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My heart sped up. All I could hear was the blood pounding in my head. The uncanny silence of the approaching figure unnerved me.
I opened my mouth. For a long moment, nothing came out, and then, my voice cracking and ascending an octave, I heard myself say: “Speakee Greekee?”
The figure at last made a sound—a hideous laugh more horrible than the crunching of broken bones. My blood turned cold. The figure reached up with clawlike hands and pushed pack the moldering wreath that obscured its face.
Had the thing once been a woman? It was revolting to look at, with hair like worms and eyes that glinted like bits of obsidian. Its pale, rotting flesh was covered with warts. Broken teeth protruded from the black hole of its gaping mouth. The thing drew closer to me, filling my nostrils with the stench of putrefaction. Its low cackle rose to a sudden shriek.
I scrambled back from the wall, desperate to get away. One of my feet slipped from its toehold and I tumbled backward.
THE NEXT THING I KNEW, I WAS COMING TO MY SENSES, PROPPED UP IN A chair in the common room of the inn.
“Gordianus, are you all right?” said Antipater, hovering over me. “What happened to you? Were you set upon by robbers?”
“No, I fell . . .”
“In the middle of the street? That’s where Mushezib says he found you. It’s a good thing he happened by, or you’d still be lying out there, at the mercy of any cutthroat who happened by.”
Through bleary eyes, I saw that the astrologer stood nearby. Farther back, a few other guests were gathered around. The innkeeper was in their midst, standing a head taller than anyone else. He frowned and shook his head. Talk of robbers was bad for business.
“No one attacked me, Antipater. I simply . . . fell.” I was too chagrined to confess that I had attempted to scale the temple wall.
“The lad must have the falling sickness. Common among Romans,” said one of the guests, turning up his nose. This seemed to satisfy the others, who drew back and dispersed.
Antipater wrinkled his brow. “What really happened, Gordianus?”
Mushezib also remained. I saw no reason not to tell them both the truth. “I was curious. I wanted to have a look at the old temple of Ishtar, so I climbed to the top of the wall—”
“I knew it!” said Antipater. He scowled, then raised an eyebrow. “And? What did you see?”
“Ruins—there are only ruins left. And . . .”
“Go on,” said Antipater. He
and Mushezib both leaned closer.
“I saw the lemur,” I whispered. “In the courtyard of the temple. She walked toward me—”
Mushezib made a scoffing sound. “Gordianus, you did not see a lemur.”
“How do you know what I saw?”
“A young man with a powerful imagination, alone in the dark in a strange city, looking at a ruined courtyard, which he has been told is haunted by a lemur—it’s not hard to understand how you came to think you saw such a thing.”
“I trust the evidence of my own eyes,” I said irritably. My head had begun to pound. “Don’t you believe that lemures exist?”
“I do not,” declared the astrologer. “The mechanisms of the stars, which rule all human action, do not allow the dead to remain among the living. It is scientifically impossible.”
“Ah, here we see where Chaldean stargazing comes into conflict with Greek religion, not to mention common sense,” said Antipater, ever ready to play the pedant, even with his young traveling companion still barely conscious after a dangerous fall. “As they rule supreme over the living, so the gods rule over the dead—”
“If one believes in these gods,” said Mushezib.
“You astrologers worship stars instead!” said Antipater, throwing up his hands.
“We do not worship the stars,” said Mushezib calmly. “We study them. Unlike your so-called gods, the vast interlocking mechanisms of the firmament do not care whether mortals make supplication to them or not. They do not watch over us or concern themselves with our behavior; their action is completely impersonal as they exert their rays of invisible force upon the earth. Just as the heavenly bodies control the tides and seasons, so they control the fates of mankind and of individual men. The gods, if they exist, may be more powerful than men, but they too are controlled by the sympathies and antipathies of the stars in conjunction—”
“What nonsense!” declared Antipater. “And you call this science?”
Mushezib drew a deep breath. “Let us not speak of matters about which our opinions are so divergent. Our concern now must be for your young friend. Are you feeling better, Gordianus?”
