Thomas Harlan - The shadow of Ararat

"Yes," Maxian said, his face drawn with fatigue. "As strong, or stronger, than the old man. It seems to be quiescent now, but I fear that it is waiting for the opportune moment to come out and destroy me somehow. I could try removing it from my body, perhaps here, where it is attenuated by this foreign building. I could succeed…" He shook his head to try to dispel the gloom that threatened to overwhelm him.

"Odd," the Persian said. He picked up his note tablets and began shuffling through them. "Pardon me if I pry, but you were born in the provincial city of Narbo, if I remember correctly. You have come only recently to Rome-no more than, what, twelve years ago? Yet you say that you show as much effect of this curse as a man who has lived in the city all his life. This augurs that the curse is not borne by something specific to the city of Rome at all."

Maxian considered this-it could be true. But if so, then what carried the curse? Something that affected men thousands of miles apart, yet possibly only within the confines of the Empire. What commonality did they hold that subjected them to this?

He and Abdmachus continued talking and the afternoon whiled itself away. Gaius Julius took the opportunity to slip away and sleep in the shade of the cedar trees in the garden. They would argue for hours, he knew, and never realize that he was absent. The sun was hot, and the afternoon still and quiet. He yawned mightily. Even a six-hundred-and-forty-year-old needs a nap now and then, he thought.

– |Krista crept through the wild irises and lilies that grew on the northern side of the house like a slinking cat. She had traded her bright shift for a dusty gray tunic, nondescript and already worn. Her feet were bare, though the calluses that she had acquired on the hard floors of the house of de'Orelio served her well as she moved through the overgrown bower. Her long hair was tied back behind her head. She had left the broad-brimmed straw hat she favored for going out in the sun back at the tree line. Coming to an old aisle in the garden, she peered out from the high grass. There was no one to be seen, or heard. She darted across to the foundation wall that held up the northern end of the portico.

Again she paused, listening. Very faintly from inside the house, she could hear the banging of a hammer and chisel on stone. Well, that's at least one of them, she muttered to herself, under her breath. Fear churned slowly in her belly-fear not only of being caught by the men here at the house but also of what would happen to her if she was not able to complete this excursion before the Duchess noticed that she had been on her trip to the flower market in the Forum Boarium for a very long time. Luckily, no one had bothered to tell the stable master that she was no longer taking the white pony out to the hills with Sigurd. It was tied off to a tree in a field almost a half mile away, downhill.

The prospect of being seriously whipped or even losing a foot for running away did not please her at all, but she was bone-certain that the pretty Prince and his foreign companions were up to something dangerous. She had wrestled with her feelings for the Prince on the long ride up from the city and had come to the sobering conclusion that though he was quite nice for a Prince of the Empire, and seemed to like her quite a bit, if he was up to something that would hurt the Duchess, then he would have to pay for it. This digging up of bodies and carting them about secretly put her on edge. That and the odd feeling she had gotten about the old man she had waylaid in the Archives. He looked like a grandfather, but he had been far too active in their little tryst than he had a right to be. His eyes and skin were funny too. She had dreamed bad dreams about him for a week after that.

She pattered down the line of the portico wall, keeping her head low, to the end. There she peeked out and saw that the back garden was also empty. The sharp crack-crack of the chisel continued to echo from inside. She glanced around again. Twenty steps and she could get up the stairs and inside, or maybe she should climb this little wall and go in through the portico?

An iron clamp suddenly closed on "her left arm and a heavy hand, smelling of freshly turned dirt and worse, closed over her mouth. She nearly screamed, but twisted aside instead and lashed out with a long brown leg. Her heel caught something soft and fleshy and there was a sharp grunting sound behind her. The clamp released on her arm and she darted away from the wall. Her heart pounding with fear and her veins afire, she sprinted off down the hill, leaping over the broken fountains and the scattered bushes. A rock, thrown with a keen eye, clipped her on the side of the head as she vaulted the crumbling brick wall at the bottom of the garden, and she tumbled, senseless, down the hillside to crash into a rosebush. The last thing she heard were boots clattering over the wall.

– |"Your friend is quick," Gaius Julius said sorely, sitting on the steps to the upper floor and kneading his inner thigh to try to get the knot out of the muscle. "Another two fingers to the right and I'd have been puking my guts out while she made like Diana into the woods."

Maxian ignored the dead man, all of his concentration was focused on the deep wound on the side of the girl's head. The rock the old man had brought her down with had cracked her behind the ear and left a bad cut. Little sharp fragments of stone had been driven into her scalp and the fleshy part at the top of her ear. The power buzzed and trembled in his hands, flickering a faint green while he worked. Under his gentle fingers, the slivers of stone trembled and then slowly eased themselves out of the flesh with a liquid pop. Skin knit closed behind them and shattered veins closed up.

After fifteen grains, he smoothed back her long hair and the flap of skin settled back into place, becoming one with its fellows. There would be no scar. Maxian smiled and felt in himself a simple joy that he had not felt in a long time. For just a moment, his mind was clear of the heavy dread of his burden. He gently turned her face back up and raised her head to slide a brocade pillow under it.

"Known her long?" Gaius Julius' voice was carefully neutral. Maxian looked up, his eyes narrowed. Abdmachus, sitting in the background, turned away a little and concentrated on his notes and writings. The dead man regarded the Prince with a level eye.

"Two years," Maxian said, his voice cold.

"What are you going to do with her? By your account she is the servant of a possible enemy of ours. By her presence I'd say that she had been spying on us for quite some time. I've checked the hillsides both above us and below us. There are places on the upper hill where two people have been regularly watching the house. This Duchess of yours, she knows that we're here. She might even know what we've been doing."

Gaius Julius' voice was calm and mildly curious. With a start, Maxian realized that the dead man really didn't care that he had just nearly killed a sixteen-year-old girl-but he was concerned about the effect she would have on their tactical situation. For a moment the Prince was fully conscious of the vast gulf between the old man, who had done more than his share of terrible things in the name of the old Republic, and himself. Then he shook his head and reminded himself that the margin they trod was very narrow and, sometimes, for the good of the people, some few might have to be expended.

"We are not going to do anything with her, beyond keeping her here. You're right, the Duchess may know. If we assume so, then we have to move again. How soon do you think we'll have to go?"

Abdmachus coughed quietly, and Maxian turned away from the dead man. The Persian was standing on the other side of the table that the Prince had used for his impromptu surgery, gazing down at the unconscious girl with a quizzical look on his face.