Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

The woman stood, shakily, and leaned on the side of the wagon, pressing her forehead to the smooth wood. She spoke, but did not know that the words flowed, aloud, from her mouth.

"This man, this Heraclius, should be driven into the field with invisible whips and stings! His flesh should run red with the blood of a thousand cuts. Madness should be his reward."

Within the wagon, laid on a soft bed of cloths and dried flower petals, the withered corpse of a woman of middle height and age lay, half curled. Robes of silk and linen had been placed upon her with care. Her flesh was dry and brittle, and broke easily, cracking into a slippery dust with mishandling.

"Why do the gods not strike him down? Why does he rule the land in glory and splendor? Why is his name praised to the heavens?"

Zoe ground her fist against the stone of the tomb wall. Blood seeped from her knuckles. There was a heat in her mind, a fury and a rage, and it seeped out of her, smoking from her fingertips. It washed over the stones, cracking and discoloring the old worn surface. The spots of blood slid down the wall, hissing like a snake. Black scoring marked their passage.

Daughter, do not despair.

Zoe turned, her eyes wide, the world wheeling around her. The tomb seemed both infinitely vast and crushingly close. She fell to her knees, mindless of the pain. Something rustled in the wagon, the sound of garments shifting. There was a skittering sound, and the click-clack of beetles. The sound filled the space, enormously loud, and Zoe pressed her hands against her ears, crying out.

You are the child of my heart, said a voice from the wagon, echoing in her mind. I bore no child of my own flesh, yet you came to me and filled those empty places. You are my daughter of spirit. In you, I live. In your memories and thoughts, I am still alive.

The sound died, leaving a great stillness. Zoe crawled to the edge of the wagon and gripped the planks for support. The rustling came again, and something moved at the lip of the panel. Zoe pressed her forehead against the smooth wood again, her eyes smarting with tears.

"Auntie, what should I do? This chieftain, this Mohammed, he desires to strive against Rome, yet the Persians who murdered you are still alive and loose in the world. How can I let you go unavenged? Fate pushes me west, yet my heart tells me otherwise…"

Dear child, life would remain in my breast and we would be sitting in my garden, laughing and talking, were it not for the perfidy of Rome. All those things that are lost to us would be restored… You must go west, and strike down the Roman. Let that be my vengeance.

Zoe nodded, tears streaming from her face, and made to rise. There was a soft touch on her hair and she froze, trembling. Fingertips stroked her hair, and the side of her head, soft and warm, and the air was filled with the subtle fragrance of orange and myrrh.

Ottaviano

Maxian dozed on the short, springy grass that covered the floor of the grotto. He lay in sunshine, warm and comfortable, and above him the bowl of the sky was a fine rich blue. Individual clouds, each fluffy and white, drifted across his vision. Hawks and eagles soared on the updraft off the mountain slopes. Somewhere among the mossy stones, frogs peeped from a hidden spring. The Prince felt almost content, lulled by the sleepy rumble of the mountain. Respite from the crawling insidious attack of the curse drew him here each day, and he spent long hours sleeping or reading, his back against one of the boulders. He missed Krista dreadfully, particularly when he thought of the lunch hamper she could pack.

Often he looked up suddenly, expecting to see her walking out from the shade of the overhanging trees.

It had taken him three days to mark her absence, and he still felt ashamed by that. The hurly-burly of setting up his library and cleaning out the buildings at the villa had occupied him, but she had been such a constant presence for the past year that he should have known immediately when she was gone. Gaius Julius and Alexandros, for their part, had not seemed to care at all. The Walach boys had moped around for a day or two before the Prince had given them leave to hunt for their dinner on the estate grounds. Then they were rarely seen at all, though there was a fine fresh supply of venison, quail, rabbit, and pheasant for the dinner table. What we lack, he thought sourly, is a cook to make good of it. "No," he said suddenly aloud, and he rolled over and stood up. "That is the least of what I miss about her."

Maxian looked around and brushed his hands clean of the rich black dirt that lay under the grass. "Galen was right," he mused to himself. "With some sleep and rest, my mind is much the clearer."

Despite seeming indolent, he had been thinking hard the past day. He was sure that Krista had left him because she had come to view his quest as a mad obsession. He could not fault her, for twice it had nearly cost her life. To his mind, he reasoned that she had come to the conclusion that the Oath could not be overturned and to remain with him would mean-in short order-her death. To preserve her life, she had gone away. Likewise, he was confident that she would not attempt to interfere with him once she had found safety.

The puzzle that racked him now revolved around what he should do next. He was greatly troubled by what he had done and condoned in the last year. A man he thought of as a good friend-the little old Persian wizard Abdmachus-had been tortured, killed, and then raised as his thrall by his own command. Before even that had happened, men and children had been abducted by his servants and subjected to heinous torments and experiments in the cellars under the Egyptian House.

"These are not the acts of a man in his right mind!"

Maxian pressed his palms against one of the big glassy black boulders that surrounded the grotto. He felt a curious sense of detachment from all that had occurred before he came to this place. The fire and darkness and blood all seemed part of another life, one lived by another man, one that had replaced the young healer Maxian when he had entered a boat workshop in Ostia. He rubbed his face, feeling stubble on his chin. What must my brothers think? Galen seemed so odd when I saw him last-but if he knows what I have been about, then he, too, thinks me mad.

The Prince thought of his mother, whose dowry had included this villa, and her kind face silhouetted by the light from the kitchen windows in their old house in Narbo. Would she approve of what he had done? Surely not! Maxian felt sick, and he sat down, the full import of all that he had done washing over him. Gods! I am a monster.

A memory intruded, breaking out of the waves of his guilt. It was his old teacher, Tarsus, speaking in the gallery of the school near Pergamum. The deep basso voice had thundered off the vaulted ceiling, sounding like the pronouncement of Zeus on high Olympus.

Each of you possesses a great power, highly prized and respected, that gift of the loving God that lets you bind and heal, restoring the withered limb and the sightless eye. Men will look upon you as a demigod, serene and without reproach. But you are not gods; you are men and prone to men's failings. This is the first law of our order-bring no harm to others by our actions.

Maxian shook his head, but the memory that came upon him was strong, and he recited aloud what he had first learned that day:

"I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asklepius the teacher, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation to reckon he who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation. I swear that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others."