Nephet gasped, feeling his old heart race, and found himself on all fours, sweat pouring from his thin body. That was too much, he thought vaguely. Mud under his fingers smoked and steamed. He was glowing, shedding a hot radiance from every pore. The pit of his stomach was cramping, his spine burning like a star. I've got to rest. Just for a moment…
The jackal shuddered, splitting into three indistinct, wavering shapes for an instant, then rushed back together again. Those few Roman thaumaturges still alive attacked, whirling white sparks igniting in the jackal's shadow shape. Brilliant rays lanced out from each impact, eating away at the shadow. Again, the jackal convulsed, a broken mirror showing three distorted images. Nephet raised his head, snarling in delight. Clutching the staff, he forced himself to his feet, though the ancient, well-burnished wood charred at his touch. Now we have it! he exulted. It's not one monster, but three magi!
Nephet felt another priest of Horus strike, then beheld a rippling distortion blur across the field, sweeping around the faint patterns of watchtowers, walls, the hot spike of a scorpion winding back to hurl an iron bolt into the Persian ranks. Swiftly, seeing his chance, the old Egyptian slashed the air with his staff, glowing green traces shining in the void as he etched a sign of power. A viridian glyph formed, spinning out of infinity, a triangle broken into three, then into three, then into… Nephet wrenched his perception away from the abyss opening before him. He felt thin, attenuated, and realized the native power in the earth around him had guttered out, exhausted by the conflagration. Oh, great god Horus, fill me with your strength! Strike down your old enemy, the father-murderer, the eater of the dead!
The staff disintegrated, falling away from his hand as ash. His flesh withered, tightening to the bone.
Nephet forced his hands together and down, the triangular abyss compressing in an echo of his movement. Then, straining, his will fading, he shoved at the air, the blazing glyph leaping away, flashing across the field in an instant. Iridescent with power, the Eye of Horus slammed into the jackal, even as it rose, reformed, shadow shape solidifying into ebon muscle and sinew. The white sparks splashed away, unable to penetrate the revivified colossus.
Then the burning, lidless eye intersected with the dark god.
A half-sphere of darkness flared into existence as the glyph collided with a glassy surface. Then the glyph separated into three, then three again. In the blink of an eye, the sphere was engulfed in blazing green fire. Nephet held his breath, woozy, unable to stand. A shockwave ripped through the hidden world as the glyphs condensed with a ringing bang! Nephet was thrown back, crashing into a fragment of the battle ward. He slid to the ground, blinded by a blue-green flare.
The jackal was gone. The golden filaments of the battle ward scattered, driven by unseen winds. The old Egyptian blinked up at the sky, his eye drawn into the void behind the stars. Dizzy, his mind tried to grasp the totality revealed in the abyss, filled with whirling disks of glowing light, of great oblate spheres of fire, of endless darkness.
Fool-making a student's mistake! Part of his mind gibbering in fear, he wrenched his attention away. The chaos of stars faded and Nephet realized his face was wet. A ghostly, barely visible, hand rose to touch his face and his fingers came away slick with glistening blood. The shape of the Caesar Aurelian loomed over him, a white outline against the jewel-bright sky. A crown of translucent golden holly gleamed on the Roman's head and shades hovered close around the prince, guarding him from evil. They smiled down at Nephet, lambent eyes shining, teeth white and sharp.
Why didn't I see you before? he wondered, raising a hand to the mother wolf curling around Aurelian's insubstantial feet. A prickly tongue licked his fingers clean, her breath hot on his hand. Old grim-faced men, clean-shaven, hovered around the prince, ghostly javelins and swords making a barrier of steel. But the red-beard cannot see you, Nephet realized, his thoughts becoming vague, his limbs heavy with sleep. And I, only now…
The priest's heart stuttered, then stopped. Blood moved weakly in his body, but his mind was already falling into darkness. The shape of Aurelian pressed stout fingers against a frail, old neck-then shook its head. Nephet's physicality began to decay, even as he grew cold and still on the broken ground.
Across the ramparts, fires raged where the glyph had shattered through black glass. Even in the physical world, the dead lay in windrows, the fighting wall toppled, bricks sizzling with heat. Three bodies lay where one colossus had struggled. Arad crumpled in a crater of vaporized brick and mud, his powerful limbs splayed on the ground, Odenathus and Zoe cast aside, faces slack in unconsciousness. Steam hissed from the earth, silt and mud boiling.
The few remaining priests of Horus crept from the battlefield, wounded and exhausted, most barely able to move. Some-blessed with servants-were borne away in litters. Others lay fallen, struck down in the struggle or stunned by the tremendous blast. Only Zoe, sprawled on the slope of the rampart, head hanging over the lip of the canal, showed any sign of life, her breast rising and falling, hand moving weakly, as she tried to rise up.
Splinters dug into Sextus' hand, though the pain was barely noticeable against a rush of bloodfire coursing through him. Gasping for breath, he scrambled up the last section of ladder onto the mirror platform. The round, silvered disk was a man's height and blazed with a shimmering reflection of the noon sun. The metal surface was suspended in a wooden frame mounted on an iron wheel. Two Egyptian boys squatted on either side, faces wrapped with cloth, staring at him in surprise.
"You two," the engineer snapped, "swing the disk 'round to flash the dam!"
Stung by the fierce tone in his voice, the boys worked quickly, each working the arm of a screw mechanism to raise the disk. Sextus forced himself to lean back against the railing, out of the way, upper body hanging out over a dizzying sixty-foot drop. His knuckles turned white with strain while the boys rotated the screw, raising the disk a hand span. The metal ring at the base of the disk was freed from a locking pin on either side and one boy turned the disk-now rotating freely-toward the south. The other squinted across the muddy canals, over a huge, spreading swamp filled with glistening bogs, stands of green cane, acres of meandering waterway and drooping, thin-leaved trees.
Away through the mist rising from the wetland, Sextus caught a flash of light, a bright spark cutting through dirty gray haze. The lookout yelped at the same time, pointing, and both boys began making delicate adjustments to the orientation and incline of the disk.
A thudding boom echoed through the air and the engineer spun, heart thudding with fear, staring back to the north. From this southern elevation, even through trailing columns of smoke and dust, he could see both canals receding into the distance, straight as a plumb bob. The placement of the ramparts, their square-walled bastions, the even occurrence of watchtowers, the geometric efficiency of the fortifications was pleasingly regular.
A wave of flame billowed into the air-to Sextus' eye, an expanding sphere of overpressure as clear as the sun itself-blowing back smoke and dust with terrific force. Watchtowers swayed drunkenly in the hot gale, and secondary fires sparked as it passed. He saw something enormous and dark-the god? — stagger, then collapse toward the ground, vanishing like dew.