“The wind had returned to him for the first time in days, bringing an ice storm to his chamber, and news that the plague had traveled still farther, that Sekhmet gloried at the edge of the sky, and now his mind was filled with his own responsibilities. He threw open Augustus’s door and found the emperor dozing in his chair, clearly drunk. Augustus sat up, startled but not on guard, and Usem snorted with disgust. The man was no warrior. He was scarcely a man. Even as Usem looked at him, Augustus ...drank another draft of his potion, the theriac. The smell of the potion put the Psylli off. It smelled like witchcraft, like Chrysate’s influence. “There is a plague,” Usem said. “It has broken out in the villages surrounding Rome, from one end of the country to the other, even to Sicily.” “I have no help for plague,” Augustus scoffed. “You are the sorcerer, not I, and to cure a plague requires magic. It must run its course and kill whom it will. The countryside has always been vulnerable.”MoreLessRead More Read Less
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