Last Seen in Massilia Read Free

Remus suckled the she-wolf, or so the Massilians claim.”
    “Are you saying a Greek sculpted this? I can hardly believe that.”
    “Sculpt? Did I say sculpt? Nobody made that thing. It fell from the sky, trailing fire and smoke—so the Massilians say. Their priests declared it was Artemis. Well, if you look at it from a certain angle you can sort of see…” He shook his head. “Anyway, Artemis is who the Massilians worship above all the other gods. And this is the Artemis that belongs to them alone. They carve wooden copies of that thing, miniatures, and keep them in their houses, just like a Roman might keep a statue of Hermes or Apollo.”
    Peering at the thing on the pedestal, tilting my head, I discerned a form that might possibly be perceived as female. I could see pendulous breasts—several more than two—and a swollen belly. There was no refinement, no artifice. The image was crude, basic, primal. “How do you know all this?” I asked.
    The soldier puffed out his chest. “We know, my comrade Marcus and me, because we two are stationed to guard this place. While the siege is on, our job is to keep this temple and the surrounding grovesafe from bandits and looters—though what anybody would take I can’t imagine, and you can see for yourself how the Massilians have let the place go to ruin. But once the siege is over, Caesar doesn’t want Pompey or anybody else to be able to say he was disrespectful of the local shrines and temples. Caesar honors all the gods—even rocks that fall from the sky.”
    I peered at the soldier’s ugly face. “You’re an impious fellow, aren’t you?”
    He grinned. “I pray when I need to. To Mars before a battle. To Venus when I throw the dice. Otherwise, I don’t imagine the gods take much notice of me.”
    I dared to touch the thing on the pedestal. It was made of dark, mottled stone, shiny and impermeable in some places and in other places riddled with fine pores. Riding through the valley, I had seen phantom shapes, illusions of light and shadow, but none had been as strange as this.
    “It has a name, that sky rock,” offered the soldier. “But you have to be a Greek to be able to pronounce it. Impossible for a Roman—”
    “Xoanon.” The voice came from somewhere within the temple. The strange word—if word it was, and not a cough or a sneeze—boomed and echoed in the small space. The soldiers were as startled as I was. They clutched their helmets, rolled their eyes, and rattled their swords.
    A cowled figure stepped from the shadows. He must have been there when Davus and I entered, but in the dimness we both had failed to see him.
    He spoke in a gruff, hoarse whisper. “The skystone is called a xoanon , and xoanon is what the Massilians call the images of Artemis they carve from wood.”
    The soldiers exhibited sudden relief. “Only you!” said the one who did the talking. “I thought—I didn’t know what to think! You gave us a start.”
    “Who are you?” I asked. The man’s face was hidden by the cowl. “Are you the priest of this temple?”
    “Priest?” The soldier laughed. “Whoever saw a priest dressed in such rags?” The cowled figure, without answering, stepped past himand out the door. The soldier pointed to his head and made a gesture to indicate that the man was mad. He lowered his voice. “We nicknamed him ‘Rabidus.’ Not that the fellow’s dangerous, just not right in the head.”
    “Does he live here?”
    “Who can say? Showed up in camp not long after Caesar began the siege. Word came down from on high that we were to leave him alone. Comes and goes as he pleases. Disappears for a while, then pops up again. A soothsayer, they call him, though he doesn’t say much. As strange as they come, but harmless as far as I can tell.”
    “Is he Massilian?”
    “Could be. Or could be a Gaul. Or a Roman, for all I know; speaks Latin. He certainly knows a thing or two about local matters, as you’ve just seen demonstrated. What’s