A thousand disasters could have befallen this site. A dozen wars had crossed this country since the last time he’d been here. But he’d chosen his hiding place well. The palace area had been continually lived in and not left for ruin. The town was off the main crossroads of Europe. Armies generally didn’t have a reason to level a coastal village with no strategic value. The place was still mostly intact, mostly preserved. Even better, over the last couple of centuries it had been cleaned up and maintained.
And in all that time, no one had discovered what he’d left buried.
He drew out his prize and held it up to check its condition.
The artifact was a clay lamp, terra-cotta orange, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. A spout at one end would hold a wick; oil would be poured in through the top. It was a poor man’s lamp, too plain and commonplace for wealth. The designs imprinted around the top were of fire. The thing was dusty, covered in grime, but otherwise in good shape. Just as he’d left it. A couple of swipes with his gloved hand cleared some of the dirt. There’d be plenty of time later to clean it more thoroughly. It didn’t need to be clean, it needed to be intact, safe in hand. The Manus Herculei. The Hand of Hercules, which he would use to bring fire down upon the Earth.
If archaeologists had found it, they’d have tagged it, catalogued it. Stuck it behind glass or simply put it on a shelf in some climate-controlled archival storage. He might have had a harder time claiming it then, and some of the artifact’s power might have diminished. But this . . . this was the best outcome he could have hoped for, and it made him wonder if there wasn’t in fact some weight of destiny on his side. He was meant to do this, and he was being guided.
He had been on this path, unwavering, for two thousand years.
79 C.E.
When Gaius Albinus arrived in Pompeii, he had not aged in eighty years. He still looked like a hale man in his thirties. A bright centurion of Rome, though he’d left his armor behind decades before. Who needed armor when one was practically immortal?
He’d never wanted to be immortal. He’d wanted to die for Rome. That chance had been taken from him by a monster. Since then, he had looked for purpose. Some kind of revenge against the one who had done this. Unfortunately, Kumarbis was as indestructible as he was. The force of Gaius’s rage surprised him. He’d never had a reason to be angry before. When he looked for an outlet, something he could break or destroy to somehow quiet his fury, he found one worthy target: the world. If one was going to be immortal, one might as well use that time to attempt the impossible.
In Herculaneum, he rented a house. This was a port village up the coast from the more decadent, raucous Pompeii. Here, he’d have quiet and not have to answer so many questions. The place was small, just a couple of rooms on the outside of town, but it had a courtyard behind high walls. In privacy, he could burn herbs and write on the flagstones in charcoal, washing them off when he finished.
Then, he learned to make lamps.
He couldn’t simply buy one in a market and have it be pure, so he went out one night to a pottery workshop and persuaded the master there to help him. The potter was skeptical, even with Gaius’s particular brand of persuasion. Gaius was well dressed and held himself like a soldier—why would he need to learn to make lamps? “It’s a hobby,” Gaius said, and the man seemed to accept that. The potter taught him to fashion clay, bake it, fire it. His first few efforts were rough, lopsided. One shattered in the kiln.
“Practice,” the potter said. “Even a simple thing takes practice. Keep trying.”
Gaius understood that, and at the end of a week of working long nights he had a lamp, all of his own making. He paid the potter well, which seemed to confuse the man.
That was the first step. Next: the inscription.
He washed, wore a light, undyed tunic, and went barefoot. The summer air was thick, sticky, but his skin was cool, was always cool. He’d taken blood from his servant, who now slept in the house, out of the way. The borrowed strength buoyed him and would be enough to carry him through the night.
A full moon rose as dusk fell, and the smallest hint of sunset still touched the deep blue sky when Gaius arranged his tools in the courtyard. Charcoal, candles, string, braziers, and incense. His lamp. He had a hundred incantations to learn, a hundred symbols to memorize and write, then write again, until he had them perfect. Practice, as the potter had told him.
Such good advice.
He had a lamp to infuse with power.
Kneeling, tools in hand and bright moonlight silvering the courtyard, he hesitated. The hair on his arms stood up, and a sudden tension knotted his shoulders. It was the sensation of being stalked by a lion. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder.
The danger was outside the courtyard, approaching. If he quieted himself, he could sense every beating heart in the town, he could follow the scent of warm blood and the sound of breathing to every hidden soul. But the thing approaching had no heartbeat, and its blood was cold. The hold it had on Gaius Albinus was difficult to define, but even after decades, the bond remained and called to him. He set down his tools and marched to the courtyard door, wrenched it open, and looked.
An old man, his skin shriveled, his bones bent, pulled himself along the alley wall, creeping from one shadow to the next on crooked limbs. Hairless, joints bulging, he should not have been alive. His ragged linen tunic hung off him like a crucifixion. This was the source of nightmare tales that kept children awake, the stories of ghouls and demons that hid under beds and in wells.
Frozen, Gaius watched him approach. His teeth ground, his jaw clenched with rage, but he couldn’t move, he couldn’t flee. He ought to murder this monster. But he couldn’t.
The shriveled old man heaved up against the wall and stared back at him. Laughing, he pointed a crooked finger. “Salve, Gaius Albinus, salve! I found you. Given enough time, I knew I would find you. And my dear son, all I have is time.”
“I am not your son,” Gaius said reflexively, as he had done a hundred times before, uselessly. He glanced around the street; he didn’t want anyone to witness this.
“Yes, you are. I made you. You are my son.”
The old man, Kumarbis, looked desiccated, as if he had been wandering in a desert, baked by the sun. Which was impossible for one like him. This meant he had not been eating, going weeks between feeding on blood, instead of days. He was starved; he was weak. How was he still existing?
Something dug hooks into Gaius; a connection between them that he’d never be able to deny, however much he wanted to. A feeling: compassion; gratitude. A tangle emanating from this creature, binding them together. Gaius had tried to escape these lines of power, fed through blood and woven with terrible magic, created when Kumarbis had transformed him.
“No! I disavow you. I broke from you!” “You are my son—”
“You are a mockery, you are not my father!” Gaius’s father had died decades ago, never knowing what had become of his son, who’d vanished into the service of Rome.
The old man stepped forward, reaching an angular hand, and grinning, skull-like. “You owe me . . . hospitality. The tribute due to a master from his progeny. You owe me . . . sustenance.” Horribly, he licked his peeling lips.
“You’ve fended for yourself for millennia before you ruined me. I will give you nothing.”