Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

Thyatis leaned aside, slipping the blow. Her sword flashed back at his throat, and he parried furiously. They traded a passage of lunge and thrust and parry and then stood back, chests heaving with exertion. The echoes of steel on steel faded in the high arch of the roof. Nikos' bald head and bare chest gleamed with sweat. Krista started breathing again. Both of them seemed possessed.

"That is enough." The deep husky contralto of the Duchess filled the air, and Krista started in surprise. Anastasia appeared between the pillars on the far side of the fighting square, her oval face filled with weariness. Krista frowned, seeing that the Duchess was wearing only a very simple gown. The lady's hair was bound up in a silver net, and her makeup was unusually heavy. Behind the striated green pillar, Krista licked her lips. There was some great trouble in the air.

"If you press yourselves more, you will only gain exhaustion, not skill." The Duchess' voice was already weary, and she stepped down onto the sand with the assistance of a little blond slave. Krista raised an eyebrow, seeing her replacement already in train. The girl was watching Nikos, however, and Krista smiled to see the intent look on her face. The Illyrian was rubbing his face with a towel, having put his blade away in its old, weathered leather sheath. The sweat-soaked loincloth left very little of his tough, muscular physique to the imagination. Thyatis turned to face the Duchess, her face grim and set. "We need a little more time on the sand," the young woman said. "Everyone's timing is off."

Anastasia nodded and handed another towel to Thyatis. The young woman smiled back and took it, drying her face and arms. The little blond slave sidled up to Nikos to take his towel away. The Illyrian grinned at her, and she glowered back before escaping with the towels through the pillars.

"I know." The Duchess sighed and pinched her nose. "My men have yet to find the Prince, so we can only train and wait. His caravan disappeared before it reached Cumae, but I have agents quartering the entire province in search of him."

Krista swallowed and stepped out between the columns. In her arms the little black cat poked its head out of the bag, looking around in interest.

"Mistress?" All four heads turned as one, and Krista saw incredulity and amazement and, best of all, joy in the face of the Duchess as she was recognized. "Which Prince would that be?"

– |Morning sun shone down on the garden, casting long slats of warm light on the wooden table and the chairs pulled up around it. Some of the servants had pulled an awning out over the terrace to shade the Duchess, and it blocked off part of the clear blue sky. The haze of the previous day had been driven off by a cool breeze, and larks and robins sang in the trees. Small puffy white clouds tracked across the sky, looking like so many wayward sheep. Glass tinkled as Krista put an empty sherbet plate back on the table. She had slept very late, drugged with exhaustion and the lassitude of a long, hot bath. She held the memory of the Duchess' warm embrace and greeting close to her heart. The remains of a huge lunch of fresh bread, scented olive oil, cut fruit, thin slices of lamb, fresh pomegranates, and light sweet wine cluttered the table. Krista leaned back in her chair, feeling the softness of the cushions under her head. She was very tired, the more so for having spent the last three hours pouring out the tale of her long absence.

The Duchess held her right hand fiercely tight, and the older woman's face was a mask of pain. The shadow in her eyes had grown deeper and deeper as Krista had related the events of her journey in the east with the Prince-their excavations in Rome and Constantinople, the flight on the great Engine into Persia, the battles in the crypts under Dastagird, the opening of the tomb of gold and lead. The others had listened quietly, though the tension around their eyes as she related these events had chilled the air. Now, even in the late morning heat, Krista could feel their grim humor. Thyatis, in particular, had drawn her longsword near the beginning of the tale and was now working the edge of it with a whetstone. The metallic scrape of the stone seemed to calm her, but it put everyone else under a pall.

Krista watched the Duchess carefully. She had not told her mistress everything by any means, only the skeleton of the tale. But Krista knew that the Duchess, somehow, held the missing portion-the matter of the Oath-the part that could not be said aloud. Anastasia stirred among the cushions in her chair and slowly released the claw-like grip on Krista's hand. The older woman put her hand on the man sitting next to her for support. Krista suppressed a frown at this-she had never known the Duchess to need the help or support of a man for anything. This barbarian was well made; tall and muscular, with a noble bearing and liquid dark eyes, but Krista did not trust him.

Indeed, many of the man's kinsmen were in attendance, and Krista wondered what had happened to the merry band of rogues who had served Thyatis before. A great deal seemed to have changed in her absence! These barbarians seemed quite at home, sitting on the tiled floor of the terrace and eating a great deal of the Duchess' food and drink.

"And now the tale is known in full." Anastasia sat upright, drawing strength from some inner reserve. A hint of the vigor she usually showed reappeared. "We know the provenance of the creature you fought in the house in the hills; we know whereat the Prince has been, who he has consorted with, and what he has been about."

"And we know where he now resides." Thyatis leaned forward, chin on her palm. Her gray-green eyes surveyed the little group, passing over Nikos, Anagathios, the Khazar Jusuf, Krista, and finally alighting on the Duchess. "But there are things left unsaid in this tale. There is the question of why the Prince should attempt to move heaven and earth in his search for the body of this Greek. Why be so secretive? What does the Prince intend? How is the Emperor involved in all this?"

Krista met the red-haired woman's gaze without flinching, but she could think of nothing to say that would not put everyone in danger.

"The Prince," Anastasia said, breaking the silence, "I believe, intends the Emperor harm."

"But…" Thyatis stopped, for the Duchess had raised a pale, jeweled hand. "There are matters afoot here that will not be discussed. It is enough for you to know, as we suspected before, that the Prince has fallen under evil influences and must be dealt with."

Thyatis grimaced and steepled her fingers, frowning over them at the Duchess. "Do you wish this Prince dead, or alive? What says the Emperor of this?"

Krista grinned, seeing that the redheaded woman had grown, too, while she was away. Thyatis and the Duchess matched flinty stares. After a tense moment, the Duchess nodded her head and looked to the side. Krista thought she was expecting someone to be standing behind her, but no one was there.

"The Emperor says and knows nothing of this." Anastasia's voice was tired. "My command is that the Prince shall be put to death. Should the fates smile and he is taken alive, then I shall deliver him to the Emperor, but I fear that he has grown too powerful in this dark magic to be an easy captive. Prepare and plan that this young man shall be slain and his body burned in fire until there is nothing but ash. Even those remains we shall cast into the sea."

Krista, hearing the words said aloud that she had chanted to herself for the past three days, felt a chill wash over her like the exhalation of a tomb. A memory of the Prince's face came to her, his dark brown eyes smiling, the white flash of his grin as they lay close together in a tangle of quilts and sheets. The vision of him, haggard and bleeding, in the crypt of the magi, silhouetted in fire and smoke. His dark, intent countenance leaning over the table of parchments and scrolls in the house in Constantinople. His face wreathed in lightning and thunder as he summoned the walking fire. She put a hand over her mouth and closed her eyes, blinking to keep tears from trickling down her cheek.