“Is that possible?” Caesarion asked, trying not to betray the interest in his voice.
“To destroy the Trident itself, yes,” Jacob said.
“It’s only wood and metal, after all,” Hannah agreed. “It is fashioned from the hands of men. He did damage it heavily. But mortal hands cannot unmake the Shard itself, the black stone that actually gives it its power.”
“What happened then?” Didymus asked, the look on his face reminding Caesarion of an anxious cat awaiting its meal. Caesarion imagined the scholar’s glee as he incorporated each new piece of information into his already encyclopedic mind.
“Too late to preserve the Trident itself, we still had to protect the Shard,” Jacob said. “The guardians split up, with half the family removing the Second Shard from the Temple and fleeing Jerusalem with it.”
“How did it get into the hands of this man Juba?” Didymus asked. “Where was it taken?”
“It traveled first to Babylon, though what happened to it next we do not know. We could not maintain contact with them long.”
“Your half of the family stayed with the Ark.”
In response, Jacob lifted from his shirt a thin silver chain. Hanging upon the necklace was a delicate pendant showing the symbol of a triangle, point down within a perfect circle bisected by a line across its bottom third. “We are the keepers of the Ark,” he said.
One by one, the other figures in the room lifted silver chains from around their necks, too, all revealing the same pendant. Hannah was last. “All of us,” she said. “And from that day to this we have not failed. From Jerusalem to Elephantine in the time of Manasseh, from Elephantine to Kush in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, and from Kush to here in the time of Alexander, we have kept the Ark safe. We have not failed. And we will not fail now.”
“With our help,” Caesarion said.
Hannah smiled, and Caesarion’s breath caught at the sight. “Yes,” she said.
“In the land of Kush, just beyond the borders of Egypt,” Didymus muttered. He caught Hannah’s eye and raised an eyebrow. “That’s not far from the land of Sheba.”
As before, it was Jacob who nodded and answered. “The Ark was safe there for almost two hundred years.”
Didymus made a slight gasp. “Until Alexander the Great invaded Egypt! Of course!”
The others looked at the scholar, whose smile was near to splitting his ecstatic face. “I don’t understand,” Caesarion said.
Didymus blinked for a moment, as if watching the pieces fall into place behind his eyes. “When Alexander came up the Nile, the king and queen of Kush met him with an army.”
“King Nastasen and Queen Sakhmakh,” Jacob said.
“Yes. And for reasons no one has ever understood, the invincible Alexander turned away. He instead came here, to Alexandria, and founded the city.” Didymus paused, as if that was all that needed to be said. He only continued when Caesarion still looked confused. “Don’t you see? Nastasen and Sakhmakh must have had the Ark. Alexander knew he couldn’t win!” Didymus looked back at Jacob for confirmation.
“A true scholar,” the Jew said. “But there’s more to it. The only reason we allowed Nastasen and Sakhmakh to carry the Ark with them to meet Alexander is that we knew he would recognize it for what it was.”
“He’d learned about the Shards?” Caesarion asked. “How?”
“He had one,” Hannah answered.
For a few moments, silence settled over the room. It was finally Pullo who spoke. “The Trident?”
“No,” Jacob replied. “Another entirely. The Aegis of Zeus.”
“Jupiter’s armor?” Vorenus asked.
“That’s right,” Jacob said. “A relatively weak artifact, but useful in that it kept him alive despite wounds that would’ve killed other men—though it did cause certain changes to his personality.”
“Where is it now?” Didymus asked.
“Here,” Hannah said. “In Alexander’s tomb, as it has been since he died. None has known its power, and we’ve never wanted to bring attention to it by moving it.”
“Wait,” Pullo said. “How many Shards are there?”
Jacob shrugged. “We don’t know. At least four.”
Vorenus shivered. From what he’d told them of the Trident in action, Caesarion could imagine why. “Four? What else?”
“The Palladium of Troy,” Jacob said. “It can control wind. It was carried away from Troy by a Greek named Odysseus, though he could not use it. Where it is now we don’t know.”
“So what of the Ark?” Caesarion asked. “That’s why we’re here. It’s the most powerful Shard, right?”
“The most powerful we know about,” Hannah said.
Jacob nodded. “Together with Alexander and the king and queen of Kush, we came to an agreement. Alexander would turn back and not go beyond the borders of Egypt. In return, we would use the Ark to help him realize his dream of creating this city that would bear his name: Alexandria.”
“I don’t understand,” Caesarion said after a moment. “Why would you help him? Surely with the Ark’s power you could have defeated him.”
“Defeating him was never our goal, Pharaoh. We only want to protect the Shard, and Alexander gave us the chance—we thought—to protect it permanently, to cease moving it.”
“Building the new city, you could build a new temple for the Ark,” Didymus spoke quietly.
“Yes,” Hannah said.
Caesarion nodded. “A Third Temple.”
“We built a new home for the Ark in Alexandria,” Jacob said, “and it has rested here, undisturbed, ever since.” He glanced over toward his sister. “From the day it came to Alexandria until this, only one person has had the knowledge of its exact location.”
“So why move it?” Didymus asked. “Wherever it is, surely it is well hidden and will be safe.”
“Octavian’s man found out about the Second Shard,” Jacob said. “Now he searches for the First. You yourselves found out much of the truth, with little effort. Given more time, and Octavian’s resources, it would only be a matter of time until he did the same.”
“And that’s assuming Octavian doesn’t just raze the city,” Caesarion whispered, the vision of Alexandria in flames managing to push Hannah’s image from his mind.
“Yes, but why us?” Vorenus asked. “Why Caesarion?”
Caesarion looked up at the mention of his name, saw that Hannah was staring at him again. “Because only you can help us move it,” she said.
23
THE LIBRARIAN’S CHOICE
ALEXANDRIA, 30 BCE
His mind swirling with too many thoughts, too much new information, Didymus moved away from the main table as the others began discussing their plans to remove the Ark of the Covenant from Alexandria. He sat down at another table, closer to the shadows and the hooded Jewish guards there.
The Ark. The First Shard.
It was here in this temple, Didymus thought. It had to be. The Serapeum had been built by Ptolemy III atop an older acropolis, less than a century after his grandfather, Ptolemy I—Alexander the Great’s finest general and closest friend—had first revealed the existence of the god Serapis, an Osiris-Apis-Hades hybrid that could be equally worshiped by Alexandria’s Egyptian and Greek inhabitants. Even before he knew of the Shards and the fact of the one God, Didymus had suspected that Ptolemy’s divine revelations were nothing more than good administrative policy: a ruler’s job was much easier if those he ruled could all honor the same deity, especially if that deity was one that had supposedly given favor to the ruler. Ptolemy had known that Serapis was a lie. Now Didymus wondered if he knew, too, that the acropolis on which his grandson would ultimately build this temple housed perhaps the most powerful object in creation: the Ark of the Covenant.