The Gate of Fire (5 page)

"Ah, just as I remember it! A gaudy ruin, filled with the stink of death!"

A thick-shouldered man with a trim waist and a fringe of close-cut gray hair strode down the landing deck of the Engine. He was dressed in the Persian style: soft linen trousers, belted with richly worked kid leather, a close-fitting shirt of silk with an embroidered ox-hide jacket over it. His nose, however, could not be mistaken for anything but a Roman nose, and a patrician one at that. His eyes, cold and gray, were restless, flickering from the roof of the house to the rank weeds that choked the old garden. A short sword of the old classical style hung from his shoulder on a leather strap, and one large-knuckled hand rode easily on it.

"You know it so well, Gaius; your boyhood home, perhaps?"

Another man, this one much shorter, descended the iron ramp that had levered out of the belly of the Engine. Within the looming dark shape was a banging as the other servants began unloading the wooden crates and boxes that held the loot of Dastagird and the libraries of the Persian savants. It was quite cool in the garden, and the smell of freshly disturbed earth thrown up by the claws of the Engine tickled at Gaius' nose.

"No, Alexandros, I grew up by the sea—at my aunt's house. This place was a fancy of mine when I was a man. Come inside, there is something you should see."

The older man picked his way through the garden and started to mount a series of broad, flat, granite steps that led up to a high-ceilinged arcade of pillars that surrounded the house. Though he was only shod in light military boots, there was a brittle splintering sound as he set foot on the first step. Gaius stopped short, peering down at the slab under his
caligulae
. It had crumbled where he had stepped, cracking in a spiderweb out from under his heel. He frowned and raised a hand in warning to the other man.

Alexandros, his long golden hair tied back behind his head in two bands of copper, also stopped. Like the older man, he was alert, his clear blue eyes scanning the shadows behind the pillars and the brown ranks of trees and bushes on the slopes above the house. He turned slowly, his eyes narrowed over well-formed cheeks and nose. Unlike Gaius, he was wearing only a short white tunic and plain sandals, showing muscular thighs and well-defined biceps. The chilly winter air of central Italia did not seem to bother him. The ramp behind them rang with the tramp of more feet, and Alex turned. "Hold up, lads. Something odd is going on. Don't unload anything yet."

The servants—a collection of dark-haired Walach and Armenians—stopped and laid down their burdens. The tone of command in the young-seeming man's voice did not allow for anything but obedience. Alexandros caught Gaius' eye and nodded to the right, crouching a little. Like the older Roman, the young man carried a blade—a long, straight cavalry sword. The Persian steel rippled out of its sheath, and Alex moved off soundlessly to the left of the house. Gaius watched him for a moment, admiring the play of muscles under the smooth-toned skin and the wolflike quality of the boy.

Gaius shook his head, clearing away unimportant thoughts, and moved off to the right, his ears alert for any sound. Dead grass rustled under his feet.

"Lord Prince?" Krista stepped carefully into the gloom of the Engine. The rumbling had ceased leaving an odd echoing emptiness in the tight little rooms that ran the length of its body. Even small sounds—the
tik-tik
of her sandals on the metal floor—seemed large. She pushed aside the circular door that led into the specially built chamber at the heart of the machine. The well-oiled hinges rolled smoothly, revealing a room of hard-angled iron plates and a slightly raised floor. "Maxian?"

The space echoed with the sound of her voice. The flickering blue-white light of the Engine itself illuminated her face. She moved carefully around the circumference of the room, giving a wide berth to the cage of gold and silver wire that restrained a crystalline orb resting in a cup of rune-carved iron. A high-pitched singing sound followed her as she moved, but it, too, was a sound that she had put aside from her conscious thought. Another circular doorway stood ajar on the opposite side of the room, and beyond it she thought she heard a sound.

That door swung open at her touch, too, still soundless. The room beyond was quite dark, though the intermittent blue light from the Engine picked out a vague shape. Krista quelled her fear and entered, left hand drawing her cloak behind her back to free her right arm.

Behind her, in its prison of glass and wire and powerful signs, the Engine peered after her with sad, enormous eyes. Its gossamer wings fluttered against the glass, and tiny hands picked fruitlessly at the perfectly smooth surface of its prison.

Krista waited inside the doorway, listening intently. There was the ragged sound of breathing and a sharp smell—sweat and fear—filling the space. "My lord?" She bent forward, one hand out in front of her. It touched a fold of cloth, and then cold flesh. "Ah! Can you speak?"

The flickering light picked out the Prince, huddled on the floor of his room, curled up into a ball. Sweat beaded on his forearms and the side of his forehead. Krista cursed silently and gathered him up in her arms. He was very cold, and trembling slightly. Her long fingers pressed against the side of his neck—there was a pulse, but it hammered like a forge. "What is it?" She rolled back an eyelid and found his pupils wide and black.

The Prince shuddered in her arms, and sudden warmth flushed his skin. "Get me..." he croaked, "get me out. It is too strong here."

Krista nodded sharply and laid the Prince back down gently, feeling a prickling at the back of her neck. With quick hands, she folded a blanket over him and then sprinted out of the chamber.

Her feet rang on the floor, raising the heads of the servants in the cargo space and on the landing ramp. She skidded to a stop and half crouched to see out into the garden. The house of the Egyptian Queen seemed shrunken and badly used by the weather since the previous year. The head had fallen off the sphinx beside the great doorway. The rosebushes and trees that had been growing up among the remains of the ornamental garden were dead and withered.

"Quickly," she snapped at the Walach boys sitting on the metal ramp, "get these things out of the way and into the house. You and you—come with me. The Prince needs our help."

Without looking to see if they obeyed, she spun around and ran lightly back into the bowels of the Engine. Two of the Walach padded after her, as they always did. She ducked back into the room where the Prince lay, finding him half sitting, his face showing enormous strain. She touched the blanket and jerked her hand away in surprise. The heavy wool crumbled to dust under her fingers.

"The house, get me into the house..." The Prince's voice was tight and strained.

Krista knelt and got her shoulder under his. The burlier of the two Walach got his own hairy arm around the Prince's waist. Krista heaved, and the Prince came up off the floor. Crabbing sideways, they slid out the door into the passage. The Prince was a dead weight, his limbs flopping loosely. The slave girl began to hear a sharp buzzing sound in her ears. "Don't stop," she barked at the Walach. "We must reach the house."

The Walach scooped up the Prince's legs and broke into a run in one fluid motion. Krista slid Maxian's arm off her shoulder and ran alongside.

The metal ramp at the mouth of the Engine rang under their feet as they ran out onto the brown dead grass of the garden. The Walach began to labor as he crossed the space between the Engine and the veranda of the house. Krista paced him, watching in horror out of the corner of her eye as the boy's long raven black hair began to dull and turn a pale gray. His steps faltered on the staircase, and more stones cracked and shattered, even under Krista's light sandals. At the line of columns, the buzzing sound soared into a shrieking wail. Krista grabbed for the Prince as the Walach stumbled sideways and crashed headlong into one of the ancient marble pillars.

The other boy, running up behind, threw himself between the girl and the dying Walach. Though lacking the broad shoulders and rippling brawn of his older sibling, the younger man caught the Prince and shoved away from the withered corpse of his brother. Krista cursed and leapt from the top of the steps into the cool darkness between the pillars. There was a moment of suffocating sensation as she passed through the doorway, but she landed lightly and spun around, long hair flying out behind her head. The buzzing sound in her head was gone. The remaining Walach followed close on her heels, the Prince in his arms.

Krista looked out on the garden and saw that the stands of trees and rosebushes that had surrounded the house were all dead. Every living thing within sight of the porch was a drear brown or a rotting black. The Egyptian House stood at the center of quiet devastation.

Gaius picked his way around the corner of the rear of the house, walking carefully on the crumbling bricks that had once made a broad, pleasant patio. The patio had opened out of the dining rooms at the back of the house, overlooking a sloping lawn and more ornamental trees that descended the face of the hill. Once, covered pipes had carried water to fountains and a culvert that watered the lemon and orange trees. Now the trees were dead and overgrown with a thick vine bearing shiny dark leaves. The culverts were dangerous gaping holes in the floor of the patio. Sharp edges of broken ceramic pipe waited for an unwary ankle.

Memories fluttered at the edge of the old Roman's consciousness. He snarled to himself, his face contorting for a moment, and drove them away with an effort of will. Gaius had spent too much time in the pleasant company of enemies to show his emotions or true feelings to anyone else. Only one person had drawn his heart's truth out of him. This house, and much more, had been part of the reward he had intended her.

Now, thinking back upon it, he wondered if this curse that the Prince obsessed about might have had an earlier genesis than they suspected. Would it not explain the circumstances of his own death? It had seemed so petty! Walking into the great Forum of Rome—a man, an acquaintance, a political crony, walking up to him with a raised hand and a strained smile. Sudden burning pain in his side—then falling, and a crowd of faces above him, some familiar, some not. A cold darkness, broken at last by a dreadful awakening in a dank hole filled with bones and mud. The old man shook his head again and stepped up onto the veranda.

Alexandros entered the arcade of pillars at the same time from the opposite direction. Under the shelter of the roof—still mostly intact, and even partially repaired during their previous stay—the floor tiles did not shatter at a step, and the walls seemed strong enough. Gaius raised an eyebrow at the younger man. Alex smiled back, his strong white teeth gleaming in the dim light. The Greek shrugged his shoulders and slipped his sword back into its sheath.

"Nothing—only ruins and dead things. Did you see any animals on your side?"

"No," Gaius said, shaking his head in negation. Alex nodded over his shoulder.

"There are flights and flights of birds heaped on that side, all dead and withered. A strange business—none are rotted to speak of, just sort of shriveled up."

Gaius pursed his lips and slowly turned around, his eyes picking out the faded remains of the marks that the Persian Abdmachus had made the year before on floor and column and wall. He put his own sword away as well. "The curse, then," he said slowly, looking out at the dead trees at the edge of the garden. "It is attacking the house, but the old sorcerer's ward is enough to hold it at bay. We should get back to the Engine and help them unload—I doubt it is safe to be outside here, now."

Alex turned to go back out through the pillars, but Gaius halted him with a touch.

"This way," the old Roman said with a wry smile. "Better not to risk it outside—and there is something that you should see within."

Alex smiled back, but Gaius was slow to remove his hand from the boy's shoulder, and the Macedonian's eyes became wary.

"Who is this?"

Alex stared up at the massive statue that stood in the atrium of the house. Gaius covered a brief smile, though his mind was no longer focused on the younger man. The rooms and chambers they had passed through seemed long abandoned, but small items—a wicker chair in one room—were not where he remembered they had been left. Someone had been through the house, doubtless searching for evidence of what the Prince had been about. The incised and painted marks along the floors and etched into the walls remained, however, and the old Roman was glad. Without the remaining vestige of power that held the invisible enemy at bay, he was sure the entire building would have been reduced to a pitted foundation.

"It is you, my friend," Gaius said at last, turning back to his companion. The old Roman thought it was an excellent likeness.

"Me?" Alex turned, his face a study in comedy. "It looks nothing like me!"

Gaius shrugged. "Those who came after you were fond of embellishing your features, your purpose, your height, your reputation—or blackening it by equal turns. A woman I once knew had this bronze cast in your honor—this was her house, and she revered you as a god."

Alex grinned tightly, a flicker of cold steel in the dimness. "My men always complained about that. It is the way of the people of the East, though, to look upon the lord and master of their time as a living divinity. But not the Greeks!" He laughed. "Not my Greeks..."

"Well," Gaius said slowly, his eyes narrowed, "she was a Greek, the last of her house, and she swore by you and the power you represented."

Alex nodded, his eyes seeing something far away. "Women always looked to me as a source of power—for them or for their families. It seems, from what you have told me of your life, that you forgot that lesson. Your assignation with her destroyed your support among the citizens and the Senate."

Gaius frowned and spread his hands. "Who can say? The accounts of the time are confused, and I did not see it when I was alive. You are not one to talk, either! Your drive to build a new civilization cost you your life by poison, and
my
empire still stands while yours is dust."