Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [34]
He shouted from afar, trying to send a warning, and the lion—no longer on the road but, impossibly, with him in the palace—turned to look at him, her body shifting, growing larger.
She was a woman now, with a lion’s head, and she gazed upon him, seeing him utterly. He felt his organs dissolving and a red miasma floating over his eyes. The creature’s mouth curved into a smile, and Octavian was transported again to a place that seemed, for a moment, peaceful.
A green orchard, a star-spattered sky, and himself, walking the paths between the trees. He was old now, older than his true father had been when he’d died, older than Caesar, too. His skin was as dry as papyrus and his hands, opening before him, were spotted with age. His spine was hunched, and one leg was short, hobbled. He chewed his meal with rotting teeth, and swallowed painfully.
He looked nervously into the darkness, feeling himself watched by a predator. He tried to cry out, but his throat seized, and something burned its way through his center.
Then he saw her, Cleopatra, unchanged, standing in the shadows. She stepped toward him, her hands outstretched, her fingers tipped with talons. He saw her pointed teeth bared. He felt her breath on his face.
Above him, the trees spread their darkness against the sky, blotting out the stars, and he was falling backward, convulsing, vomiting fire.
“Guards!” he screamed, and Marcus Agrippa charged into the throne room, leading his men.
Octavian was drenched in sweat, and he found that he was down before Cleopatra. Kneeling to her. He couldn’t stand. The men, swords drawn, ran from end to end of the room, searching for the enemy that had upset their leader. Agrippa knelt beside Octavian.
“Are you ill? Do you need a physician?” asked Agrippa, and he couldn’t answer.
Her eyes were shut now, as though they had never opened, as though he’d never seen into the depths of—what? What had he seen? He knew one thing, and that was that he never wanted to see such visions—such omens—again.
“What happened here?” Agrippa demanded. “Is there an enemy?”
“She was—” Octavian stopped. Agrippa would not believe him. How could he tell him that a dead woman was not dead? That he’d seen a vision of the end of days in her eyes? Agrippa would think he was mad.
“I thought I saw the asp, but I was mistaken.” Struggling to his feet, Octavian commanded, “Bury her.” He wanted nothing to do with his previous plan to take her corpse with him to Rome and parade it through the streets as proof of his victory. “Bury her with Antony, if that is what she wants so much. Wall up the tomb with two layers of mortared stone. Make sure there are no entrances or exits. We do not want anything getting out. Set guards around the perimeter. Give them the best weapons.”
Agrippa looked at him, bewildered.
“Getting out?” he asked.
“Do you question me?” Octavian asked, regaining his authority at last. Finally, he could draw a breath. His damp garments chilled against his skin, even in the heat of the room. He would not look at the queen. He would not.
Her eyes had been bottomless. He had seen in them the very sphere of the sky, the edges of the horizon, and the green, living world, just before it all went dark.
He would burn her body, if he only knew what would result. It might spur the visions to take place, like a spark to kindling, and he’d be the man who begat the end of the world.
No, he thought, his breath coming too quickly, his head spinning, the safest course would be to wall her up with the man she’d wanted so badly. The proper rituals, a funeral fit for a queen, for a wife. That would placate her. That was what she had wanted, after all, this soulless creature, this thing. Love.
“Don’t touch her!” he shouted as one of the men laid a hand on the queen’s arm. What if she woke? The men, accustomed to carrying out peculiar orders, lifted the couch with Cleopatra upon it and carried her over their