Chapter 21 The Galley Heracles
“All right, this one goes north.”
Corneto scratched down a few more lines on the wax tablets laid before him, then leaned back in his folding chair. Prodded by soldiers, the ragged line of slaves moved up, shuffling in ankle chains, and a teenage boy arrived in front of the scribe’s table. Corneto glanced at him.
“To Antiochia?” he asked Vulci.
Beside him the officer stroked a long, unshaven jaw under a crested helmet. “Maybe. His accent’s too strong to suit for a house servant. But he’s no zug either. He’s an odd one. I don’t know where he’s from or what he was doing in Lucilla, but he’s never sat a galley bench, I’ll wager.”
“No good at the oars?”
“On the Heracles he didn’t know which end was which.”
Corneto sighed his disapproval but without real feeling. Putting down his stylus, he looked across the harbor waters at the Galley Heracles anchored nearby, her five tiers of oars drooping and stilled, her swan-headed prow white in the sunlight, and gulls screeching around her bare masts. She was just returned from the ruined site of Lucilla, where Vulci and other soldiers had recaptured these hundreds of escaped slaves.
“But you must have had more hands than you needed,” he said. “No need to try to break in an inexperienced rower.”
“Thoz’s truth! An easy three weeks for them, coming down river with hundreds more of them than we could put at the oars. Most of them laid around the deck. This one did. So did the ones who were sick from breathing smoke. Did I tell you we had to smoke some of them out of their holes in the ruins?”
“And you got them all?”
“We think so.”
Corneto’s attention returned to the boy.
“Name?”
He had an odd look to be sure. Steady, wary eyes that matched poorly with his slave’s rags. Hair unusually yellow.
“Clay.”
Corneto wrote ‘Kla-ee.’
“Age?”
“Seventeen.”
When he looked up again, the scribe noticed that the boy was rubbernecking at the harbor, the great walls and causeways of which formed a huge hexagon protruding into Quintusia Bay. Here on the water were built warehouses, counting houses, taxation booths, and colonnades dotted by statues. Beyond were the city walls over which could be seen the roofs of palaces and public buildings.
“Work experience?”
The boy said he had none.
“They won’t care about that where these are headed,” Corneto remarked to Vulci. “You don’t need experience to haul rocks from a quarry, just a thick hide when you’re whipped. Which he’ll get plenty of. The slave drivers of Antiochia have a mighty short temper these days with all the Olympic building projects falling behind schedule.”
The soldier laughed agreement. “Say, are we still raising the price?”
Corneto nodded as his puffy hair blew about and his robe billowed in a gust of sea wind. “Yes, and the Antiochians are still paying it, Vulci! We thought your slave-fetching expedition would pay off, but oh, how it’s paying off! A broken down zug that would have gone for a few silvers last year will bring twenty-two now, and the price is still rising.”
Vulci grinned as he looked at the lean old man who stood next in line behind the teenager, his gray locks hanging beside his face. “They could work ’em to death in Antiochia and not get their money back out of some of them.”
“That’s their concern. But don’t underestimate their slave drivers. I hear they can get work out of the dead.”
He looked up at the boy again.
“Former master?”
The boy blushed lightly. “None,” he said.
“Where from?”
Another hesitation. “Indiana.”
Corneto’s brow wrinkled. “What city is that near?”
No answer.
“It’s no use,” said Vulci. “We had weeks on the Heracles to try to figure him out, and he’s still a mystery. Soft hands, good teeth; no home, and no past, apparently. One thing, though—he’s a favorite of old Crat. Now why would a rebel lord take a shine to a foreign beggar boy? What does that mean?”
Corneto looked down the quarter-mile line of slaves still to be checked in. “It means I write down ‘In-dee-a-na,’ and get on with it. Move him along now. What about the geezer here? No, wait a minute, what did we say we’d do with the boy? Antiochia?”
The stylus hung over the tablet.
“Excuse me, scribe,” the old man mumbled, his eyes humbly lowered. “This boy ain’t no good at rowing, and he’s skinny and weak. But....” He paused to see if he would be allowed to continue.
“No more from you,” said Vulci sternly.
“Sorry, sir.”
“What’s his point?” said Corneto. Then, immediately leaving that behind, “What did we say just now we’d do with him?”
“I don’t know what you said.”
“Well, I asked you.”
“So decide one for yourself.”
“Fine,” Corneto said tersely as he completed the entry. “They can’t all go north. King Varro wants a tithe at least for the home market. He stays here.”
To Corneto’s surprise, the old man sighed as if with relief. Both men looked up sharply, but decorum hardly allowed the questioning of slaves’ sighs, and time was getting short.
Corneto glanced down the line again, sighed himself, and began a new entry.
“Name?”
Amoz the Snake saw it first. A tiny bell in the house below had rung three times, signal from the eastern lookout that a flying messenger was coming. Now as Amoz scanned the evening sky he saw a large, black bird winging to them over the rooftops of Quintusia. By the time the Magus had drawn the attention of the dark-robed witches who attended him, the raven had landed on the balustrade and was standing still as a stone. When Amoz came near and offered it his arm as a perch, it stepped on stiffly.
Amoz did not like having such a creature so near to him. Especially he tried not to look at the crusted, red-rimmed eyes so hideously diseased. But however quickly he wished to be rid of it, he must not hurry with the Vulture’s messenger. It’s grip on his arm was weak, it might fall. Slowly, he descended the stair to the courtyard and, followed by the other witches, entered the house.
The others, male and female, glided ahead of him and, gripping the corners of a low table, lifted it aside. At once, prying tools were applied to the joint between two of the floor stones. Soon they lifted away a thin, flat slab that had appeared thick, revealing the opening of a steep and narrow stairway. Amoz began to inch downward, careful of the fragile raven, his sixty year old bulk just able to squeeze through.
He emerged at the end of a rough, vaulted chamber lit only by a small opening in the ceiling of the opposite end. Under this wan light was an ancient altar on which was carved the image of a man slaying a bull. Amoz paused while those following him took seats on stone benches along the side walls.
By the altar stood three. One was Amoz’s uncle Dom Chalice, last of the Scorpion’s Brood, his wrinkled face expressionless under his high-crowned, tri-corner hat. Here also was the High Priestess Zavira, the Immortal; small, heavily veiled, unimaginably ancient and powerful. The third person was the Ox-priest Pellop, head of the local coven, a man so frightened and overawed by his eminent Farjan guests that his face showed strained and sweaty in the one shaft of light from the ceiling. Zavira and Dom had visited with him for eight days already, and no end was in sight. Plainly he would be glad to be rid of them.
A small, bare table about three feet high stood before the altar. On this Amoz placed the raven and then took his place by his uncle. All were quiet. The bird slowly opened its bill and closed it again. Someone coughed.
Pellop could not wait any longer to discover what Zavira would do. “High Priestess,” he whispered, “what do you require of me? Shall I say the words?”
Z
avira ignored him. Facing the bird, she slowly raised a shriveled hand, horribly black and burnt, missing parts of fingers.
“Baal,” she said, “arise!”
The raven stirred. Then it spoke in a cracked, shrill voice punctuated by shrieks and chatterings.
“The Black Vulture...of the Forest of Darkness...greets the coven of Quintusia.... Thus says Ruhal, Lusetta...of the Palace of Reflections.... Quintusian soldiers...did capture at Lucilla...a youth from the Old World...blond and young...named Cally.... He is the Lila-me King.... The Queen his sister escaped...to the forest folk....”
This appeared to be all. The bird stood a moment longer, then fell on its side and was motionless. Pellop made a move toward it, but Amoz cautioned him with a hand on the Ox-priest’s loose, black sleeve.
“It’s dead,” he whispered. “They die after the message is given.”
“Of course, I know that,” Pellop whispered back in a shrill tone.
“Pellop!” crackled Zavira, and through the sleeve Amoz felt the Ox-priest shiver.
“Yes, Priestess?”
“Quintusian soldiers were at Lucilla.”
“Yes, Priestess, they were. Slaves escape down river and hide there among the ruins. So a fleet was sent and the slaves rounded up and brought back. They only returned just a few days ago.”
“A noble foreigner was brought back with them as prisoner.”
“No—that is, not to my knowledge, Priestess Zavira.” Pellop wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Only a renegade nobleman from this city—Kroz Crat.”
“A youth? Light haired?”
“M-middle aged, Priestess, and gray.” The hag was a statue. “Priestess, I can have the ships’ records investigated if you wish.”
The old man Dom spoke. “Of course, you fool. Do it at once.”
After Pellop dispatched one of his women to obtain the information, some hours passed during which they waited in the cave-like chamber called the Midraeum. Nobody dared to leave or even to speak, for the Smoke Hag Zavira had given no such permission. Daylight failed and the clay oil lamps were lighted on their stands.
Amoz sat bolt upright on a stone bench and did nothing. He did not much mind doing nothing. He had spent his whole life waiting upon the higher wisdom of his superiors in the cult and had found doing nothing to be pleasanter than doing the somethings they might at any time require. Horrible somethings. Even his own son Brutus the Lion had been murdered with Amoz’s connivance. But he must not think of that, must not let his mind wander. Inattention in the presence of Zavira could be fatal. She expected all around her to be constantly concentrating on her, even when—as now—she did not move or speak for hours.
Amoz’s perfect record of attention and obedience had won him a place among those who were gradually replacing the eleven children of Zebulon Hytra—the so called Scorpion’s Brood—as they died off. Ten of the eleven brood-names were now taken by younger members of the Hytra family. Before his early death, Amoz’s son had briefly taken a brood-name. Amoz’s daughter-in-law, Brutus’ widow, had recently taken the name of the Dog.
The Eleven were the secret masters of the city of Farja—that is, under Zavira and Monophthalmos—and were meant to someday be masters of all the Fold. Deep plans had been laid, everything taken into account. But rumors had recently multiplied that the cult’s enemies would counter by trying to bring from the Old World descendants of the Princess Lila Quintus, she who had left the Fold centuries before. Sarrs—stinking, non-human creatures that had lived on the continent before humans came—were searching out a hidden, mystic Door of entrance to the Old World. Through this Door, it had been prophesied, two of Lila’s descendants would come—or already had come—to claim the Empire.
Hearing of this, Monophthalmos and Zavira had sent spies throughout the continent to find these descendants and kill them as soon as they would show themselves. For only a Lila-me, a descendant of Lila, could unite the warring humans and Sarrs and bring about general peace. And only a Lila-me might hope to take the crown of Empire away from Solomon in the East and so make useless the intended political marriage between Solomon’s son Tavit and Amoz’s widowed daughter-in-law Metuza. Such events would ruin all the witches’ plans.
Zavira, who never traveled far from Farja, had exerted herself this once to take ship all the way to Quintusia, because she believed the prophesied Lila-mes, King and Queen, would appear here where humans had first set foot in the Fold. (As good a guess as any, Amoz thought.) She had brought Dom Chalice and Amoz with her, two flawlessly dedicated servants. And now it appeared that the King, at least, of Prophecy would soon be in her hands.
To think, a boy! And captured in the ruins of Lucilla, of all places. Too improbable, it must be a mistake. But if not a mistake, obtaining him would be easy. Prey this close Zavira had never let slip.
Late in the night, Pellop’s witch woman returned from her errand and stood directly before Zavira.
“Speak to the point,” Dom Chalice instructed dourly.
“The records of the Galley Heracles,” said the woman, “show a youth named Kla-ee. He named an unknown homeland and claims no previous master. His squad were taken to the Upper Market three days ago where they were auctioned singly. Kla-ee was purchased by a country nobleman named Mucius—”
“You sent to this Mucius at once?” growled Dom.
The woman’s gray eyes were hard and her nerves strong. “He’s not nearby. He lives near the ruins of Korinthos. I sent to the captain of the Priestess’ ship, telling him to ready the Cerberus to leave at once for Korinthos.”
“You command the Priestess’ captain? How dare you!”
“I thought it best to move swiftly,” she replied, “because I found I wasn’t the first to inquire after the boy. This morning, Unknown King Zendor was in the markets asking for news of him.”
“Zendor!” said the Hag. “Then you’ve done well. You are sharp and decisive—good.”
“I’ve also ascertained, Priestess, that Zendor’s ship is still in port. If we go at once, we’ll have the start on him.”
Zavira lurched into motion, heading toward the stair, and Dom and Amoz followed automatically.
“Pellop,” she said, “make sure that no one from the government follows us or investigates.”
“Certainly, Priestess.”
“Your messenger, the woman, comes with me.”
“Yes, Priestess, but—”
Zavira paused on the stair and turned her head under her thick veil.
“—of course, your wisdom is all, Priestess. Only that Perze is only third level. We employ her so readily because her husband is high in the government, but she’s not proven.”
“Prove her, then. Put her to the tests. She must be first level by the time I return from Korinthos, ready to go to Farja with me. Answer.”
“Yes, Priestess, it will be done.”
Dom Chalice was slow to mount the stairs, slower even than the Smoke Hag. His eighty-two years made him halt on each step and breathe heavily. Amoz, behind him, took advantage of this for a quick, whispered consultation.
“Uncle, is this boy the prophesied king?”
“You heard the message, Amoz. The Vulture didn’t say it was so, only that one of his spies reported it that way. However, the Black Vulture of Skoteine does not communicate with us over trifling rumors. Very likely we have him almost in our hands. But Amoz, let’s speak wisely and call him a Pretender, not a King.”
Dom pulled himself up another step.
“If he is that one,” said Amoz, “I see no escape for him. No roads lead from Korinthos anymore, only the river. No place for him to run except toward us.”
“He isn’t running,” Dom said to his nephew. “He’s chained in place. Just chained there waiting for us.”