The Legions of Fire Read online

  “And yet,” said Memory, “you have not always acted on the knowledge that you yourself bought at such a price, One-Eye.”

  “The regret of a friend’s murder would be a terrible thing,” said Wisdom. “Better perhaps that Midworld should die; in fire this time.”

  “As before it died in ice,” agreed Memory. “Better by far.”

  “Fool!” repeated the bearded man, rising from the throne. He was greater than the cavern; its ceiling split in thunder, and the starry universe above burst more loudly still.

  Corylus was falling. He would have shouted, but he had no breath in his lungs. He flailed in nothingness—

  And shot upright. He was in the servant’s alcove of Varus’s suite. Moonlight streamed through the clerestory windows in the outside wall.

  Corylus’s legs were cold. When he rubbed them, he found that his bare feet were wet with crystals of melting ice. He took a deep breath.

  He’d thrown the coverlet off in the night; he hadn’t needed it in this weather. Smiling grimly, he tugged it up to cover his legs, then lay back on the couch and twitched shut the curtain.

  He didn’t remember when he’d been so tired. He was asleep in moments, and he didn’t dream.

  CHAPTER IX

  Hedia turned with regal care, looking south over the sprawling city. Her maids had teased her hair high and held it in place with silver-chased ebony combs. Her coiffure included a lace mantilla also, which wasn’t as good an idea on top of the Capitoline Hill as it had seemed in her bedroom: the stiff breeze whipped it violently.

  She didn’t want to look a fool by having her hair rearranged in public—in front of the chief temple in Carce, as a matter of fact. On the other hand, she’d look even more of a fool if the damned lace tore or tugged the combs loose to go clattering across the pavement.

  Hedia minded less that her tunics and the short purple cloak she wore over them were being pressed hard against her body. It was quite a good body, and—she smiled—there were several very presentable men among the hundreds of spectators here for her husband’s auguries. Hedia wasn’t actively hunting, but she’d found that it never hurt to keep her options open.

  Saxa was talking with the priest of Jupiter—the Flamen Dialis—who would officiate over the ceremony. He was Gnaeus Naevius, Hedia’s cousin by her first marriage.

  Like all the other relatives of Calpurnius Latus, Naevius had blamed Hedia for the problems of the marriage. She hadn’t expected the family to take her side—they were bound by blood to support her husband—but the venomous attacks on her had seemed extremely unjust. They of all people knew what kind of a man Latus really was.

  Still, she knew not to expect justice in this world. In fact, she knew her own sins too well to want justice. She smiled coolly as Naevius, feeling her eyes on him, looked up. He flushed and resumed his conversation with Saxa with loud enthusiasm.

  Varus stood at the grove of cypresses, writing in a notebook while his servants chatted among themselves. Nearby were the half a dozen senators who had come to watch Saxa take the auguries and then swear the oath to defend the Republic during the period of his consulate.

  Which would be a few weeks or perhaps a month, unless the Emperor decided to shorten the period still further. It had always been possible to appoint a temporary consul to replace one who had died. Now that the Emperor was guiding the Republic, it had become the practice of consuls to resign after a brief term to make way for more of their fellow senators in the office.

  There were several hundred general spectators also, held at a proper distance by temple servants stretching a plush rope. Many seemed to be either urban idlers or countrymen here for the show, but among them Hedia noticed Varus’s teacher, Pandareus. She’d seen him declaiming in the Forum, but they’d never been introduced. Given that there was a delay in the ceremony—Venus knew why, but the reason didn’t matter any more than the rest of the completely empty spectacle—it was a good time to rectify that omission from her duties as mother.

  Hedia strode toward her son, followed by her train of servants. They had learned to jump when she moved. She didn’t care much whether they followed her, but woe betide anybody who got in her way because he hadn’t been paying attention.

  Varus looked up, saw her, and straightened. He’d been bracing his right foot against the tree behind him and resting the wax-leafed notebook on his raised thigh. His expression as she approached was reserved rather than welcoming.

  “Are you working on your poem, Son?” Hedia said brightly. Perhaps if she showed some interest in his activities, he might stop viewing her as a potential enemy.

  The boy’s careful expression became glacial. “I must have risen in your estimation to be worth mocking,” he said. “I suppose I should feel honored.”

  He put his foot against the tree bole again and reopened his notebook. He pulled the bronze stylus from its clip on the spine and poised to resume writing.

  Hedia stepped forward and snatched the notebook away. Varus looked up in amazement. Hedia clacked the leaves shut under his nose.

  “Listen, young man!” she said. “I said nothing that I thought would be offensive to you; but if I had, that is my right as the mother of a son who has not been emancipated.”

  Hedia had been leaning toward him. Now she straightened and offered him the notebook. “If you’ll courteously explain my mistake,” she said, “I won’t make it again.”

  She took a deep breath and urged herself to relax. Her anger hadn’t been a pretense, though she knew the boy’s silliness wasn’t the real cause.

  Varus blinked; it was a moment before he noticed the notebook and took it back with embarrassment. “Mother,” he said. “You weren’t present at my reading, of course.”

  “I’ve never pretended to know anything about poetry,” Hedia said quietly, slightly regretful of her outburst. Still, with men it was never a bad idea to go with honest passion if you could manage it. “If you’d wanted me at your reading, Varus, I would have attended.”

  That probably wasn’t true. Not only did she know nothing about poetry, but listening to it struck her as only slightly less boring than watching plaster set. It was the politic thing to say now, however.

  “I’m sorry, of course you needn’t have done that,” Varus said, looking down but then forcing himself to meet her eyes again. “I was terrible. My poem was terrible. There was, there were the other things too, but I mean the poem. And I won’t make a fool of myself that way anymore.”

  He was a very nice boy, though what he really needed was something his mother couldn’t provide him with. Hedia smiled and gestured with her index finger toward the notebook. “If not verse …?” she said.

  “Ah!” said Varus, brightening visibly. “Well, you see, I realized that many of the rites of the Republic have never been written down. They’re passed on orally in the priestly colleges when a new man is inducted. But I thought, there should be a formal record of the rites and procedures for scholars who don’t happen to be priests to consult.”

  He gestured to the crowd. “It isn’t secret, after all,” he said. “And I thought, well, I could be the person who collects the information!”

  Hedia’s gaze followed the line of his arm. The senators were becoming restive, and the rural folk were beginning to drift away. Perhaps they were getting something to eat and drink, because hawkers weren’t allowed within the walled precincts.

  “For instance,” Varus burbled, “they haven’t been able to begin the auguries yet because all the birds which have flown over the temple have come from the left side. The priest’s left, of course.”

  “I thought they were using chickens,” Hedia said in puzzlement. “And if they eat the grain, then my lord’s consulate will be auspicious.”

  The grain would be the first food the birds had seen in a full day. The consuls who’d been in command when Hannibal wiped out the Republic’s army at Cannae had performed the same ceremony; so had every other consul presiding over a disaster. He
dia wouldn’t have had a great deal of faith in the auguries even if she’d believed in any supernatural power.

  “Yes, but before that rite can be held, there has to be a bird flying from the right, the side of good fortune,” Varus said. “Usually that’s no problem, the temple staff tells me: there’s always a pigeon or a crow or something. But today, all the birds have been coming from the sinister side.”

  “I see,” said Hedia politely. She thought that some of the men she’d met had no more sense than a pigeon, but that still didn’t mean she believed it was a good idea to hand the conduct of public business off to birds.

  She cleared her throat. “I noticed your teacher in the crowd there,” she resumed. “Would you introduce me, please?”

  “Pandareus came?” Varus said in surprise. “Oh, by Hercules, I didn’t know that! Please come, I’ll do that right now!”

  Hedia strode along beside him, smiling faintly. She was pleased not only to have gotten out of the lion pit she’d innocently fallen into, but apparently to have improved her relationship with her stepson in the process.

  The attendants, more than a score of them together, initially followed her and Varus. When they realized that their noble principals were walking toward the crowd of spectators, the burlier males rushed ahead with cudgels lifted to drive a path through the commoners.

  “Midas, stop!” Hedia said. She could too easily imagine Pandareus being laid bleeding on the ground because some flunky wanted to impress his mistress with how zealous he was.

  “Balaton,” said Varus unexpectedly. He gestured to the older man wearing an embroidered sash over his tunic, apparently the ranking member of the temple staff. “Tell your men to pass the learned Master Pandareus through their cordon, if you please.”

  “At once, Lord Varus,” Balaton said. He knelt instead of passing on the order, but two servants were already performing the difficult feat of lifting the rope high while bowing the teacher through.

  “Thank you very much, Lord Varus,” Pandareus said. He nodded to Varus but turned his attention to Hedia. “The family crowding around me were eating the cabbage rolls they’d brought from their home in Tusculum. I fear that the cabbages had been off even before they were cooked yesterday morning.”

  Hedia returned the teacher’s stare. He was small and very trim—clean-shaven instead of favoring the full beard which a certain type of learned man thought gave him greater credibility as a thinker.

  Pandareus’s tunics and sandals were simple and not new, but he didn’t look poor. He wasn’t young and he might in fact be seventy, but the bright interest in his expression kept him from seeming old. In all, Hedia decided that the word “neat” seemed to best describe him.

  “Master Pandareus?” said Varus. “Allow me to present my mother, the noble Lady Hedia.”

  “Mother?” said Pandareus, raising an eyebrow. “Surely stepmother, is it not?”

  “I prefer ‘mother,’” Hedia said, “which is my legal status so long as Lord Varus lives under my husband’s roof.”

  She hadn’t expected the teacher to be anything like so sharp. She’d wanted to meet the man from whom Varus and Corylus were getting advice on the trouble with Nemastes, but she hadn’t expected to be impressed by him.

  Very few men impressed Hedia, intellectually at least; Pandareus did. She’d been looked at—occasionally—as knowingly before, but never with such profound neutrality.

  “Thank you, Varus,” she said with a crisp nod. “I believe your teacher and I have matters to discuss before the pigeons get their orders straight. Master Pandareus?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said the teacher. With a polite nod to Varus—the boy looked startled but not angry at suddenly being excluded—Pandareus and Hedia walked in the direction of the Temple of Juno on the other knob of the hill.

  “I heard you in the Forum three weeks ago,” she said when they were out of general earshot. Her entourage kept at a distance of several paces and made sure no one got any closer than that to their mistress. “You argued that altruism was better than self-interest. I thought it was a very persuasive lecture.”

  “Thank you, your ladyship,” Pandareus said. “But?”

  A very clever man. “But,” she said with a nod, “most lecturers would have followed that speech with another the next day which proved self-interest was better than altruism. Couldn’t you have done that?”

  Pandareus shrugged. “Certainly I could have,” he said. “I teach young men the skills needed by a lawyer, and I would be a very poor teacher if I lacked those skills myself. The problem, you see, is that I regard myself as a teacher rather than as an entertainer. My school fees keep me in bread and vegetables, suitable fare for a philosopher. I prefer”—he stopped and met her eyes directly instead of chatting with side-glances as they walked along—“that diet to pork sausage bought at the price of my honor. Because I really believe what I said about altruism, you see.”

  “I see,” said Hedia. She wasn’t used to people being quite so blunt about the choices they were making.

  “I thought you might,” said Pandareus. “Seeing that you’re of the same opinion. A rare one, I’m afraid.”

  Hedia was glad they’d stopped, because if they’d still been walking, she would have frozen in her tracks. “I don’t think you’d find many people to agree with that judgment of me, Master Pandareus,” she said.

  Then, in part because she wanted to change the subject, she went on quickly, “Why have you come to view the ceremony, if I may ask? Are you of a religious inclination?”

  “No more than they are, your ladyship,” Pandareus said. He gestured toward the squad of the Praetorian Guard posted in front of the Temple of Juno; the Republic’s mint was housed in the precincts of that temple. “But I thought Master Nemastes might make an appearance—”

  “I’m glad he didn’t!” said Hedia.

  “I understand that,” said the teacher, “but I fear Nemastes could be more of a problem when we don’t see what he’s doing than he’d be if we did.”

  He cleared his throat. “Regardless,” he went on, “I wanted to observe what happened to Lord Varus at an event as charged with spiritual power as this one is. Odd things have been happening in your son’s presence recently.”

  “You mean what happened last night?” Hedia said. “At this temple, I believe. Though Varus wasn’t very forthcoming when we met him on the way home. Corylus had been attacked by a pack of dogs, he said.”

  “I won’t be very forthcoming either, your ladyship,” Pandareus said drily. “Though for what it’s worth, I don’t have any great insights to offer anyway. Nor did I know anything about the … dogs, you say?”

  “He said dogs,” Hedia corrected with mild emphasis.

  Saxa and Naevius had been talking with a number of temple functionaries. One of the latter trotted toward an outbuilding. Even before he reached it, a man with triple chins and the double-striped toga of a knight waddled out, followed by four servants. Two carried a rectangular wicker cage, while the others had a baton and a small grain jar respectively.

  “I gather the noble Gaius Naevius has found the omens favorable,” Pandareus said. “Shall we move closer, since you have very kindly brought me through the barrier?”

  “Naevius couldn’t find his ass with both hands,” Hedia said, letting her opinion of her former cousin by marriage show more directly than she usually would have done in front of a near stranger. She must trust the teacher more than she had any reason to do. “And I don’t have much more confidence in the chickens.”

  Pandareus smiled faintly as they walked to where Saxa stood with the priest. “I’m sure that they’ll eat,” he said. “Certainly I never found any difficulty in eating after I’d fasted for a day.”

  “A religious rite?” Hedia said.

  “No, a rite of poverty,” the teacher said in the same dry deadpan as before. “Many philosophers claim that it strengthens the soul, but I don’t believe my own soul would have been seriously weake
ned by a scrap of bread or an onion in season.”

  “My noble lords!” said the fat chickenkeeper. “I am Sextus Claudius Herennianus, a knight of Carce, and honored to hold the office of overseer of the sacred fowl!”

  His speech would have been more impressive if he hadn’t paused to cough after the word “honored.” Not very impressive, but more so.

  Seeing him beside the two senators, neither of whom was exceptionally tall, Hedia realized that Herennianus would barely come up to her own ear. Not that she had any intention of letting him get that close.

  “Yes, yes, man,” growled Naevius. “Get on with it, won’t you? We’ve wasted enough time already!”

  Saxa looked a trifle put out by the priest’s attitude. This was, after all, his moment in the highest formal position in the Republic of Carce. To Naevius, of course, it was simply a tiresome exercise that he had to perform a dozen or more times a year in exchange for his reserved box at the Games and other public events.

  Hedia’s smile grew harder. Naevius had never attempted to see things from any viewpoint other than his own. The fact that this nonsense was important to Saxa wouldn’t cross the priest’s mind—or affect his behavior if it did. She wanted to walk over and caress her husband, but this wasn’t the time for it.

  “Your noble lordships!” Herennianus repeated, bowing as low as his ample girth permitted. He straightened and took the baton from the servant, then used its tip to scribe a circle about three feet across in the dirt. The ground was hard, but his ragged line in the dust was adequately visible.

  The chickenkeeper handed back the baton and took a small scoop in exchange. The servant with the grain jar came forward, tilting its open top toward his master. Varus had moved closer too; he was continuing to jot notes.

  “I will now sprinkle the sacred—”

  “Yes, you fool, get on with it,” Naevius said.

  Herennianus withdrew a scoopful of meal from the jar, but the priest’s brusqueness had flustered him. He scattered half the contents onto the ground before he got the scoop over the circle he’d drawn. He stared transfixed at the spill, then reached for the jar again.