Byzantium's Crown Page 4

  That was where they were taking him. He was as sure of that as of his own heartbreak. Perhaps the sight of him would enrage her so that she would order him killed.

  A shove at the base of Marric's spine forced him into a passage lit by smoky torches. The orange light and violent shadows spun about him. Water trickled down the walls. Even the immense beams that prevented this den from crashing down on the rats and human refuse that scrabbled about in it were moist and phosphorescent, sagging with rot.

  Walking the dark passage, Marric imagined through a feverish haze that at the end would stand a throne of wood, gleaming in decay, surrounded by a nimbus of evil light. There, guarded by jackals, decked in jewelry looted from a hundred tombs, secure in powers he dared not think of, Irene would rule as queen over the dead.

  That was not Empire. True Empire lay in the sunlight where the Golden Horn gleamed, and the blue water flowed cleanly beneath the keels of great ships. Marric couldn't have loved it half as much as it deserved. But he would try to remember it as he died.

  The prison corridor twisted upward. One of the guards counted passageways under his breath. Doors studded the walls like rotten teeth. From behind one of them puffed the nauseating sweetness of something left too long unburied.

  If there were only water—Marric longed to wash the vileness of this place from him. Finally a black door loomed before them. Iron studs formed a crude pattern across its heavy crossbeams. One man thumped on it with the butt of his spear. Slowly the door opened.

  More jailers were waiting on the far side of the door. As they entered, Marric paused for a moment, though they struck him. Set deep into arched embrasures were narrow windows. Sunlight poured down. Though the light hurt, Marric stared at it avidly. Hail unto thee, oh Ra, in thy rising . . . the old prayer ran through his mind. He turned to examine his new guards, slouching in heavy armor, each with the coarse face of a brute. One croaked a remark to Marric.

  "What's that? I can't understand you," Marric replied, only then realizing the man had gobbled his words because his palate was deeply cleft.

  His companion spoke not at all, but set his massive shoulders to the door and shoved. As the door grated shut, be of the harelip grunted a protest. The other man did not notice. Deaf, Marric thought, and the other one is as good as mute. Isis preserve us all, where does Irene find—or make—such men?

  "Move, princeling!"

  Marric moved along the sunlit hallway. He remembered the day he had leapt from his war-horse to mount one of the fierce little ponies that the Huns cherished more than anything but their sons and their shamans. Ellac and Uldin were adopting him. They rode, they feasted, and then they rode again, exulting in the feel of the wind against their faces. He had raced Ellac over the plains toward the Euxine. Then they had turned back to greet their men. Had he savored his freedom enough?

  The small procession passed door after door. The windows vanished for a while, and now the doors were of silver. Somehow they had traveled underground to the palace. There had been times when Marric had strode through such doors dressed in gilded armor with an honor guard at his back. Princeling. It was a role I played. I never really had any power.

  As Marric passed, forced toward the Hall of Audiences, men grounded their spear butts. They mock me.

  The hall was long and wide, a richness of stone wrought into the likeness of a garden. On the walls were mosaics of flowers so fair that Isis might have plucked them to wear in her hair.

  At the end of the hall, enthroned in splendor, sat Irene.

  Light flickered around Irene as she sat between rows of her favorites. Her dark eyes, beneath arched, imperious brows, lifted to regard her victim.

  The usurping empress wore the robes of Isis-on-Earth, silks from beyond Hamadan and Nishapur, heavily woven with silver and sewn with gems of the moon: pearls, corals, and moonstones. Rubies studded the collar that overlay her robe, fluted in the archaic style of the Two Lands. At her ears hung enormous pearls. And on her dark hair gleamed the crown of Isis, a disk of lucent silver that flashed in the light. A great crimson cloak lay draped over her throne.

  Marric's guards prodded him in the back, then pushed him down in the full, over-elaborate prostration on which Irene, a lady jealous of her dignities, had always insisted. Before they could keep him there, Marric rose to his knees.

  His eyes locked with hers, a glance that sent hatred down the length of the hall, robbing it of some of its beauty. A breeze from the great windows carried the incongruous freshness of roses.

  The men cursed. One began to bend Marric's stiff neck for him.

  "Kiss earth, prince," the man muttered. Before he could stop himself, Marric spat a few words he had learned from the Huns. The man backhanded him, and blood trickled from his split lip.

  "Stop that."

  Irene stood. She raised her hands. Marric saw that she held in them a twisted glitter of opals, rubies, and moonstones—the splendid collar Ctesiphon had affected the night of his death. The goldwork was mangled from the hooves that had tramped Irene's son to death.

  Can I make her angry enough so that she will kill me quickly? As Irene approached him, Marric launched himself up from his knees at her. Perhaps one of the courtiers would stab him.

  Fever had left him too weak to fight. A soldier hurled him off-balance. Marric fell heavily, unable to rise for the minutes it took for a pleased Irene to make a leisurely circle about him. No one laughed.

  "Prince Marric," she mused in that heavy accent that had always reminded Marric of a camp follower from Aleppo. "You come before me in disarray. I am surprised."

  He heard her approach more closely and tensed his belly muscles for the kick that must surely come.

  "Are you surprised that I appear before you at all? I assure you, I do not do so of my own free will." From where had he gained that new, measured dignity? He sounded like his father. Well, it would probably pass before the end.

  "Raise him," Irene ordered. After he had been dragged back onto his feet, she spoke again.

  "This meeting has cost me much." She displayed the ruined collar.

  "I wish it had cost you your life."

  He had been foolish to say that, he realized instantly. Nails raked his cheek. He smelled the perfume she wore—musky and too sweet. At least Alexa had seen to it that Ctesiphon would not live to rule as his mother's puppet. Had Irene truly loved her son, or only the power he might buy her?

  "You murdered Horus-on-Earth!"

  "My father was Horus-on-Earth. You betray him," Marric told her. "He acknowledged your whelp, that much is true. But how do we know he wasn't the get of some charioteer—or a slave?" Or some demon. Marric tensed, awaiting the scream of rage, the blow that never fell. He heard the mutterings of Irene's courtiers and raked them with his eyes. Traitors, all of you.

  "So now, what do you do, Isis? You have no consort, and yet you must have one. Will you take the Reaver-jarl of Jomsborg to your bed? The empire will never accept him."

  "You remain—"

  "I?" Marric spat bloody froth on the tiles and bit back the retort that he would rather be a eunuch. Such could be made all too easily, and he preferred to die a whole man.

  "I can give you power," Irene said. "Look!"

  Red light burned at her finger tips.

  "You tasted my power in your cell, did you not? The power to bend, to control emotion, to rule forever—"

  "Powers of Set," Marric whispered. "Why?"

  "To confirm my rule, Marric. To keep it and enjoy it for a thousand years. Why rule for just one lifetime?" She stepped closer to him and ran her hand down his bare chest. Marric stood motionless.

  Irene raised his chin in fastidious, disdainful fingertips. He had no choice but to look at her. Even at arm's length, he could smell the oils with which she anointed herself.

  How could this woman be his stepmother? How old was she? Irene looked as if she had not aged a single day since Alexander had installed her as a minor wife. Marric was almost grateful fo
r the pain that kept him from responding to the promises of sense, voice, glistening eyes, the lush figure hinted at by her robes. Irene's nostrils quivered with suppressed eagerness. She had always been a woman of strong passions; the strongest of them was for power.

  "I need a consort who will do my will."

  "Steal the consecrated bull from the priests of Mithras," Marric suggested. "That might service you adequately."

  "Enough! I offer you co-rule and you spurn it. But you do not delude me, Marric; you want power. You simply need time to consider my offer—time and a place to think it over."

  Little time he'd have if she sent him back to that dungeon. Fever would kill him in days. But better fever than that black cloud. Sooner or later it would find, the weakness in his soul that Alexander had seen; and then Marric would be damned as well as lost. Like Alexa. My poor child, my dear one, he thought.

  Still, if Irene needed him, she would not kill him nor torture him. Weak, corruptible. Marric hated himself for the surge of hope that he felt.

  "No. Not the pit again," she mused. "Hard work, yes, to make you appreciate the future you would toss away. You have called me low, vile things; you shall yourself be low and vile—a slave, sold with a bad character. In a year or two I may send for you to see if you have reconsidered. If you still abuse me then, there are always the Silk Routes. Few slaves return from them." She paused, amused, sated. "No word, my poor Marric?"

  Despair warred with a rage for vengeance that shook him almost to ecstasy. He mastered it. Pride was all he had left.

  "Better to let the empire die than to let you corrupt it."

  Irene gestured. A richly dressed man approached, prostrated himself, and awaited orders.

  "Antinous, are your merchant ships ready to sail?"

  "At your command, Divine Lady."

  "Good. Take this rebel fool and be sure he sails aboard your next ship. Alexandria or Antioch: just let me know which. I will not have him sold to the quarries or into ship's service, however. Let him wish for death, if he will. I want him alive."

  Marric had steeled himself to endure death and disgrace unconquered. Slavery? His legs almost buckled beneath him. Even a slave, he had been taught, had his own human dignity. But philosophy was one thing, the slave block quite another. Even with his new-found poise, Marric had far better die than risk having his spirit broken. He tried to hurl himself onto an outheld spear. The spear shaft, rawhide around a metal core, slammed against the side of his head. The hall burst around him into splintered light and chaotic shouting. Over it all he heard Irene's sweet, contented laughter.

  "Take him away," she said. Soldiers hustled him out. The last Marric saw of the throne that should have been his was Irene sitting and brooding, her sharp-nailed fingers caressing Ctesiphon's necklet.

  Chapter Four

  Marric heaved himself onto his side. Someone pushed him sharply back and jerked away.

  "The jackal eat your soul! Do you think it's rose petals you're lolling on?"

  His head ached, and would ache worse before long from the stink of close-packed men and human filth—the brine could not disguise the stink of nearby vomit.

  Brine? With a groan Marric returned to his senses. He had been drifting the way, it was said, mages of long ago Chaldea had been able to travel in and out of their bodies. In what seemed another life, he had thrown silver to the singers of such tales. The deck rocked beneath him. He was on board one of Antinous' merchantmen, bound—as Irene had gloated—for the slave block. And then what? Irene had said she did not care whether he were sold at Antioch or Alexandria, but sold he would be.

  Twice on the way to the ship Marric had tried to kill himself, once by hurling himself at the armed guards, a second time as his captors forced him out of the palace along the back ways where the road bordered the high walls. Marric had almost burst his heart trying to break free long enough to toss himself down onto the rocks or into the uncaring blue of the harbor below.

  He dashed a hand across split lips and discovered that he was chained again. The heavy metal of his wrist shackles gleamed in the light that filtered through the grilled hatch. He stared in fascination at his bonds. Did these alone make a slave of a prince?

  Cautiously this time, he shifted position and felt movement on either side of him. He levered himself up. His neck hurt. The smith who had fit him with his collar had not been gentle, and Marric had fought. He remembered the harbor stithy as a vision of hell.

  His mind and body had been too strong, so he was spared nothing of the long, ignominious progress down to the docks with the slaves, nor the painful crowding as he and the others waited to be collared; not one hammer blow of the whole degrading process. Now he was marked as property: anyone's prize, should he escape. That was almost worse than the possibility that someone might have recognized him among the coffle of slaves.

  "The prince, in chains!" they might have cried. He would have been helpless to hide his shame and the disgrace to his blood. His rebellion—no, he must not think of it as rebellion—his just attempt to assume his father's crown had failed. It had been premature, a desperate action. And as he walked in chains, the guards pushed him ever faster till he blacked out. Then they threw salt water on him till he woke, then waited so he could stumble along to the gangplank and spare them the trouble of lugging him on board. Be thankful you weren't whipped, one man told him. Marric fantasized ways of killing him, then shrugged. Such thoughts were wasted effort.

  He had gotten one look at the ship—gaudy-hulled and bearing the bright device that proclaimed Antinous a wealthy man, and likely to become wealthier before long. Square-rigged like most merchant vessels, it had a fighting turret and leather shields to protect the oarsmen in battle: good rowers were valuable property, more so than slaves. Threatened with naphtha or drowning, the slaves on their way to market might have to row for their miserable lives too.

  "So you're awake now, are you?" the man next to Marric asked. His chains were secured to the same rusty bolt as Marric's. "For a while there, I thought we might have one less body to crowd this hulk."

  Now Marric became aware of the rhythmic splash of oars and the surge of the stroke as the oarsmen sent the ship through the water, the bright sea he had always loved. It had brought his ancestors world dominion.

  The last time I sailed, he recalled, I stood on deck in fine armor and . . . clean clothes, with the captain asking my will. "I . . . live," Marric said. "The gods grant that I do not continue to live for long." Burdened with the collar, his neck bent before he knew it, and he buried his head in scraped hands.

  The man laid a hand on his shoulder. "Your collar is too tight. They didn't trust you when they brought you on board. Said you were vicious."

  "They sell the vicious ones on the frontier," another slave cackled ghoulishly. "The Berbers kill them . . . or the Huns. Depends on where they're sold." The man's accent was so thick Marric could barely understand him.

  "Never mind," said Marric's chainmate. "We're all bound for hell on earth one way or other, so we may as well resign ourselves to face it. Dignity becomes even a slave."

  That was no gutter speaker. Marric turned sharply to look at him and paid for it with intense, nauseating dizziness. His companion was pale. Below their harsh bracelets his hands were uncallused: the hands of a scholar, perhaps, or a minor civil servant.

  "By Osiris in Glory," Marric began, "what brings you here?" The other slaves growled.

  "Do not presume to ask such questions of slaves, stranger," said the man. "But I will tell you. How did I, Nicephorus, wind up, in the hull of a slave ship, bound for Alexandria or wherever? I was a scholar whose debts—and bad luck in my choice of creditors—reduced me to this. The men I owed had friends at court." He spat and made a sign of derision. "To pay—well, I had a choice: myself to the block or my . . . oh gods, my wife or my children. To save them, I chose this."

  Marric bowed his head in respect.

  "But you, stranger. Surely your voice is not the ba
bble of the streets, nor that of barbarians."

  "No," said Marric. "No. I was a soldier. And, like you, I ran afoul of the court."

  "As they say, those who live by the sword shall perish by it."

  "Stow it!" a nearby slave shouted as others grumbled.

  Marric hoped that this man Nicephorus, whose voice was the first comfort he had found in days, would not now preach some cult whose asceticism maddened its disciples. But wasn't his proverb true? Warriors died in combat. Had Marric fallen in battle, he would have no complaint to make. Indeed, he had fought to the utmost of his strength.

  "You worship the sign of the Fish?" Marric asked reluctantly.

  "Nay, not I. I serve Isis and Osiris, but I seek wisdom wherever it may be found, in slums or in scrolls. Once I owned many scrolls, but now it looks as if it's slums that will teach me."

  How could this Nicephorus be so damned resigned? Was he a coward? Marric studied the man—slight and pale, unused to physical hardship. Unless some rich family wanted a pedagogue, he probably wouldn't last the month. And he would never again see the family for which he had sacrificed himself. Yet he spoke calmly, kindly to another man.

  "Why?" Marric rasped. The hatch above his head slammed shut, and he had to strain to see Nicephorus in the dark.

  "Light," Nicephorus murmured, and a pallid light gleamed between them. A brave little man and stronger than he looked if he could summon magic even in chains. Strange: Nicephorus' light did not revolt Marric the way Irene's red flames or poor Alexa's magic had.

  "You are no ordinary scholar," he said.

  "I have sat at the feet of the traders from the Country of Gold beyond the Silk Routes," Nicephorus said, "and I have spoken with the druids. All agree. Beyond this life lies many another, and we live them out to atone for our misdeeds. One seeks in this life to be worthy so that one may be even worthier in the next—or escape the Wheel entirely to guide others along the Way. I believe—yes, I do truly believe," he tested the words with satisfaction, "that no one lives or suffers in vain. Who knows? Perhaps in another life, I did that for which this one is only fit recompense."