Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (67 page)

Now the rocks began to fall. My mother looked around quickly and then addressed me with more urgency.

“I could not allow that to transpire, and so I made a deal with the queen of the Hyperboreans,” she continued. “We are both mothers, and so she understood what I would do to protect both my children and my civilization from House Sertorian's aspirations. The Sertorians have unleashed nuclear fire aboveground. I will be dead any moment. But the queen has protected Aulus, taken him into her body. He is charged with interfering with the Sertorians' efforts to acquire the ichor, but he's only a child, he can't do it alone. The Hyperborean queen can see much that I cannot. Her vision is not limited by the constraints of time and place. I have asked that she draw you to this place, and she has said that it will come to pass. Aulus will need you. I need you, Accala. There's too much at stake for me to trust anyone but my own children. I have raised you to understand the difference between right and wrong, to put duty and honor before glory and self-interest. The queen has taken my pin and infused it with the purest ichor from her body. I've left it with Aulus. The pin will draw you to the ichor like a compass as well as create a bridge to permit communication with the Hyperboreans. Aid them in their mission. Help them escape this world with their cargo, help them take the ichor back to the realm of the gods, far from human hands. This is a sacred charge, a celestial quest that I entrust to you, my daughter. It is no exaggeration to state that the fate of the empire rests in your hands.”

The image faded, and now I saw only my face reflected in the tunnel wall.

I'd failed my mother, but I'd only ever had half the information. I didn't know what to make of this talk about the gods, but one thing was overwhelmingly clear: My mother made a deal with an alien power and the deal was a bad one. She couldn't have known the Sertorians would come to possess her pin, that the Hyperboreans would turn Aulus into whatever this thing beside me was. She acted out of desperation; she put the empire before the needs of her children. I understood why she did it, but it didn't stop the anger from rising up to cover me like funerary robes. How dare she make offerings of us. Move us about like pieces on a chessboard. I willingly suffered every humiliation to avenge her death, and now it turned out that she was the architect of my suffering. Aulus and I were the only ones who could use the pin to find the ichor, making us a priceless commodity ripe for exploitation.

Quick. Let go of that idea,
Lumen said.
It's like a poison dart that will worm its way toward your heart. Pluck it out. Drop it like a hot coal before it burns you. You must not blame her. She made a difficult decision in a difficult situation. Would you have done any different?

“She's not your mother,” I snapped. “You don't get to speak for her. A mother is supposed to protect her children. She should never have left home, never have come to this world.”

Weren't you desperate to leave Rome and play your part in the game of empire?
Lumen asked.
Hadn't you already made a sacrifice of yourself to try to right a wrong? Why would you deny her the same right? With so much at stake?

“So much at stake for your people,” I said. “Your concern is for the Hyperboreans, don't pretend any different.”

My concern is for all beings, for the fate of the galaxy. Yours should be too. Don't be too hard on the Hyperboreans. The queen reached out from her mountain and cast me into the place where you found my mortal body, deep into a deposit of pure ichor. She thought I'd be safe, but she didn't understand the damage a nuclear strike would bring to this world. We were both trapped. She inside her mountain, I inside mine. The radiation was slowly killing my physical body, so she made me another, this body. What you saw when you held Aulus was the last breath of organic life in my old body, but my soul had already moved on to this form you see here. The queen honored the deal with our mother as best she could—to preserve my life so that I could help the Hyperboreans complete their mission. So that together you and I could finish Mother's work.

I stumbled, suddenly dizzy, and he lightly touched my arm to right me. A cool breeze flowed through my mind, clearing my thoughts, calming me.

No one is forcing you, Accala. I've made my choice, but you must decide for yourself if you want to be here.

“Aulus was too young to choose anything.” I turned from him. “I can't do this. I can't treat you like him. You're not him.”

I am what I am. Are you the same Accala who left Rome? This world has remade you too. How you see me is up to you, as is your decision. I must go on, but I can make a place here in the mountain for you to hide, or show you to a tunnel that will lead back to Avis Accipitridae. You might be able to stow away on a transport and escape to some distant part of the empire.

Were these the choices my nine-year-old brother rejected when he had the chance? Coward's choices. They brought my own anger into focus and I saw it clearly for what it was. Self-pity. Fear. I might not like where my mother had placed me, but I couldn't walk away from this fight. Not now.

“There's no choice,” I said. “The Sertorians must be stopped. That's the bottom line.” I felt some energy run through my muscles. My body was mobilizing; the memory of Accala the fighter was returning. “What do we have to do? The queen is in the place you showed me? The ruins near Lupus Civitas?”

Beyond the ruined city, girded by a crescent-shaped valley, lies this world's tallest mountain: Nova Olympus. At the foot of the mountain is a temple built in Minerva's honor. The queen lives within this mountain.

I could see it as he spoke to my mind. See it in a new way, not as I did in my dreams or in the holovids on my information nodes. I saw the crescent, the mountains, and the city as the Hyperboreans saw it. One whole. One body. I had a vision of it not as it had been, not the perfect crystal flower filled with ichor, but how it was now—sections of the walls pulsed with dark channels, an illuminated slick black film clung to the crystal stalactites that dripped from the roof of the cavern, and the walls cracked and split as the dark ambrosia slowly found its way through them. The queen's body was like a bird trapped in an oil slick, its wings heavy with sticky tar, unable to pull free, slowly drowning in pollution.

It was here that I was reborn,
Lumen said.
The pollution prevents her from creating more children. I am the last.

It reminded me of the Sertorians' mining site where I fought Licinus. Black poison eating white light, slowly, inevitably.

You just have to get me to Nova Olympus. The ichor I bring will give her the power to free herself, to clear the pollution from her body. That is my role. Then she can take my people far from here. I know you can do it, Accala. Please, help us.

It would mean heading east. Whatever had transpired while I'd been down there, in order to help Lumen, I'd still have to traverse the tournament course to Lupus Civitas. No escape. If the gods had a sense of humor, it was a dark one.

“What resources do we have at hand?”

This way,
he said, taking a sharp right turn, moving the tunnel in a new direction.

The Hyperborean child who claimed to have my brother inside him had no facial expression, but I sensed a smile, I could feel it like sunlight falling into a dusty room. An image of me, a stray thought, was intermingled with the light—me fighting in the school athletics competition, mobilizing my team, leading them to victory. That's right, Aulus was there that day, cheering me on. The old Accala. I hardly recognized that girl.

“These tunnels of yours—how long can you keep generating them?” I asked.

Not for much longer, and I only do so now to keep us out of the way of the arachnoraptors,
he said.
I can't spare any more ichor. So much was lost when the city fell and more again when you attacked me. When I leave this mountain my powers wil be severely limited. I must preserve every ounce if I'm to complete our mission.

When the city fell. When I struck him. I was not without fault. He was letting me know that I had a responsibility to him, to these aliens, to undo the damage I'd done. And now that he'd mentioned it, I could feel the energy running from him, the cost involved in his keeping the tunnel open. He could move this whole mountain if he wanted, but he permitted himself only the smallest drips of power. Like a castaway who must ration a flask of water, he dared not drink it all. He must save it, use it sparingly in order to free the queen and liberate his people. I wasn't wrong to think of him as a little Spartacus.

“So if we must go aboveground, then how many Hyperboreans can you bring to the field?” I asked.

To fight? None but Concretus,
he replied.

“None? But there were hundreds of warriors,” I protested. “I saw them in the hives.”

They have rejoined with me to conserve energy. As I journey back to my mother, I'm not only collecting ichor from the hives, I'm drawing the individual workers, singers, and warriors into me. I'm absorbing them as well as their ichor.

Again, the voice in my mind was different when he spoke of his people. It lost my brother's tone, the sense of his youth, and took on a distant, sonorous quality.

“Inside you? How many?”

Right now? I contain about forty thousand, give or take.

Gods. An ocean of ichor ready to be plucked up, poisoned, and turned into an endless supply of ambrosia. That was Aquilinus' dark dream. Right now Lumen was priceless—the most valuable commodity in the empire.

The queen bee gives birth. The hive is born of her. I'm the opposite. I collect and recombine. As we travel, more Hyperboreans will come to join with me, like adding notes to a song.

“That sounds like it will slow us down,” I said.

It can't be avoided. When we lose Hyperboreans, it's like a symphony with missing notes. The song is an expression of the power of the ichor. If we lose too much ichor, then the song fails. We will be unable to leave this world, unable to carry our cargo home. Our death and the loss of the ichor will be tragic, but only a small tragedy compared to what will follow. Without the ichor to fuel them, the gods will not be able to uphold the ongoing song of creation. The galaxy will begin to turn in on itself and die much sooner than planned.

“How soon?”

Soon enough. A thousand years, maybe less. Countess lives will be lost, but the real tragedy will be cosmic in scale—the premature end of this aspect of creation, before it has time to know itself, before it can complete its song. The galaxy is a mirror of the gods. It is how they come to know themselves. The song must come to a natural conclusion and then return to its source. Then a new song, a new galaxy, is born. For the song to be perverted by human desire, twisted and warped by its power, is the greatest sacrilege, the worst outcome for any age of creation.

“So no pressure then,” I said. I didn't want to seem flippant, but I had to keep things simple, practical. Focus on the next step. No thoughts of gods or universal consequences.

“The good news is that the Sertorians are desperate, and we're in a position to deal them a fatal blow. The entire empire is relying on them to deliver what they promised. The bad news is that the Sertorians are desperate—they'll be throwing everything they've got into finding you. The arachnoraptors are just the tip of the iceberg,” I said. “When you said you'd show me resources, I meant weapons, soldiers.”

We cannot tolerate weapons in this place, but there is a cavern, high above, near the surface, a place where the Hyperboreans confiscated weapons from Roman expeditions over the centuries. The weapons from the last conflict in my city were also placed there.

“An arms stockpile?”

Yes, your discus is there. I had Concretus recover it—I know how important it is to you.

“Orbis is there? And armor?”

Yes.

“I can work with that. Let's get moving.”

There was no use having weapons without soldiers to wield them, but right now anything was better than nothing, and holding Orbis in my hand would give me some much-needed strength.

I have one more thing to show you first. You mentioned soldiers. I knew we would need help to complete the mission, so I had Concretus take two of your allies as the city was collapsing.

“What allies? I have no allies.”

This wasn't good. In the distance I saw a lit cell, similar to the one I was kept in but larger. There were two figures within it. They were naked, just like me. One was sitting; the other paced back and forth along the far wall.

We approached rapidly. I stepped into the cell and Concretus came after me just in time before the tunnel collapsed shut. They both turned to look at me.

“Gods, what have you done?” I whispered.

Julia Silana paused her pacing and stared at me, gobsmacked. The figure beside her, sitting on the icy ground, his knees pulled up to his chest, rocked back and forth, staring into space. His skin was an anemic white, his body so weak and skeletal that I barely recognized him, but the eyes left no doubt that this was the man who tried to brainwash me, to break me, to own me—Gaius Sertorius Crassus.

XXXVI

I
T TOOK ME A
moment to realize there was something else different about Crassus—he looked normal, no longer godlike. The glamour of the ambrosia had left him. If I expected some dramatic response, I got nothing. He seemed vacant, sitting quietly at the far end of the cell. I wasn't sure he even knew I was there. His body shivered, freezing to death, but he seemed detached from everything. He was drained, broken.

Julia, by contrast, stared at me, her eyes wide, one hand covering her mouth.