Cleopatra's Secret: Keepers of the LIght (16 page)

He closed his arms around her and held her tight.

But her intuition whispered, though his words were sincere, much time would pass before they held each other like this again. Blocking her mind against the unwelcome knowledge, she closed her eyes and clasped him with all her might.

The journey back to Alexandria had none of the gaiety of its first lap and the beauty of the sun setting the Nile aflame, or the lush green farmland drifting by only made Cleopatra more painfully aware of what they left behind.

When they reached Lochias Palace, they dined alone in her chamber, the briny salt air of the sea billowing the silk curtains which shielded them from the harbor below.

Cleopatra watched Antony as he stared gloomily off at nothing, ignoring the fresh plump scallops set out before him. She tried to smile. “Is the dinner not to your liking? I would not have your last meal in my palace be anything but complete perfection.”

He met her eyes and the smile faded from her lips. She had not touched her plate either.

“You know everything about this place is perfection…is magic.” He rose, impatiently striding across the room to the balcony.

Cleopatra sighed. Antony had none of the self-mastery so prized by her people, but his honesty, and even his restlessness, the way he was always in motion, always so vitally and completely alive, was one of the things which drew her to him. What would happen if she ever threw away her own carefully maintained control and lived as he did?

“Don’t go.”

She was at his side by the balcony almost before she even realized what she was doing.

He turned to her and there was such a tender sadness in his expression.

“You, of all people, know that I must.”

She shook her head. “No, not this time.”

“I won’t be long, Cleopatra. I swear it.”

She reached back to clutch the balcony as it hit her full force, this terrible feeling of foreboding.

Her voice trembled as the words rushed out. “I'm afraid that it will be a very long time. I'm afraid…”

She turned away to look out at the harbor. She could see the Roman galley that would carry him away bobbing on the evening tide. Roman soldiers crawled across the surface of the ship like a tiny army of ants.

His voice was low and soothing as he slipped his arms around her waist but she detected a hint of concern in it too. “Do you see something with your magic? Is this a warning?”

She couldn’t speak. The lump in her throat was too big. This was not how she had wanted to behave tonight.

“That night, the night before they killed Caesar, when I saw you outside his villa, you came to warn him, didn’t you?” he asked.

All she could do was nod.

He turned her almost roughly to face him, his eyes boring down on her. “Cleopatra, do I go to my death in Rome? I know too much now to doubt what you see. If death awaits me, I won’t go.” His voice softened. “I would not leave you so soon.”

She gulped down tears. All she had to do was lie. Tell him he would die if he went home.

“You will not die in Rome, Antony. Of that much I am certain.”

He frowned. “Then what could you possibly be afraid of?”

She dropped her eyes for a moment, but that would not do. She was still Queen of Egypt. She met his gaze almost defiantly. “I’m afraid you will forget me.”

The tense lines of his face relaxed into a smile. “Then you have nothing to fear.” He brushed a lock of hair from her face and ran an appraising finger along her jawline, the curve of her cheek. “Can you really believe that I could ever in all of eternity forget
you?
”

Her fingers twisted together uneasily. How could she make him understand? Did she even understand what she was feeling?

He placed his hands on her shoulders, as if to steady her. “My own dearest, listen to me.” He was dead serious now. “I vow that I will return to you and when I do, I will marry you and I will stay.”

Cleopatra let the words sink in. It was the truth. Everything in her knew he meant it, and it would all be as he promised, and yet….

She shook her head, not wanting to think anymore and pushed into his arms, kissing him with all the fear and longing she could no longer contain, until the vital warmth, the power that was Antony burned everything away, and for a short while in the darkness she forgot everything she knew.

***

Cleopatra and Antony were not the only creatures astir in the midnight hours. Alone in her darkened chamber, Iris worked with only the light of one small candle. Quietly as a cat, she moved about her room collecting the tools she needed.

How she had been driven to such madness as she was about to commit, she did not know. But after once feeling the reality of Antony's body entwined with hers, bound so intimately with her virgin flesh, some line had been irrevocably crossed in her heart.

She simply could not exist without him.

His departure to Rome made things easier. She could not leave with him now, but in time she would find a suitable reason to quit Cleopatra's court and fly to Antony’s awaiting arms. Though, of course, he never suspected it was her, Iris, he had embraced in his straining moments of pleasure that night, that it was she whose body blossomed like a flower under his touch in the magical moonlight of the desert, it would not be long before he understood.

She held up two small figures fashioned by her own hands from the smooth clay of the Nile mud.
Shabti
dolls. One she had painted to resemble herself with porcelain glazed skin and bright turquoise eyes. She had even snipped off a lock of her own golden hair, attaching it to the doll’s head and arranging it in the same manner she did her own. The other figure she shaped into the sturdy lines of Antony, wrapping it in a snippet of his soiled toga to ensure a part of his essence would be merged with the magical doll’s.

She placed the
shabti
before her and closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the thunderous beat of her heart against her chest and the surge of adrenaline tingling through her excited body.

Taking the dolls in her hands, Iris sat as still as stone, calling up the coil of power that the priests taught her rested at the base of her spine. She willed the heat to spread up her back to her shoulder blades, shivering as the power coursed through her, and then consciously directed her spirit to flow down her arms, into her hands, igniting the spark of life within the dolls as she muttered the incantation usually reserved for the resurrection of mummies into the afterlife.

Iris’s head spun as her life force was sucked into a greedy void inside the small figures. Through the haze of stars flashing before her eyes, she saw the
shabti
glowing in the dark chamber, radiant with a life of their own.

Laughing with delight, she allowed them to slip from her sweaty fingers to rest on her knees for a moment, staring in wonder at the green light that shimmered around them.

The spell was working
.

Iris sat on her heals breathing deeply, allowing her spent body to recharge, but her eyes remained glued to the little figures of herself and Antony in her lap. If this really worked…A surge of pure joy broke through her exhaustion and fear. It would be too much to believe she could really have Antony to herself forever. Iris pressed her lips shut and melted into the pleasure of a world in which he was hers, bound to her by magic.

But there was still more to do. Iris shifted her stiff shoulders and took a deep breath. Somehow she must summon the energy.

Regaining her focus, Iris picked up the dolls again, clutching the figures tighter, and as she had done under Apollodorus’s stern supervision so many times before, she allowed her mind to go blank and smooth as a reflecting pool. She waited in the dark as her body relaxed and her internal vision stilled to perfect nothingness.

Iris rested in the void for a moment, serene in the peace, almost reluctant to leave. Then a voluptuous swell of memory broke through her meditation. All she could see was Antony's flushed face above hers, his deep blue eyes akindle as she arched against him and wrapped her legs around his back. His godlike bare body illuminated by moonbeams streaming through the tent’s flap as he murmured words,
I adore you
, and hammered through the barrier of her virginity, filling her in a way nothing else ever could again.

Drawing energy from the memory, with laser focus, Iris shifted her mind to her one great desire. Like the point of Diana’s arrow her goal stood out bright and clear, the waters of the reflecting pool rippled and fell away as her consciousness altered to the magical plane.

A new vision materialized before her.

As if standing outside herself, Iris beheld Antony in a flower-decked hall covered with bright fresco paintings and supported by two long rows of gleaming white columns. All the Roman senators and their ladies were in attendance. Antony looked more handsome than ever in his neatly folded toga with a purple cape draped carelessly off his broad shoulders. Next to him stood a girl with a cascade of golden hair and creamy skin like her own. The scarlet veil of a bride fluttered around her face, obscuring it from view.

A marriage was taking place.

The golden haired bride raised Antony’s hand to her lips and her soft words echoed through the ethers. “Your hearth is now my own.”

Thrilled with her vision, Iris allowed every ounce of emotion and power to flow into the image.

Let it be so Nephthys! Let this marriage take place before the next full moon rises over the Seven Hills of Rome!

She repeated the words of power from her forbidden scroll until the vision, her dolls and everything in her body vibrated with the chant. Then, once again, as had happened in the Dark One’s temple, her mind went blank.

She jerked out of her trance, nearly jumping out of her skin as the loud caw of an enormous raven shattered the stillness and the
shabti
slipped from her fingers cracking on the hard marble floor at her feet. She fell back covering her head with her arms as the midnight bird sailed over her, extinguishing the guttering candle with a swoosh of wind from its outstretched wings.

Iris held her breath, paralyzed as the raven swept through the darkness, a black shadow carrying with it the scent of tomb dust and dead still water. She screamed as it dove for her, pushing past the arms she raised to shield herself, caught for a horrible moment in a tangle of her long, fine hair. She flailed madly, trying to dislodge the screeching raven as it scratched her pale cheek with its sharp claws.

With a sudden flap of wings the creature released itself, taking a clawful of golden strands with it. Iris collapsed to the floor, her hand over her wound as she scrambled back into the corner, trying to get away from the wild bird.

The raven let out another ear-splitting caw and dove straight at the floor, snatched up the
shabti
in its talons, and flew out the window melting into the darkness as if it had never been there.

Her breath coming in pants, Iris rose on unsteady legs and quickly drew the curtains tightly closed. Then she slid to the floor shaking, her hand still pressed to the burning claw marks on her cheek.

Exhaustion swept over her, as powerful and narcotic as opium, and she lay drained on the hard floor with her lids lowering despite her best efforts to stay awake. A swirl of dots spun before her eyes and her limbs felt clammy. She gave up the fight and allowed her eyes to close…

She wasn’t sure how long she drifted in and out of sleep, but when Iris came to the moonbeams had shifted their silver path on the floor and shone bright as a beacon into her face as her eyes fluttered open.

She sat up, blinking into the darkness.

It was done.

Tentatively, Iris reached up and touched her cheek, feeling the raised welts from the raven’s claw. She had been marked as the Dark One’s. The wound would fade, but the spiritual brand never would.

Tears welled in her eyes. All she could think of was the first time Cleopatra had listened to her play. The way she had taken Iris’s hands in her own and asked her if she wanted to come and live in Egypt.

With a sick feeling rising from the pit of her stomach Iris began to realize what she had unleashed. In the blindness of passion there had been room only for Antony. But now…it was as if the mad raven had somehow removed that desperate desire from her with the
shabti
and left her eerily hollow inside.

With her magic irrevocably set in motion, Iris clutched her knees to her slight breast and shivered. She hardly dared whisper into the darkness of the night, “Isis, forgive me.…”

***

The cold light of dawn spread over the harbor. Cleopatra pulled her mantle close around her as she and Antony made their way towards the galleon which was to carry him back to Rome. Germanicus waited onboard, his lean body silhouetted against the brightening horizon.

All of Cleopatra's court turned out to bid good-bye to the God Antony had become during his sojourn in Egypt.

Antony looked up at Lochias and the elegant people standing on its steps to see him off. He took it all in: The Palace Of A Thousands Doors with its jewel box rooms and moon-drenched lotus ponds. The sound of gently plucked lyre and the soft civilized laughter of courtiers floating through the jasmine scented air. It all seemed like some sort of enchanted dream, but Cleopatra's tearstained face and the feel of her warm hand in his brought a very real ache into his heart. His love for her was no dream.