The expression in her eyes was the last thing Tarquinius saw before she tore him apart.
In the early years of her harlotry, Justine had been beautiful enough to command high prices and count some of Rome's most powerful names among her clients. On a number of occasions she had visited the royal palace, and even after so many years, its rooms and passageways remained clear in her mind.
At the gates she presented herself as a whore answering a royal summons. “And this,” she said, indicating a figure swathed in robes, face hidden, “is my protector and bodyguard.”
“With that body, you'll need one,” leered the guard.
Her restored beauty was sufficient. Justine and Bur-Sin were swiftly passed through.
Once inside, she led the way to the king's apartments. Each time a guard challenged them she flashed a dazzling smile. “Tarquinius Superbius sent for me,” she would say. The king's tastes in young women were well known, so no one questioned her.
When they reached the royal chamber she was astonished to find two guards lying unconscious outside the door. “Be careful,” she started to warn Bur-Sin. Then she laughed. How foolish to warn a demon! With him close behind her, she entered the chamber.
The room was like an abattoir.
A tall man lay unconscious in the middle of the floor. On the bed a woman in a torn gown crouched in a pool of blood. Her hands were hooked into talons clutching gobbets of flesh. The light of madness burned in her eyes.
There was blood everywhere, spurted in long streaks up the walls, dappled across the ceiling, pooled on the tiles. Half on the bed and half on the floor sprawled a mutilated body, so badly disfigured that it took Justine several moments to recognize the king of Rome. She gave a moan of horror.
The
siu
hardly glanced at the corpseâor the woman. All his attention was fixed on the unconscious Etruscan. He bent over him and stroked his face with a lover's touch. “See how strong he is, how healthy! Dear child, this is a gift,” Bur-Sin chuckled, “from the gods.”
Pepan could feel the whirlpool of energies swiftly gathering around the embodied
siu.
He knew him now, knew his name and his history. This was Bur-Sin, architect in life, lover of the goddess Pythia in death. He was now somehow trapped in rotting human flesh, his very presence in the Earthworld an abomination. His current state of existence disturbed the delicate web of energies that linked the worlds, creating pools and vortices of discord.
All of Pepan's strength was necessary to keep from being sucked into one of the vortices. A low humming sound filled the room. The air grew cold, colder, freezing.
Justine hugged herself. Her lips were turning blue. “Let me out of here,” she pleaded.
The woman on the bed whimpered. Then with an effort she got to her feet and began to stagger toward the door.
The demon rolled his eyes in her direction. His features were livid; with every movement of muscle, more skin pulled loose. Completing the transfer would require his total concentration, but even so he was briefly distracted by something he saw on the woman's face. Something familiar.
He had no time to think about it now. “Yes, go, Justine,” he managed to say in a voice distorted by the collapse of his vocal cords. “Go to that shack of yours and take the woman with you. I will come for both of you soon. Soon.”
“Where will you be?” asked Justine.
“I'll come to you presently. I have some work to do here first. Go!”
Justine caught Vesi by the wrist and fled.
T
he slaves who came to prepare their master for bed were alarmed to find the guards unconscious on the floor outside. They hurried into Tarquinius's chamber. What they saw sent them gibbering in terror.
Flavius, captain of the royal guard, arrived at the run, sword in hand and a company of men at his back. One look inside the chamber was enough to tell him the king had no further use for his services. His body had been torn apart. Flavius shrugged. He had always known that one day he would find Tarquinius slain.
His constant prayer had been not for the king's safety but that he himself would not be in the way when the assassination attempt was made. Obviously, the gods had answered that prayer. He must go to the temple when he had the opportunity and offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
At the foot of the bed was a small heap of decomposed meat, as if someone had thrown a meal on the
floor and left it there to rot. Flavius stepped over it, idly wondering what it was doing in the king's bedchamber.
Then he crouched down beside the nobleman from Clusium. From the general condition of the chamber, he expected to find Lars Porsena dead. But the Etruscan was still alive, although he appeared dazed and groggy. Flavius helped him to his feet. “What happened here?” he demanded.
Lars Porsena slowly opened his eyes. “We were talking. Someone burst in ⦔ His pupils rolled back in his head, showing only the whites before his eyelids drifted down again and he fell silent.
Flavius's men had by this time restored the guards in the hall outside to consciousness and marched them into the room. They looked at the dead king and then at Lars Porsena with expressions of shock and horror; but before either could speak, the Etruscan said, “The king was attacked by a band of assassins who must have sneaked into the palace. The two guards stationed at the doorway fought valiantly but were unable to overcome them. They should be commended; I have never seen anything so brave. If they were mine, I would make them both officers.”
His eyes were still closed.
The guards kept their mouths similarly closed. The word of an Etruscan nobleman would be believed before the testimony of two lowly plebeian guards. Better to be lauded as heroes than condemned for failing to save the king.
“What of you, Lord Porsena?” asked Flavius. “How did you manage to survive?”
“I defended your king to the best of my ability,” the other replied. Then he opened his eyes and looked down at his right arm. He extended it for Flavius's inspection. The arm was badly lacerated and a purple bruise was appearing from his temple to his jaw. “I am afraid my best was not good enough, although I would gladly have given my life for Tarquinius. He was one of us, you
know, a man of Etrurian blood,” Lars Porsena added with convincing sincerity.
Flavius was examining his wounds. The longer the captain looked at them, the more horrific they became. “Your defense of Tarquinius does you credit,” he said. “Do you know what became of the assassins?”
Lars Porsena shook his head. “Sadly, I do not. I was struck a blow on the side of the head and everything went black. The next thing I knew you were helping me to my feet. Will you allow me to assist in searching for them? If I get my hands on them, I will do to them what they did to ⦠to ⦔ He indicated the mangled body of Tarquinius with a nod, obviously too emotional to speak further.
Pepan was aghast at the turn of events. Watching helplessly from the Otherworld, he had observed the serpentine shadow wrapped around Vesi's spirit. He had seen the ancient evil peering through the empty eyes of Repana's daughter and knew it for what it was.
He wanted to warn Horatrim, but his first duty under the circumstances was to Vesi. Abandoning the gore-spattered chamber, he followed the fleeing women. He was aware that the strength to do the deed had not come from Vesi herself. The girl he had known would never have been capable of such horror.
She was different now. Possessed. But not totally lost. Not yet. Faintly, very faintly, wind-blown and weakened yet persistent in its grip on life, came the thread of sound that identified Vesi's
hia.
In the Otherworld Pepan also could hear the tonal discord surrounding the beautiful young woman called Justine. She was not possessed but she had been warped in some way; her song was distorted and off-key. Having Vesi in her custody was worrying. Pepan didn't sense any malice in the woman, however ⦠only greed and a deep sadness.
Pepan hovered close to them as they made their way through the warren of corridors. Justine knew the palace well; she managed to avoid each point at which guards were stationed and in time led her charge safely through a side entrance and out into the night.
No one in the palace was paying much attention to women anyway. The guards were concentrating on finding a band of assassins. Foremost among the searchers was the wounded Lars Porsena, who valiantly ignored his injuries as he ran up one corridor and down another, indifferent to danger, inspiring the men who followed him.
Streaks of angry red light appeared in the eastern sky before Flavius reluctantly conceded the murderers had escaped them. “We should summon the Senate immediately,” he said.
“What will happen now?” asked Lars Porsena. The prince from Clusium looked very tired, with dark circles under his eyes. Yet those same eyes were fever bright.
The captain shrugged. “It will be up to them to decide what to do next. It's not the first time we've had an assassination, nor I fear will it be the last. Being king of Rome is a lifetime occupation, but sometimes that means having a rather short life.” He stopped, and looked intently at the wounded prince. “Of course, certain kingsâthose who inspire the respect of the militaryâtend to live a little longer.”
By the time Justine and Vesi reached the harlot's shack, the Etruscan woman's energy was exhausted. In spite of the fact that the slain man's blood was drying to a stiff paste on her hands and clothing, Vesi tumbled onto the rags piled in the corner and was asleep at once.
Justine stood looking down at her for a time, wondering what Bur-Sin wanted with her. She was not attractive by Roman standards; just mute and god-touched. Justine's own brother, in their distant childhood, had
been god-touched. He howled at the moon every month with white froth bubbling on his lips. One morning she had awakened to learn that their fatherâor the man they assumed to be their fatherâhad given him to the Tiber.
Justine blew out the lamp and stretched herself beside Vesi. Strange, she mused, she had not thought of her brother in a long time. Just then a sudden, sickening chill washed over her. The ancients believed the sensation presaged death. In the gloom, her teeth flashed in a grim smile. She was not going to die. Not now. Not for a long time. She had a demon on her side.
Pepan waited nearby until Justine feel into a troubled sleep; then he turned and fled back toward the palace.
Horatrim awoke with a start. At first he did not know where he was. Then he was not sure who he was. Slowly, memory came dribbling back. He was in Rome. And he was no longer Horatrim. He was Horatius Cocles. Propertius's adopted son.
And he was a man. Last night Livia had kissed him. The memory was sudden and vivid. The man in him knew there had been the promise of more ⦠the boy in him was unsure what the promise entailed.
The pale lemon light of an early Roman morning was beaming through the one small window. The other “sons” with whom he shared the room were already up and gone. Yawning, Horatius rose from his pallet. He stood tall, stretched, yawned again. Where was everyone?
He jangled the string of silver bells that hung by the door, but no slave came running to dress him. After waiting for a time, Horatius began to laugh at himself. The sound was strangely hollow in the quiet room. “I've dressed myself all my life,” he remarked aloud. “I can do it now.”
He fumbled awkwardly with the folds of the toga, trying to achieve a fashionable effect, then gave up and
simply twisted the cloth around his tunic as best he could. He gave the sandals a long look, then decided to leave them for later. After a life spent barefoot it would take a while to get used to having his feet encased in leather.
Next he splashed his face with water from a pottery bowl on a nearby stand. Lifting the bronze razor Propertius had given him as a gift, the young man looked at his reflection in the mirror beside the bowl and decided that he really should practice scraping the hair from his face. Roman men did not have facial hair, unlike the Teumetians, who prized it as a sign of virility.
“Horatius,” he said, practicing the name as he scraped the blade across his cheekbone.
Horatrim.
His old name echoed in his head.
“Horatius.”
Horatrim.
The sound was louder, clearer.
He squinted into the mirror. His image was curiously blurred. Bending his arm, he scrubbed the polished silver with the sleeve of his toga. “That's better.” He raised the razor again and looked into the mirror.
A face gazed back at himâbut not his face.
Horatrim, your mother needs you.
The razor slipped and cut a deep gash in his cheek. He brushed at the wound, then ran his bloody fingertips over the silver, leaving a crimson streak.
The face in the mirror solidified.
Your mother needs you.
“But my mother is safe in the royal palace!”
She is no longer there, and she is far from safe.
“Where is she then? And who are you?”
Vesi was taken from the palace during the night. She is in grave danger.
“Who are you?” Horatius repeated, his voice rising. “Are you one of the gods?”
Alas, I am no god. Nor do I have a physical body with which to save hers. That is why I need you to â¦
“But I can see your face!”
You see my memory of my face. I amâI was Pepanâand now I am what you would call a ghost, I suppose. A spirit without flesh. Throughout your life I have watched over you out of love for your grandmother.
Suddenly Horatius became aware of noise outside; people were shouting to one another in the street beyond the window, and there were distant horns blowing.
“My grandmother? Repana? You knew her?”
I knew them both. Listen to me, Horatrim. You must go to your mother and make her safe.
The razor dropped forgotten from Horatius's fingers. As soon as he turned his back on the mirror Pepan could no longer appear to him. He hovered at the young man's right shoulder; invisible, calling but unheard.
Horatius ran from the room as the noise outside grew louder.
In the Otherworld Pepan was almost overwhelmed by the brazen blare of Rome's voice.
Propertius's house, Horatius quickly discovered, was empty. Even the servants were gone. He opened the front door to find the street crowded with people milling about and calling questions to one another.
“Something terrible has happened; I just know it.” a woman was saying anxiously. “I heard an alarm just now.”
Horatius caught hold of her shoulder and turned her to face him. “What alarm?”
“Horns blowing at the palace.”
Horatius began to run. The face in the mirror had told him that Vesi was in danger ⦠and now an alarm was sounding from the palace. The two events could not be unconnected.
Where was Propertius? He must find the Roman. Propertius would know what to do. Elbowing people
aside, Horatius pounded off down the hill, intent on reaching the palace, unsure what he would do when he got there.
Then he turned a corner and ran headlong into someone he knew.
Khebet the Aegyptian staggered under the impact.
Horatius caught the man before he could fall. “Have you seen Propertius?”
“I have not,” Khebet replied, rubbing his bruised chest. “I was looking for Severus myself. He was summoned from his house abruptly; I thought he might have come up here to his brother.”
“There's no one in Propertius's house, but people are saying there's some sort of trouble at the palace. I'm going there now. My mother is ⦠but she may not be ⦠I must find her!” Horatius cried, increasingly frantic.
Khebet was practiced at remaining calm when others were emotional. Observing that a slash across Horatius's cheek was oozing blood, he touched the wound with his long, slender fingers.
When Khebet, priest of Anubis, made contact with Horatius's blood, his third eye opened.
The Jackal God always responded to blood.
Never before, however, had mystical vision come as vividly. Khebet found himself staring at a veritable horde of beings, male and female, old and young, clustered so tightly around the young man that their forms overlapped into an ever-changing, fluid shadow. They had no bodies, merely the memory of flesh.