Thomas Harlan - The storm of Heaven

"They will not stand to face us today, Lord Prince," Vahan barked. "Why should they? The desert is their sanctuary…"

Why indeed? Theodore had pondered the issue for weeks, while his forces mustered on the plateau. He had chosen his camp carefully. There was good water year-round. Below the cliffs to the south ran the main road to Damascus. Other roads converged from the north. Here on the heights above the Sea of Galilee was the turning point of the entire defense of Judea and southern Syria. The Prince was sure he wanted battle, his full strength gathered. Did the bandits? They seem to, having come out in force, in full array, to face me.

"Boleslav, attend me!"

The captain of the Faithful stomped up, a single-bladed ax slung carelessly over one mighty shoulder. The Northman was nearly six and a half feet tall and built like a mountain. Even the steadily growing heat did not seem to touch him. "Ja?"

Theodore leaned from his horse, his mouth close to the Northman's conical helmet. "Have word sent to the thaumaturges. Tell them to begin their working."

Boleslav nodded, thick neck sliding like the gearing of a water mill. "Ja, altjarl."

– |Zoe jogged down the slope, riding boots sliding among the stones and scrub. A single plait of her hair bounced on the back of her armor. The sleeves of her robe were tied up to keep her arms free. Mohammed remained on the boulder, high above the line of battle. Regiments of her clansmen squatted at the base of the hillock, banners furled and kaftans pulled over their faces. The men of Palmyra respected the sun. Water skins passed along the lines of men.

She came to a halt, senses filled with a slowly rising hum of sorcery building in the valley. "Do you feel it?"

Odenathus nodded in greeting and acknowledgment. "I do," he said. His long face, darkened like hers by the sun, was pensive. "They're not messing about today."

Zoe shaded her eyes and stared across the swale at the Roman camp. There, among the stunted trees and tamarisk, she could make out the rectangle of a Legion marching camp and, just outside the palisade, a circle of staves and withes marking the tents of the thaumaturges.

"There must be at least twenty battle masters," Odenathus continued, his voice steady. "Plus the usual apprentices and journeymen. Almost double the usual complement to a Legion force of this size." The Palmyrene's face was grim and his hands moved restlessly on the hilt of his sword.

"Yes," Zoe said, distracted, "they must have borrowed from the other legions, maybe the ones in Persia. The Prince wants to make a big show…"

Closing her eyes, Zoe settled her mind, letting the heat and the dry wind and the sound of flies recede. It was difficult. The air was charged with anticipation and fear. Odenathus was worried and she could smell the fear-tang in his sweat. Her own armor was heavy and the bindings bit into her skin. She breathed out slowly, measuring the intake of air to the beat of her heart. She knelt, the pommel of her sword pressed against her forehead. The sensation helped her focus, let her mind block out the sensi constantly flooding her sight, hearing, taste and touch.

Faintly, she felt Odenathus kneel beside her, and the whisper of his thought.

Zoe let the image of a wheel form in her mind. This came of its own accord, from long practice, and with it, as the wheel spun and brightened and grew larger, she felt the last distractions of the physical world fall away. An old friend called this the Entrance of Hermes, and once told her, as they sat beside a high mountain stream, road-weary feet cooling in the chill blue-white water, that he imagined it as the eye of Horus, coming up out of unguessable depths. First, he had said, it was a single bright mote in an abyss of darkness. But then, as it rushed closer, it became larger and brighter. At last, as it came very close, it was enormous, bigger than a house, a burning eye trailing sparks. Once it rushed over you, once it consumed you in cold fire, you had passed the first entrance to the hidden world.

Zoe invoked the image of a wheel of fire, but the effect was the same. When it whirled over her, her mind was freed of the physicality of the senses. Her hidden sight opened and she beheld the valley in its true form.

For a moment, before asserting a pattern of symbolism fitting her waking mind, she beheld a shining void, filled with millions of hurrying lights. The streambed below was a slow blue surge coiling and twisting across a ghostly landscape. Thousands of men moving on the slope were sparkling motes. The horses thudding across the dusty ground, delicate traceries of living fire. Arrayed across the enemy camp was a shining wall of gold. Symbols danced across its surface, forming out of the rainbow shimmer, then disappearing again. Her perception shied away from the abyss of the sky, for the blue vault and thin white clouds were gone, leaving only an infinite depth filled with a haze of burning spheres.

Sweat beaded on her forehead and she summoned up a second image, the first in a swift succession of patterns. This was the second entrance, where the adept, the sorcerer, brought forth from his hidden mind a series of symbols and patterns that allowed the manipulation and perception of the hidden world without going mad.

That raw sky, the unfettered vision of the truth of the world, was too much for the human mind. Even in the brief instant Zoe stared into the abyss of light, she had felt the core of her being begin to dissolve, losing the unique identity that made her Zoe, Queen of Palmyra.

A flower box unfolded before her, expanding into a constantly growing pattern of planes and forms. Each facet gleamed with a single pure color, bright enough to hurt the eye. At the heart, where the wheel of fire spun and hissed, a shining trapezohedron emerged. The people of her city, though they were born and bred of the desert, thought of themselves as Greeks. "The heir of Athens," they called fair Palmyra under the reign of the first Zenobia. Poets and sages, mathematicians and astrologers flocked to her golden court.

Zoe's teachers were mathematicians, geometricists. They instilled their own symbology in her. The trapezohedron tore, then reknit, becoming a dodecahedron. Now her mind settled and familiar reality asserted itself. The hills had shape and solidity; Odenathus, still at her side, now seemed a mortal man, not a thing of fire. But the golden wall remained and the sky was filled with the tracery of power and intent.

"The thaumaturges are attacking?" Zoe was startled. The Eastern Empire prided itself on the strength of its wizards, but their skill had always been turned to defense.

"They have learned from the Western mages," Odenathus rasped. "We must work quickly."

Zoe rose, her mind finding her cousin's thought waiting. They had been trained in a swift, harsh school, under the tutelage of the Legion during the Persian war. Now the circle closed. Zoe extended her will and meshed with Odenathus. Together they turned to face the valley. Power from the rocks and stone, from the air, from water buried deep underground, flowed into them. Their own matrices and hidden shapes began to build.

Here they come, Odenathus thought, and flame boiled out of the golden wall, licking across the ranks of Arab and Decapolis troops. Zoe knew that the men could see nothing, maybe only feel unease, a sour taste in the air. She put forth her strength, lashing out with a deep blue arc of light that hewed into the red fire. The tendril of power recoiled, flickering back into the safety of the shield wavering beyond the streambed.

Thunder grumbled in a clear sky, and the Arab soldiers, still waiting in the hot sun, looked up in surprise.

– |"Allau Akbar!" The sky rang with the massed cry of four thousand throats.

Colonna felt the earth shake as the Arab cavalry hurtled towards the front rank of the legionaries. In the instant before the shock of contact, the centurion bellowed Ground and Lock shields! The first line of soldiers went down on one knee and grounded their rectangular shields. The second rank stepped up, shields held high, spears a thicket of iron. The Arab chargers slewed aside at the last moment, the desert-men turning in their saddles to fling javelins at a dozen paces. The entire charge slid sideways along the Roman front, the riders howling a battle cry as they hurled into the closely packed Romans.