The Legions of Fire Read online

  She couldn’t walk out once she’d sat down, though. She and Varus hadn’t been close, exactly, but they’d bumped around together in a household where their father didn’t pay much attention and there wasn’t anybody who even pretended to be their mother. Varus had never tried to tell his sister how to behave. There were plenty of brothers who tried to be stricter than their fathers were, she knew.

  Alphena didn’t feel that she owed Varus support in this silly poetry business, but it would be stabbing him in the back if she came to his reading and then walked out in the middle of it. He cared about his poetry, though Juno knew why. Insulting it publicly would be the worst thing she could do, and he didn’t deserve that.

  What was wrong with Corylus? Alphena pressed her thigh against his again, but it was like hitting a padded wall. He didn’t even feel warm anymore. His eyes had narrowed to slits, and his breathing was so light that she had to watch carefully to see the tiny flutters of his chest.

  “The earthborn monster blazed with rage,” Varus said. “He was a stranger to fear and had never before known pain.”

  He recited like he was running through the list of vegetables which he’d been asked to return with from the family villa just east of Carce. His eyes were open and staring, but he’d stopped turning the scroll forward. His body was as rigid as that of Corylus here on the bench.

  Why doesn’t Corylus notice me? Alphena had seen the way he looked at Hedia out of the corners of his eyes when they happened to meet. When Corylus realized Alphena was watching him watch her stepmother, he blushed. He trotted toward the gymnasium so quickly that he trod on the heel of his own sandal and almost fell.

  I don’t care about Publius Corylus!

  She went white with rage—at herself, though she was imagining Corylus strapped to a wooden colt so that she could flog him bloody with a switch. With her own hands!

  Pandareus was seated at the left end of the front bench. Alphena leaned forward so that she could see him. He was jotting notes, using a brush and a notebook of thin boards. His outer garment was a light cape instead of a toga, because he wasn’t a citizen of Carce. He’d hung a miniature inkwell fashioned from the tip of a cow’s horn to the broach pinning the neck closed.

  Varus stumbled. His recitation had been so dull that his stuttered “horny-hoo … horny … horny-hoofed—” almost passed unnoticed. The audience was asleep or lost in a world where this wasn’t happening.

  Varus released the book’s take-up wand. The tension of the coiled papyrus made the glistening roll spring closed. He stopped speaking.

  Alphena glanced around the hall. Pandareus looked quizzical, his brush poised; no other member of the audience appeared to have noticed the change. Corylus remained in his silent reverie.

  “Comes Surtr from below,” said Varus, his voice suddenly thunderous. “With him comes Fire, which sings in the forest!”

  Members of the audience came alert, mumbling in surprise. The hall had been uncomfortably warm with the press of bodies, but a clammy breeze made Alphena shiver.

  A short freedman wearing a simpler toga than most of those present stood and pushed toward the door. Sweat gleamed on his high forehead.

  Varus gripped the top and bottom of his scroll and twisted. The winding sticks crackled like the bones of a strangled chicken. One of the gold knobs popped loose and rattled to the floor.

  “Surtr’s sword is drawn,” said Varus. Or at least the words came from his mouth. His eyes were wide and staring, and veins stood out on his throat. “Like the sun it shines!”

  The room shuddered. It was dark as night save for a sort of yellow-green fox fire which came up from the earth itself. The doorway was a blur and the light sconces had become dull sparks as though their wicks were starved of oil.

  The air was cold. At the edges of her consciousness, Alphena was aware of watching figures.

  Alphena heard an angry squeak. The central image of the wall panel to her right was a sphinx no larger than a clenched fist, painted in the same delicate gold as the dividers which mimicked lathe-turned rods. It fluttered its wings. With another peevish cry, the little creature flew off the plaster and circled upward.

  Instead of a molded ceiling, there was open sky. Storm clouds flashed lightning across it.

  Alphena stood and took a step forward. The look on her brother’s face stopped her. His eyes were bright with a wild malevolence which she’d never seen before. The figure shredding the lovingly prepared scroll wasn’t Varus; it wasn’t anything human.

  “Surtr’s legions will feed on the flesh of fallen men!” shouted her brother’s mouth. “Their blood will dim the summer sky forevermore!”

  Alphena stumbled forward, crying with the effort. Lightning as red as banked coals flashed. That and the glow where the floor should have been were the only light in the room.

  Men shouted; benches toppled over. Alphena supposed the audience was trying to escape. Did the door to the courtyard still exist? All she could see over her shoulder was blackness.

  “Varus!” she said. Something tangled her feet. The fetid light from below was getting brighter; she could see things moving in the depths. “Brother, you have to stop this!”

  “From the Iron Woods comes the Wolf’s brood!” thundered the speaker.

  Pandareus gripped Varus by the forearm. “Lord Varus, attend to me!” he said in a voice of command.

  Alphena reached them. The dais seemed a steep wall, but she forced herself up it. The shapes in the greenish light were crawling upward.

  Circling the terrified audience, skeletally thin figures danced in the shadows. Almost visible, they leered in the darkness.

  “In Hel’s dark hall the horror spreads!” shrieked the white-faced youth. Alphena slapped him with all the strength of her right arm.

  There was a thunderclap. Varus staggered; he would have fallen if Pandareus hadn’t held him upright. There was no storm; the triple lamp stands seemed brighter for the hell-lit dimness which Alphena had imagined a moment before.

  Her palm stung. Her brother’s cheek was crimson and already swelling around the imprint of her hand; that much at least was real.

  Varus blinked in dull wonder. He held something, but she couldn’t see it properly.

  Corylus joined them on the dais. He clasped his friend warmly, but Varus could only mumble in reply.

  Alphena looked over her shoulder. The audience milled in confusion, bleating. The freedmen were afraid to go or stay, despite the sudden return to normalcy.

  Saxa and the wizard Nemastes stood in the doorway. The Senator looked puzzled, but naked fury blazed on the Hyperborean’s face. He stared at Corylus.

  Nemastes turned and rushed from the scene, drawing Saxa with him. They would have trampled Hedia in their haste if Lenatus and Corylus’s servant Pulto hadn’t put themselves in the way.

  Alphena met her stepmother’s eyes. Hedia looked calm and very cold; as cold as the blade of a dagger.

  CHAPTER III

  Alphena hugged herself. When the light returned to normal, the hall had again become warm and muggy; she shuddered from reaction to what had just happened. Whatever that was.

  The members of the audience had rushed out as soon as they saw the sunlit courtyard again. Alphena smiled despite herself: if her brother had wanted his reading to be talked about, then he’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

  The smile slipped. She didn’t want to think about dreams. She was afraid she’d see—she’d feel—this afternoon’s events every time she closed her eyes for the rest of her life.

  Varus and Corylus were still clinging to each other; they looked stunned, as though they’d been pulled from the water when they were on the verge of drowning. Their teacher, Pandareus of Athens, seemed unaffected by the visions. He frowned and said, “We should get out of this room, even though it seems to be all right now. Lord Varus, perhaps we can go into the courtyard?”

  Though the guests for the reading had vanished, Saxa’s own servants peered furtivel
y through the doorway or hunched low on the second-floor balcony opposite to see into the Black-and-Gold Hall. If Varus and his companions adjourned to the courtyard, the spectators would have an even better view.

  Alphena didn’t want what had just happened to be discussed any more than it had to be. That would surely be enough as it was. Acquaintances would ask her what had happened, and she wouldn’t know how to answer.

  “I suppose—,” said Varus.

  “No,” said Alphena. “We’ll go into the gymnasium. It’s bright, and Lenatus and your man Pulto can keep everyone away from the door. Come, I want to get into the sun.”

  Pandareus and the three younger people stood in a tight group on the dais. The veterans, each holding a wooden sword lightly, stood between them and the hall proper. They were turned slightly to keep the others in the corners of their eyes, but their real concern was anyone who tried to bull his way through to the courtyard.

  When Lenatus and Pulto heard their names spoken, they nodded slightly. Neither spoke, but the trainer grinned. Alphena had practiced daily with him for over a year. That grin showed her a man she hadn’t imagined.

  “All right, where is it?” said Pandareus. “And quickly, if you would, though I don’t think the room itself was the problem.”

  Pulto led; Lenatus brought up the rear. Alphena wondered why Lenatus wasn’t in front; then a bulky under-steward crowded too close. Pulto kicked him in the stomach. Corylus’s servant was freeborn and outside the household hierarchy. That permitted him to act—with the authority of the owner’s children, of course—without fear of retribution, either formal or informal. The old soldiers were coarse men and uneducated, but they weren’t unsophisticated about the way things worked on the hard edges of society.

  Varus rubbed his eyes as they crossed the courtyard. “Did I see Father come in?” he asked. “I’m not sure what happened.”

  “Father was here but left again,” Alphena said. “It was—there was shouting. I guess, well, I guess that a lot of people heard it.”

  Servants stared. They didn’t appear to be so much frightened as excited and curious. They hadn’t been in the hall when Varus was reading, and apparently all they knew was that there’d been a noisy to-do of some sort.

  Alphena smiled again; her expression was wan but not forced. Hercules knew that she really couldn’t say much more about it than that either; but from where she’d been, it certainly had been frightening.

  Pulto strode into the gymnasium and looked about it. Alphena hadn’t meant for the soldiers to be part of the discussion. Before she could speak, he came back out and said, “All clear, missy. You go ahead and talk all you like. Nobody will bother you.”

  Lenatus smiled again without speaking. They’re on our side, Alphena reminded herself. She entered the yard, feeling the sun’s touch relax her.

  Pandareus shut the door with a thump and barred it. The gymnasium was open to the sky, but its walls were ten feet high. The yard wasn’t over-looked by anyone outside the property, and the rooms facing it on the upper floor of the house were windowless.

  “What happened?” Pandareus said. His voice was even, and he glanced between the two young men.

  Corylus grimaced, then faced his teacher; the sun caught blond highlights in his hair. His features had been cut with a sharper chisel than those of Varus or Alphena.

  “Master,” he said formally, “I didn’t see anything, I’m afraid. I must have—I’m sorry, Varus, I must have fallen asleep. I dreamed that I was flying.”

  “Flying?” said Pandareus. “Flying where, boy?”

  He faced the two youths as though he were questioning them after a declamation. Alphena had watched the class once when it met in the Forum. It irritated her that her gender had excluded her from the further education her brother got, but she didn’t miss the education itself. She would rather weave like a woman of ancient Carce than spend her time spouting high-toned twaddle about pirate chiefs and heiresses.

  “Master, there were trees,” Corylus said. He stood stiffly upright, his hands clenched. Alphena thought he would have liked to knuckle his eyes to squeeze the vision back to life. “Huge trees, firs and spruces mostly, and there was heavy snow.”

  He gestured, not with the sweeping arm of an orator but rather a circular scoop of one hand as though he were digging out the right word. His hair was a golden crown from where Alphena stood.

  “Not snow like some winters here,” Corylus said. “Snow like it falls in Upper Germany, but there weren’t the hardwoods like German forests. It was all conifers.” He pursed his lips and added, “And birches. Little ones.”

  “What did you see in the forest?” Alphena said. The men had been ignoring her, but she’d seen the look on Corylus’s face as her brother boomed lines that he certainly hadn’t written. “It wasn’t just trees, I know it wasn’t.”

  Pandareus looked at her without expression; Varus was still shrunk within himself. Corylus smiled faintly and said, “You’re right. I saw elephants, but they had long hair. I was dreaming, as I told you.”

  He lost his smile, but he continued to face her. It was the first time he had really engaged Alphena as a person.

  “And just before I woke up,” he said, “I saw your father with a man I didn’t know. He was the same man who came to the door of the hall with the Senator after I woke up. But when I saw them first, I was dreaming.”

  Corylus shook his head and looked at his teacher again. “Master,” he said, “it was just a dream. But I’ve never had a dream like it before.”

  Pandareus nodded to close that portion of the discussion. He turned to Alphena’s brother. “Lord Varus?” he said. “What’s that in your hand?”

  Varus blinked. Ever since Alphena had slapped him, he’d been acting as though he’d just woken up. His cheek still glowed.

  “I don’t know,” he said, unclasping his hands. “I had the scroll ….”

  They all stared at a two-inch-high head carved from—no, not stone as Alphena had thought. It was ivory, with the honey brown patina that old ivory got. The image was narrow-faced and wore a bulbous hat or turban. There was a loop in the back so that the figurine could be hung from a neck cord.

  “Where did that come from, boy?” Pandareus asked sharply. He stretched out two fingers of his left hand but stopped well short of touching the object.

  “I …,” said Varus, frowning with concentration. “I’ve had it, sir.”

  “Not that I’ve ever seen,” said Corylus. There was harsh certainty in his voice.

  “Nor I,” said Alphena. “Brother, you know you didn’t have that when you were reading. You were holding your poem!”

  “I don’t know, then,” Varus said. He closed his left fist over the figurine again. In sudden anger he snarled, “It’s mine now, anyway.”

  “Varus?” said Corylus in surprise.

  Varus winced. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, rubbing his temples with his right fingertips and the knuckles of his left hand. “I have, I guess it’s a headache. My head throbs.”

  “Brother?” said Alphena. Varus wouldn’t meet her eyes. “What did you see? You weren’t the person reading at the end, were you?”

  “I don’t know,” Varus whispered. “I don’t know! I saw a dance; I think I remember dancers. But I don’t remember anything about it.”

  He looked up. “What did I do with my manuscript?” he said. He opened his left hand slightly to peer at the figurine again, apparently making sure that it hadn’t changed back into a roll of papyrus. “Did I leave it in the hall?”

  “You destroyed it on the dais, Lord Varus,” Pandareus said. “In a very thorough and determined fashion. Why did you do that, do you suppose?”

  “I did?” said Varus in amazement. “Why on earth did I do that?” He looked up with a wan smile and added, “I don’t suppose much was lost by that. I don’t think I’m going to gain fame as a poet.”

  Corylus put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Pandareus smiled coldly and sa
id, “Regarding the heroic exploits of Regulus, I agree with your estimate. The lines you sang after you departed from your prepared manuscript, however—those had elements of real power. Did you compose them on the dais?”

  “Master, I don’t know,” Varus said simply. “I don’t have any memory of what happened after I started to read. Except that I think someone was dancing. Maybe I was dancing myself?”

  “Not that we in the audience noticed,” said Pandareus.

  He pursed his lips, tapping his notebook against the palm of his left hand. “There is a great deal going on,” he said, “and I can see only the surface. From what you boys tell me, you saw even less.”

  Varus grimaced; Corylus nodded firm agreement. Both were alert now.

  “Therefore, I want both of you to join me tomorrow night at the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter,” Pandareus said. “My friend Priscus—”

  “Atilius Priscus?” Varus said in surprise.

  “Yes, Senator Priscus,” Pandareus said. “Are you surprised that a mere teacher of rhetoric would claim a respected senator as a friend?”

  “No sir, not at all,” Varus mumbled, lowering his eyes again.

  “You might well wonder,” the teacher said in a milder tone. “The Senator has a remarkable library. I applied to read his copy of On the Stars by Thrice-Learned Hermes. Our acquaintance ripened through a mutual love of scholarship.”

  He coughed, then continued. “He’s on duty tomorrow. I’ll send a messenger to him to expect us at the temple at the beginning of the second watch. You’re both agreeable?”

  Varus nodded. Corylus grinned and said, “I’m glad somebody has a plan. I don’t, and … Master, I’m not a fearful man, I hope. But the dream I had disturbed me.”

  “Master Pandareus?” Alphena said. She spoke without the humility the youths, his pupils, put in the title. “Why do you think Priscus will understand the business better than you do? You were there, after all, and he wasn’t.”

  “I don’t think my learned friend will understand it,” Pandareus said, allowing his lips to spread in a slight smile. “We won’t be visiting him for that. He’s one of the commissioners for the sacred rites, however.”