Misplaced Legion (Videssos Cycle) (16 page)

“What is it?” the Greek answered from the fringes of the crowd around the tied-up Khamorth.

Marcus explained his idea to the doctor, adding, “Can you examine him and find out why his nature has changed so greatly since the last time we saw him?”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do? But all these gawkers here are too tightly packed to let me through.” The physician was too slight to have much luck elbowing his way into a crowd.

“Let him by. Make way, there,” the tribune ordered, moving his men out of the way so Gorgidas could reach the nomad, who lay across Scaurus’ own pallet. The physician knelt beside him, touching his forehead, peering into his eyes, and listening to his breathing.

When he stood, his face was troubled. “You were right, sir,” he said. Marcus knew how concerned he was when he used the title of respect; Gorgidas was a man with no time for
formality. “The poor devil is at the point of death, from some toxic potion, I would say.”

“At the point of death?” Scaurus said, startled. “He was lively enough a few minutes ago.”

Gorgidas made an impatient gesture. “I don’t mean he’s liable to die in the next hour, maybe even not in the next day. But die he will—his eyes are sunk in his head, and one pupil is twice the other’s size. He breathes like a delirious man, deep and slow. And between his bellows you can hear him grinding his teeth fit to break them. As anyone who has read the writings of Hippokrates will tell you, those are fatal signs.

“Yet he has no fever,” the doctor continued, “and I see no sores or pustules to indicate some disease has him in its clutches. Therefore, I must conclude he has been drugged—poisoned would be a better word.”

“Can you cure him, do you think?” Marcus asked.

Gorgidas tossed his head in an imperious Greek negative. “I’ve told you before, I am a doctor, not a worker of miracles. Without knowing what hell-brew is in him, I wouldn’t know where to start, and, if I did, it would probably still be useless.”

“ ‘Worker of miracles,’ your honor said?” Viridovix put in. “Could it be the priests of Phos might save him, where you canna?”

“Don’t be ridi—” Gorgidas began, and then stopped in confusion. Marcus had to admire the way he faced up to an idea he did not like. He reluctantly admitted, “That might not be foolish after all. Some of them can do what I’d not have believed—isn’t that right, Minucius?”

The legionary a priest had saved outside of Imbros was a stalwart young man whose stubbly whiskers were black almost to blueness. “So you keep telling me,” he answered. “I don’t recall a bit of it—the fever must have made my wits wander.”

“That Nepos fellow you brought over last night seemed a man of sense,” Gorgidas suggested to Marcus.

“I think you’re right. Nephon Khoumnos will have to know of this, too, though I wouldn’t blame him for thinking I’m trying to tear down Videssos’ army from the inside out.”

“If this sort of garbage goes on, I’d say the Videssian army could use some tearing down,” Gaius Philippus said. Privately,
his superior officer was beginning to agree with him, but Scaurus had already found that was not something he could tell the Videssians.

The tribune bent to pick up the dagger forced from the Khamorth. He misliked the blade even before he touched it. The pommel was carved into a leering, evil cat’s-face, while the hilt was covered by a green, velvety leather that must have come from the skin of a serpent. The blade itself was badly discolored, as if it had been tempered too long or too often.

No sooner had Marcus’ fingers folded round the hilt than he dropped the weapon with a cry of alarm. The discolored blade had begun to gleam, not an honest red-gold like the Druids’ marks on his sword and Viridovix’, but a wavering yellowish green. The tribune was reminded of some foul fungus shining with the sickly light of decay. He sniffed … no, it was not his imagination. A faint corrupt reek rose from the dagger.

He thanked every god he knew that the baneful weapon had not pierced his flesh; the death it would have dealt would not have been clean.

“Nepos must see this at once,” Gorgidas said. “Magic is his province.”

Marcus agreed, but could not nerve himself to pick up the wicked blade again. Magic was no province of his.

“It came to life when you touched it,” Gorgidas said. “Was it glowing when the nomad assailed you?”

“Truth to tell, I have no idea. I had other things on my mind at the moment.”

Gorgidas sniffed. “Well, I suppose you can’t be blamed,” he said, but his tone belied his words. The Greek was a man who, if it befell him to lose his head, would notice the color of the headsman’s eyes behind his mask.

Now he stooped down to take the vicious dagger gingerly by the handle. The blade flickered uncertainly, like a half-asleep beast of prey. The doctor tore a strip of cloth from a solider’s mantle and wrapped it several times round the dagger’s hilt, tying it with an elegant knot he usually used to finish a bandage on an arm or leg.

Only when the knot was done did he touch the hilt with his bare hand. He grunted in satisfaction as the blade remained dark. “That should keep it safe enough,” he said, carefully
handing the weapon to Scaurus, who took it with equal caution.

Holding the knife well away from his body, Scaurus started for the door, only to be stopped by a guffaw from Viridovix. “Would your honor not think it a good idea to put on a cloak, ere he scandalize some early-rising lass?”

The tribune blinked; he had had too much else to worry about in the commotion to think of clothes. Not sorry to be rid of it, he put the dagger down for a moment to wrap himself in a mantle and strap on his sandals. Then he picked it up again with a sigh and stepped out into the crisp sunrise coolness.

As soon as he reached the door, he discovered how the nomad had been able to get into the barracks without the Roman sentries stopping him or raising the alarm. Both of them were lying in front of the entrance, fast asleep. Amazed and furious, Marcus prodded one none too gently with his foot. The man murmured faintly but would not wake, even after another, harsher, prod. Nor could his fellow guard be roused. Neither seemed harmed in any way, but they could not be brought to consciousness.

When Marcus summoned Gorgidas, the Greek physician was also unable to make the guards stir. “What’s happened to them, do you think?” the tribune asked.

“How in blazes do I know?” Gorgidas sounded thoroughly harried. “In this bloody country you have to be a he-witch as well as a doctor, and it puts me at a disadvantage. Go on, go on, fetch Napos—they’re breathing well and their pulses are strong. They won’t die while you’re gone.”

The sun’s first rays were just greeting the tops of the city’s taller buildings when the tribune began his walk to the Videssian Academy, which was on the northern edge of the palace complex. He did not know whether he would find Nepos there so early, but could think of no better place to start looking for the priest.

As he walked, he watched the sun creep down the walls of the structures he passed by, watched it caress the flowering trees in the palace gardens and orchards, watched their blossoms begin to unfold under its light. And as he walked out from behind the long blue shadow of a granite colonnade, the sun reached him as well.

The dagger he carried was suddenly hot in his hand. At the
sun’s first touch the blade began to burn, giving off clouds of acrid yellow smoke. The Roman threw it to the ground and backed away, coughing and gasping for breath—the smoke felt like live coals in his lungs.

He thought he heard the metal wail as if in agony and resolved to clamp down on a runaway imagination.

The fire was so furious it soon burned itself out. After the breeze had dispersed the noxious fumes, Marcus warily approached the sorcerous weapon. He expected to see only a lump of twisted, fused metal, but found to his dismay that hilt, pommel, and even Gorgidas’ wrappings were still intact, as was a thin rod of steel extending the length of what had been the blade.

A cautious touch revealed the dagger to be cool enough to handle. Fighting back a shudder, the tribune picked it up and hurried on to the Academy.

A four-story building of gray sandstone housed the Videssian center of learning. Though both secular and religious knowledge were taught there, a spire and golden sphere surmounted the structure; here as elsewhere in the Empire, its faith had the last word.

The doorman, half-asleep over his breakfast of bread and hot wine, was surprised his first guest should be a mercenary captain, but polite enough to try to hide it. “Brother Nepos?” he said. “Yes, he’s here—he’s always an early riser. You’ll probably find him in the refectory, straight down this hall, the third door on your right.”

This early in the day, the Academy hallway was almost deserted. A young blue-robe looked intrigued as the Roman strode past him but, like the doorman, offered no comment.

Sunlight streamed through the tall, many-paned windows of the refectory and onto its battered tables and comfortably dilapidated chairs. But somehow, instead of accenting their shabbiness, the warm light gave the old furniture the effect of being freshly varnished and newly reupholstered.

Except for the fat, unshaven cook sweating behind his pots, Nepos was alone in the room as Marcus stepped in. The priest stopped with a steaming spoonful of porridge halfway to his mouth. “You look like grim death,” he told the tribune. “What has brought you here so early?”

By way of answer, Scaurus dropped what was left of the
Khamorth’s dagger with a clank onto the priest’s table. Nepos’ reaction could not have been more emphatic had it been a fat viper in front of him. Forgetting the spoon in his hand, he shoved his chair back as fast as he could. Porridge splattered in all directions. The priest went first red, then pale, to the crown of his shaven head. “Where did you come by this?” he demanded; the sternness his light voice could assume was amazing.

His round face grew more and more grave as the Roman told his tale. When at last Marcus was done, Nepos sat silent for a full minute, his chin cupped in the palms of his hands. Then he bounced to his feet, crying, “Skotos is among us!” with such fervor that the startled cook dropped his spoon into a pot and had to fish for it with a long-handled fork.

“Now that you’ve been informed,” Marcus began, “I should also pass my news on to Nephon Khoumnos so he can question—”

“Khoumnos question?” Nepos interrupted. “No! We need subtlety here, not force. I will put the question to your nomad myself. Come!” he snapped, scooping up the dagger and moving for the door so quickly Marcus had to half trot to catch him up.

“Where are you going, your excellency?” the Academy doorman asked the priest as he hurried by. “Your lecture is to begin in less than an hour, and—”

Nepos did not rurn his head. “Cancel it!” Then, to Marcus, “Hurry, man! All the freezing furies of hell are at your back, though you know it not!”

When they got back to the barracks, the bound Khamorth screamed in despair as he saw the consumed weapon Nepos carried. The prisoner shrank in upon himself, drawing his knees up against his belly and tucking his head down into the hollow of his shoulder.

Gaius Philippus, a firm believer in the saving value of routine, had already sent most of the Romans out to the drill field. Now Nepos cleared the barracks of everyone save himself, the nomad, the two unconscious Roman sentries, and Gorgidas, allowing the doctor to act as his assistant.

“Go on, go on,” he said, shooing them out before him. “You can do nothing to help me, and a word at the wrong moment could do great harm.”

“Sure and he’s just like a druid,” Viridovix grumbled, “always thinking he knows twice as much as anyone else.”

“I notice you’re out here with the rest of us,” Gaius Philippus said.

“That I am,” the Celt admitted. “All too often, your druid is right. It’s a rare chancy thing, going against one.”

Only a few minutes passed before the sentries came out of the barracks hall. They seemed none the worse for what they had undergone, but had no memory of how their unwilled sleep had begun. As far as they knew, one moment they were on guard, while in the next Nepos was bending over them in prayer. Both of them were angry and embarrassed at failing in their duty.

“Don’t trouble yourselves about it,” Marcus told them. “You can’t be blamed for falling victim to wizardry.” He sent them on to exercise with their comrades, then settled back to wait for Nepos to emerge.

And wait he did; the fat little priest did not come forth for another two hours and more. When he appeared at last, Scaurus bit back a shocked exclamation. Nepos’ gait was that of a man in the last throes of exhaustion; he clutched Gorgidas’ elbow as a shipwreck victim clings to a plank. His robe was soaked with sweat, his eyes black-circled. Blinking at the bright sunlight, he sank gratefully onto a bench. There he sat for several minutes, gathering his strength before he began to speak.

“You, my friend,” he told Marcus wearily, “have no notion of how lucky you were to wake, and how much luckier still not to be touched by that accursed knife. Had it pierced you, had it even pricked you, it would have drawn the soul from your body into the deepest pits of hell, there to lie tormented for all eternity. A demon was bound in that blade, a demon to be set free by the taste of blood—or destroyed by Phos’ sun, as in fact befell.”

In his own world, the tribune would have taken all that as a metaphor for poison. Here he was not so sure … and suddenly more than half believed, as he remembered how the dagger had shrieked when struck by sunlight.

The priest continued, “You were right in blaming Avshar for setting upon you the poor, damned nomad inside your hall. Poor lost soul—the wizard linked his life to that of the demon
he bore, and when it failed, he began to gutter out, like a candle in air unable to sustain a flame. But the destruction of the demon severed the hold Avshar had on him, and I learned much before his flame fell into nothingness.”

“Is your honor saying he’s dead?” Viridovix said. “Hardly hurt, he was, in the taking of him.”

“He’s dead,” Gorgidas said. “His soul, his will to live—call it what you like—there was none in him, and he died.”