Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

"Can you see anything?" The taller man was still shouting, trying to make himself heard over the din of the trees being lashed by the storm. The rain began to fall heavily, and sight of the villa disappeared into a dark mist of falling water and blowing leaves. "Nikos?"

The shorter man shook his head, and his fingers made signs in the air. The taller man frowned, trying to follow the quick succession of signs. After a moment, and after Nikos repeated them, he made out:

The lights have gone out. And then, If the others do not arrive quickly, we will go in ourselves.

The tall man frowned at that, but made no answer. They had been expecting their backup for three hours, but the other Khazars and the maniple of legionaries that the Duchess had borrowed from the military camp north of the capital had yet to appear. Some deviltry was at work down in the ancient ruin. Their spy inside had only said that something was in the offing, something against the Emperor. Something that would happen tonight.

Jusuf, Prince of the Khazar people, settled himself back down in the shelter of the tree. The Illyrian, Nikos, continued to watch and wait. The storm howled, and small branches, broken from the crown of the trees, began to rattle through the canopy. Lightning flared in the heavens, sending a brief brilliant flash through the forest. Below, roof tiles shattered under the blow, sizzling and crackling with the heat of the stroke. The storm was getting worse.

– |At the center of the chamber, within the boundary of gold and silver, the Prince stood at the head of the marble table, a silk bag held reverently in his hands. He raised the bag, still tied closed with purple string, toward the northern corner of the room. As he did so the chanting of the Nabateans died, dwindling away to a low, almost inaudible mutter. The Prince turned and raised the bag toward the east and as he did so, the droning sound from the Persians faded away. He turned to the south, and the Walachs fell silent, and last to the west, where even the last low mutter of the Nabateans ceased.

"This is the body of our Emperor," Maxian declared to the still air. Even the odd mist along the ceiling had stilled, ceasing its constantly roiling movement. "This is the body of the state, of the Senate, of the people, and of the city of Rome. Praise him, our Emperor, from whom all order and justice flow."

Maxian bent over the marble table and took the bag in his left hand. With a quick movement he unknotted the string with his right hand and took the cord in his teeth. Carefully, he opened the top of the bag and shook it lightly to break up any clumps that might have formed inside. On the tabletop, the outline of a man with arms at his sides had been marked in purple chalk. The Prince's forehead creased in concentration, and he bowed his head, holding the open bag in front of him cupped in both hands. His eyes closed.

Krista started nervously and cocked her head. Some sound trembled in the air, just past hearing. A thin hum filtered out of the stones under her feet, and the shimmering echo of a distant gong. The sound rose, pulsing like a beating heart, making the air quiver in anticipation. The sound of horns rang, and the wail of the bucina-all faint, like the memory of some ancient battle renewed by the light of a dying sun-then a vague tremor of men's voices raised in a thunderous shout. Krista's head snapped around, her eyes wide in alarm, and a flickering glow of ultraviolet and static blue washed over her face.

Power crackled in the air around the Prince, a slow dance of standing lightning flaring between the Prince and his three companions. The air shifted, wind rising up and blowing past Krista, rushing out the door of the chamber. The Nabateans and Persians and Walachs bowed their foreheads to the paving stones of the floor and-almost unheard over the building roar of lightning and thunder that growled at the center of the room-they began to chant again.

The Prince forced his hands apart, crackling and burning with crawling rivers of red and electric blue. His eyes were black pits, thrown in sharp relief by the flare of light that streamed out of his hands. The bag disintegrated, but the pale ashy dust inside did not. Wind caught at it and swirled it up, whipping the dust this way and that. The Prince's mouth moved, speaking a single word.

The air boomed, and Krista found herself on her knees, gasping for breath, one hand skinned on the stone floor, reaching for some support. At her fingertip a lead cone rattled, almost unbalanced. A smear of blood marked the paving stone. The green mist rushed away, spilling through the doorway in flight, and the ceiling, now revealed, seemed to recede into an infinite distance.

The dust whirled in a broad circle over the marble surface, still just contained by the boundary of gold and lead that circumscribed the table and the Prince. Maxian, his face marked with concentration, pushed his hands against the air, drawing them farther and farther apart.

Krista, crouched within the pentacle by the door, could hear his voice at a great distance, speaking like a god in the mountains, a vast and enormous sound.

"We honor and obey our Lord, the Emperor of all Rome, the master of the world."

The dust whirled even faster, but now grains of it, sparkling in the shuddering light, flashed out of the stream and snapped to the tabletop. One by one, the grains flew to lie within the outline of the man marked on the marble. One by one, they rushed together, piling higher and higher.

Krista squinted. It was hard to see with the shimmering heat haze in the air and the rippling lightning that still danced between the three men. Gaius Julius and Alexandros seemed to be screaming, or crying out, but she could not hear their voices, only that of the Prince. Abdmachus had only slumped to one side, dull eyes staring straight ahead.

A body formed with dizzying speed on the table; that of a man of middle height, stooped by age, his face lined with wrinkles and long-held care. One foot was a little twisted, some ancient injury leaving a long scar along his leg. The Prince raised his hands up, into the air, and the last of the dust settled. The corpse was whole, knitted together by sorcery and trapped lightning.

"We honor him, the Emperor, and make sacrifice to him, blessing him and his regal name, Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus."

– |Thunder rattled the wooden window shutters that lined the upper floor of the house. A blue-white crack sizzled in the air, sending echoes rolling over the hills. Rain continued to pour down, filling the dead garden with slowly spreading pools of mud. Along the main hall of the villa, now empty and dark, was a flicker of red light along the floor. Tiny signs and symbols of protection marked there months before by the Persian sorcerer Abdmachus flared up brilliantly and then died. A tide of black mist began to creep in from the garden doors. Where the mist touched, the tesserae of the floor crumbled to dust, and the stones and wooden supports of the roof and the walls began to flake away, eroding at a fantastic pace.

At the center of the house, in the barren inner courtyard, where once ten thousand flowers had bloomed in spring to bring a smile to the face of a young queen, a figure stood, alone, exposed to the fury of the storm that rippled and cracked in the heavens above. Dark clouds swirled in the sky, glowing with the constant flash of lightning. Ice and rain fell, lashing the tiled roof. The garden was filling with water from the torrential rain.

The figure stood, inviolate and uncaring, in the storm. A dull yellow gleam marked the slits of its eyes. Water sluiced off a bony skull, ridged with long, twisting lines of tiny stitches. The homunculus, Khiron, waited patiently, watching and listening to the roar of the storm. Hail drummed on its ancient flesh, but the thing did not feel the blows.