Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (63 page)

They came for her as the sun began its descent into the west. The angle of the sun hit the window casting a hundred small quarter moons on the opposite wall. Sabrann closed her eyes and felt blessed by the moons, symbols of the Otherworld. The
Rab-kohanim
and four priests of Baal, each wearing the high cone-shaped headdress and gold rich robes, crowded together in the doorway. No simple klafti scarf for these important men.

None of those priests would come near her. The
Rab-kohanim
had brought a young slave— a temple prostitute—to prepare Sabrann for the sacrifice at the
Tophet
. The girl was small, like Akmu-en-Swnw, and clad in a garish red gown. She wore her long, black hair in a mass of thin braids, in the style of Egypt, with small tinkling bells at each end.
Tawe
, they called her—an Egyptian name.

Tawe did not seem afraid and gave Sabrann a gentle embrace as she carefully guided her through the limestone-walled halls to the door leading outside. It was the same way they had gone to the queen’s palace, except now she was alone—there was no Akmu or Hero.

Outside, the sun blinded her, even as it lowered in the sky. Her mouth felt dry, and her tongue swelled and stuck to the roof of her mouth. Tawe held her hand.

A small cart and mule waited with its driver. The cart was draped with palm fronds and bright sprays of fuchsia bougainvillea, for she was a gift to placate their gods.

At first, it was calm, orderly, just the handful of priests and a few guards to march by the side. Tawe walked behind. The little cart made its way in silence. Sabrann’s hands were tied together in front with rough rope. She grasped the edge of the cart. It rocked as it bumped along the rough streets, and she almost fell.

They passed through the wide expanse of the market, empty of the day’s cacophony of languages and people. Only a few young boys guarded the strings of pack horses, the cages of wild animals. Feral dogs snarled and fed on the rotten food left from the day’s market. A wild- haired hyena screamed its high call at her and tugged on its chain. A young panther paced endlessly in its cage, night-black, yellow-eyed, hungry. Sabrann stared at them, too weak to be frightened.

Then the cart turned onto the street that led to the harbor and the silence exploded! Here were all the people: crowds lined the way, shouting, screaming the names of gods.

All day long, an unseasonable heat had locked the city in its claws. The air was thick, unmoving. By the time dusk came, the people of Carthage were hot enough and crazed enough by the heat, to seize the barbarian and tear her apart. Except none dared to touch her.

The priests rattled their
sistas
in a vain effort to still the crowd that shoved up close to the cart, shaking their fists. People fell to their knees and wailed, “Death to the queen’s killer ... Death to the barbarian demon.” The heated air was heavy with the stink and acrid smell of people. Everywhere, it was her death they wanted.

From Reshef’s temple, with its walls covered in thousands of gold leaves, to the temple of Astarte, where a large group of sacred prostitutes beat tambourines and hand drums, the priests had incited the people for days, telling the story of the demon barbarian. Carthage was a city of temples, both large and small, and passing by each temple brought more people, fresh to the clamor of the crowd. Primed and hysterical, they streamed into the streets.

Their voices kept up a solid ululating chorus demanding death. The sound swept over Sabrann like a high wind in a storm.

The street was narrow and tall buildings loomed overhead, casting deep purple shadows. The sun, a heated ball of crimson, disappeared; the streets grew dark. Slaves held torches to light the way. Most people were terrified by the sight of a demon so close they could reach out and touch her. Some covered their eyes with one hand and peeked. A few were bold and threw stones. She struggled to stay upright and leaned against the side of the cart.

Close to the harbor basin stood the great temple of Baal Hammon, the sun god, bringer of life and death, and the god of sacrifice. Here was the
Tophet
, where all sacrifices were made.

The street around the temple was packed with a screaming mob. The guards used spears to push and fight their way through. When the cart finally entered the back gate to the temple, the first thing Sabrann saw was the sacrificial pyre stacked with piles of wood.

It waited for her.

CHAPTER 42

The sun rose high over
El Haouaria
, sullen and hot in the still air. Sunburned and yoked like a beast of burden, Lorc cù-luirg struggled to keep his feet moving as he pushed the massive wooden spoke that turned the giant wheel of a crane. Sweat poured down over his eyes, and he shook it away with his head. He had to see. If he faltered or fell, he would be whipped and sent to work below in the darkness of the quarry, where he would find a sure death in the stagnant, dust-laden air. This was his third week and already he was exhausted. He would surely die before long.

Two sturdy horses and four men worked in tandem to turn the wheel, struggling to pull heavy stone up from the quarry hidden beneath their feet—the massive pieces of sandstone used to build the glorious buildings of Carthage.

Nets of ropes, each thick as a man’s arm, hung down through a square-cut opening in the rock face, to carry up the huge stones. Far below the opening lay an immense cave, the heart of the quarry. Here an army of slaves hacked and prodded, chipping away at the sandstone rock with short-handled picks, until a rough-shaped building block emerged from the rock wall.

Narrow shafts gave the underground quarry a strange dim light, like being underwater. The constant cutting and sawing, lifting and chipping, kept a thick haze of rock-dust in the air, and covered every slave in a film of fine, white sandstone.

Lorc cù-luirg stumbled and cursed. Even and slow! No jerks that might cause a two-ton piece of stone to slip from its rope casing and fall back down to the floor of the quarry. Men died down there; he had already seen it happen. Two days ago, a sandstone block had crashed down and caught two slaves beneath it. Their bodies, flattened beyond recognition, were scooped into a basket that was sent to the surface to be thrown into the sea, just like stone rubble or a bucket of waste from the piss pots.

They worked from first light to sunset. Then buckets of some slop the guards called food were sent down. The workers below slept there. Life as a quarry slave was short, but there was always a steady flow of new slaves to replace the worn-out, broken-limbed, used-up ones.

Lorc cù-luirg knew his strong back had saved him again. On the
Astarte
, when the Admiral wanted to throw him back in the water, the captain had needed his strength as a rower. Even after the great storm and the flogging, the captain still needed him. Here he was worked like a beast, but Lorc had seen what happened to the rest of the crew from the
Astarte
. They were all suffocating to death, working down below in the cave.

At least he would die in the open, fresh air. With a mighty push of the crane’s wheel, the last block of stone crested the opening. The overseer caught the ropes with a long crook and guided it to the rollers, a platform of tree trunks lashed together. Soon the horses and the strongest slaves would pull the cut stone on the rollers, down to the water line, and then up a ramp, where a barge waited.

The slave master cracked his whip over Lorc’s head, a sign to take a brief rest and water break before pulling the stone to the barge. He unhitched Lorc from the crane. Lorc glanced at the sun, then leaned his head on the wooden spoke. He had been here since dawn and the day was only half done.

He drifted into a sleep-like daze. When a few drops of water fell on his arm, he dreamed of the cool river near Mai Dun and green fields. Home. Someone pulled on his arm. He opened dust-rimmed eyes. It was Glas, the water boy.

The boy grinned at him. How was it he always seemed happy?

“The gods catch you smiling like that and they’ll bury you deep in that cave. This is a place for demons and the forlorn.” Lorc scowled at him.

Glas gave him an extra measure of water from the gourd cup. Lorc took the offered cup and drank all the water fast. A few drops dribbled from his parched lips.

He nodded his thanks and wondered how the boy was still alive. Lorc remembered well the terror of being young and alone. And with the girl gone, the boy had no one to look after him.

They were both alone. He felt sad; he wanted to protect this crippled boy. Lorc welcomed his company, even if it reminded him of the girl and his lost chance for getting back his name. He looked at the Gaesatae tattoo on his arm. That seemed like something from a long-ago dream.

Nothing mattered now. They would all die here.

The slave master yelled at Glas. “Water-boy, get busy!”

“More,” rasped Lorc. His throat felt closed with stone dust.

Glas slipped him another drink of water and then exclaimed, “Look, it’s Akmu!”

Standing next to the slave master was the little Egyptian and Hero, the scribe. The slave master seemed upset. He kept shaking his head and had his arms folded across his barrel-shaped chest. Then he raised his hands, a look of disgust on his face, and walked away.

Akmu and Hero walked toward Lorc. Hero held a scroll in his hand.

“The magistrate, Lord Gisco, has sent the physician Akmu-en-Swnw to determine the well-being of the
Astarte’s
crew,” Hero announced, in a loud voice.

The slaves stared at him in disbelief. The closest thing they had to a physician was the barge captain, who checked the sick for sweating sickness or pus-filled boils and the vomiting that always caused death. They would be taken aboard the barge and pushed overboard into the bay. No sickness was allowed to kill the other slaves.

Akmu lifted Glas’s hand and examined his fingers. “It is not true,” he said in a low voice. “But Hero has written an order that the slave master, who cannot read, dares not question. Listen carefully. Things have gone badly with the queen. Very bad. Sabrann is condemned to be a sacrifice tonight. I will go to her tonight and bring her something to make it painless. She asked me to look after you. You know she loves you as her own.”

Glas slumped to the ground. His face went white.

“I will find a way to get Lord Gisco to release you and come get you tomorrow. Have heart; in this life, the god’s will is unknown. But I will see you safe. I have promised Sabrann.”

He reached in his shoulder bag, drew out a long strip of linen and wound it around Glas’s wrist. “You are wounded; do not forget when the slave master comes by.”

Akmu rose to leave and glanced over at Lorc. “I cannot help you, Gaesatae. Perhaps Admiral Himilco will be able to free all the men from the Astarte soon. Live for that.”

Lorc watched Akmu leave and closed his eyes as any hope drifted away.

No much chance for that
.
We will die before then.

“I saw this,” Glas said.

Lorc’s eyes snapped open. “You knew? What?”

“Yes, but she wouldn’t listen,” Glas whispered. Tears fell as he turned to Lorc.

“I must go to her. My Mam said I must not let her die.”

His Mam. Was the boy talking to ghosts from the Otherworld? Lorc cù-luirg knew the boy’s mother was dead. They had killed her while he was still a Gaesatae warrior, in that other lifetime. The spiral on the girl’s cheek that marked her as seer and Caradoc’s heir had also marked the boy’s mother for death. Sometimes the gods were cruel.

He glanced at the boy. His eyes were on the sky. Far above, some hawks floated on the warm updraft.

“I must go to her,” Glas said.

“And just how will you do that?” Lorc gave the boy a pitying look. He was dreaming.

“I cannot do it by myself, Gaesatae. Help me.”

Gaesatae!
It hurt to hear the word. Lorc felt a sharp pain in his chest and a great sadness ached in him. He would die here, a miserable slave, never a proud Gaesatae clan leader.

Help me.
The boy’s words rang in his ears. Words from the Gaesatae Code he had sworn to obey flooded into his thoughts:
And take care of the weak and wounded who cannot help themselves.

Like this boy.

Stunned by the sharp memory of the code, Lorc looked at Glas. The boy was brave and more. But did he think he could just walk out of here? The words from the Gaesatae Code echoed again in Lorc’s head. Once, that code guided his life in all ways. He knew every word. It was a bitter memory of a more honorable time.

The boy needed help—he needed a plan. Lorc followed some slaves to the latrine area behind the quarry, thinking. He might work like an ox and die within a month, yet he still remembered the things that once mattered, beyond this stinking quarry.