river or a still pool among mossy rocks. The faces of her uncles were sharp in her mind; and racing horses, or hunting ermine and fox in the deep snow, or the sight of storm-heavy clouds winging up over the black peaks of the Kaukasoi.

Shirin leaned on the spade, weary and gasping for breath. Her arms and legs were numb. A breeze drifted over the hill, carrying the acrid smell of wet ash. Months had passed since the mountain vomited fire. The stinging yellow rain had stopped, the sky washed clean of a bitter haze. Now the green shoots of grass and flower buds poked up from the gray earth. In another year, a carpet of green and yellow and orange would cover the hills. She frowned, supple lips twisting into a grimace.

Chrosoes had tried to keep her—a beautiful, singing bird in a gilded cage. He had died, hacked to death by Roman soldiers in the burning ruin of the Palace of the Swan.

Heraclius and Theodore had desired her, to seal the conquest of Persia and bind her royal blood to theirs, cutting the root of Chrosoes' dynasty. Both had perished in the wreck of their own grasp for power.

Thyatis had tried to set her away, a perfect crystalline beauty, in the prison of Thira. For safety. So that she would be unchanged, unblemished when Thyatis returned. Shirin spit to clear her mouth, bile rising in her throat.

There were four graves in the ground, and four little corpses to fit them.

Thyatis was gone, wrenched away by fate and transformed beyond recognition. Shirin's hands trembled and she clasped them firmly around the haft of the spade. The same madness, which filled Chrosoes, distilled into the