The Gate of Fire (24 page)

Dwyrin put the cup down by the amphora. It was empty; he could tell that by the weight. The little lamp exhausted its oil and flickered out. "Do you want me to come with you?" His voice echoed in the darkness, but there was no one there. He had wanted to say this to Odenathus, but his throat had seized up and he had not. "I will, if you just ask."

The young man lay down, curling his body up against the cold desert night. Stones dug into his back, but for the moment he did not care. "We should stay together," he whispered. "We're a strong team."

High above the camp, on the soft breeze of night, an owl hunted, crossing the moon.

Gaius Julius squatted in deep shadow, a cloak of dark red wool pulled around his shoulders and falling to the ground around his boots. It was cold among the ornamental trees, but the old Roman grinned to himself in delight. Indeed, he was flexing his fingers and feeling the smooth movement of muscles and tendons in his hands and arms. Clouds covered the sky, shrouding the sliver of moon that had been peeking over the tops of the cedars.

"What are you laughing about?" Alexandros' voice was edged with tension and excitement.

"I was thinking," Gaius whispered over his shoulder, "that when I was a living man I would be feeling creaky and old and frozen to be out here at this hour. But now? Now I feel fine! I can sense the cold, but it does not dig at my bones."

"Huh." The Macedonian did not seem impressed. The young man continued to fidget, constantly checking the tools and bags that were strapped to his body. "I can still run farther and faster than you. My grip is stronger."

Gaius Julius smiled in the darkness, hearing the utter confidence in that mellow voice. His heart tugged at him, even cold and dead as it was. Something about the golden youth drew him, subtly demanding that he follow the other blindly, even to death. The old Roman was wary and cynical and knew that he had once exerted the same influence upon others. Perhaps he wouldn't be fooled.

"True," the old Roman purred, "but you died so young and with so much left undone. Your restored body is much fitter than mine, which is old and worn out, abused by success... but even so, I do not feel the cold, and that pleases me."

Alexandros made a muttering sound and slouched down against the bole of one of the pine trees. They were crouched in hiding within the first tier of trees. A curving road of gravel and close-fitted stones lay before them, and beyond that the looming circular shape of a great mausoleum. Across the way, a barrier of rosebushes encircled the base of the tomb. High marble walls rose up to a terrace planted with more ornamental trees—lemons and olives intertwined. Two more terraces rose above that, each sloping with green turf and bright flowers. Finally, surmounting the whole edifice, a great brick drum faced with travertine rose up, topped with a stout marble pillar and then a shining golden statue.

Gaius Julius looked up, seeing the thing glittering in the light of torches held in brick recesses at its base. His lips curled into an involuntary sneer. The sight of his so-called nephew, arm raised in benediction over the city of Rome, the crown of laurels upon his head, galled him. "Puppy..." he hissed, feeling envy and jealousy stir in his heart, bitter as wormwood.

"'Ware." Alexandros touched his shoulder lightly and pointed.

A dozen yards away was a break in the neatly trimmed rosebushes and a flight of steps that led up to a pair of broad golden doors. The gold panels gleamed in the light of a pair of lanterns that were hung up on hooks at either side of the doorway. A pair of stools and an iron brazier were placed in an alcove just off of the doorway. Two soldiers in the garb and armor of the Praetorian cohort had been sitting there, talking quietly and warming their hands over the coals. Now they had stood up and were belting up their swords.

"The watch is changing?" Alexandros tensed at Gaius' side, ready to sprint out across the road.

Gaius shook his head and laid a calming hand on the young man's shoulder. "No, not yet. They must be going
utmeiant vel in meiantur
, as it were."

The two Praetorians made a careful survey of the dark woods and the sky, then picked up one of the lanterns and sauntered off into the stands of carefully manicured trees. Gaius watched them carefully until the light of the lantern disappeared between the trunks. Then he nodded to the Macedonian. "Let's go."

The long bronze key jiggled in the lock. The doors, up close, were ornamented with incised pictures of the events surrounding the birth of the Empire. Gaius Julius cursed softly and pulled the key out. The hexagonal lock mechanism was sticking. He pulled a second key from a leather bag hanging from his broad military belt. Behind him, Alexandros moved a little, his
lorica
making a soft metallic rattle. Gaius shook his head, trying to get the helmet he was wearing to set properly on his head. It had been a long time since he had worn a full legionnaire's kit, and the heavy armor on his shoulders and chest was slowing him down.

Soft politician
, he chaffed at himself. The boy doesn't even notice the weight of this metal.

The second key clicked and engaged a pin somewhere in the lock. Gaius put his shoulder into turning the handle and there was a grating noise as a bar rolled back inside the lock. The complaining screech it made seemed very loud, but Gaius knew that the sound would die quickly.

"Here we go," he said as the door cracked open a little. He put the key away and pushed at the panel. It swung in, creaking on its hinges with the weight of all that gold on the door facing. The dim light of a few candles showed inside, and Gaius slipped in with Alexandros close on his heels.

"This is all that is left? Just ashes?" Alexandros rolled a carved marble cylinder between his hands, making a tic-tic-tic sound on the top of a malachite coffin. The cylinder was about a foot long and intricately carved on the outside with scenes of men and horses and women and ships and the Forum. "It's so small!"

"Not much left of a man, once he's been rendered down." Gaius was poking around with a dagger in the niche that had held the cylinder. "I guess you Macedonians weren't much for saving the ashes, though."

"No," Alexandros said, his face pensive. "Wind and fire take the dead back to the gods. I sent many of my men home that way." Gaius looked up, hearing an unexpected thread of melancholy in the young man's voice. In the months since the youth's resurrection he had possessed a singularly positive demeanor. The events of his death and return to life did not seem to bother him at all. Gaius had thought that the youth only took it as his due to rise from the dead and walk among the living again.

"I wonder why they did not honor me that way." Alexandros' face, half illuminated by the light of the little candle-lantern that Gaius had brought, seemed drawn and marked with terrible fatigue. "Did they hate me so, after all that we had suffered together, to leave me trapped on earth, imprisoned in gold and lead?"

Gaius slid the dagger back into its copper sheath and stood up carefully and backed out of the brick-lined alcove that held four recessed niches. He untied a silk bag from his belt, where it had been held with purple string, and shook it open.

"Even in death," Gaius said absently while he worked, "you inspired both hate and love, my friend. If the histories are true, terrible arguments followed your funeral. Blows were struck while you lay in state, your body not even cooled. Some of your generals demanded that you be sent to the gods immediately, but others argued that you should be returned to Macedon to be buried in the city of your fathers. Each man strove to better the others in his grief and love of you."

Alexandros made a face at this, and shook his head and shoulders, trying to shake off the image.

"They were dogs," the old Roman continued, his gray eyes in shadow, "that tore themselves apart once the pack leader was dead. It took two years for an army of craftsmen to build your funeral car, your catafalque. The great generals were already murdering each other for control of your Empire before you were even properly buried. It is said, by men who were there, that the procession of your funeral train took five days to pass. No greater tribute has ever been paid to a living man. Entire nations were beggared to build your coffin."

The Macedonian sat down heavily on one of the steps that lined the tomb. It was cold and dark, lit only barely by the little lantern. A domed ceiling receded above them, lined with niches and statues of the dead. The pale circle of light from the candle barely touched the young man's feet.

"Why did they dishonor the traditions of my people so? The sky should be my burial place!"

Gaius looked down upon the boy, weighing his words. "You were no longer a soldier, deserving a soldier's death," he said softly. "Instead you had become the Emperor. The embalmers who laved your body and put the death shroud upon you prayed for a day and night before entering the chamber where you lay, lest they be struck down for touching the body of 'not a man, but a god.'" Gaius knelt, putting one gnarled old hand on the boy's knee.

Alexandros looked up, his eye makeup streaked with tears. "And my son, my wife? My mother?"

"Dead," Gaius said in an even, toneless voice, "within a decade of your own death. Murdered by those in the court at Pella who hated you. No heir of your body survived. It is said that your son by Empress Roxane, born after your death, was strangled by Cassander. Even your magnificent Empire did not survive your death. By the time the funeral procession left Babylon for the west, five kingdoms stood where you had built one pan-Hellenic-Persian Empire."

Alexandros stared back the Roman, his eyes stricken. "To the strongest—" he whispered, and held a hand to his mouth.

"Ruin," answered Gaius Julius. The old Roman felt for the boy, feeling at last the death of his life's work and great dream. "All in ruin within a generation. In the end, they even fought over your body. You never reached ancient hallowed Aegae; you never lay in the tomb your soldiers had raised there with their own hands. Even in death, you were more than a corpse; You were a veritable icon and a prize for the most ambitious."

Alexandros snarled and stood up, his fists clenched. A vein throbbed in his forehead. "Was there no banner of passage for even my corpse? Did they not even honor that, the journey of the dead? Who stole the coins from my eyes?"

One of Gaius' eyebrows inched upward at the vehemence in the boy's voice. He suppressed a smile with difficulty. The irony of it all was delightful.
Why shouldn't the body of a living god be a tool in the hands of conniving men? Is it not so now?

"The one who styled himself your brother, of course," Gaius said, gesturing at the cylinder on the floor. "The wily Ptolemy stole your entire funeral away as it passed through Syria. He took you back to Egypt and installed your body in a fabulous tomb—the
Sema
—where it lay in state for six hundred years. I looked upon it, when I was alive, and made homage to you—as tens of thousands had done—in the Temple of Ammon."

"Ptolemy"—Alexandros frowned and smiled at the same time—"that rascal! He would... he would dare such a thing. Boyhood friends should never be trusted. They never show proper respect!"

Seeing that the boy was ignoring him, Gaius dragged the marble cylinder over to him and began unscrewing the top of the urn. It was old and had once been sealed with a band of bronze, but that had corroded away in the intervening centuries. Gaius' hands were quick about their work; even with the door carefully locked behind them, there was no telling if the sentries might notice something and enter the tomb to investigate. The lid was still sticking, though. Gaius rummaged in the leather bag and found a cold chisel and a mallet. The mallet's head was lead with a woolen fleece tied around it to muffle noise. He wedged the cylinder between his boots and carefully lined up the chisel.

"Who won?" Alexandros' voice was businesslike again, and the melancholy tone had vanished. "When dogs fight, a new leader rises. Was it Ptolemy? Antiochus? Pray not that panderer Seleucus!"

Gaius looked up, the mallet in one hand and the other on the top of the cylinder. "None of them, lad. In the end it was brash young Rome that won. By the time of this puppy"—he tapped the top of the cylinder with the mallet—"the Republic had overthrown all of the
Diadochai
—your successors—and conquered the world. Well, save for Parthia..."

Alexandros frowned and looked around the tomb as if for the first time. "This was the best you could build, after all that? It's barely bigger than a minor temple in Thebes!"

Gaius raised an eyebrow and bent again to the urn. He carefully positioned the chisel and tapped softly at it with the mallet. After a moment, and despite a seemingly enormous noise, the top budged and then the old Roman could unscrew it.

"Pfaugh! What a must!" Gaius held the urn away from him and nodded at Alexander to hold the silk bag open. Ashes spilled out in a thin gray stream, barely filling half of the bag.

"Must have been a small fellow," Alexandros said, curiously looking into the sack.

Gaius ignored him and tied up the top of the bag with the purple string. "Take this," he said to Alexandros. "I need to replace the urn so they don't notice."

Gaius wrestled the heavy marble cylinder back into its niche, then pulled yet another bag from his belt. This one was heavy. He pulled the top open and poured the contents into the urn, his face turned away. "Ay! You're complaining about the mustiness of this? What in Hades is that?" Alexandros backed away from the niche, holding his nose closed and breathing through his mouth.

Gaius stepped back and brushed his hands off on his cloak. He was smiling broadly. "Just paying my proper respects," muttered the old Roman. "Make sure everything is picked up."

Alexandros nodded, and they checked the area around the niche carefully, obscuring any footprints in the dust and recovering their tools. There was no reason to leave any clues to their theft. Within minutes they were gone, the tiny bobbing candle vanishing up the stairs that led to the entrance tunnel.