The Shards of Heaven (42 page)

Not all would be so lucky, though. For all his mercy, there were those whom Octavian could not allow to live.

Let Vorenus have found the children, he thought. Please.

Just as Caesarion began wondering to whom he was directing his prayer—if it was a prayer—there was a rumble like thunder from beneath them, and the waters of the canal stirred and shook as a whirlpool formed where the passage leading up to the Ark opened into the canal.

The platform, too, shook, the wooden bridge above straining, and it knocked Hannah off balance. She fell into Caesarion, her head coming down against his chest, and strands of her hair brushing up against his face. She looked up, her eyes searching and, Caesarion thought for a moment, hopeful. Her face tilted back as it raised, her lips parting only slightly as she breathed.

Roses, Caesarion thought as the scent and the feel of her filled his world. Red, red roses.

And then, just as her face approached his, the platform shook again, and from the direction of the Ark chamber they heard—unmistakably—the sound of shouting from the other guardians of the Ark.

 

27

O
NE
F
ATAL
M
ISTAKE

ALEXANDRIA, 30 BCE

Juba had long since grown to despise the presence of the two praetorian guards that Octavian had assigned to him for his supposed protection, but on this early morning, in the confined space of the dark passageway they'd been following from Alexander's tomb, he was glad for the way in which they went about their business. The square-shaped passage was surprisingly free of traps—or any markings whatsoever—but alone he would have still moved more cautiously than the praetorians did. Despite the fiery desire for vengeance that burned in his chest, an instinct for self-preservation would have seen him walking carefully into the dark. Not so these men. They hurried into the unknown with supreme confidence, one in front and one in back of him and Didymus, the little oil lamps in their hands feebly pushing back the shadows with a warm orange glow and the swords at their hips seemingly ready for use. The detachment of six other Roman legionnaires moved swiftly in their wake, no doubt wondering what they were doing rushing through a tunnel underground rather than pillaging the buildings above them.

Good Romans, though, they'd not voiced their displeasure when Juba had ordered them to accompany him. Nor had they shown anything but quiet, businesslike patience as they followed the tunnel through its twists and turns and occasional stairs.

Not so with Didymus. The Greek scholar was anxious with both concern and excitement. With Juba's assurances that the Library would be spared, and that Selene would immediately be returned to Antirhodos under the most secure guard to prevent anything from happening to her—and that the same guard would take control of her siblings, as well, in order to keep them safe—Didymus had revealed everything he knew about the tunnel on one more condition: that he be allowed to accompany their mission to recover the Ark. Knowing that the scholar was no physical threat to that effort—and that he could, in fact, be of some use either as a hostage or as a source of further information—Juba agreed at once.

It was a decision Juba was glad he'd made, as the scholar had been useful not long after they entered the hidden passage, when they'd encountered another passageway heading off to their left, a branch that Didymus had insisted must lead to the distant Serapeum. And now, as the praetorian in front signaled for a halt in a room with three passageways leading forward, Juba was once more glad he could turn to the man who'd figured out so many of the world's greatest secrets.

“I thought you said this was a single tunnel leading to the Ark.”

The librarian's face was part frown and part fascination. “I did,” he said. “That's what we were told. Two of these paths must be false leads.”

“I'll break up the men, then,” Juba said, thinking a simultaneous search would be fast, efficient.

“No, wait.” Didymus closed his eyes for a moment in thought. “Two-thirds of them will die.”

A quiet murmur passed over the men behind them, but Juba ignored it. “Why?”

“The Ark's guardians would have tried to keep it well protected. Two of these paths are surely traps.”

Juba felt impatience rise like heat in his chest, thinking what a small sacrifice two-thirds of these strangers would be when weighed against the destruction of Octavian, but he quickly shook such thoughts away. It was Octavian's kind of thinking, the very thing he wanted to destroy. Such impulses had been coming to him more and more since he had donned the armor of Alexander, the Aegis of Zeus. He resisted the urge to pull away the cloak hiding the armor, the urge to reach out with his mind and embrace the warmth of the black stone mounted at the center of his chest. “Then what do you suggest?” he asked.

The scholar walked forward, past the lead praetorian, and he paced back and forth in front of the three passageways, now and again pausing to look up at the ceiling above one of them, or at the floor at his feet. He wasn't, Juba was certain, looking for signs of the Jews' passage: they'd already learned that the sealed doors to these passages had prevented even the faintest traces of dust from collecting on its floors. What then, Juba wondered, was he looking for?

Didymus abruptly stopped pacing, his head whipping up to nod at each of the passages as if counting them. “How many steps have we gone down?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Steps?” the praetorian asked from behind Juba. “We were supposed to be counting steps?”

The librarian shook his head impatiently as he turned around to face them. “No, no. Not individual steps. Those occasional little sets of stairs. How many? Five? Six?”

Juba had balled his fists to keep them from tearing at his cloak, but the scholar's question allowed him to relax them as he thought back. “Five, I think.”

The praetorian who'd been leading agreed, the light cast by his lantern bobbing over the scholar in front of them. Didymus grinned like a little boy. “Then we go left,” he said as he started to walk in that direction, his pace fast with resolution. “Always left.”

Juba and the others hurried to catch up to him, the praetorian stepping around him to once more take the lead. “How do you know?” Juba asked. They were quickly moving past a turn in the new passageway. “Are you sure?”

Didymus shrugged, but his face was still beaming as they walked. “It's the Nile. The whole passageway is a model of the river. This must be the start of the delta.”

“But how do you know we go left?”

“The Ark is here in Alexandria, and Alexandria is off the Canopic branch of the Nile. The farthest west,” the librarian answered.

Juba was starting to ask how he could be so certain that the passageway had anything to do with Egypt's great river when the praetorian in front raised his arm to signal for silence. Juba strained his ears as they crept forward, feet making soft noises on the smooth stone. Another turn, and at last he could hear what the praetorian already had: voices, faintly echoed from the rock around them, too dim to discern their words but clearly near at hand. And then, at the far reach of the light of their lamps, they saw a large wooden entryway at the end of the passage, bolstered with iron.

“They must be on the other side of the door,” the praetorian whispered.

At a motion from Juba, the second praetorian joined his fellow in front of the door. They both drew their swords.

For all his experience at war, Juba had been fortunate to take part in few fights. Feeling close to it now, his heart thrilled in both anticipation and fright. He signaled four of the legionnaires to move up front, confident that there was little danger from behind.

He didn't desire a fight. He'd made that order clear enough, he hoped. But if the Jews didn't quickly agree to terms, if they didn't quickly surrender the Ark, Juba knew he wouldn't let them stand in the way of his vengeance. As he'd told Didymus back at the Library, the need for it burned in his veins, burned with a smoldering rage that threatened at any moment to consume him.

The men ahead exchanged nods of readiness as one of the praetorians gripped the door handle. Juba took a deep breath and pulled his own sword. Then he turned to Didymus.

The scholar, he saw, wasn't paying attention to the assault about to happen. He was fingering something on the wall beside him, an indentation just the size of a man's hand, and he was looking at the ground beneath his feet, where faint sweeps of chalky dust—glaringly apparent against the otherwise spotless tunnel—showed that something heavy had recently moved there.

Juba's gaze traced the lines on the ground, and he saw it all for what it was. He reached past Didymus to the stone, gripped what he could see now was a hidden handle in the rock, and began to pull the secret door open. He turned to whisper a warning not to open the wooden door, but his realization had come to him too late.

Time seemed to slow, as if he were moving through thick sand. He saw, in terrible clarity, the handle of the wooden door lifting in the praetorian's hands. He saw him turn to his fellow with a look of final satisfaction as he pulled.

Then time lurched forward, actions speeding into sudden fast motion. Juba found his voice, only to have it drowned out by the splintering boom of the wooden door blasting inward. The world seemed to scream.

The next moments came to Juba in flashes. Blood flinging into the air. A plank hitting the Roman in front of him, grotesquely doubling the man over. Shadows reeling as lanterns flew and clattered. And then the shock of bitter cold as a pent-up tide of water roared forth from the doorway, flooding the passage.

Parts of the door and the men in front of it swept down through the passage, knocking down those still standing and driving them back. Juba felt his own legs being pushed out from beneath him as he fought to hold on to the handle in the stone door. Didymus slammed into him, the older man somehow catching into the folds of Juba's cloak.

The full weight of the water crashed into them then, a buffeting blow that struck like a great hammer in the hands of an unseen and very angry god. The wall of water drove them off the floor, Didymus clinging desperately to Juba, whose grip on the door was the only thing keeping them both from being swept away. Juba's body swung in the passing wave, his eyes closing against the cold and the spin as everything in his being concentrated on holding his straining grip. He felt his body slam up against the scholar's, then the wall, but neither of them let go. For a heartbeat his face found air. Then a second wall descended and they were surrounded by water.

Juba opened his eyes to see only the slightest haze of shapes through the rush of water in the flooding passage. The lamps had all been extinguished by the onslaught, but a dim light reflected down from somewhere beyond the exploded door. It was, Juba thought, a way out.

But there was no way to swim against such a current. And it was not the way to the Ark.

He looked toward his grip, saw that the stone door was already partially ajar. Water was streaming into the crack that he had opened. Willful determination shook him into action. He pulled himself against the current, kicking to pivot his legs against the stone near his hands. His lungs burned, and his mind wailed at the horror of drowning. He fought the emotion down, only to have it replaced by the terrible doubt that he wouldn't be able to open the door further. He would be too weak, or it would be frozen in place, or …

He pulled. His surroundings grew dimmer, becoming a narrowing circle of light.

He pulled.

In his tunneling vision Juba saw that Didymus had swung himself around, too, to join him. The Greek planted his feet beside Juba's. Juba thought that the stone beneath his grip moved, and he didn't know if it was from the scholar's help or if the rush of the water was actually pushing the crack open.

Together they pulled, straining against oblivion.

The door came free, the current catching it and pulling it wide even as the water slammed them, one after the other, into the void behind it.

Once more he spun and rolled as they rode through churning waves. Juba felt himself pop free of the water into the air and he inhaled instinctively, but just as he did so his ribs crashed against an edge of stone and the air in his lungs was coughed out again. His body bounced upward, vision fading to black, before he at last bobbed out for good, gasping for air.

Juba kicked with what little energy he had left, keeping atop the rising surface. When it ceased pushing him upward, his feet found purchase on the stone of a stair and he scrambled up out of the water in an exhausted push. Didymus came up out of the water beside him, somehow alive. Juba helped pull him up onto the stairs, where the scholar collapsed facedown, coughing.

Juba's ears rung, his vision sparkled with flashes of light, and his lungs felt like they were torn and raw, but he'd made it. He was alive. And the Ark was near. His vengeance was near.