Night & Demons (15 page)

“I cannot leave off,” said Hardin in a despairing whisper.

Bishop Holar sniffed; his right hand, as white and delicate as a woman’s, stroked the cover of the book
Dragon.
“So I see,” he said. “Well, it will be as it must be, then.”

Hardin resumed his chant. All the world was silent except his voice.

The fire was a stake of white light through the heart of the sky. Through the shaft of flame could be seen the shapes of rocks and plants and figures; but not such as are seen in the world of men.

The cat paced, her face twisting with hope and eagerness; and with not a little fear as well. Hardin continued the incantation. His visage was set like a skull and his voice was a child’s piping, but still he spoke the words.

No longer did the wizard’s hands turn the pages of
Gryphon.
The parchment leaves turned of themselves, and as they turned, the light of the fiery letters on them hung in the air like the afterimage of a lightning stroke.

Bishop Holar sneered, but he, too, showed the tension. Holar took a step forward, unwilling to advance but doing so nonetheless.

Hardin’s lips moved, but no longer was the chant audible as words from his tongue. Pulses too deep to be sound throbbed through the cosmos, making the sky and ground tremble together.

The fire was a sword cleaving the heavens. The fronds of a nearby willow curled back; the trunk split with a despairing hiss.

Bishop Holar’s arm began to straighten, extending the book
Dragon.
His movement was slow, as slow as the face of a glacier grinding down the notch of a valley.

The fire was a pressure as palpable as stone, and it roared like an angry god. The fronds of the great cypress shriveled and burst into flame.

“Hardin!” said the cat. “Your fire will swallow you and the world with you unless I smother it now. Is it your will that I save you, Hardin, or do you choose to go to hell in a bath of flame?”

Hardin’s mouth formed the words of power; his tongue had no more volition than a boulder has, careening down a hillside. His right hand moved in a desperate gesture toward the fire he had lighted but could not quench.

The cat bent with a supple motion to grip one of the tripod’s three clawed feet. She straightened, lifting the braðzier of chiseled iron with an ease that belied the slender delicacy of her arms. Grinning at Hardin, she overturned it and thrust the basin into the pool over a sunken grave. Steam from the stagnant water flooded the churchyard in a hot cloud.

A thunderclap threw Hardin backward, drowning Bishop Holar’s cry of triumph. The book
Gryphon
fell to the ground. It erupted into ruddy flames which blazed until they had consumed leaves and binding utterly. The soil where the tome had lain was baked to glass without even a dusting of ash upon its heat-crazed surface.

The two wraiths had vanished. Bishop Holar remained. He bowed low to the cat, then walked back into his tomb carrying
Dragon
in the crook of his arm. His step was unðsteady, for the strain had been great for even such as he.

Hardin’s body lay where he had fallen. His chest moved, but his eyes were empty. From Hardin’s still form separated a wraith of gray light in the wizard’s semblance.

The wraith looked at the familiar, then looked for a last time at the world it was leaving. With the jerky motion of a marionette, Hardin’s soul followed Bishop Holar within the tomb. The edges of the cracked marble flowed together as though they had never ruptured.

From Bishop Holar’s tomb came a yowl like the agony of a starving cat, diminishing slowly into silence. On the blackened stone of the tomb door was an additional face, tortured and despairing.

Dawn was breaking. The cat laughed to the sky as she danced about the slack-jawed form of the one who had slain her mate.

THE FALSE PROPHET

Latin has been my soul’s anchor ever since my second semester of college. I don’t know why that should be, but I can tell you how it happened.

I took two years of Latin in high school because it was that or Spanish. Neither option appealed to me, but I had to take some foreign language. My grades were adequate but nobody was going to mistake me for a Latin scholar, and I don’t recall getting any particular pleasure from the classes.

My plan in college (the University of Iowa) was to major in chemistry, go to law school, and become a patent attorney. Chemistry required German, so I started German with the expectation that I’d never read another line of Latin.

I pretty quickly realized that I wasn’t cut out to be a chem major (or, I suspected, a patent attorney), so I switched to history. I continued with German (which I didn’t actively dislike), because I didn’t believe that I could ever get back into Latin after a year away from the language.

That’s when things get kind of odd. College was a complete disruption of my life. Everything had changed. I don’t mean everything was bad—Iowa’s huge library in particular was a wonderful resource for somebody like me who can get interested in a wide range of subjects—but everything was different. I found myself thinking of Latin as the one part I might reclaim of the, well, youth which I’d surrendered when I left home.

I borrowed an old copy of the Latin book I’d used in high school and studied it on my own. Studied it for the first time, really: in high school I’d shown a flair for sight translations but I hadn’t bothered much about grammar. I started regular course work in my third semester and took about all the Latin courses offered at Iowa before I graduated. (I wound up with thirty semester hours and asked if I could call Latin a double major with my history. The administration agreed.)

I entered Duke Law School in 1967. That was stressful, too; I took Latin courses in the main university to settle me. (They’d never had anybody do that before, but there were no rules against it.)

When I was drafted out of law school I couldn’t take courses, but I carried my Oxford Classical Text of Horace through basic training and as much of Southeast Asia as I saw. I continue to read Latin for pleasure. I also read extensively on classical subjects, because they interest me and I’ve got a good formal grounding from my undergraduate days.

Naturally I’ve used a lot of classical backgrounds in my fiction, SF as well as fantasy and horror. I wrote “The False Prophet” to fill out a collection of previously written stories in a classical milieu.

Something I’ve come to realize is that many readers think they know things about ancient Rome. When they read a contrary statement in a story of mine, some assume I’ve made a stupid mistake. Well, I do make stupid mistakes (for example, the time I nearly severed a tendon while sharpening a knife), but when the subject is Roman history or culture, the smart money is going to bet on me.

A universal case is that educated people don’t want to believe that Roman shields were made of plywood. I had a stranger call me from California to tell me that plywood hadn’t been invented until the nineteenth century. Roman shields were made of three plies of (generally) birch, glued together. The grain on the front and back layers ran crosswise, but it was vertical on the central ply. Archeologists call the material plywood (what on Earth else would they call it?); the educated man in the street finds that truth ridiculous.

I once complained that I should feel lucky that I don’t get similar objections when I mention that most Roman buildings were concrete. The next day I got a query from an editor who wanted to know whether my mention of “Roman concrete” was a mistake.

A similar problem involves readers who believe that colloquial Latin should be translated into something closer to William Morris than to normal English. There’s a place for high style, but it doesn’t get much use among soldiers or ordinary people in general, now or two thousand years ago. My dialogue (like that of Martial, Catullus, Petronius, and a very long list of other Latin writers) tends to be colloquial in form.

A lot of reading and research went into these stories; but my heart went into them, too.

* * *

T
he big young man, grinning at Dama through the doorway of the City Prefect’s private office, had the look of a killer. Dama knew the fellow’s name, Lucius Vettius—and knew that he was an officer in the imperial guard, though at the moment he wore a civilian toga. Dama smiled back. “The virtuous Marcus Licinius Dama!” bellowed the nomenclator in a strong Syrian accent. Why couldn’t Gaius Rutilius Rutilianus—who was, by Mithra, City Prefect of Rome—buy servants who at least pronounced Latin properly?

“He didn’t mention that you’re only a merchant!” Menelaus whispered to Dama in amazement. “No, he didn’t,” Dama agreed without amplifying his response. The nomenclator was wearing a new tunic. So was the doorkeeper who’d let Dama and his older companion into Rutilianus’s reception room with a crowd of over a hundred other favor-seekers. The tunics were best-quality Egyptian linen and represented a hefty outlay—

Even to Dama, who imported them along with the silks which were his primary stock in trade. “His companion,” cried the nomenclator, “the learned Faustus Pompeius Menelaus!” The nomenclator paused. “Known as The Wise.’’ Menelaus suddenly looked ten years younger. He straightened to his full height and fluffed his long gray beard.

Though Dama said nothing as the pair of them stepped into Rutilianus’s private office, the nomenclator had earned himself a bonus by the degree to which his ad-libbed comment had brightened the old man’s face.

Menelaus and Dama’s father had remained friends throughout the latter’s life. Dama stopped visiting his parent when disease and pain so wracked the older man that every conversation became a litany of insult and complaint; but Menelaus continued to come, to read aloud and to bear bitter insults because to do so was a philosopher’s duty—and a friend’s.

“Well, he sure looks the part, doesn’t he?” quipped Caelius, one of the four civilians standing around the Prefect’s couch. “Got any owls nesting in that beard, old man?”

“Looking the part’s easy enough,” countered Vulco.
“
If you want a philosopher of
real
learning, though, you’ll hire Pactolides.”

“I think it’s unchristian to be hiring
any
sort of pagan philosopher,” said Macer. “Severiana won’t like it a bit.”

“My wife doesn’t make the decisions in
this
house,” the Prefect said so forcefully that everyone listening knew that Rutilianus was as much voicing a wish as stating a fact.

The Prefect shifted his heavy body on the couch and scratched himself. Though the morning air was comfortable by most standards, Rutilianus was sweating despite having dispensed with the formality of his toga while handling this private interview.

The men were the Prefect’s friends, advisors, and employees—and wore all those separate masks at the same time. Except for Vettius (who was about Dama’s age), they’d accompanied Rutilianus during his governorships in Spain and North Africa. They carried out important commissions, gave confidential advice—and picked up the bits and scraps which form the perquisites of those having the ear of high office.

“Anyway,” offered Sosius, “I don’t think that there’s anything sinful about hearing advice on living a good life, even if it does come from a pagan.”

For what Dama had paid Sosius, he’d expected more enthusiastic support. Pactolides was getting much better value for his bribe to Vulco.

“Well, let’s hear what he says for himself,” the Prefect said, still peevish at the mention of his wife. He nodded toward Menelaus. “You
can
speak, can’t you?” he demanded. “Not much use in having a personal philosopher who can’t, is there?”

“Pactolides can speak like an angel,” muttered Vulco. “Voice like a choirboy, that man has . . . .”

Dama prompted his friend with a tap on the shoulder. Menelaus stepped forward and bowed. “If ever there was a man who was rightly afraid when called to speak in your presence, noble Rutilianus,” the old philosopher boomed, “it is I; and I sense—” he made a light, sweeping bow to the Prefect’s companions “—that those who participate in your counsels are well able to see my distress.”

Menelaus was a different man as soon as he began his set oration—confident, commanding; his tones and volume pitched to blast through the chatter filling a rain-crowded basilica when he addressed his students in one corner. Dama had worried that the old man’s desperate need for a job would cause him to freeze up when the opportunity was offered. He should have known better.

“—for my heart is filled with the awareness of the way you, armed like Mars himself, preserved the liberty of this Republic; and now, wearing the toga, increase its civil glory. For—”

The soldier, Vettius, crooked a finger toward Dama and nodded in the direction of the garden behind the office.

Rutilianus’s other councilors looked bored—Vulco was yawning ostentatiously—but the Prefect himself listened to the panegyric with pleasure. He nodded with unconscious agreement while Menelaus continued, “—while all those who have borne the burden of your exalted prefecture are to be praised, to you especially is honor due.”

Vettius, waiting at the door into the garden, crooked his finger again. Dama pursed his lips and followed, walking with small steps to disturb the gathering as little as possible—though Menelaus in full cry couldn’t have been put off his stride by someone shouting
Fire!
and the Prefect was rapt at the mellifluous description of his virtues.

The garden behind Rutilianus’s house had a covered walk on three sides, providing shade at all times of the day. The open area was large enough to hold a dozen fruit trees as well as a small grape arbor and a variety of roses, exotic peonies, and other flowers.

Military equipment was stacked beside the door: a bronze helmet and body armor modeled with idealized muscles over which a pair of naiads cavorted; a swordbelt supporting the sheathed dagger and long, straight-bladed spatha of a cavalryman; and a large, circular shield in its canvas cover.

Vettius followed Dama’s eyes toward the gear and volunteered, “I’m army—seconded to the City Prefect for the time being.”