The Divining

     "My mother is the only family I have ever known," Ulrika said, picturing a Galician villa filled with children. "We never had a home, we were always on the move because of her personal quest. We came to Rome seven years ago, but it has never felt like home to me. I have never really known where I belong. I had thought perhaps here ..." She sighed. "It must be nice to have an ancestral home, to know that blood relations are still there, that you can always go back someday."

     "Someday . . ." Sebastianus said as he stared into the fire. That was theproblem. Sebastianus Gallus was a man who wanted to walk two streets at the same time: he wanted to remain unmarried and free to explore the world, open new trade routes. But he also yearned to go home, settle down, marry, and have a family. He could not do both, and so he traveled his exotic trade routes with a divided heart.

     "My next journey, the gods willing," he said, "will be to China. If Emperor Claudius will grant me the imperial diploma." And if, he added silently, I can find a way to distinguish myself over Badru, Gaspar, Adon, and Sahir.

     Sebastianus had been on his way to meet with Gaius Vatinius, to inform the general of the location of the hidden rebel camp, when he had been stopped by a stab of conscience. Although the information he carried to the Roman commander was priceless beyond measure, and would surely guarantee the granting of the diploma to him by Claudius, Sebastianus had suddenly thought: the insurgents might be this girl's family. And he could not betray her. She trusted him, had placed herself in his care, and Sebastianus always prided himself on being an honorable man. So he had turned back, deciding that he must earn the diploma by other means.

     "Can you not go to China without one?" she asked. "Do merchants not travel that route already?"

     "No merchants from Rome have ever gone as far as China. The route is long and fraught with danger. Caravans are constantly being attacked by brigands and mountain tribes. A diploma from the imperial court at Rome guarantees some degree of safety, but only as far as Persia. Beyond that, little is known about that fabled far-off land."

     Hoot! Hoot!

     Ulrika turned to the entrance, her eyes widening.

     Sebastianus stirred the fire. "It is but an owl," he said quietly. Or, he thought, it is a secret signal. And he imagined the Barbarians using the cover of night to plan their assault on the cave. He kept his sword close.

     Ulrika turned then to peer into the darkness at the back of the cave. "What is it?" he asked.

     "I thought I heard ..."

     "There is nothing there," he said, looking into the black abyss beyond the fire's glow and feeling the dark forest at his back with its myriad sounds and whisperings.

     Ulrika slowly rose, her body stiff as she leaned toward the darkness.

     Sebastianus reached out, touched her arm, to reassure her. She gave a cry and whipped about. "It's only me," he said.

     Ulrika's eyes went to the scallop shell that lay on his chest, a cream-colored mollusk with fluted ribs and a wavy outer edge. "What does it mean?" she asked as she sat down.

     Sebastianus looked down at the shell suspended on a leather cord and said, "There is an ancient altar near my town. No one knows who built it or when, or to which god it was originally dedicated. Since the arrival of the Romans, someone has carved the word 'Jupiter' into the stone, but I believe the altar was originally dedicated to a goddess because it is decorated with hundreds of scallop shells which, as everyone knows, is the symbol sacred to the goddesses Ishtar and Mari. For many years pilgrims came from all over, each adding a scallop shell. In this way the altar became large and beautiful."

     Sebastianus was proud that he was a descendant of the distant ancestress who had built the altar. In fact, he had taken his scallop shell directly from the altar instead of collecting it at the shore as others did. The shell around his neck was very old and might possibly be one of the originals placed there by his ancestress herself, and so it carried great power.

     "Unfortunately," he added wistfully, "the highways to the remote altar became rife with brigands who set upon the unarmed pilgrims. Visits are sparse now. I fear the altar might someday be forgotten."

     "It means a lot to you?" Ulrika asked.

     He gave this some thought, weighing his answer. "I was praying there one night, ten years ago, and ..." He hesitated.

     Lucius, she thought, holding him with her eyes.

     The flames crackled and snapped. The darkness of the forest hovered at the cave's entrance, a constant reminder of the dangers beyond. Behind her, Ulrika felt the darkness of the cave's belly, empty and hungry. She saw how the fire brought out the bronze highlights in Sebastianus's hair.

     "Ten years ago," he said quietly, his green eyes reflecting the light as he relived a memory, "I was to accompany a shipment of wine to Cypress with a fleet of our merchant ships. My brother Lucius was to take a local caravan in Hispania. But he knew of my desire to go to China, that I had recently come into possession of new maps to the East, that I needed to study them,plan my route, meet with traders who had recently come from kingdoms that lie on the road to China. And so Lucius offered to change places with me. Our father would not have approved, but he was in Rome at the time, and would not have known of the switch. So Lucius accompanied the ships to Cypress. He perished during a storm at sea."

     He touched the gold bracelet on his wrist. "I was at the scallop-shell altar," he said, "the night a shower of stars fell from the sky. A river of debris covered the countryside, mostly bits of ice and rock no bigger than a grain of sand, but that night, as the star-shower streaked the sky, I saw a star fall to earth, and I ran out into the hills to find it." He touched the small, gray stone on his gold bracelet. "The crust was hot at first, but it cooled, and I kept it as a trophy, an actual fragment of a star."

     His face darkened, his gaze going inward as he said, "And then the letter came, informing me of Lucius's death, and when the author of the letter specified the exact date—the tenth day of that month named for Julius Caesar—and I realized it was the same day on which I had found the star-stone, I knew it was a sign from my brother. But I also realized that I had sent my brother to a death that should have been my own, and so I made a vow that day, on the sacred scallop shell, never to remove this bracelet, in memory of my brother."

     "I'm sorry," Ulrika said. "That is a sad story." She suddenly sat up. "Did you hear that?"

     "Hear what?"

     Ulrika listened. Beyond the cave's entrance, the forest stood in complete darkness, with not even moon glow to relieve the night. She turned and looked toward the back of the cave, also plunged in darkness. "We are not alone," she whispered. "Someone is in here."

     Sebastianus shook his head. "It is impossible. There is no other entrance."

     "There is someone at the back of the cave. I'm sure of it."

     Wrapping a dried vine around the end of a stick to form a torch, Sebastianus rose and walked toward the back of the cave, Ulrika following. But the light illuminated only cold, stone walls and an earthen floor, with a ceiling so low they had to lower their heads. When they reached the end, they found no exit, no way for an intruder to get inside.