Krista almost laughed aloud at seeing him as an excited child, showing off the muddy frog he had found by the bank of some stream.

"But what is possible- if we can find the crux, the anchor, the focus of this thing- is to destroy it utterly. Somewhere in the old Imperial archives there must be a record of the first working that made this thing possible. We will find it. The tomes of the old priests contained many secrets, and one of them is perfect for what I intend."

Krista raised a long, rich eyebrow at the confidence in his voice.

Maxian stopped for a moment, nonplussed, then pressed on. "Yes, I see your expression- such a look you give me! No, my love, listen: These things we know- that in the time of the first emperor, Octavian, the words and intent of the legionary oath of allegiance were changed. That new text, imbued with some tiny spark of power, bound each legionnaire to the service of the state- not to flee in battle, not to allow ruin or corruption or disaster. A small thing, in its beginning, a tiny pebble thrown into an empty field.

"But time passes. Thousands and then tens of thousands of legionnaires take this Oath- fighting and dying to expand and protect the Empire of Rome. With each one, another pebble is added to the pile in the field. Some of those who take the Oath have the power themselves, and the strength of that original spark gets a little hotter. Too, the Oath and the regulations of service bind the sons of a legionnaire as well, and the Oath passes to them as well, carried in blood and bone from father to son. Generation after generation, it becomes stronger and stronger.

"The pebble becomes a mountain, a very monolith of stones."

Maxian paused. The Engine was beginning to drop through the clouds, and he pulled his woolen cloak- a heavy black fabric that the dead Alais had woven for him- around them both. Freezing rain spattered around them, pilling on the surface of the Engine and flipping away into the slipstream. The sun vanished, swallowed by black clouds, and they rushed through a huge corridor of cloud and smoke. The crack of lightning echoed loud around them as the Engine continued to drop through the storm.

The thunderheads lit up, burning with white-hot light as a trail of lightning hissed past. The Engine continued to speed downward, lashed by rain and lit by staccato bursts of incandescence. Krista turned her head away from a bright flare that danced along the wingtip of the Engine. She felt Maxian's body tremble in response to the enormous boom that followed.

Then there was clear air, and above them a massive ceiling of cloud. Rain continued to fall, but the Engine swerved to the left and suddenly they were flying beside a falling curtain of water. Below them, as the Engine banked again, they could see a gray sea and terraced fields rising up the sides of a huge cone-shaped mountain. White beaches fringed a great bay, and the colored sails of ships could be picked out among the waves. Krista stared in awe, seeing the tiny tracery of roads and towns rush by below. Puffy white clouds fringed the top of the mountain, where a bowl-shaped valley lay nestled at the very summit.

"This is the thing," Maxian continued, his voice fuzzy for a moment, "that we call the curse- the thing that I had thought was a plague, or a contagion. This is the thing that murders in the night, that kills the artist and the innovator. This is the thing that saps the life from every Roman child, leaving them pale and scrawny. It hides in their blood, an invisible guest at every table and in every wedding bed."

Anger, bitter and abiding, began to show in his voice. At her ribs, Krista felt his fist clench.

"It kills our future each day- how many advances might our philosophy have made without the bony hand waiting in the darkness to pluck away our best minds? Those jewelers- what they had made would benefit every man, every woman, every child in the Empire! But they, all unknowing, proposed to change the fabric of the Empire- a crime worthy of death for this invisible judge."

"If," Krista said, summoning some strength in the face of the fate that hung over her as well, "it is so pervasive, how can it be driven out? You would have to bend your will upon every person who lives in the Empire- there are millions!"

"Yes- that is what I had thought. But the works of the priests of fire have taught me well- even old Abdmachus had an inkling of what must be done when he offered me a lever to move the world."

Krista sneaked a look up at the Prince's face, but saw no feeling was there for the little Persian sorcerer who had joined him when these investigations had first begun. Now the funny old man was one of those in the Engine below who lived only by the will of the Prince. His soft laugh and fondness for plums and pears was dead, like his flesh, though he still moved and spoke- at least when questioned. Unlike Gaius or Alexandros, he did not revel in his «new» life, but rather sat quietly in the darkness, his pale eyes shining in the gloom.

"The mountain cannot be destroyed," Maxian continued, heedless of the sadness on Krista's face, "not one pebble at a time- but it can be moved. I believe that at the root there is a focus or an anchor upon which the entire structure of the Oath depends. Like: like the arch of a bridge, with a keystone that locks the edifice into place. This is the thing that we must discover- we must know its nature. Once I have that, then I can shatter it, and the whole Oath will unravel. With Alexandros, the power to my hand is a hundred times what it was before- if we can find the last piece, the puzzle is unlocked."

"And," Krista said slowly and carefully, mindful of being in a flying machine two thousand feet above the earth, "what if Gaius' theory is correct? What will you do then?"

Maxian stiffened and his fists clenched around her hands. Krista breathed slowly out, willing the sharp pain in her wrists to go away. The Prince sat in thought for a moment, and the young woman continued to breathe evenly, though the pain was inching toward agony.

"No: " The Prince shifted in his seat and let go of her hands. "I do not think he is right. He has no schooling in these matters- he makes a guess, trying to push me to his desired course of action. He has no proof of this, only a feeling."

Krista smiled a little, hearing fear in Maxian's voice. She weighed her options and, seeing the bleak look in his eyes, decided to set the issue aside.

The rain fell away behind them, afflicting the vacationers at Baiae and Neapolis, and the Engine soared over the close-set fields of Latium on a cool spring day. The Prince unwrapped himself from the young woman and returned to the hot, crowded decks below to instruct the Engine as to their landing place. Krista remained above, slowly kneading some feeling back into her hands and wrists. With Maxian gone, her expression settled into a deep frown. She needed to talk to someone about all of this, and soon. The Prince was preparing to embark on some very dubious efforts and could well lose his own life as well as that of countless others.

"But there is just me," she said aloud, to the speeding air. "Just one pretty, dark-haired slave girl with no friends to speak of."

There was a sharp pain in her chest, almost matching that of her wrists. Memories of other times with the Prince threatened to surface, but she held them away with an effort of will. She smoothed her cloak instead, and carefully checked the bronze tube strapped to the inside of her left arm, testing the point of the steel rod that rode inside it. The blood that had come from the eye socket of that fat cow Alais had been carefully scrubbed off after she had retrieved the dart. Touching it now, the slim sharp rod still tingled with the power that the Prince had put into it so long before. Satisfied that the spring was still stiff and the thumb-ring was just a little loose, she checked the rest of her garments- the long, thin knife at her side was secure, the length of wire-cord string nestled at her waist. The familiar routine helped settle her mind.