“You have masters of the art that are sixteen?” Mohammed’s voice was confused.
“No!” Ahmet exclaimed in horror. “When the master of the school received the notice of the levy, he bade me take the boy to the hidden temple and initiate him into the mysteries of the third order-but he has not the training for it, not the discipline, not the patience! He has been opened to a world he cannot properly see, or control. He is still a child-a troublesome child-one the master of the school felt it best to be rid of, lest he cause more problems, but that is no excuse to offer him up as a sacrifice to the gods of war. He may already be dead.”
Ahmet stared off, into the night, with blank eyes.
Mohammed clapped him gently on his shoulder. “So, you abandoned your position at the school to find him, then? What will you do if you do find him?”
“Take his place, I suppose.” Ahmet’s voice was low and filled with fatigue. “Join him and teach him what I can if they will not release him from his duty to the state. He was, he is, my student. I am responsible for him, for all his cheerful tricks and irreverence. He had promise, my friend, promise to be a fine young man with a good talent. He could have done many worthy things. I am sick to think of him dead in a field, entrails pecked by crows, because the master of the school found it convenient to dispose of a possible political problem without getting his hands dirty.”
Mohammed laughed silently in the darkness. Was that not the way of the world?
“There is no more difficult path than that of an honorable man,” he said in a portentous voice. “Ahmet, tomorrow we will take the caravan into the city and turn the glasswares and pottery over to the warehouse my wife’s cousin’s brother owns. Then my business will be done for this venture. I think that we should then make inquiries at the citadel to see if the Roman authorities there know the whereabouts of the Third Cyrene. Then you and I, if you will have my companionship on the road, will go and find your student and see about getting your honor back.”
Ahmet glanced up. “A fine offer made to a man that you’ve barely known three weeks. Why would you do such a thing?”
Mohammed sighed, clasping his hands together in front of him. “You are driven by honor and your duty as a teacher. I am not driven by anything. I have a fine wife and a rich family in my home city. I could while my days away, and I have, in reading and philosophy. I have spent my time in the saddle too, raiding the oases and villages of the enemies of my tribe. I could play the merchant on the road, journeying to distant lands and cities, and this too I have done. My heart is hungry, and I have not found the thing to fill it. I am restless, my friend, and I want to understand all of this.” He waved a hand to encompass the sky, the grove, the ground beneath their feet.
“I miss the comfort of my wife and our household, but something is still missing. So, I will come with you and see something, at least, that I have not seen before. Perhaps I will find what I am looking for! One never knows where he’ll end up, setting out on an unknown road. Truth might lie around the next bend, or over the next hill.”
In peaceful days, the markets of Damascus were filled with a raucous throng of thousands coming and going along the narrow, covered ways. Now, with tens of thousands of troops camped around, or in, the city, it was worse. It took Ahmet three hours of pushing through congested streets filled with bands of armed men, rickety stalls, and the citizens of the city to reach the broad square surrounded by mighty temples and buildings of the state that marked the center of the ancient town. Once on the square, Ahmet was able to breathe again and walk at a normal pace. He headed for the imposingly porticoed front of the Temple of Zeus, which made itself unmistakable by towering over the entire square and every other building adjoining it.
He mounted the long tier of steps at the front of the temple, passing by fountains set into the broad front that fed a series of shallow ornamental pools at the base of the building. The footsteps of many priests and penitents echoed off the high ceilings as he made his way into the dim recesses at the side of the central nave. There were a number of small offices there, and he walked along them after asking directions of a slave at the front of the temple. At the end, in a rather barren cell, he found the man he wanted to see.
“Master Monimus?” A slight man with only a trace of hair remaining on his head looked up from a low desk. Wooden scroll cases surrounded him like honeycombs, filled with burnished brass handles and well-worn wooden pegs. The priest’s eye~$ were a merry blue, and his face, though deeply lined with age, seemed open and pleasant.
“I am Monimus,” he said in a clear tenor voice. “Please sit. There is wine, if you are thirsty.”
“Thank you, master. I am Ahmet of the School of Ptha-mes in Egypt. I also serve Hermes Trismegistus.”
Monimus bowed, still sitting, and poured two shallow cups of wine from an ancient red-black amphora. He passed one of the krater to Ahmet and sipped politely from the other. Ahmet sipped as well, then placed the ancient drinking bowl on the edge of the table. Monimus waited with the calm that all of the masters of the order seemed to assume as a matter of course. Ahmet cleared his throat, not sure how to begin, but he thought of how Mohammed would handle this and decided to plunge straight in.
“Master Monimus, I must beg your indulgence and ask two favors of you and your house here. I am on a long journey and I am afraid that I have not pleased the master of my school overmuch. He did not give me leave to undertake such an absence, and he may be most displeased with my hasty departure. Despite this, I feel that I should tell him where I am and where I am going, and why I left in such a precipitous manner.”
Ahmet opened the heavy cloth bag that he had purchased in Gerasa and drew out a letter written on poor papyrus. He placed it on the desk between himself and the master. “If you could see that this letter reaches Master Nephet of the School of Pthames, near Panopolis in Upper Egypt, I would be grateful. My second favor is more pressing, though you may not know the answer. Has any news of the Imperial Legion called the Third Cyrenaicea reached you? I must find a man who is serving with it, but my last report held that it was coming here, and it has not done so.”
Monimus sat quietly for a little while, his blue eyes considering Ahmet. The young Egyptian began to feel very nervous at the examination, but he remained still and did not fidget. After a time the Syrian priest sighed and picked up the letter from where it had lain on the desk.
“Of course I will see that this letter reaches your superior in Panopolis. I believe that I know this Nephet from my time at the sanctuary of the Order in Ephesus. He is a stern man, if memory serves, but he does care about his charges, and forgives. Of your second request, I can say nothing, for I know nothing of the matter. Every tongue in the city has the matter of the war against Persia upon it, but I have heard nothing that would indicate that the Imperials are coming here. Are you determined to find this man?“
Ahmet nodded.
The older priest picked at the edge of the letter, his face troubled. “You know of the levy upon the orders, of course?”
Ahmet nodded again, and something of the anger he felt must have shown through.
“Yes, an evil business,” said Monimus, his voice quieting to a whisper. “Little good can come of it-yet it is a desperate necessity. You r?ay not feel the tremors and echoes in far Egypt, but here, so close to the border, we feel the workings of the Persian mobehedan often-almost daily in the last months. The walls between our world and the others are strained and pinched. We tremble at the approach of each darkness of the moon, for then it is worse. They are desperate for victory. They are paying a terrible cost for strength to bring against Rome.