Echoes of light, p.17
Echoes of Light, page 17
Seneca took a deep breath of the sea air, turned to look at Imani, and exhaled slowly. As always, her grace calmed the roaring flames inside him.
It's not only for my own glory that I do this, he reminded himself, as she reminded him. I do this so that I can heal a broken world. So that I can stop the killing, the brutality of evil emperors. To save Imani's home. To save Ofeer's home. To save this world that collapses around us, even as we sail here.
He squeezed Imani's hand, and she smiled, perhaps hearing his silent words. She kissed his cheek.
Without you, Imani, he thought, I would be like Porcia. I would be like Tirus. You make me a better man.
When he turned forward again, he saw it. A thin line along the horizon. The coast.
"Aelar!" the men cried behind him. "The Sacred City!"
Seneca's eyes dampened as they sailed onward, as he watched details emerge. Soon he could see the cityscape he dreamed of every night. The walls, towers, and glittering domes of Aelar. The City of Gods. The Jewel of the Sea. The Capital of the World. Aelar was known by many names, and all roads, all dreams, all hopes led to it. Aelar. His birthright. His home.
"It's almost over, Imani," he said. "All our wars, our struggle, all this blood and pain—it's almost over. The world will be ours."
She looked ahead, and he expected her to gasp, to marvel at the beauty, and he already imagined himself showing her the wonders of the city. But a thin line appeared on her brow. She tilted her head.
"It's . . . burning," she said.
Seneca squinted. Plumes of smoke were rising from the city.
His heart seemed to freeze.
As the fleet sailed closer, the voices died across the ships. All stared in silence. Soon Seneca could hear it, a distant chorus on the wind: screams, banging steel, flying stones.
War.
Soon the stench of smoke flowed over the fleet, overpowering the smell of the sea. Seneca grimaced. Aelaria Maritima came into view, the fabled port of Aelar, the source of all its might. The breakwaters spread out, lined with columned walkways, lighthouses soaring at their tips. A handful of islands rose in the harbor, topped with colossal statues of the gods. Normally hundreds of ships filled the bay, and beyond them sprawled the boardwalk and the villas and temples of the city.
Today those ships were burning.
Today a horde of barbarians roared on the boardwalk, firing flaming arrows, and beyond them the city crumbled.
"Gael," Seneca said. "They've taken the city. Gods, Imani. The city has fallen."
The Nurian queen stared ahead, eyes narrowed, teeth bared. "No. The city has not yet fallen. Battle still rages here."
As they sailed closer to the port, Seneca saw that she was right. Aelarian archers still manned the walls—but they were firing their arrows into the city. Between the homes and atop hills, he still saw the banners of the Magisterian Guard—laureled eagles on crimson fields. Between them rose the banners of Gael's tribes—wyverns, wolves, bears, dragons, rampant upon green fields.
As the fleet approached the lighthouses on the breakwater, about to enter the harbor, terror shot through Seneca.
No. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
He struggled for breath. His hands shook on the balustrade.
I was meant to sail in to the cheers of the crowd. Not a war. Not thousands of bloodthirsty barbarians.
He could see the Gaelians everywhere. They ran along the breakwaters. They lined the boardwalk. They stormed through the streets. Towering warriors, bearded, foul, the creatures who had attacked Seneca's fleet last year, who had nearly killed him.
He wanted to turn around. To flee back south. To find another way. To raise more troops. Anything but to sail here into fire and smoke and death—so close to the end, so close to his throne.
At his side, he saw Imani flex her fingers around her spear. When Seneca turned around, he saw his troops along the deck, staring ahead grimly, some licking dry lips, some trembling, but all ready to fight.
"For Aelar," he said. "For our homeland."
He turned back forward and drew his sword. They sailed between the breakwaters and into the harbor.
A thousand Gaelian women stood along the breakwaters, raised bows, and fired flaming arrows at Seneca's fleet. Several men fell. The arrows slammed into the hulls, the masts, the shields of warriors. The ships caught fire, and men screamed and burned, yet still they sailed onward. They plowed through the wreckage of charred, shattered ships the Gaelians had already destroyed, moving under a veil of smoke toward the shore.
The piers had burned. Gaelians fired arrows from the boardwalk, and Seneca raised his shield. In the hailstorm, he directed his ship to plow through the charred docks and bang against the boardwalk.
"Fighters of the Empire!" he shouted. "Cut them down!"
He looked at Imani. She met his eyes. They turned together, leaped onto the boardwalk, and charged into battle.
They fought through the city of his childhood, of his ruin, of his dreams.
He stormed across the city, leading his army, a song of bloodshed and splendor and terror such as Aelar had never seen. The elephants led the charge, finally free of the stifling hulls of ships, trumpeting as they trundled down the cobbled boulevards of Aelar. Seneca and Imani themselves rode one of the beasts, leading the assault, as behind them rolled the chariots, the riders, and finally line after line of infantry. Aelarians. Nurians. Phedians. A united army under his command, as all around them, from every road, alleyway, and rooftop, the barbarian horde slammed into them with hammers, axes, and shattering iron.
The world fights, Seneca thought. Here is the great battle of nations.
Along the avenue where, a year ago, he had led Ofeer among slaves, a hundred of Seneca's men fell to the barbarians' spears. In a courtyard where he and his father had once sacrificed a pregnant cow, sharing the meat with the plebeians for the Fordicidia festival, the Gaelians now tore down an elephant, roaring as the beast fell and shattered a home. Near the bakery where Seneca used to take Valentina for cakes, a horde of Nurians slammed into a Gaelian assault, javelins flying, horses kicking, blood splashing the street.
Everywhere—in every alleyway, every courtyard, every garden, every home—they fought. From balconies. From roofs. From the gardens of villas. Along the staircases of apartment buildings that soared eight stories tall. In temples of marble columns and rotundas. In slums where beggars fled and sandals kicked through filth. Through brothels and houses of healing, scattering lupi and lepers onto the streets. Through smoke and fire. Buildings burned. Walls fell. People fled and died. And still they fought.
Not in five hundred years, since its founding by the goddess Aelia, had an enemy breached the walls of Aelar.
And the city will never fall, Seneca vowed.
When a storm of arrows took down his elephant, he fought from a chariot. When the Gaelians slew his horses, he fought afoot. Always Imani fought at his side, lashing a spear, and her brother fought with them, suffering several gashes but never straying from his sister's side.
The sun fell, and still they fought.
Through dawn and day and dusk again, Seneca's army flowed through the city, coursing like ointment through the grooves of a wound, killing the poison.
At sunset, he reached the gates of the Acropolis and saw that it still stood. Across the city around him, street after street, his hosts slew the last of the enemies.
Weary, wounded, barely able to stand, Seneca raised his sword and shield.
"The city is ours!" he shouted. "Gael is slain! Aelar stands! Aelar stands!"
At his side, Imani raised her spear. "Our masters are slain! Nur is free!"
"Nur is free!" shouted her warriors.
"Aelar stands!" shouted his men.
The city still burned. The city still stank with death. The city stood.
As the horns and bells of victory sounded across the smoldering city, Seneca pulled Imani close to him.
"Everything will change now," he said, hoarse, eyes damp. "Tirus, Porcia, the Gaelians—all our enemies lie dead. You and I will rule this world together. Nur will have its freedom. It will be a time to rebuild, to heal, to live again in peace."
Covered in blood, tears in his eyes, he kissed her.
They turned together toward the gates of the Acropolis—the same gates he had entered a year ago upon his victorious return from Zohar, leaving Ofeer in the slave market.
The gates were locked.
Seneca cleared his throat. He had hoped for a triumphal march into the Acropolis, not an awkward search for its keys. He took a few steps back. Curtain walls surrounded the Acropolis, topped with ramparts and guards.
Seneca coned his mouth and called out, "Hear me, Magisterian Guard! Tirus lies dead and the barbarians are slain! I am Seneca Octavius, son of Marcus, heir to Aelar! Open these gates to a new age!"
The Magisterians stared down from above. The Acropolis gates remained closed.
"What's wrong?" Imani said.
Seneca was exhausted. He had fought through day, night, day, and now night was falling again. He wanted to collapse into his old bed in the palace. Failing that, he wanted to collapse right here onto the street and sleep. He forced himself to remain standing.
"It seems our war might not yet be over," he said.
He looked behind him. He had sailed here with thousands of warriors. Most lay dead across the city. From where he stood, Seneca could see several hundred fighters. Not enough. Not enough to break through these walls, to defeat the Magisterian Guard—the finest soldiers gleaned from the legions.
He turned back toward the walls. "Magisterian Guard! Open these gates, and we will draw the future of this glorious empire!"
A voice spoke beside him. "Come with me, Prince Seneca."
Seneca turned and saw a young man on the roadside, wearing a simple toga. He looked vaguely familiar, but Seneca could not place his face. That face was ordinary, utterly forgettable. Soft. More pretty than handsome. The brown hair fell across the brow, thin and smooth. He looked like the son of a tradesman or local clerk.
Then finally Seneca remembered. He had seen this man in the palace before. Had seen him speak to his father.
"Caelius," he said. Commander of the Magisterian Guard.
Several other Magisterians stepped forth from behind a row of cedars. They wore togas, but Seneca saw the hilts of daggers peek from the folds of the fabric.
"Come with us," Caelius said, smiling thinly, gesturing for Seneca to approach the cypresses. "We'll talk."
Seneca thought of the stories he had heard—that it was Caelius who had arranged the assassination of Porcia, who had plunged the killing blow into her heart. Perhaps with the same dagger that now hung at his side.
"Stay here, Imani," Seneca said softly.
She grabbed his arm. "I will go with you. With a hundred soldiers."
Seneca shook his head. Not ten thousand soldiers would help him now, not against a determined, disciplined Guard in possession of the Acropolis. Not if he wanted to see any part of this city still stand.
He kissed Imani and caressed her cheek. "Wait for me."
He turned and approached the smiling Caelius. They stepped between the trees, and Seneca felt as if he were walking toward his most dangerous battle.
ABISHAG
"Toil!"
The whip cracked.
"Faster!"
Leather tore into flesh.
"Up!"
Feet kicked. Clubs cracked against bone. Screams rose across the desert.
"Toil! Faster! Up!"
Abishag swayed. She stumbled forward, ankles hobbled, the sun beating down. Her hands trembled around the handles of the cart.
"Faster!"
A whip cracked, and pain blazed across Abishag's back. She nearly fell. She bit down on a scream. She had seen what happened to those slaves who fell. Some still lived upon the crosses.
With thousands of other slaves, she trudged forward, step after step, barefoot on the hot stones, wheeling the cart forward. In the wooden cart rose piles of rock, sand, soil, and mortar. Abishag's hands blistered. Her feet bled. The welts rose on her back, and sweat soaked her, stinging her eyes and cracked lips. The other slaves of Beth Eloh toiled around her, wheeling their own carts of soil and stone. Their Aelarian masters moved around the slaves, lashing whips, tearing skin. When Abishag lost a step, she screamed as another lash tore into her, and she smelled her blood. Under the blinding sun, she toiled on.
Ahead of her, she saw the mesa. A monolith of stone soared from the desert, taller than any mountain Abishag had ever seen. Jagged cliffs formed its flanks, leading to a flat plateau. The mesa was so tall Abishag had to tilt her head all the way back to see its crest. From down here, she could just make out the fortifications atop the mesa: towers, turrets, a round fortress lined with columns, curtain walls, archers' embrasures, and ramparts. The greatest and last stronghold in Zohar.
"Damn it, slave. Faster!"
An Aelarian approached her, one of thousands who had come here, waiting to break into the fortress above. The man raised a club and brought it down hard on Abishag's shoulder. She yowled. She nearly fell and spilled the cart's contents. She moved on.
Ahead of her, hundreds of slaves were overturning their carts, then packing down the soil and earth, filling a massive wooden framework. Abishag didn't even know what they were building. It was larger than a wall. Larger than a hill. It drove across the desert like a dune, many times the height of men, pointing toward the mesa.
She climbed the pile of rock and sand already there. It rose taller even than the walls of Beth Eloh. When she finally reached the top, Abishag tilted her cart over, adding its contents to the construction.
For a brief moment, Abishag paused for breath, here high atop the pile, and looked around her. Ahead, still a good distance away, soared the mesa and Tarath El atop it. Directly below and behind her, five thousand slaves, the last survivors of the slaughter in Beth Eloh, toiled at filling and wheeling forth more carts. All across the desert spread the legions. Fifteen thousand Aelarian warriors were here. Several hundred served as masters to the slaves. The others surrounded the mesa. More slaves were toiling elsewhere, building crude walls around the mesa, complete with towers for archers, as if the Aelarians sought to cut off all escape, to surround Tarath El with prison walls.
They not only want to climb the mesa and break in, Abishag realized. They want to block escape.
A crude circumvallation wall, large enough to enclose a city. Slaves toiling at a massive structure, its purpose unknown. A soaring mesa. A citadel at its top. And all around them, the parsa'ot of desert, leading to nothing but ruin. This was all the world that remained.
"Slave! Back to work!"
Abishag nodded, her back stinging with too many lashes. She climbed down the pile of stone and earth, rolled her cart toward the quarry, and refilled it.
She toiled on.
Hour by hour.
Day by day.
And still the slaves labored.
Whenever Abishag thought the work might be complete, that the wooden framework was finally full, the Aelarians commanded more wooden frameworks built over the existing edifice, forming more places to add soil and sand and stone. The structure kept rising. First the height of a wall. Then the height of a palace. And still the earthworks rose taller. Eventually the structure soared even taller than the Temple had risen in Beth Eloh. And still they toiled.
During the nights, Abishag trembled in the darkness, pressed between the other slaves. During the days, she struggled under the blazing heat, sweat and blood dripping across her, suffering lash after lash. As the great structure grew taller, so did the wall around the mesa. Within weeks, the circular wall where other slaves labored rose as mighty as the walls of Beth Eloh, lined with legionaries. No aid could come to Tarath El now, and none could escape it. The mesa of stone, and the citadel at its top, was now isolated from the world not only by desert but by ramparts and guard towers and ditches.
You came here for safety, Epher, Abishag thought, gazing at the mesa through the sweat in her eyes. But you found yourself in a trap.
And she worked on.
The structure she and others built rose taller, longer, a dune the size of a mountain. Its soil was soaked with her sweat, blood, and tears. Every day more slaves died, and they buried them in the earthworks, and they built higher.
As she labored—bleeding, weak, perhaps dying—Abishag thought of Maya.
She thought of Maya's teachings, her wisdom, her kindness, and Abishag knew that she had to survive this. She had to live. She had to spread the word of Maya's wisdom throughout the world. When so many slaves fell dead around her, slain by thirst or whip or weariness, Abishag took another breath, took another step, added another stone to her cart. She toiled on. She survived.
The days and nights rolled by.
The structure grew.
And finally, when it rose so tall it was half the mesa's height, Abishag understood its purpose.
She stood at its top, holding her cart, and gazed toward Tarath El, and she knew.
It was a ramp.
EPHER
He stood on the wall, barely able to breathe, his fingers digging into the battlements. His head spun. The fear paralyzed him. Epher forced himself to take deep, slow breaths, to think, to breathe.
Below in the eastern desert, they toiled. Thousands of slaves. For many days now, they had been laboring. Under the whips of their Aelarian masters, the slaves of Beth Eloh had built a circumvallation wall around the mesa, blocking off all aid or escape. The wall was crude, formed of rough stones and mortar, but tall and lined with guard outposts. A dry moat ran along the wall, filled with jagged spikes, and always the legions patrolled the perimeter. Within this great circle, the legionaries had raised a camp—rings within rings of tents, home to fifteen thousand troops. Across the camp, horns kept blaring, drums kept beating, and legionaries kept chanting.
"Crucify them!" shouted a man.
"Burn the rebels!"
"Snap their bones!"
