The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World (Novels of Ancient Rome) by Steven Saylor

Author:Steven Saylor [Saylor, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-06-05T06:00:00+00:00

VII

STYX AND STONES

(The Walls and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon)

“In Babylon, we shall see not one, but two of the great Wonders of the World,” said Antipater. “Or at least, we shall see what remains of them.”

We had spent the night at a dusty little inn beside the Euphrates River. Antipater had been quiet and grumpy from the moment he got out of bed that morning—travel is hard on old men—but as we drew closer to Babylon, traveling south on the ancient road that ran alongside the river, his spirits rose and little by little he became more animated.

The innkeeper had told us that the ancient city was not more than a few hours distant, even accounting for the slow progress of the asses we were riding, and all morning a smudge that suggested a city had loomed ahead of us on the low horizon, very gradually growing more pronounced. The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and for miles around is absolutely flat, without even low hills to break the view. On such a vast, featureless plain, you might think that you could see forever, but the ripples of heat that rose from the earth distorted the view, so that objects near and far took on an uncertain, even uncanny appearance. A distant tower turned out to be a palm tree. A pile of strangely motionless—dead?—bodies suddenly resolved into a heap of gravel, apparently put there by whoever maintained the road.

For over an hour I tried to make sense of a party approaching us on the road. The shimmering heat waves by turns appeared to magnify the group, then make them grow smaller, then disappear altogether, then reappear. At first I thought it was a company of armed men, for I thought I saw sunlight glinting on their weapons. Then I decided I was seeing nothing more than a single man on horseback, perhaps wearing a helmet or some other piece of armor that reflected a bluish gleam. Then the person, or persons, or whatever it was that approached us, vanished in the blink of an eye, and I felt a shiver, wondering if we were about to encounter a company of phantoms.

At last we met our fellow travelers on the road. The party turned out to consist of several armed guards and two small carts pulled by asses and piled high with stacks of bricks, but not bricks of any sort I had seen before. These were large and variously shaped, most about a foot square, and covered on the outward-facing sides with a dazzling glaze, some yellow, some blue, some mixed. They were not newly made—uneven edges and bits of adhering mortar indicated they had been chiseled free from some existing structure—but except for a bit of dust, the colored glazes glimmered with a jewel-like brightness.

Antipater grew very excited. “Can it be?” he muttered. “Bricks from the fabled walls of Babylon!”

The old poet awkwardly dismounted and shuffled toward the nearest cart, where he reached out to touch one of the bricks, running his fingertips over the shimmering blue glaze.

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