Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator (62 page)

We were only a few feet beyond the great archway when the chariot came to a halt. No one said a word. The scale of the spectacle before us was so vast that it was impossible to absorb immediately. We beheld a hollowed-out mountain, hundreds of feet from one side to the other, an immensely large space that ran to great heights and depths, and within it lay a city of crystal.

The ice walkway ran out onto a long crystal platform, perfectly smooth, incredibly thin, and nearly transparent. In the distance that walkway joined a large central platform, also see-through, that seemed to float in midair. From the distant walls, great torrents of liquid ichor flowed out of large channels, cascading waterfalls of shining white fluid that fell down to a great reservoirs below.

The others looked up first, I down, but we all discovered that there were at least five, maybe six of the same kind of walkways and platforms above and below us, all of them carrying tens of thousands of ichor-laden Hyperborean workers. They were all heading to a shining structure at the heart of the mountain. Running right through the center of each platform, from the shadowy heights to the depths of the waters below, was one giant unbroken crystal hub radiating a powerful light that was reflected in all the other surfaces of the city. Other, lesser crystals—some the size of the tallest trees on Mother Earth—grew out from it at every angle, forming an irregular starburst nexus. It was this central crystal that emitted all the light that filled the cavern, so strong and clear that it eradicated all shadow and gave the hidden city a celestial quality.

“It's a machine,” Julia said. I looked up and saw her mouth hanging open, eyes filled with wonder, her plight and suffering forgotten. This was her celestial machine, or at least the greatest physical expression of it she was ever likely to see.

“Yes,” Aquilinus agreed.

Their crude assessment was irritating at first, but when I looked out on it again, the functional pattern of the structure became obvious. It was like a complex, multilayered circuit board.

Some of the Hyperboreans traveled through the air, flying between the waterfalls and the shining heart on wafers of flexible crystal, like large manta rays, seemingly held aloft by the ichor mists rising up from below. The Hyperboreans riding these discs were different again from the others. Whereas the workers were slim and transparent and the warriors were solid with spines, these Hyperboreans had curved, vibrating filaments that protruded from their bodies, giving them the appearance of being surrounded by a field of light. They also created an incredible cacophony of humming noise, vibrating out loud the song I'd heard since commencing my voyage.

We were surrounded by a rarefied aesthetic that made Rome's magnificence look contrived, outworn like a veteran's old uniform. But something so beautiful was also delicate. The fragility I noticed earlier was represented here as well. Stalactites fell from the ceiling into the ichor mists below. The occasional rumbling of shifting rock echoed throughout the vast space, rising momentarily above the roar of the falls. The whole thing had the feeling of a stacked house of crystal cards that might collapse in a heap at the slightest disturbance.

At the same time if Julia and Crassus were correct and it was a great machine, then what kind of a machine might it be? Every machine had a purpose.

Aquilinus reached out and ruffled my hair like I was a well-loved pet. “Look at what you've done, you beautiful little bitch. You've given me the whole empire lock, stock, and barrel.”

But I was looking down, through the many layers of transparent crystal platform to the reservoirs below the city. The mists had cleared enough that I could see black churning waters. Mania followed my gaze down and then grabbed Licinus' arm, pointing excitedly. “Look! Look! It's ambrosia.”

“No, not ambrosia,” he said. “It's radioactive waste. See, the crystal from the mountain takes the ambrosia from the workers, strips it of impurities and then expels the waste below.”

There. This was a purification plant, or at least if that wasn't its sole purpose in the past, that was what circumstances dictated that it would become. The city, like the Hyperboreans themselves, was sacrificing everything in order to purify its ichor.

“It's like a big chandelier. I wonder how they managed to keep it from us for so long?” Barbata pondered.

“Because they are better than us,” Julia said weakly. “We could never build something like this.”

I had to agree with her, as hard as it was for me, for any Roman, to admit. Even non-Sertorians were raised to believe in humanity's inherent superiority, in Rome's divine supremacy.

“Nonsense,” snapped Aquilinus. “This is nothing more than an oversized food storage and purification system, a giant fridge, unappreciated by these mindless barbarians and here for the taking by a higher species that appreciates its true value. We are the rightful inheritors. Humanity is the pinnacle of creation, as the Sertorians are the pinnacle of humanity.”

I'd been fed all sorts of lies, had it burned into the depths of my being, to regard this man as something akin to a god, and yet he couldn't see it, couldn't appreciate the wonder before him. Seeing through Crassus' eyes didn't make a difference. All Aquilinus saw was the opportunity to take something, to appease his appetites. The gods themselves could suddenly appear and sing songs before him, and he'd still argue against their existence. The realization that behind the public figure, the proconsul was in fact a foul-mouthed, red-faced pig who could not recognize beauty of a higher order served to weaken the invisible chains that bound me.

“We'll advance and we will be silent,” Aquilinus advised. “All the ichor's running toward the center of the mountain, to the shining crystal. I want to see it up close.”

So much ichor. The air was thick with it. If that crystal was a storage unit, then all Aquilinus had to do was secure it and airlift it out of here. The whole empire would indeed be his—lock, stock, and barrel.

As we slowly cruised along the procession toward the center, I noticed that each platform, including the one stretching out before us, had large crystal towers rising from it, like temples set by the side of Via Appia leading into Rome, and sitting in a small alcove near the top of each tower was one of the singing Hyperboreans. The other singers were flying toward the circuit board alignments to integrate themselves. They were taking up positions in between the towers. Even though they were a great distance away, I could sense that these singers were emitting the most powerful vibratory chords to the humming chorus, as if the towers were enhancing their song. They were not the source of the song, though. The song that had drawn me to this place lay at the heart of the mountain. The great shining jewel was the place that I was called to go, the place where all of this world's ichor was pouring. The singers picked up the vibration and accelerated it, speeding up the purification process in the central gem. Every Hyperborean was lending its life force to feed that central gem, and we were joining their sacred pilgrimage.

The slow-moving workers we passed, shuffling toward the light, had shattered facets, cracks that seemed to be lengthening even as I watched. They carried black-green veins and bellies filled with our ambrosia. The pristine bodies I saw aboveground were here chipped, broken, caked in dirt. They were dying. Looking ahead, I observed that occasionally the radiant light of the central gem weakened momentarily but then returned, and I wondered if that was the moment a worker with ambrosia inside him entered the light.

We traveled for another half mile parallel to the alien queue, occasionally passing long connective ramps set at an angle to run between the different layers. The alien song had led me to this place, and the closer I drew to the center of the mountain, it grew not only louder but also deeper. It was like a ball of string that was slowly unraveling to reveal tonal levels of connection between the Hyperboreans and their environment. This city wasn't some dwelling separate from them; it was part of their body.

Eventually, we neared the tall towers that stretched up to the next platform high above us. The towers seem to be infected too, exhausted of light in places, filled with dark clouds of black ambrosia in others. The peaks of the towers from the platform below crackled with energy. The ground about us was increasingly littered with workers who had not survived the journey. Their bodies were blackened with poison, the course of the living Hyperboreans diverted around them before re-forming their perfect line. Up close, the clouds of darkness in the towers were revealed to be clusters of poison-filled veins, creeping through the interior of the clear structures like dark ivy.

Tower after tower went by until we were about halfway from the arch we'd passed through on entering the cavern, and our goal. The nexus point at the center of the crystal began to loom large, a geometric intersection of the eight great beams that were laden with shining white ichor. The crystal tips of the beams were facing inward, marking points about a circle, and at the heart of it all, like a sunburst, was a figure that seemed to be absorbing the energy from all the sources about it. The facets of the great crystal magnified the form, making it appear like a giant, but I recognized it at once. Short limbs, a smaller body than the Hyperboreans that were also magnified as they walked into it, and only two arms. This was the shining child I had seen earlier, commanding the uprising on the surface. Their little Spartacus. He was shimmering like a star as he absorbed all that world's ichor into him, into one compact package. But for what purpose? I turned back to see Aquilinus' face burning red and twisted with desire. This was all the power he'd been searching for and more, contained in one being, a being he would want to own and control, as I was controlled.

Once we passed the halfway point on our journey to the center, an ache started up all over my body and then became more acute. I saw a change in Licinus too, red lines appearing on his face and arms in places I wounded him. Wounds that had cleared up and vanished thanks to the miracle of the ambrosia. The same was happening to me—arms, face, hands—cuts and gashes reappearing.

Barbata looked around, slightly bewildered as her facial wounds began to weep a black, oily pus. She reached up to touch them and then lowered her hand to find it covered with blood and sticky black ambrosia.

“It's this place!” Mania said. “It's undoing the effect of the ambrosia.”

“We have to leave,” Barbata said. “It's killing us, leaching the ambrosia out of our bodies.”

Hah! It was just as I'd experienced in the ichor well when I pursued the bull chief. Black bands of ambrosia started to drip from Licinus' wrists. He looked worried. I would bet he was feeling the same along every line I cut him. Nothing was more precious to a Sertorian than his own life. These aliens and we shared the same fate now. Our poison was killing them, and their response was to draw all the ichor into one shining heart, the same power that was now leaching the ambrosia from us. This had the ring of justice. That we die here, all of us, right before the prize we'd been squabbling over like a pack of seagulls.

“We're not going anywhere,” Aquilinus snapped. “Get to the heart of the mountain and get me that child.”

He could afford to take risks. I guessed he could leave Crassus' body anytime he liked. Go back to his comfortable private box in the Rota Fortuna high above this world.

And then eagle-eyed Castor raised the alarm. “The Viridians!”

They appeared on their war chariot, racing on the platform directly above us. Of course. Julia had rigged our chariot to leave a trail, and there was Caninus the tracker. They'd been following us all this time.

As they overtook us, Marcus looked over the side of his chariot, through the transparent floor and right at me. Did he tell Carbo the code word? Looking at the state of me, near-naked and wounded, the thong of Mania's weapon looped about my neck, he had to see that I wasn't here of my own free will. The Viridians were powering forward at top speed, heading straight for the heart of the mountain. They'd seen what was most important and weren't constrained by the leaching of the ambrosia that hampered the Blood Hawks.

“Go! Beat them to the prize!” Aquilinus screamed.

He had to have the alien child now. And more, at all costs he had to ensure the Viridians didn't possess it.

The Dioscurii raced forward, holding nothing back. No more tournament, no games, this was the battle for possession of the substance that would control the empire. Mania needed both hands to fight, so she pulled the loop of her bow staff about my throat tight and bound me close to the central post of the chariot—so that if I pulled away even a little, I'd start to strangle—and then used another strand of leather to bind my wrists together. She had to hurry. There was a little slackness, but she knew what she was doing. It would take some effort to free myself from her bonds, and I had to contort myself to see what was going on around us.

As I worked to free my neck, we sped along curved rows of streets formed by the circuit board layout of the crystal towers. Running parallel to us in the distance were more arches with more ramps leading toward our level. Thirty yards ahead of us, the Wolves took a downward path, appearing to fly as they raced down the transparent ramp. When they hit our level, a barrage of darts and bolts flew our way, and the Hawks were forced to take shelter behind their shields. The race was on. We had to pass them, except that the way ahead on either side of the Wolves was blocked by slow-marching Hyperboreans on their pilgrimage.

“Form a dire wedge! Cut through anything that gets in our way,” Licinus ordered. “Charge!”

He began to swing his war chain, Barbata moved to the front of the chariot with her trident, and Aquilinus took his position with Crassus' javelin in hand.

There was little hope for me now. Weak and bound, I did not expect to survive, but I could make a sacrifice of myself. For Aulus, and for my mother. A last offering that would quell the ambitions of the Sertorians once and for all, here and now. Goddess, O Minerva, forgive me for turning from you. Please give me the chance to set this right. Take my life in exchange. Please.