"I'll see if the spring north of the theater is still running," he croaked at last. "We need to find water. Shelter, too. Night will fall soon, and it will be cold."
Zoe ignored him, staring across the ruin of her city with cold, dry eyes.
Odenathus picked his way through fallen pillars and great slabs of cut sandstone that had once formed the facade of the theater of Helios. The street here was very dangerous. There had once been tunnels and rooms dug under it, to hold wild animals and performers for the theater and the amphitheater that backed onto it from the north. Now whatever had raged through the buildings had torn open the avenue, leaving deep pits and channels gaping wide in the surface of the street. A block beyond the theater there had once been a well that had served the northern half of the city. Odenathus remembered a dry voice lecturing in his youth, speaking of the effort that the city had invested into the aqueduct that had supplemented this water source from catchment basins in the hills to the west.
He stopped at the top of a long, sloping hill of rubble. A great cavity had opened in the street in the street, swallowing two houses and part of the theater market. Its bottom was in shadow, thrown by a lone building wall that stood forlornly to the south of it. Disgusted, he rubbed his nose and sneezed. The city was filled with a fine brown dust that got into everything. It was even worse than the grit that blew in from the desert. Though the collapsed street and the fallen buildings obscured it, he could make out the edges of the underground cistern fed by the spring.
Grumbling to himself, he swung his bag of equipment over his shoulder and bound his long dark hair back with a fillet of twisted green cloth. Two empty water bags slapped against his thighs, tied to his back with leather thongs he had made during the long ride south from Antioch. Prepared, he began to pick his way down the slope, cautious of loose shale.
Zoe sat on the shoulder of a fallen giant- once the image of the god Bel, who had blessed the city for so long. His face was gone, that which had stared down (in grave majesty) upon the supplicants in the court of the Silk Queen. Now only a white marble shoulder remained. The rich paints that had adorned him and given his cold skin the semblance of life had been burned away. The sun and the wind had done the rest. Here on his shoulder, Zoe sat above the city looking out upon the devastation that had shattered nearly every house and building within the circuit of the walls. Even those granite and sandstone ramparts, rising thirty, forty, or fifty feet high, had fallen to the enemy. Wooden stakes had been driven into the stone and flushed with water until the wood, swelling, had cracked away the ashlar facings, sending the walls crashing down to lie in heaped piles along the outline of the city. The two great gates- that to the west, toward Damascus, and that to the east, toward the distant Euphrates and the trading station of Dura Europos- had fallen. The looming towers had been torn down, leaving only a shell of the once-powerful gatehouses.
She sat, silent and still. The fierce anger that had driven her forth from Antioch and the arms of the Imperial Legions had drained away. A haunted emptiness filled her, looking out at the ruin of all her dreams. She knew deep in bone and blood that not one person she had cared for within the circuit of these walls lived to walk the earth. The windrows of bodies lay too deep to give her false hope. Not a soul had gone forth from this place in chains, the captive of the Persians. No hope of ransom was held out to her, even if she could dig in the ruins and find the treasuries and storehouses of the Queens of Palmyra.
The power that had wrecked the city had spared nothing. She could feel the echoes of it still ringing in the broken paving stones and toppled statues. A great power had walked here in incandescent rage, striving to break the spirit and memory of the city. Little was left of it, all those spirits and lives that had walked in the shaded streets, or sung love songs on the balconies under a starry desert night- they had been consumed. The power that had crushed bone to ash and stolen the lives of the thousands and the ten thousands of citizens had taken the memories, too. Sitting there, cold and alone on the height of the city, she knew its purpose, this power. It intended that no one would remember her city, or the vibrant people who had lived in it. It thought, in its malignant power, that no one remained, that there was no one to sing the tale of her city. It thought it had killed Palmyra and torn out its heart.
Zoe's face darkened, and a little wind sprang up around her, swirling first this way and then that. Her fingers, dark and thin in the desert sun, made a mark in the air, and it hung there shimmering softly for a moment. I remember, she thought grimly, and I will remind the whole of the world that the city still lives.
Below her, on the long boulevard, a movement caught her eye. Her head turned, canting like a hunting hawk, and she peered down from her perch high on the ruin of the palace hill.
A man was in the city, walking carefully among the bones, leading three camels.
Thin streams of dust fell from the cracked rubble above, filtering down through slanting beams of sunlight. Three stories below the level of the street, Odenathus picked his way carefully across a mountain of paving stones. Below, in the darkness, he could hear water falling into some kind of pool. The sound, magnified by the curving walls, made him terribly thirsty. He negotiated a fallen lead drainage pipe and found himself on a set of steps that emerged from the debris. Heartened by this, he made his way down.
At the bottom, a pool of green water spilled over a section of tessellated floor. Dolphins, mermaids, and high-backed ships cavorted on a pale blue surface. Letters marked out with small black chips of stone spelled the name of a notable merchant house of the city. Odenathus paused at the edge of the floor, looking for a way around to the wall beyond where he could see a bent pipe sticking out, spilling a tiny stream of water. The tumble of stones on either side seemed precarious, though. No matter, he grumbled to himself, you've gotten your boots wet before! He stepped out onto the mosaic floor, still moving carefully. A stone rattled past from above and splashed into the water. He looked up. Something dark blotted out the light coming from above. He threw up his arm and was smashed down by a heavy weight.
"Roman pig," someone snarled above him in the sudden darkness. " Water-thief!"
Odenathus went down hard, feeling tesserae crack under his back. The weight on his chest squirmed, and he felt a knee drive into his stomach. He gasped and tried to roll to one side. The assailant clipped him on the side of the head with a fist, but got more floor than flesh.
"Ay! Bastard!" the voice squeaked in pain. Odenathus shoved up, catching something that felt like an elbow. He tore at the rough fabric around his head and snagged a finger on a leather strap. The cloth ripped, and he rolled again, suddenly losing the weight. He threw the bristly cloth away. He was soaking wet.
A man in ragged clothing stood over him, wiping water out of his face. Odenathus scrambled up to his feet, though the footing on the wet floor was treacherous. The man scuttled back, fumbling at his belt for some kind of knife. Odenathus slid forward, keeping his boots to the floor, and grabbed the man's shirt. The old stained fabric tore in his fingers. The man twisted away, snarling. "Hands off, Roman pig!"