Fires of Alexandria Page 3

  Chapter Three

  Agog banged on the double doors. When he put his ear to the wood, he could hear the faint sounds of metal on metal. Closer, creaking metal gave away someone lurking inside.

  He slammed his fist against the double door, rattling them together, and called out Heron's name. Movement from a window above him drew his gaze, but whoever was spying on him slipped away before he could get a good look.

  Agog thought he'd saw a pale creature with half clothes and two dark eyes on its head. He shrugged and banged once more on the doors. He'd seen stranger things in the lands east of his. Animals that could talk and houses that walked. The former had taught him grave secrets about the world and the later had been how he'd found Aurinia.

  Circling the workshop, he found gates into a courtyard. Leaping to peer over the edge, he spied building materials stacked into piles. Further in, the reddish-orange glow of foundry light poured out of the darkness.

  Agog chuckled as he imagined his lieutenants watching him hop like a mad ibex. They'd feasted him on the day of his leaving, declaring their intent to attend him on his journey, but he forbade it, under penalty of singular combat with him. None of his lieutenants had ridden with him.

  Parched from a day spent sweltering in the sun, Agog left the workshop in search of covered stalls and cool drinks. He found an open-air café and carried a handful of spiced meats on a stick and an earthen mug full of beer to an empty table.

  Agog questioned the freshness of his meats, but the spices and charred skin hid the rank flavor. His shoulder blades itched after a time, letting him know he was being watched. His lieutenants claimed he had eyes in the back of his head during battle, always spinning around at the last second on a charging foe.

  Upon craning his neck around, he found a table of three men in togas watching him intently and whispering under their breath. The shortest, obviously a Roman by his aquiline nose, stood up and walked towards Agog's table when they made eye contact.

  The man strode up and Agog supposed he was being analyzed along the way. The Roman man spoke a phrase in Burgundian, a language Agog was familiar with, but not fluently. Agog thought he might have asked him if he could sit at his table.

  "Please join me," said Agog in Latin.

  The man goosed, checked back with his fellows and promptly sat in the chair across from Agog. The other two were watching wide eyed as if their friend was feeding olive leaves to a bull.

  "I'm Gnaeus Genucius Gurges," he said, offering his hand.

  Agog captured Gnaeus' hand in his own and shook, careful not to damage it.

  "Agog."

  "You speak very well for one of your kind," said Gnaeus.

  Agog's feet had been propped onto a chair next to his. He pulled them off, set them down and put his hands on the table around his drink.

  "And what kind is that?" he asked.

  "A barbarian, of course," said Gnaeus, clearly not realizing his words were insulting. "A northerner. One of the uncouth races. It's so obvious isn't it?"

  Agog grunted and took a drink from his beer.

  "Go on," said Agog, switching to Gallic. "I assume you have questions for me."

  The switch in languages goosed Gnaeus again, but he went on without acknowledging it otherwise.

  "Well, I am the foremost scholar at the Library in barbaric studies," said Gnaeus proudly. "And I wish to ask you a few questions. In return, I would buy you a meal."

  Agog looked down at the empty sticks. "I will answer your questions if you answer a few of my own."

  Gnaeus nodded enthusiastically, the wealth of questions practically brimming at his lips.

  "But first," Agog said. "Which library?"

  The Roman scholar appeared insulted at his question.

  "Why the Great Library of Alexandria herself! Are you that unwise?" Gnaeus held his hand to his chest in mock injury.

  Agog let the smile rise to his lips slowly. "Which library within the Great? The Mausoleum, Paneum, Mithereum, or the Serapeum?"

  Gnaeus coughed. "The Mausoleum, of course. The oldest and most important studies are housed there, which includes my own."

  Agog grunted, informing the scholar he was ready for his questions.

  "Is it true that you barbarians allow your women to have a say with whom they mate?" Gnaeus asked.

  The question brought memories of Aurinia leaning from her hut high above, clad in white with a flaxen cloak and a bronze girdle, taunting him with jabs about how the Suebian knot on his head had been bound too tight, making him dull. He tried to climb the poles the house had been built upon to set her right, but she knocked him loose with a long staff.

  "They have a way with words," Agog replied.

  Gnaeus nodded sagely. "Are you not concerned with their deceptions? They are despicable creatures."

  "Despicable? No. Deceptive? Yes." Agog rubbed the parallel rope scars along his forearm. "One tricked me into killing a particularly dangerous black bear for her."

  "Did you punish her for her indiscretions?" he asked.

  "Yes." Agog letting a grin rise slowly to his lips. "I married her."

  Gnaeus began laughing hysterically, knocking over his mug with a flailing arm. While Gnaeus wrung the beer from his toga, Agog ordered two more beers.

  Gnaeus' scholarly friends departed the café making wild glances as they passed.

  "I would like to press you further on your knowledge of Northern women," he said. "But for now I wish to know the answer to a question that has vexed me for some time."

  "Ask," Agog said simply.

  "You are as a barbarian familiar with the Cimbrian War?" Gnaeus asked.

  Agog let his face stay neutral.

  "I am familiar," he answered.

  Gnaeus puffed up, as he prepared to release his hard won knowledge.

  "Over a century ago, when Consul Marius defeated the bastard King Boiorix upon the Raudine Plain, killing him and driving his troops back north, was it ever known if King Boiorix had an heir?" asked Gnaeus.

  "Would it matter if he did? A king who cannot hold his kingdom is not a king at all. Who begat who matters not," said Agog.

  "No...no...," said Gnaeus, waving his hand. "I do not suggest that his son should have been a king, only that we are missing links in the genealogy of the northern barbaric tribes. Finding his heirs would clear up a host of other questions."

  "If you know these other questions, you should not need me," said Agog.

  "Well, you see," Gnaeus said. "We lost so much in the Great Fire. I have reconstructed what I can, but too much was lost. I need that missing information."

  "Take your complaint to Rome then, since it was Caesar that burned it down," said Agog.

  Gnaeus became wide eyed, ducking his head down, listing back and forth. The scholar became very concerned about a pair of Roman soldiers walking past the café.

  "Do not say that so loudly," whispered Gnaeus. "It is a crime to say that Caesar caused the fire. The Romans are concerned that Alexandrians, given enough reason, could overthrow the Governor."

  "If they know he burned it down, then why don't they act?" Agog asked.

  "They have no proof. The fires happened during a battle in the city. Blame has been thrown widely," said Gnaeus.

  Agog made noises of interest, the scholar's words weighing heavily on his mind. He got up from the table to leave.

  "Agog," said Gnaeus. "Can you not answer any more of my questions?"

  Agog stopped, mind whirling. "Another time. I will come by the Mausoleum."

  Gnaeus seemed perplexed as Agog prepared to leave. Then Agog stopped, remembering an earlier errand. "Are you familiar with the miracle worker Heron?"

  The scholar nodded.

  "Do you know where I can find him? No one answers at his workshop," asked Agog, clicking his tongue in thought.

  "I've heard he has been seen frequently at the Temple of Nekhbet. Th
ey have been losing followers for some time now, so it would make sense," said Gnaeus.

  Agog left the scholar staring into the litter of empty mugs. Gnaeus would have much to think about from their conversation and so did Agog.

  The heat of the day had peaked and the streets had emptied somewhat compared to the morning. He didn't have to elbow one person on his way to the Temple of Nekhbet.

  Outside, a crowd had gathered before the stone building. Water poured from a woman's statue into a pool lined with turquoise stones. A brazier set upon a bronze pillar, quite inexplicably to Agog, garnered the attention of the crowd.

  Men and women in simple tunics, mostly Egyptians with their bronze skin soaking up the sun, clamored about restlessly. Though Agog had been in the south for months, his skin still paled against theirs. The assembled carried sticks and lumps of charcoal.

  Agog judged the people waiting outside the temple as common folk: artisans, merchants and the like. Those with a jingling bag of coins and ambition to spare.

  A few well dressed scholars hung off to the side, debating in their obliviously arrogant manner. Agog was instantly reminded of Gnaeus. The scholar might provide some future benefit, but it would likely be trifling small and impractical.

  The patrons of the temple harassed the priests in violet robes on the stairs. He gathered from the hurled insults that the temple had been faring poorly in exciting its followers.

  North or south, once a god had a building to maintain, Agog found them to be quite insistent about tithing and finding the means to encourage it. He preferred the gods and goddesses of the woods and streams. They required nothing more than a simple word and the occasional burnt offering.

  Before Agog lost his patience, the priests produced flaming torches, much to the delight of the assembled. With the brazier lit, the crowd threw in their sticks and charcoal. The flames grew until it was a fiery conflagration. Then to Agog's amazement, the huge red doors slowly swung open.

  Agog could see no man pushing the doors. They seemed to have opened by magic. As the crowd shuffled into the temple, Agog followed.

  Like the spitting soldier statue, Agog could see no markings or levers that moved the door. Miracles upon miracles these Alexandrians witnessed on a daily basis. Why they hadn't risen up and thrown off the yoke of their Roman masters perplexed him.

  The crowd settled onto the chipped stone pews, whistling and calling liberally. Skins of wine could be seen passing down the rows.

  A pale cloud of incense hung in the vaulted portion of the temple. Agog's eyes watered and he desired a beer from the café. Here on the edge of the southern sands, their beers were no better than camel piss, but the heat made them taste like the water of the gods.

  Agog grabbed a skin of wine from the row in front, squirting the liquid in his mouth and spilling some across his chest. The worshipers around him swallowed their protests.

  The crack of a wood against wood turned the heads of the faithful and as they did, Agog spied a vulture-headed priest in violet robes stepping from a hidden alcove into the middle of the temple, standing before a massive black marble statue of the goddess Nekhbet.

  When the faithful turned back, surprise lifted easily from their tongues, but it quickly turned to taunting jeers. They had not come for simple trickery. The high priest with the vulture head hesitated, bringing down more insults.

  The clearly drunk and rowdy crowd would not be subdued easily. The high priest raised his arms decisively and shouted an incantation in tongue Agog did not recognize. The languages south of the Mediterranean were mostly unknown to him. Only a smattering of the Egyptian words were familiar to his ears and the high priest's words were none of them.

  But the tone and pace were familiar. In the beginning the priest spoke simply, gathering momentum like a shepherd gathering his flock upon a grassy hillside. The vulture-headed priest captured their interest for a time.

  Agog drank from the wine skin, examining each member of the crowd for one that could be Heron. He cursed himself that he hadn't gotten a description from the old man, though the task of finding him, he thought, should be easy.

  Agog found it odd that he would find a person such as Heron in the temple at all. Most of the crowd were common folk and merchants. Given the size of the workshop, three times the buildings around it, Heron had to be wealthy even accounting for bad luck.

  Maybe cursed, he came to the temple for favor. Agog hoped not, for he cared not for those who expected the gods to weasel them through each task.

  The vulture-headed priest had lost the crowd, Agog decided. He'd lectured too long, or asked too stridently about coinage before properly lubricating the masses, though lubricating they had done much on their own.

  "Hazz'em ler agresseum!" screamed the priest, clearly cutting right to the expected show. He pumped his hands up above his head in two fists.

  It seemed like the priest had expected something to happen, because he checked back over his shoulder and repeated the fist pumping.

  The second time, a loud thud and sparks erupted from the peak of the Nekhbet statue. From the white cloud after the sparks, an ebony vulture screamed out, flying the length of the temple with wings spread.

  Agog expected the vulture to crash into the back wall when another loud bang from the front of the temple, at the offering well, turned the crowd's heads. Warned to the trickery from the priest, Agog watched as the vulture completed its flight by being pulled up into a trap door in the ceiling.

  To the great surprise and delight of the crowd, and by the urging of the priest as he lifted his arms repeatedly in flight, the statue of Nekhbet rose an arm's length from the floor. The crowd ducked in unison and Agog followed this time, witnessing that the statue was actually floating above the floor with no supports.

  Agog didn't have long to consider how the miracle was being performed when the statue moved forward. The priest stayed ahead, flapping his arms quite ridiculously while the statue moved forward. The crowd seemed suitably awed by the miracle and cheered with aplomb.

  The vulture-headed priest in violet robes, even beneath his mask could be seen buoyant with the fever of the crowd. Feverishly flapping his arms he began to move faster down the aisle between the pews.

  The statue kept pace with the priest, which Agog found odd. The second thing which was odd to him occurred right after the first and before the third and mostly terribly odd thing to happen in the Temple of Nekhbet.

  As the priest began to run down the aisle, the massive stone statue began wobbling behind him like an ox cart and Agog heard a female screaming from high above, clearly and in Greek: "Slow down you imbecile!"

  Agog glanced up, signaled by a sudden change, and in much the same way he read the flow of battle, he sensed the impending disaster. The statue seemed to be moving much faster now, even more than the priest.

  Then Agog realized as he watched the events unfold, idly drinking from the borrowed wine skin, that the statue was tipping. Observing the descent of the statue, he knew its marbled head would crash through the back of the temple, bringing the whole structure around their heads, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.