ABISHAG

She ran through the city as the world burned.

Around her, the streets and homes blazed. Legionaries marched everywhere, slamming rams into buildings, crushing archways and walls. Bricks fell around Abishag, buffeting her, cutting her skin. She ran onward. She didn't know if it was night or day. Smoke hid the sky, and firelight painted the city. Limbs stuck up from rubble. As she ran, she stepped on a corpse, grimaced, leaped onto a road, and ran onward. The legions were everywhere, lashing spears and blades, killing anyone they saw.

Before Abishag, a mother knelt in a doorway, huddling over her baby. One legionary ripped the babe from her arms. Before Abishag could run nearer, the legionary tossed the babe into the air, only for another Aelarian to shoot him with an arrow. Both men laughed, then grabbed the screaming mother and dragged her off. Their only mercy was slitting her throat before they raped her.

Abishag turned and ran the other way, tears in her eyes. Several children emerged from an alleyway, wailing. An Aelarian chariot rumbled down the street. It crushed the children under its wheels and cut them with spinning scythes.

"Where is your god?" The voice rolled down the street, maniacal. Abishag recognized that voice—the voice of Claudia. "Where is your rat king? Both have abandoned you. I am your goddess now!"

Abishag stumbled down the streets, climbing over ruins, over bodies, seeking a way out. Often in her dreams, she had felt trapped in a labyrinth, seeking an exit, finding none. She kept waiting to wake up, to be by Maya again, yet there was only more fire, more smoke, more iron and steel, more death.

Where are you, Epher? she thought. Where are the defenders of this city?

Claudia's words kept echoing down the stone halls. They abandoned you!

Abishag kept running. She knew these alleys. She had spent years navigating them. She knew every twist, every doorway, every courtyard, every tunnel that ran between brick walls and under archways and balconies and awnings. Yet now she recognized no place. Those arches were falling, exposing the smoky sky. The walls of homes kept falling. Domes and towers crashed to the ground. Some people sought safety on rooftops, only to fall into rubble. Many ran but were cut down.

She skidded to a halt under an archway that led to a wider road. Several legionaries stood there, blood staining their hands and dripping off their blades. They kicked corpses aside, smirked, and approached Abishag. Their blades pointed toward her.

"This one would make a good slave," said one legionary.

His friend spat. "Fuck that. I ain't delivering her to some fancy dominus with a powdered cock. This one's our prize." He licked his lips. "I'll enjoy slitting her throat after we've had our fun."

Abishag grabbed a fallen brick and hurled it, hitting one legionary. She turned and ran, heading back down the alley. The men cursed and followed. But they were slow in their armor, and Abishag was young and slender and quick. She leaped over fallen walls and archways, through the ruins of a house, and over corpses. All around her, the slaughter continued. The legionaries pressed people against walls and slit their throats. They shoved people into pits and cast down burning branches and oil. One legionary sat cross-legged, grinning as he slammed a stone into a girl's head again and again. Barely anything remained but hair caked with blood.

Abishag glanced behind her. Legionaries were still pursuing her. She didn't know if they were the same ones. When she ran toward a well, she saw soldiers grabbing a woman and dragging her off—perhaps to slavery, perhaps to entertain the troops before slitting her throat. On a nearby road, a few elder Zoharites had mounted a defense, battling the legions with knives and clubs, only to be torn down within moments, helpless against the armor and swords of the world's greatest soldiers.

There is no safe place in this city, Abishag knew. No more help will come to us. We must flee to the countryside.

More soldiers turned toward Abishag. Again she ran. Small. Fast. Slipping through tunnels created by fallen archways and walls. Scuttling over ruins that the heavier soldiers could not climb. She saw a house that still stood ahead, rising from rubble. Soldiers were laughing nearby, kicking corpses. Abishag ran toward the standing house, and when she burst inside, she found several children huddling in the shadows. One boy, a few years younger than her, held a trembling knife. The others cowered behind him.

Abishag reached out to them. "Come with me. We have to leave this place." She heard the soldiers drawing nearer. "I'll look after you."

But the boy jabbed the air with his blade, and his siblings trembled and hugged one another.

"I'm protecting them from the bad men," said the boy.

When Abishag glanced out the back window, she saw the legionaries step toward the house, laughing and spitting. One man pissed on a corpse before joining his comrades.

"I need you to protect the little ones on the way," Abishag said to the boy. "Can you do that?"

He hesitated, glanced out the window, and nodded.

Abishag grabbed one girl and lifted her. She let another climb onto her back. She herded the others out of the house and onto the street.

One of the legionaries nearly slammed into them. His grinned, revealing blood on his teeth. "What a pretty little mother and her spawn. I think I'll—"

Abishag never learned what he thought. The oldest boy plunged his knife into the man's foot. As the legionary screamed, they ran around him. They crawled under a fallen archway—it left an opening too narrow for a soldier—and raced over ruins.

Fallen bricks lay in hills, and dusty faces and limbs peeked from the rubble. One of the faces blinked, tried to whisper, choked on blood. Abishag wept as she ran onward. If she stopped, she would die, she knew. A woman crawled over rubble nearby, reaching out to Abishag, calling for air. Her stomach had been slit open, spilling and dragging across the ruins. Abishag ran onward, leading the wounded, taking only the children.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

As they raced up a hill of rubble, Abishag saw the Mount of Cedars in the distance. The Temple and palace had fallen, and fire blazed on the Mount, as tall as those old halls, a great demon rising toward the sky, casting out heat and light and smoke. The dawn broke in the east, and horribly, cruelly, luridly, a rainbow rose over the desert like the grin of a painted madman, soon fading in darkness as a new cloud of smoke hid the sun. Abishag turned westward. The Gate of Lions was near, and it would lead to the hills. There a road could take her to the sea, and perhaps she could seek refuge in Gefen, maybe even board a ship and sail to another province. She did not know what fate awaited her outside these walls. But she knew that in Beth Eloh only death or slavery awaited.

She led the children off the mound of ruins, through a veil of smoke, and around the corpse of a camel, its cubs wailing as they tried to nurse from cold teats. The city's outer wall rose beside them, the only structure that still seemed to stand. Abishag and the children ran along it, moving between burning palm trees and howling stray dogs. Soon they reached a craggy tower and a courtyard. Past smoke and flurrying sand rose the Gate of Lions.

Abishag's heart sank. Many others in the city had thought to flee here. They filled the courtyard, crying out, falling. Legionaries stood at the gatehouse, and others lined the streets, firing arrows and lashing blades. Blood washed the cobblestones.

"Come, children," Abishag whispered. "We'll find another way."

They kept moving, racing around the walls of the city, traveling down arched walkways, through rubble, hiding in shadows from the patrolling legions. Everywhere the people fell, and the stench of death hovered over Beth Eloh. But every hour, there were fewer screams, fewer who fled, and more corpses burning in courtyards. Gate by gate, Abishag found only closed doors, only slaughter. She remembered her time seeking the Gate of Tears, seeking salvation, finding nothing but dead ends and despair.

"I want to go home," whispered one of the children, a girl with ragged black hair and green eyes, a rare color in the desert of Zohar. "Please. Can we go home now?"

The other children huddled by the city wall, shivering. Some bled from deep gashes. The boy with the dagger was trembling, pale, his knees skinned.

"We have to keep going," Abishag said. She still carried one child in her arms, another across her back. Her shoulders felt close to breaking. Abishag was barely more than a child herself, and they were so heavy, and she had not eaten or drunk since this bloodshed had begun. How long had it been? Two days, three? How long did it take to raze a city, to destroy a nation?

"We want to go home!" said another child, a boy barely more than a toddler. "Please, Abishag. Can we go home now? To my parents?"

But there was no more home. They had no more parents. They lived what Abishag had lived through three years ago.

She knelt before the boy. "We have to keep moving now, all right? There's one gate that's fallen, that we can escape through. You have to be brave. Can you do that?"

The boy trembled but nodded. "I'll be brave like King Epher."

The words seemed to stab Abishag. Like King Epher who left us. But she nodded. "Yes, child. We'll be like King Epher."

The boy shed tears. "I think my parents are dead. But I'll stay with you. To protect you. To—"

A legionary emerged from the shadows. He grabbed the boy, smirked, and slammed his head against the wall. The skull shattered.

Abishag screamed.

"Run!" she shouted.

The remaining children wailed and ran with her. Two more legionaries leaped and scooped up two more children. Abishag shouted, wanted to fight, to stop, to try to save them, but she still carried two children, still led another two. She couldn't stop. She kept running, leaving the other children behind. She heard them scream, then go silent. Her soul tore.

She ran around fallen columns, down an alleyway between smoking ruins, and vanished into a haze of smoke. She kept running, unable to breathe, eyes stinging, throat burning. One child in her arms. Another on her back. Two more at her side, their footsteps pattering in the smoke. They finally burst out into a pocket of dusty air. A palm tree crackled before them, and an archway rose, all that remained of a fallen home. An old man lay in the rubble, barely alive, praying softly. "Ours is the light, ours is the light . . ."

Abishag moved on, skidding to a halt before a road. Horses came marching down. Dozens of horses. Maybe a hundred. Claudia Valerius rode at their lead, her armor bright, unstained with blood. A crimson cloak billowed across her shoulders, and a red crest rose from her polished helm. The emperor's daughter stared ahead, a small smile on her lips, holding the reins of her white mare.

Behind Claudia marched a legatus, a general of the legions. Both wore breastplates worked with golden eagles, and a standard-bearer rode behind them, holding an Aquila. Many horses followed, their riders wearing lorica segmentata—iron strips across the torso, the armor of the common legionary. Abishag knelt in the shadows, hidden behind rubble, watching as they kept riding. Finally, behind the cavalry, marched many infantrymen, each man holding a shield and spear, and swords hung from their waists. Their sandals slogged through blood. War drums beat and horns blared.

They're leaving the city, Abishag thought, some hope rising in her.

"We will find the rebel!" Claudia cried ahead, distant now. "Epheriah will be ours!"

Abishag dared to creep forward, to stare down the road. Ahead lay the smashed Gate of Myrrh—or at least what remained of it. Here the adversary had torn down the gatehouse. Here the legions had first entered Beth Eloh. The rubble had been cleared away, and now Claudia and her soldiers were exiting the city into the countryside. Abishag waited, breathing in relief, sure that the slaughter had ended. She counted the centuries as they marched by. Century by century—a hundred legionaries each—grouped into cohorts of five hundred. An officer led each cohort astride a splendid horse, breastplate golden. Abishag counted ten cohorts leaving the city—five thousand men in all, an entire legion.

Yet when they were gone, no more soldiers followed.

More than one legion had entered the city, Abishag knew. More than one remained.

So the slaughter was not yet done. Claudia was riding out to seek Epher, but many of her legionaries remained in Beth Eloh to continue the butchery.

Abishag took a deep breath. She gathered the children close.

Then we must leave the city.

"You'll have to run fast," Abishag said. "All right? You see the path out of the city? You have to run. As fast as you can! I'll be behind you. Go!"

They leaped up from hiding. They ran down the road toward the smashed gates. Several legionaries stood here, guarding the exit. They raised their spears as the children ran.

"Over the rubble!" Abishag cried. "There, over that fallen tower. Climb! Run!"

The children scattered off the road. Two towers had once flanked the gatehouse. The demon had shattered them, and they still lay in piles of bricks. The children ran over the rubble, scuttling up, and the soldiers cursed, too heavy in their armor to climb in pursuit. One man tossed a javelin, missing his target. A second javelin hit its mark, driving into the back of the child Abishag had carried through the city.

Her heart shattered.

She stopped in the center of the road.

She took a shuddering breath. The legionaries still faced the rubble, their backs turned toward her, raising more javelins. The last children still climbed, wailing, slipping.

"Soldiers of Aelar!" Abishag shouted, still on the road. "Sons of eagles, I curse you!"

When Abishag had been a child—it seemed a different lifetime—her parents had sent her every evening to a crumbling brick house in the village, to an old man who taught her the Aelarian tongue. Her parents, poor shepherds, had paid the elder with milk, eggs, and wool, hoping to educate their daughter in the tongue of the mighty, to impress suitors of wealth and status. They had not imagined that years later, Abishag would use her lessons in a burning, crumbling city.

The legionaries—she counted eleven—turned toward her. Their eyes and grins widened. Abishag knew that she was fair, that she kindled fires in the hearts of men. She had always earned silver from the priests outside the Temple, not mere copper or tin. She was a more alluring prize than the children who still climbed.

"Well, look at that," one man said. "A Zoharite whore."

His comrade snorted. "Fucking rat whores."

"No, I mean she's a real whore," said the first legionary. "I fucked her once outside the Temple."

He was lying. Abishag had never worshipped with the eagles, only with holy men. Perhaps the man had served here with Porcia's legion, had seen her worshipping, had fled Zohar's Blade only to return under Claudia's command.

"He did!" Abishag lied. "Though his cock was less a spear and more a dagger."

The legionary's face reddened, and his comrades laughed. Behind the soldiers, the children reached the top of the rubble, then leaped down, vanishing outside the city.

Just three lives, Abishag thought. Three lives spared. Three lives I saved. Run, children. Run to the end of the world, and never look back.

"You miserable, lying dog!" shouted the legionary she had insulted. He marched toward her. "I'm going to carve out your tongue."

Abishag turned to flee. But she had gotten too close to these men, had stepped too far onto the shadowy road. One legionary grabbed her from behind. Another—the one she had slighted—backhanded her. One man drew a dagger while the other drew his cock; the two began to argue about which best to stab her with.

"Let's just slit her goddamn throat!" shouted the red-faced legionary.

"With your dagger?" said another. "Or with your spear?"

Abishag struggled madly, desperate to free herself. She kicked the air. She tried to bite the man holding her, but her teeth found only his iron vambrace.

"Do not lie with me," she said, "for it's true. I was a consecrated sister, and I lay with men for coins. And the men of this city knew me, even as the Gray Death spread. Now it spreads between my legs. Lie with me, and your cocks will shrivel and your balls will turn to stone."

One man, the one with his cock already out for thrusting, paled and took a step back. The red-faced legionary raised his dagger before her, ready to plunge it into her breast. Abishag inhaled deeply, chin raised.

If the priests were wrong, and if there is life after death, she prayed, let me rise to you, Maya. I told you that I would follow you anywhere.

"Wait!"

The voice boomed across the road, and Abishag opened her eyes.

She saw a general, heavily armored, ride toward them. His helmet was shaped as an eagle's head, complete with an ugly black beak and a crest of dark, oily feathers. Through the eyeholes, Abishag saw scars. Instead of a left hand, he had a prosthetic shaped like an eagle's talon.

A living eagle of metal, Abishag thought, shuddering. She knew him from countless tales. The Iron Eagle. General Constantius.

"Hail Legatus!" said the legionaries, saluting him. "Hail Aelar!"

Constantius dismounted, walked toward Abishag, and examined her. He was a tall man, his eyes cold. He reached out his iron talon and caressed her cheek. The metal was hot and sharp and smelled like blood.

"Pretty," the legatus said, voice like metal on gravel. "What's your name?"

"Abishag Bat Naeem," she told him.

Constantius turned back toward his men. "Domina Claudia commanded we capture five thousand slaves. You brutes have butchered too many. There might not even be five thousand left in this hive. This one's pretty enough to serve in a brothel or bathhouse."

"She said her cunt's made of stone," said the red-faced legionary, then seemed to gather himself and lowered his head. "Dominus."

"As is your brain," said the Iron Eagle. He turned toward Abishag and stroked back a lock of her hair. "This one is intelligent. She knows how to play the game. I saw how you let the children escape. Are they yours?"

"All the children of Zohar are mine," she replied. "For I was consecrated, and I bear the word of our savior."

Through the holes in his helmet, his eyes narrowed in amusement. He looked back at the legionaries. "Chain her up with the others. And don't touch those stone nethers of hers. If your cocks even stray near her, I'll wear them around my neck."

The general mounted his horse and rode off. The remaining legionaries bent Abishag's arms behind her back. A man struck her again, and white light exploded into a thousand stars. They marched her through the city, jeering, tearing at her clothes and skin. As they herded her into a courtyard full of slaves, and as they closed manacles around her, Abishag trembled with more fear than she had ever known.