Vulcan's Fury: The Dark Lands Read Free Page A

deploying with the legions,” she told Paulus. “But I’m trapped by the status of my birth, just as much as any slave.”  
    Pelonius looked at her, his outward expression unchanged, but disappointment reflecting clearly in his eyes. He had been born into slavery, and after many years of servitude had been granted his freedom by her father, who had at last come to the conclusion that while animals such as horses and oxen were given by the gods for men to use as they would, other men were not. From that day on, the Emperor was served only by free men and women. But granting Pelonius and the other palace slaves their freedom had ignited a political war with the Senate that was still being waged, and it was yet unclear if the Emperor would emerge the victor.  
    “Forgive me, Pelonius,” she said bowing her head in shame. “That was a thoughtless thing for me to say.”
    “You need not ask forgiveness, princess,” the old scribe told her, reaching out with a hand to gently raise her chin so their eyes could meet, “for there is truth in what you say. You were born into a gilded cage, just as I was born into one of rusty iron. Neither of us were then free to choose our destiny.” He held his arms out as if embracing the world. “But look at me now. I am free of my cage and I am in the service of the Emperor himself as a free man, his personal scribe and tutor to his daughter and ward.” Taking gentle hold of her shoulders, he said, “You are in your gilded cage now, child. But someday you will work open the door and make your own flight to freedom, wherever it may lead you. But until then,” he said, dropping his voice, “remember that your cage is of gold, that you sleep in a soft bed with every comfort, and not in the filth of a slaver’s pen, your back lashed with a whip.”
    “Yes, Pelonius,” she whispered. Last year he had taken her, with a doubled guard, of course, to tour the slave market as part of her education. “You cannot truly be Roman until you understand the darker side of what that means,” he had told her. He had not just shown her the auction pits, which was all that most people saw. He had taken her to see the pens and cages where the slaves were kept before they were sold to their new masters, the flogging posts where they were tortured, and the hellish ships that brought many of them to the capital. It had been a horrifying experience, and since that day she had prayed for her father’s success in his battle to abolish it.  
    Pelonius, as if reading her mind, smiled, the bright white of his teeth gleaming against the deep black of his skin. “Come now, let us go see your father about these mysterious goings-on in Aquitania.”

CHAPTER TWO

    Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus, Emperor of Rome, stood alone in his private study. While the throne room (such was it still called, even though no king had ruled Rome for centuries) and most of the other chambers here in the palace were festooned with columns, statues, and tapestries befitting the grandeur of his office, his study was spartan, the furnishings comfortable but utilitarian. This one room reflected the soul of a soldier, one who had risen to the highest rank over a long and glorious military career that had finally led him here. On one wall hung a great map of the known world that occupied his attention, and for a moment he imagined his distant predecessors doing just the same, reflecting upon the past while considering the opportunities and perils of the future.  
    Of course, their maps of the world, drawn before Vulcan’s Fury had been unleashed, would have been far different from his own. If the historians could be believed, at least three thousand years had passed since the God of Fire’s great hammer had struck from the heavens to cleanse and reshape the Earth. The old Roman Empire had been completely destroyed, along with Greece, Egypt, and the other ancient civilizations nurtured by the Mediterranean Sea, and everything