She failed to smile back, her attention focused on keeping the crystal glass and heavy gold flatware from toppling onto the floor. He frowned after her, then dismissed her from his mind. There were a thousand more women, each more beautiful than the last, at his disposal. He could choose as he pleased. He picked at the sweet grapes and sliced fruits garnished with sugar and honey that were on the low table before him.

“Bring the map of the world!” The gold mask lent a strange echo to his father’s words. Siroes glanced up, his long dark eyelashes covering his eyes. He sniffed. His father was mounting the steps that led up to the platform of the entertainers. The heavy purple robes had been cast aside, showing the strong shoulders and forearms of the King of Kings. From behind one could see the leather straps that held the gold mask onto the King’s face, that and his thinning hair. Siroes snapped his fingers and a slave, a

Greek by his look, was quick to bring him a fresh goblet of wine.

Chrosoes looked up, his arms akimbo.

Above him, the ceiling descended-a vast disk of mosaic tile. Winches and pulleys groaned in the background and ropes squealed as they slithered through the workings of the apparatus. The center of the room, dominated as it was by the elevation of the platform, was matched in a stair-stepped ceiling with a circular center. Now that center descended and, as it did, it began to swing down until, at last, as it reached the level of the floor, it stood vertical, a great round disk thirty feet high. Above, the ceiling was revealed to house a hidden chamber filled with ropes and chains and diverse mechanisms. On the face of the disk, illuminated by many candles and lanterns that the other servants had quietly rushed forward to install, was a map of the entirety of the world, picked out in tens of thousands of tiny colored tesserae.

The great map was centered, as was held proper by the Lord of Light and man, upon the city of Ctesiphon, where the court of the King of Kings now sat. It stretched west to the rim of the known world, the Island of the Dogs on the endless ocean that the Roman named the Atlanticus. South, the wild coasts of Axum and Canoptis were lined with tiny pictures of terrible beasts and strange races of men. East, beyond India to Serica and Sinae, the map faded out into wastelands and jungles. North, high above the head of the King of Kings, the vast steppes of Scythia and the Hunnic lands ended in endless forest and snow. But at the center, where Chrosoes stood and spread his hands wide, the thousand cities, towns, and fortresses of Persia were carefully laid out.

“We stand on the verge of victory,” the Great King proclaimed. “The Roman enemy has been defeated again and again. Our armies stand within sight of his capital. Our allies besiege his walls. The great Prince Shahin and the Lord Rhazates will soon sweep the coast of the Levant and seize Egypt from him. Without the grain of Egypt, Rome and Constantinople will starve.“

A servant in the pale-tan robes of a scribe mounted the steps with a long pointing staff in his hands. He went to stand behind the Great King. Chrosoes paused, his hidden eyes sweeping the assembled generals, viziers, and Princes. His gaze paused for a moment on Siroes, who looked up guiltily from where he had been nibbling at a slice of candied meat. The Prince flushed, meeting the stern eyes of his father. The Great King’s attention passed on and Siroes slumped back in his seat, relieved. What can he want of me? The Prince was constantly confused by the expectations of his remote and forbidding father.

“The harvest has been gathered, noble lords, and the enemy has at last moved against us. Recent reports from Shahr-Baraz at Chalcedon…” The servant raised the pointer to indicate the shore opposite the Roman city of Constantinople in the upper left quadrant of the map, where the Sea of Darkness and the Mare Aegeaum met in a narrow strait. “… indicate that the army of the thrice-defeated Emperor Heraclius, he who will be my vile and insensate slave, has departed with a fleet to the north, to cross the Sea of Darkness to land, doubtless, at the city of Trabzon.” The servant moved the pointer east, along the long coast of northern Pontus to the eastern end of the Sea of Darkness.

“From this place the Roman dog can slink south through the mountains to attack us from the north. The Boar, most beloved of my generals, has already marched his Immortals east to the new city of Tauris on the lake of Matian.” Now the pointer moved to the southeast, to where a lake had been depicted in blue and white, amid high mountains. A tiny symbol stood on the eastern shore, a city with red walls and domes. “Any advance of the Romans east from Trabzon must force a passage through Tauris. The Boar and his army wait for them.”

“There are rumors that a Roman army has landed at Tar sus on the plain of Cilicia.“ The servant scurried to the left, moving the pointer to a bay on the eastern end of the Mare Internum, north of the Roman-held island of Cyprus. ”My spies in the capital of the enemy suggest that this is a small army of Western Romans, led by the Emperor Martius Galen Atreus.“

Chrosoes stopped, a bubbling chuckle escaping his lips and then thundering from the roof as he threw his head back in great humor and howled with laughter.

“Two Emperors will attend me,” he shouted, “and be my slaves! There will be no ransom for them; they will live at my side, sightless, tongueless, for a hundred years! When they die, they will be decorations of the court. Embalmed by the finest craftsmen, their bodies shall be stuffed with spices and salt. They will bow before the throne of the King of Kings for all time! So shall all traitors and kin murderers be treated.”

In his couch, Siroes shrank from his father’s outburst. The King of Kings had been more and more given to fearsome display of late, leading his son to sequester himself more and more in his private chambers.

He is insane, Siroes thought mournfully. My father is mad. How can I love someone who has become inhuman?

“I see your eyes, I know that you are afraid! We have never held Rome so close to utter defeat. Never, even under the glorious reign of my ancestors, have we been poised to recapture everything, everything that the cursed Greek took from us! Three armies stand against us, but they are small, and weak, and widely separated. We have every advantage and will crush them each, one by one, and line the boulevards of my city with a forest of Roman skulls!”

Chrosoes paused and the echo of his shouting died in the high alcoves of the great room. The generals and viziers gathered before the platform stirred, their robes rustling. The Great King looked down upon them, and they were silent and looked away. Siroes looked up again, afraid, as his father’s gaze settled to rest upon him at last.

“Great King,” the Prince mumbled as he struggled to stand up. His knees were watery and he clutched at the heavy velvet of the couch arm. “O King of Kings, how… how will we defeat them? Only… only two of our armies are in the field. The Boar is far to the north, while Shahin is far to the south. If this Emperor Galen strikes from An-tioch against the capital, there will be no one to stand against him.”

The King of Kings, the light of the torches glinting off his golden face, gravely descended the steps of the platform! The nobles and viziers drew away from him silently, leaving a clear aisle to the figure of the Prince, who trembled slightly as he stood by the couch. Chrosoes stopped before his son and looked down upon him. Siroes felt pale and weak compared to the mighty figure of his father. Chrosoes was taller by a hand, and his shoulders were broad and his arms corded with muscle. Only the pale glimmer of his mask detracted from his physical presence. In his youth, his face had matched his clean-lined body. Now unwinking eyes stared down at the Prince.