forward and assumed vocal command of the assembly.
'Silence all! Stand in place! Listen!' he commanded in the stentorian style of his father's distant memory. 'The truth now comes to me! I see into my remote past as a child at Dacia.
The woman Perenna and the guardsman, Scorilo, are sister and brother. I see into my childhood days. These two are the daughter and son of the high priest of Dacia, old Dicineus the Sacrificer, who was my father's advisor. I see the woman called Anna Perenna when she was a child my own age. We were acolytes of Zalmoxis at the killing of Iron People captives. I forget her name but I recall her zest for the killings.
Her priestly father Dicineus and his family relished the sacrifices. She too had the marks of Zalmoxis tattooed on her face, the insignia of the priestly class and its bloodline. Her brother Scorilo was much older. He was already a young Wolf Warrior proven in combat. He was one of my father's fiercest bodyguards and has the victor's tattoos to prove it. He was one of the horsemen who escorted my father and mother, with my sister Estia and I, into the forests of Dacia to escape the pursuing Iron People.
Who are the Iron People? The Iron People are us, we Romans. I too am now an Iron Person. I too am a Roman.
My father discharged his guards to allow them to flee before the enemy could overtake us. But he demanded an oath of revenge, the oath to Zalmoxis. He sent my mother, his queen, and then himself to Zalmoxis. Before he killed himself he demanded we swear an oath to destroy the Iron People king's loved ones too, in reparation to Zalmoxis. It was a fearful oath of dire consequences!
I too swore it. I was very young. I swore to kill the Iron People king's loved one too, in vengeance. But I failed in my oath, I am pleased to say. The children of Priest Dicineus the Sacrificer did not! They killed the king's loved one, Antinous.'
Geta slumped against Caesar's throne, exhausted.
Hadrian spoke in a disbelieving voice to Perenna and Scorilo.
'Is it true you are the children of Dicineus, that murderous priest?'
Neither responded.
'The Bastarnae were one of the tribes of the Dacian Confederation, yes?'
Again silence.
'Is it true the blood on the stones here is that of Antinous?' he asked further. Again no response.
Hadrian grew gray with distress.
'Why, Dacians, why? Why would you bleed such a gracious man, such an innocent, for your pointless obsession?' Hadrian's eyes were riven with pain.
Perenna struggled ineffectually in her captor's grip, her eyes wild, her body writhing with feverish energy. The kohl lines had begun to melt down her cheeks in her body heat; the ashen powders of her face were corroding from her skin; the hue of her oiled lips was smeared across her mouth. In her disorder she projected the energy of a wild forest creature or ghoul seething with savagery, an alien demon bent upon havoc.
Suetonius, Clarus, Strabon, and Surisca whispered together as one, 'The She Wolf.'
'The oath is fulfilled!' Perenna cried aloud across the sanctuary, her haughty disdain resounding off the temple stones. 'The loved one of the Iron People's ruler has been sacrificed to the god of the Dacians! His face was daubed in his own blood! We dipped our fingers in his gore to lick and taste his arete. We drained his carcass of its arete to offer to Zalmoxis the life-juices of the precious loved one of the Iron People's King!
Our priestly father's strangling at Rome is revenged. The Decebelus's honor is restored. The blood debt of our warriors in the arenas of Rome is paid. The faithful devotees of Zalmoxis have exacted bitter retribution!'
Perenna, or whoever she was, was spiraling into delirium.
'How did you persuade Antinous to participate in his own slaughter, priestess of Zalmoxis,' Suetonius called to the deranged creature before him.
'The fool was a willing victim! His desire was urgent. He craved to exchange his lifeforce for the lifeforce of his erastes, this King of the Iron People. This king is diseased, he told us. The king is affected with a dropsy of the internal humors. He is dying, he bleated in tears. He wished to give the king renewed life, his youth's fresh life! He wished the Imperium to receive his hero's gift and to exchange his years of health for the king's declining lifespan!'
The assembly was enthralled by the escalating frenzy.
'The youth had witnessed those wizards who claim to revive a beheaded man. He knew how return from the Land of the Dead was feasible with the proper sorcery. At least that's what he thought. He was taught Queen Alcestis had been brought back from Hades' grasp by Hercules. He had been taught the heroes who sacrificed their lives in antiquity's wars live on eternally at the Isle of Achilles across the Black Sea. He learned how the followers of Chrestus revere their executed founder because he was magically reborn, resurrected to life again. And he saw with his own eyes how Great Alexander Divus lies intact still after four hundred years, preserved by a potent magic.
This year's Isia was his opportunity to become Osiris, restored from death to life. He took his opportunity. I used his need and his love for his erastes, and told him how Anna Perenna too can exchange the energies of one life for another by her incantations. I said she too can revive the dead. He believed me, the fool…'
'Cease talking, Hagne!' Scorilo suddenly called to the priestess. 'They'll indict you for murder or worse. The penalty is vile, Sister. Cease now!'
Surisca whispered to Suetonius and Clarus, 'Is the Bastarni guardsman then the wolf?'
Perenna continued unabated. She was on a roll.
'The boy wanted it! He pleaded for it! He was impelled to exchange the surging lifeforce of a healthy youth with the fading energies of his imperial erastes. He wouldn't cease his pleading. He said he was so utterly indebted to Caesar and committed to Caesar's cause as ruler!'
Hadrian slumped heavily back into his throne, disconsolate. He was overwhelmed by her words.
'So you helped him to do it, Hagne?' the Special Inspector asked coolly as Strabon scribbled speedily at his notebook. Suetonius used the barbarian name Scorilo had called. 'Tell us Hagne, how was it done, priestess of an alien god? Tell us all.'
The woman began burbling with zealous, righteous enthusiasm.
'Brother Scorilo and Centurion Urbicus had befriended the youth for our purpose. They taught him tricks of swordsmanship and other warrior's skills. They persuaded him to come to The Alexandros to my sanctuary to effect the transfer. He was to come under another name to deflect attention. I wrote an invitation note in the name of one of his friends, Lysias, to ease him past the sentries without his real identity being noted. He suspected nothing, he was so trustful of us.
He was to wear his ceremonial uniform beneath his cloak, this was to be a formal rite of great majesty. He did so without fear. He believed how in nine days after his journey through Hades' domain he would be restored to life, but at the cost that his youth's lengthy lifespan would be exchanged with Caesar's shorter span. Meanwhile, Caesar would live and rule!'
The woman was trembling in exultation and fervor. She was triumphant.
'Why would Antinous believe such a thing? He is no fool!' Suetonius called.
'Fool? Love is a great persuader. Fools do remarkable things for the sake of Love!'
'And then?'
'We performed a ceremony honoring Rome's Anna Perenna of old, and the youth voluntarily drank my infusion of opion and kannabis in wine. He believed it to be my magical potion to effect the transfer of energies. He swiftly drifted to sleep.
My brother and I then performed a rite to Zalmoxis and burned a lock of the victim's hair for the God to receive as smoke signaling his impending spiritual presence.
I lanced his wrist veins, inserted a surgeon's bleeding spigot to siphon, and proceeded to drain him as our priests do when they slit the throats of offerings. With time, our basin collected enough blood for three amphorae jugs.
Blood is the food of Zalmoxis. Blood carries the arete of a man.
I anointed the victim's face with his own blood, the ultimate insult of the God. Over the following days Zalmoxis consumes his entire arete by fermenting the blood to an odious filth. This is our way.'
The woman's delirium was assuming a dire maenadic aspect. There were vestiges of some ancient ritual frenzy betrayed in her behavior. She had become a wild creature.
'And, Hagne, what more — ?' Suetonius resolutely pressed.
