Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

"They took you to the island?"

Anastasia shook her head. "No, things were in too much confusion then. No one was admitted onto or off of the island until Imperial order had been restored. I do not know if it still exists, but at that time there was another sanctuary in the mountains of Epirus. We were taken there and trained in secret. Oh, those were a cruel six years!"

"Six?" Thyatis touched Anastasia's foot, gently squeezing the older woman's big toe. "How you must look down upon the younger generations who must only suffer for five…"

Anastasia touched Thyatis' hair and bent down, kissing the crown of the younger woman's head. "Ah, but we did not have the benefit of Lady Mikele's ministrations then…"

"Oh!" Thyatis stood up and made a face. "That was a soft life, then!"

Anastasia laughed and held up a robe of soft cotton. Thyatis bowed and slipped the garment over her broad shoulders.

"Perhaps it was, but I think that you followed your heart and I could not-will not-gainsay that. You matter too much to me."

Thyatis smiled and embraced the older woman and knew that she was home.

Damascus

A spinning wheel of fire drifted over the arches of a stone bridge. The span had three courses, rising almost sixty feet above the bed of the Baradas River, and it was wide enough to allow a cohort of men to march abreast. The wheel blazed in the air, spinning faster, and slammed into a barrier of overturned wagons at the northern end of the bridge. There was a hissing sound like a hot blade plunged into a quenching bucket and the line of wagons exploded in smoke and flame. One wagon was catapulted into the air, wheels flying off as it disintegrated. The Syrian militiamen behind the barricade scattered, running pellmell for the safety of the walls of the city. The remaining wagons burned fiercely, sending up a billowing column of pitchy black smoke.

Odenathus and his cavalry galloped across the bridge. Some of the Palmyrenes were armed with bows and sent a ragged flight of arrows after the fleeing Syrians. Odenathus pulled up as he reached the smashed barricade. While his men trotted past, he concentrated and reached deep into the earth, touching the flickering fluid glow of the river. Power came to his hand, and the remaining wagons, still burning, toppled away from the road, clearing it.

A hundred yards away, across a leveled field that usually served as a farmer's market for the city, the other Palmyrene horsemen had turned as well and were exchanging arrows with the city. Two huge brick towers rose at either side of the Jerash gate. Covered walkways crowned them and were filled with militia. An arrow, its flight almost spent, wobbled through the air past Odenathus and clattered on the roadway. He turned his horse and urged it up the road. Behind him, the rest of Zoe's little army was trotting across the bridge.

The gates of the city, set well back within an overhanging archway, were already closed. From previous visits to the metropolis, Odenathus knew that a long tunnel led through the walls, guarded by three heavy gates of iron and wood. All three would be closed now, though the young Palmyrene almost laughed aloud at the thought of the city cowering before his pitiful band. More arrows whickered past him and he raised a hand, sketching a glowing sign. A flutter grew in the air between him and the city ramparts. Arrows staggered in flight and dropped from the sky, sticking up in the dirt like a bed of new saplings.

"How strong is the gate?" Zoe rode up, her long hair tucked up into a braid and coiled behind her head. Like Odenathus, she wore an open-faced Legion helmet and a shirt of linked mail under a tan robe. A horse-bow jutted from her forward saddle holder, and a sheaf of arrows matched it on the other side of the four-cornered saddle. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were dark with anger.

Odenathus sighed and gestured toward the huge square towers. "Look," he said, keeping an eye out on the flanks of the three hundred-odd riders who were now regrouping at the head of the bridge. "Look and see the labor of a thousand years of the art."

Zoe glared at him, her eyes flashing. They had gone over this matter for days while they had sat in the hills above the city, watching the comings and goings of the citizens. She tossed her head and turned away, guiding her glossy black stallion with her knees. Bending her head for a moment, she leaned toward the massive gate, seemingly listening.

"Tiris, Gadama!" he shouted, his voice well used to the carrying volume that being the war leader of this band of ruffians required. "Take ten men each and circle the walls. Stay alert-they may sortie from another gate. If they do, don't forget to come back and tell me!"

Damascus was a city of a dozen gates; some small, some large. Odenathus knew that their effort here was fruitless. Zoe cried out in rage, drawing his attention. He turned in time to see her stab an angry fist at the looming gate.

The air twisted and buckled between the young woman and the gate and Odenathus flinched back, feeling the rage and hatred that howled around her. Stones in the field at her feet shattered, crumbling to dust, and the sky darkened. A wind rose up, whipping grit against the horses.

The main gate, a thirty-foot-wide expanse of iron and wood, shuddered, booming like a bass drum. For an instant, Odenathus could see the gate and the surrounding towers flare up with a tracery of dark red light. Ancient spells and wards, bound into the rock and wood and iron of the gate from the days of the first men, flickered and refracted. Zoe's stroke spattered on the ancient inter-locking vertices. Odenathus blinked, calling up the sight he had set aside, and saw the fading echo of the bolt draining away in a hundred traps and guides, flowing across the front of the gate like water spilling on a stone. "It is too strong, my Queen." His voice was quiet and soft, so that no one else could hear.

Zoe spun, her face a mask of rage. Smoky power burned behind her eyes, only barely restrained. "We will break this city." Her voice was still soft, too, but he could hear a scream building in it.

"We will not." He urged his horse up to hers, wither to wither. He leaned close, his gray eyes matching her dark brown ones. "This is a city of almost five hundred thousand souls-we have but three hundred men, and there are only two of us with the power. Listen, you can hear the citizens jeering us."

Zoe looked over her shoulder, and it was true. On the ramparts, thousands of Syrians-men and women alike-were shouting and screaming. Stones and refuse and offal rained from the wall, though none of the Palmyrenes were close enough to strike. The young woman shuddered, leaning against the high cantle of her saddle. "Rome has betrayed them, too." Zoe's voice was thick with emotion. "Will they not rise up? Will they not stand with us against the Empire that uses us and then discards us?"

Odenathus caught her shoulder and turned her around, gently. "My Queen, it is not their city that Rome offered up as a sacrifice. They do not care what happens to us. Come, let us go."

Zoe shook her head, a track of tears on one cheek. "I will not slink away like a whipped cur," she snarled. "She is watching. She would find a way to bring down those gates in ruin and fire."

Odenathus' face closed up, and he forced himself to keep from turning to look back across the bridge. There, on the far side of the river, another cluster of riders guarded a wagon. In the back of the wagon, carefully tied to a chair of gold and ivory that had once graced the Garden Room in the palace, was the body of Zenobia, once Queen of Palmyra. The body was ancient and withered, horribly scarred and disfigured, but it rode in the wagon in state, clothed in gold and samite and silk. Zoe had insisted, once she had returned from her long days in the hills above the city, that the dead Queen still ruled the city. Hidden wires and rods of copper held the body together and kept it upright. Odenathus felt a chill whenever he looked upon it.