Rome: The Emperor's spy

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The cowl was both a blindfold and a disguise.

Pantera made himself breathe, and counted the scents of incense and old spittle and unwashed hair and found them strangely comforting, like the harsh wool scratching his face.

And then, just as the smokes of frankincense and myrrh had become a vellum on which his past had been painted, so the cowl’s dense screen became a window to eyes other than the ones he was born with, so that he could see the true dimensions of the Oracle’s temple, and know how much greater it was than the one that housed the false god above; he could see the Oracle herself, and know how much greater she was than any one woman, even Hypatia; he could see Alexandros, and know that his lame leg was the gift that had led him to this place, and that his soul was light as a feather, held in balance on Osiris’ scales.

And with his new vision, he knew too the names and essences of the two men and a woman who were walking up the long corridor from the rushing river below.

Hannah came first, forging through the knee-high smoke with the hound’s baying draped all around her like a cloak.

In daylight, Pantera would have known her by the straightness of her back, by the curve of her neck, by the sweep of her black silk hair. Here, cloaked into blindness, he saw instead her courage and the texture of the peace that sustained her, even as sparks of red terror shot through when she saw him standing black-robed and silent behind the altar; she hadn’t expected him to be part of the Oracle.

Pantera hadn’t considered himself as a part of it before that moment either, but now, with neither arrogance, nor pride, nor fear, he knew it to be true; he was there because he was needed, because he was wanted, because time and the gods had ordained that it be so. And, because he had seen the past in the veils of smoke, he knew how to see at least part of the future written on the black screen of the cowl.

It was with that far-sight, therefore, that he saw Saulos emerge from the tunnel.

At Hannah’s murmured order, he walked between the pillars and came to kneel before the altar. There was nothing humble in his supplication. He was faint from hunger and still weak from his own terror, but in his own estimation he was a man who had successfully battled the Ferryman to win his passage across the Styx and he entered the chamber of the Oracle alight with his own power, as if he had just earned the keys to all its wealth of worldly knowledge.

Arrogance blazed from him, as peace had from Hannah. Pantera strove to see what lay beneath, but had no time, for a third soul was walking up the long tunnel that led from the Styx. Forewarned, Pantera lifted his head in time to see a third black-cowled figure enter the chamber, and knew that this was beyond all precedent; that even more than his own presence, that of the Ferryman changed the delicate balances of past, present and future.

To Pantera’s left, Hypatia hissed out a long, slow breath, like the exhalation of a mountain as the sun’s light leaves at dusk.

‘You come as a supplicant. Have you the incense of life and of death?’ Her voice was the raw essence of power, greater than any man might carry, however great his arrogance. It filled the temple to the furthest reaches of the roof.

Wordless, Saulos held up the two resins in his cupped palms.

‘Give to your left the Sense of Life and to your right the Sense of Death.’

Without any volition on his part, Pantera found himself taking a step forward. Saulos’ eyes flew wide. For the first time he looked uncertain. Moved by forces beyond his own control, Pantera stretched out his hands to accept the frankincense as it was offered.

His hands… that were not his hands.

If he had had any command of his own body, he would have fallen in fright, then. The hands cupped together in the red light of the brazier were old and mottled and the fingers were longer than his had ever been.

He stared at them even as he accepted Saulos’ offering, held the rich nugget high above the flames, crumbled it between finger and thumb, and, with a dexterity that amazed him, sent the fragments flowing down to the burning heart of the fire. To the Oracle’s left, Alexandros matched him grain for grain, spill for spill.

Two columns of white smoke streamed evenly to the ceiling. Saulos breathed in the new scent, coughing. His eyes streamed and his nose began to run. He stared open-mouthed at the visions that were sent him. Whatever they were, Pantera could not see them.

Presently, the Oracle’s ageless voice said, ‘You may ask one question. It will be answered with the truth.’

‘ Only one? ’

By a clear act of will, Saulos managed not to give voice to the panic that flooded his mind. Instead, he gathered himself and bent his considerable intellect towards finding a single question that would give him the answers he needed. Oracles were famed for their ambiguity; on the precise framing of a question, whole kingdoms prospered or died.

Pantera saw the shape of the words before they were spoken aloud, so that the hearing was an echo of something already asked and answered.

‘At what time of what day of what year must Rome burn to fulfil this prophecy as it was written?’

Saulos drew from his tunic the copied prophecy with all its gaps and ambiguities and promises and held it out to the Oracle.

Pantera could have recited it by rote, but in this place the power of the writing was made manifest, drawn as images across the veil of white smoke, and, this time, he could see where it led.

He saw Jerusalem drenched in blood, Rome scarred and burned, rising again from the ruins of a fire, saw men and women burned within it, and again, and again, in cycles of death and violence spreading down the centuries for a hundred generations and more.

The Oracle disdained to take the paper. ‘We issued this prophecy. We know where it leads. Are you sure that you do?’

‘Lady, I know only what is required of me.’ Dark passions curdled Saulos’ soul; arrogance, contempt, vengeance and a pure, unadulterated hatred, all of them hidden in daily life, all of them on view here, in the Temple of Truth. Ignoring them, he said, ‘If the Oracle issued these words, it must have been with a reason.’

‘We saw the beginnings of a great evil and sought to deflect it,’ the Oracle agreed. ‘If a god is drenched in blood, his kingdom will likewise be bloody, but a prophecy is only one path among many and, as men and women can bring it into being, so also can men and women prevent it. Such men and women as are here in this chamber today may not have it in their power to keep this evil from the world, but, knowing what may come, they can at least create a seed of hope to stand against the darkness. You have seen the bloodshed on which the new kingdom is built. Are you certain you wish me to answer your question?’

Saulos clasped his hands together, cracking the knuckles. His arrogance blazed. ‘Lady, for the sake of one man and one woman who stand before you, I must say that I am.’

‘Hear this then.’ The Oracle raised her arms. Her leaf-light voice drifted out across the smoke, carrying to Saulos, to Pantera, to Hannah and, last, to Ajax, dressed as the Ferryman, who stood by the entrance to the tunnel that led to the Styx.

‘ One comes who brings wrath and destruction, who brings death in the name of life, hate in the name of love, pain in the name of compassion. His time is not endless, but will seem so. And thus will it come about in the Year of the Phoenix, on the night when the Great Hound shall gaze down from beyond the knife-edge of the world, that in his sight shall the Great Whore be wreathed in fire and those who would save her will stoke the flames.’

‘The Great Hound?’ Saulos closed his eyes in concentration. ‘Sirius, Hound of the Sky, known in Egypt as Sopdet? You have not given me a day or a date, nor even a year.’

‘You know already that this is the Phoenix Year,’ the Oracle said, not unkindly. ‘Sopdet rises this year over Rome on the eighteenth night of the month once known as Quintilis, but now named after Gaius Julius Caesar, who believed himself a god. You have until then to prepare — nearly four months. At least two of those months will, of necessity, be spent in a sea journey, but it will be no different for anyone else who strives to reach Rome in time.’

‘My lady, I offer my deepest thanks.’ Saulos’ bow was the lowest and most extravagant Pantera had ever seen. His relief rolled over them all.

‘You should leave,’ Hypatia said. The exhaustion in her voice was her own. ‘And you,’ she raised her head and looked directly at Ajax, ‘have a race to run.’