Ancient Fire (11 page)

Someone who
does
have a torch pops his head down under the floor and peers after us.
I think I can make out a scraggly kind of beard in the shadows.
“They’re down here!”

Tiberius has joined the party.

Thea and I break into another run. I feel
around in my pockets for a match, anything, but all I touch are the
other two baseball cards. I take one out… The faint, dim glow from
the holographic image — in the dark, I can just make out Barry
Bonds — lights up a square inch in front of my face. Better than
nothing.

It smells pretty damp and sour, but I don’t
care. I just hope I have enough light to keep us from crashing into
a pillar or running off the embankment into the slow, gurgling
stream below.

“Just follow the water!” Thea pants.

“How…how are you going so fast…?” I can
hardly see her ahead of me in the dark.

“I’m holding on to K’lion’s tail!”

We open a lead on Tiberius, because his men
seem a little scared to come after us in the dark. In case Thea
really is a witch. Or I’m a wizard. Or Clyne is whatever they think
he is.

All those thoughts are knocked out of my head
when the three of us go crashing down as we all trip over
loose…

…bodies
that have
been dragged into the catacombs and left there.

I crash down right next to one as Barry Bonds
pops out of my hand and falls next to Thea, who’s landed near me.
As my eyes adjust, I can still barely make her out. “Slow pox,” she
whispers. “They don’t even have time to bury them anymore.”

I can see her reaching out in the dark and,
like a blind person, touching the faces of the bodies that have
been dumped there, trying to figure out what they look like with
her fingers.

Maybe in case one of them is her mother.

I sit there for a second, trying to watch her
in the dark.

What do you say to someone in that
situation?

I won’t find out. Torches flicker in the
distance — some of the mob has gotten over whatever spooked them,
and they’re back on our heels.

And where is…“Clyne? Buddy? Are you out
there?”

“No talk.” It turns out dinosaurs can
whisper
. “This is a move in Cacklaw. Play
dead. Fake out.” I can’t see him, but he must be lying perfectly
still, pretending to be a dead human body so that Tiberius won’t
notice him in the dark.

I’m not sure that will work. For one thing,
water has begun to steadily drip down on us, and it’s hard not to
move.

“Get away from here, Clyne! Run. We’ll come
after you.” I hiss-whisper back, and hope the sound doesn’t carry
too far in the tunnel.

“Can’t go,
kk-kk-kk
,” Clyne answers. “You and Thea still here. I
hide, too.” I hear a loud
splash
as Clyne
dives into the stream.

“Up ahead!” The torches are getting closer.
Thea is still carefully touching the faces of the bodies around
her.

“Don’t move,” I hiss again.

From the footsteps, I can tell they’re nearly
on us. I shut up and roll over, lying still, but I bump the
decaying body next to me, and part of it gives way with a
squish
, like a Jell-O mold collapsing. The
whole thing is really gross, but there isn’t much time to be
scared. The men are too close.

“We’ll never find them down here,
Tiberius.”

“We will. Heaven commands us to.”

“This place, Tiberius, has little to do with
heaven.”

“You are a nervous fool, Praetorius.”

“Only a fool would
not
be nervous. It is dark. Our clothes are heavy with
water, and these pillars are groaning. And I can smell smoke even
down here. You should not have let this grow out of control.”

“The fire started at the harbor. There was a
ship…bringing in more scrolls for that witch-woman’s library.
Foreign scrolls. The crowd wanted to put a stop…to strange ideas.
The flames are a sign of their righteous passion.”

“All this death down here…it’s evil.”

“Listen. Shh.”

“What?”

“Hear that? Like a faint echo.”

I peek and see Tiberius peering in our
direction. The water is coming in more heavily. Some gets on my
face, and I try not to sputter.

“Death is natural, Praetorius. But life,
spinning out of control—
that
is evil.”
There’s a constant rumble now as water comes in. But that’s not our
only problem: Tiberius is staring right where Thea has wedged
herself between a couple of bodies.

“Tiberius? What do you see?”

“I believe I see a strange twist of fate,
Praetorius — or a witch’s trick.”

He steps toward Thea just as the rumble turns
into a low, steady roar, and then it feels like I’m back in the
Fifth Dimension, because several things happen at once:

Tiberius touches Thea, who stops pretending
to be dead long enough to scream.

Tiberius screams back, “Sorceress! I
have
you!”

As he grabs for her, I reach out and yank his
ankle. I guess he thinks Thea is bringing the dead to life, because
his scream changes from rage to terror…

…just as water sprays down on his torch,
snuffing it out and surrounding all of us with total darkness…

…just as whatever was controlling the flow of
water into the harbor gives way, and half the Mediterranean comes
roaring into the catacombs and sweeps us up. I reach out for Thea,
for someone or something to hold on to, but grab only water, which
fills my ears, my eyes, my nose…

…and then I go black. And this time, there
are no colors to wake up to.

Chapter Thirteen

Thea: Survivor’s Tale

415 C.E.

After seeing so much, it would have been far
easier to tell myself I had gone mad. I was soaking wet and trapped
in the lighthouse, where a mob had assembled—for the second time
that day—calling for me to be burned. Mother was gone, taken by the
same crowd, and I was left with a talking reptile and a boy trying
to be a wizard as friends. And my city was burning. How much easier
to tell myself it was all some kind of insane vision. But the
vision wasn’t insane. The city and its people were.

I had been with my mother, Hypatia, in that
very lighthouse the day before as she con- ducted an experiment on
the nature of time. That had been at noon.

By then, Mother already stood accused of
being a witch. Me too, not only for being her daughter, but also
for knowing stars the way I do and for suggesting once that our
Earth is not the center of divine creation, but a piece of it.

Just for surviving the flood in the
catacombs, they would suspect me of black magic. Eli the boy
wizard, K’lion the lizard man, and I were all in the tunnels,
trying to escape from the great library, which had been put to
flame.

I am glad, at least, that Mother did not see
the fire. It would have broken her heart and her spirit at
last.

“Sorceress!” they were yelling from outside.
Me, sorceress. Here I was, a thirteen-year-old girl, shivering and
cold. Where was my magic now?

In the catacombs, the docks and channel locks
had collapsed above us, destroyed by flames.

I was covered with water and swept away. I
had been pretending to be dead and now found myself clutching one
of the many
real
dead bodies rushing by,
using it as a raft. That body, that person whose life had been
given to slow pox, saved mine in the flood. Eventually, I floated
out past the shattered Gate of the Moon at city’s edge. I shook
myself off and staggered to shore.

I gazed back where the docks had been. Fire
seemed to be everywhere.

I remember once looking at a statue of
Serapis—the serpent god, the healer, the city’s protector—on
Mother’s desk. I asked her if there really was a Serapis. I argued
with her that if a god, or gods, exist, how could their greatness
and mystery be contained in a mere statue?

“What there is really,” she said, “what
exists, is people’s hope that there’s a way to balance things, heal
them and make them better. ‘Serapis’ is one of the names we put to
that hope.”

“Then Serapis is not real?”

“Hope is a very real, very living thing. But
it needs to be taken care of and nourished, or it dies.”

Brother Tiberius’s view was that if you even
mention
Serapis, you should have your
tongue cut out.

That seemed neither helpful nor hopeful. And
now our city was burning. There were screams in the distance,
panic. Everyone going through their own sorrow, their own
grief.

Walking along the ruined shoreline, I heard
the flapping of wings. I expected an owl hunting in the night, but
saw instead the escaped griffin vulture from the zoo circling
overhead. These loose bodies would be a feast for him.

Eventually, heading in the direction of the
lighthouse, I was surprised to see the long wooden footbridge
leading out to Pharos Island still intact. Once again, that bridge
provided the promise of escape.

I thought that perhaps nobody would think to
look for me in the lighthouse a second time, but I had only just
arrived inside and bolted the door when I heard a loud
thump
and the first cry of “Witch!”

Tiberius had eyes all over the city, and the
fire had not managed to blind them to my whereabouts. It seemed his
whole mob was after a final reckoning with their perceived enemies
that night.

An hour or two went by, and from the yelling,
I could tell the crowd below had grown in size.

I had no idea if my new friends were still
alive. Or if Mother was. In a lighthouse, surrounded by people, I
had never felt more alone.

I thought of letting the mob in. Perhaps, in
the end, that would be less painful.

Then, suddenly, came a new and distinct
pounding on the door below. I froze, listening to the loud booms.
And realized they had a battering ram. Now it didn’t matter what I
did. They would get in anyway.

The battering ram crashed into the door
again, and instinctively, at the top of the tower, I stepped back
away from the noise. I stumbled over the remains from Mother’s
experiment.

Because of the chaos in Alexandria, no one
had come here to spark the lighthouse bonfire, which is why the
signal was dark for the first time in memory. But the mirrors were
there, and the fuel lines from the ground floor were still intact,
drawing up oil from below to keep the giant wick lit...

I realized
I
could
make the lighthouse shine again if there were a way to start the
fire. And perhaps, seeing the signal, someone would come. Someone
not connected to the mob below.

The crystals were sharp in my hands, almost
cutting my skin, but I hardly noticed. I began to wonder if those
two stones could be used…like flints.

Chapter Fourteen

Eli: Tiberius

415 C.E.

My mom is waking me up, and I’m home in New
Jersey, and it’s all been a dream, and I’m still a regular kid who
thinks clocks and time only move forward. It’s sunny out, and I’m
getting ready to go out to the woods and set up a Barnstormer game
with Andy. Later, we’ll get a ride home, with some warm
cookies—

“Wake up, boy!”

No we won’t.

I’m actually cold and soaked, and the light
and warmth I feel come from the fire burning through the city of
Alexandria. And instead of my mother, I get the face of Tiberius,
caked with blood and grime and smoke. The scariest thing of all is
that he’s
smiling
at me, like he’s happy
that I’m still alive. Grownups always smile at weird times — but
this grin is the weirdest and most frightening of them all.

“Wake
up
! It’s not
your dying time yet, wizard.” He pulls me to my feet. I’m still
bleary, but I can see another body on the ground nearby. One of his
friends from the catacombs. Tiberius points a bony finger down at
his remains.

“My friend Praetorius drowned in the flood,
but
you
, warlock, you live with the help
of your dark magic.”

I
am
alive, I guess.
Barely. I have no idea what happened to Thea or Clyne, though. I
mumble something to Tiberius.

“What?”

I mumble it again—I want to point out that
he’s
alive, too — but he still doesn’t
understand. I feel behind my ear—the lingo-spot is still stuck to
me. But, of course, Tiberius doesn’t have one, so he has no idea
what I’m saying.

“Are you trying to cast spells on me,
warlock!? Your words will not touch me, because I am protected by
God’s love,” he screams. “His
love
!”

I repeat the word
love
, almost like a question, because it seems so out
of place, but I have water in my mouth and I’m numb, so it seems
like I’m spitting, and Tiberius shakes me some more.

“You think you can mock me because Alexandria
is still the devil’s place! But the fire of justice will cleanse
it! And come morning, you will be in no position to mock me.”

I hurt all over as I’m yanked around,
thinking,
This would be a really good moment to
get unstuck in time and be somewhere else.

If I can just get the Thickskin off my cap
and let it come in direct contact with me…

But there’s nothing on my head. My
WOMPER-charged Seals cap is gone!

The last thing I remember is frantically
trying to swim in the great gush of water and getting slammed
against a pillar. The water roared by, taking me with it, and I
landed—ouch!—hard on the ground, just like now, as Tiberius throws
me down. I realize I’m missing a shoe, too, then pat myself down.
Amazingly, I still have the last of Mr. Howe’s baseball cards stuck
in my pocket, and the satchel is still wrapped around me, though
it’s tangled up like seaweed.