Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [123]
“Is this where you live?” Cleopatra asked Antony, and he shook his head, though his eyes, when she looked into them, seemed to slant away from her.
“We must go farther,” he said.
Cleopatra wondered how long they had been walking through the Underworld, and how long her body had been caged in the silver box above. She wondered what would happen to them when all this was finished. She could think of no happy ending.
He brushed his ghostly fingers over her skin.
“When the dead are called from Hades,” he said, “the living pound their hands on the earth so that we may hear them grieving us. When the dead are called from Hades, the living pour blood into the soil, so that we may drink of life. We thirst. We hunger. We are too far from the living in this place. The longer we stay, the more I fade, and the less I am Antony.”
He brushed his lips over her hand, and she felt a chill.
“You are still Cleopatra,” he said. “Still my wife, but I am of Hades now.”
Cleopatra looked at him, feeling her universe collapsing all over again. The gods of the dead held their citizens tightly. His skin, which had been brown with sun, was paler the longer she looked on him. She could see the trees through his breastplate.
“Then we must leave here together,” she told him. “Hurry. We must travel to the chamber where the gods dwell, is that not what you told me?”
“To Persephone,” he said, and his voice wavered. “We are running out of time.”
Cleopatra took his hand in hers and held it as best she could.
Together they ran through the ghostly battlefields of the improperly buried dead, where some men saluted him and other men cursed him.
Together they ran across roads of bone, and all around them, the world was winter, though in Rome the sun beat down on the city, and outside Rome, the countryside sweltered, the Slaughterer traveling from village to village, from temple to temple, killing and sending endless shades down from the summer and into the snow.
11
A grippa and his small band of men rode south to Krimissa and to the temple of Apollo, dedicated in the time of Troy by the warrior Philoctetes. All of Italy was founded on myth, and when Nicolaus had told him the tale of what this place concealed, he’d nodded in recognition. He knew the story. It was part of the living and proud history of Rome, like the hut of Romulus.
Nicolaus was not with Agrippa’s group. With a sword, the historian would be a danger to no one but himself. Instead, Agrippa had left him to watch over Augustus, enlisting the seiðkona as well. All that was necessary was that Augustus stay in the residence. The emperor was weakened by the potion he insisted on consuming. It would take little effort, even for a scholar and an ancient, to keep him stationary.
Agrippa held out little hope that anyone could keep Chrysate away from Augustus, but he hoped that Augustus might be tantalized by the historian introduced as a new biographer. The emperor fancied himself a writer of some skill, though he typically wrote only rhymes. Agrippa smiled in spite of himself, thinking of it as they rode around a promontory. He felt better, now that he was out of Rome. He was doing something about the problem. Never mind that he was the only one who was. At least Cleopatra was no longer under Chrysate’s control. The room she was jailed in was lined at every seam with silver, and the box she was inside was wrapped in silver chain. Agrippa’s most trusted men guarded it.
The Psylli had come to him before he left, and asked to go with him to Krimissa, but even after the battle at the Circus Maximus, he was no Roman soldier. Usem could not possibly be as well trained as Agrippa’s own men, and he did not seem likely to follow orders. Agrippa had left him, instead, guarding the silver room. If Chrysate tried to use magic, Usem would know it.
At last, the temple was in view, and Agrippa’s smile faded.
From below, the building shone in the late-afternoon sun, placed at the top of a spiraling cliff and nearly inaccessible by road. Agrippa looked up at it, nervous.