Nicolaus braced himself for its touch. He discovered that he was crying. His tears froze on his face, and one fell to the ground, shattering as it hit the earth. He bowed his head toward her, giving himself over.

Let her touch him. Let her take away the things he’d seen and done. Let her take his mind and thoughts. Let her take him and all the words he’d clung to.

No, she said, her lips unmoving. You will remember this.

He looked up and was caught, pinned by her silver gaze.

You will remember all of this. You will tell this story. You will write it.

The seiðkona lifted her distaff over her head, and Nicolaus watched it move toward his brow.

As it touched him, his mind broke open, making room for everything it must encompass. He felt his own memories splinter and spin like marbles, rolling to the edges of his consciousness, to be lost there.

The distaff touched him for only an instant, and yet he was no longer only Nicolaus.

He knew. Everything. His mind swelled with it, agonizing, horrifying, filled beyond its capacity, and then filled more. Love and sorrow. Death and despair. Hunger. Bloodshed. Armor being donned and swords being sharpened, children waking from dreams, mothers holding their babies, lionesses hunting for prey. All the stories of the dead. All the stories of the living. All the memories she had taken from them were his to keep. He cried out, pressing his hands to his forehead, feeling his skull splitting open with the contents of the world. There could not be enough room in him for all of this. But there was.

Now his history was the history of millions. He knew everything, and there was no forgetting. He was the one who would remember.

He ran from the battlefield, holding his injured arm, tears running down his face. The skin began to heal as he ran, and he knew she had twined his fate with something else. He knew that he would not die tonight.

He had a purpose yet.

He was the keeper of the history of this day, and of the days before it. He would tell the stories of the serpents and the soldiers, of the gods and of the goddesses. He would tell the story of the queen and of her love, of their children, and of the shades who had come from below the earth.

All of it, all of everything and of everyone, was within him.

He was a historian at last, wholly and utterly.

He would tell the world.

Epilogue

The emperor hobbled through an orchard at the foot of Vesuvius, the wind pressing against his robes, chilling his thin skin, ruffling his sparse hair. Something was familiar to him here. The pattern of the stars against the sky, perhaps, was like a tattoo he’d seen once on a woman’s back. Augustus searched his memory for the details, but it was no use. It was only a fleeting recognition, maybe something he’d dreamt long ago. He laughed quietly, a rasping cough of dark amusement. His mind had become like Oceanus, and all the places he’d once known were drowned in salt sea, peopled with ghosts. He could no longer tell truth from fiction, nor his own recollections from things he’d invented.