Anno Mortis Page 12

  "A scarab," Vali said. "Born spontaneously from the dung in which it lives. The Egyptians believe it's a messenger of reincarnation."

  He rolled the scroll on, and Narcissus was glad when the creature was lost to sight. The next image was of a lizard, its long strong body emerging from a river. A mouth full of razor-sharp teeth grinned out of the page.

  Vali frowned. "Crocodile. The Nile is infested with them. They're said to guard the gateway to the underworld."

  "Really?" Narcissus tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. "Crocodiles like those ones, you mean?"

  They were at the far end of the room, another fifty paces on. The marble they'd been carved from was the same mottled green as a living creature's skin, and as Narcissus approached he got a true sense of the scale of them. Their heads, filled with the same brutal teeth as their picture, were at the same height as his. Their eyes glittered black in the light of the torches.

  They stood face to face against the wall, a gap wide enough to admit two men between them. But there was nothing there, just blank white marble. No entrance, and this time no hidden keyhole either.

  Vali moved to join him, rolling The Book of the Dead back into a cylinder and tucking it beneath his tunic. "You think this is a doorway?" he said.

  It seemed absurd to be so certain, but Narcissus was. "Everything we know so far links back to The Book of the Dead. Wouldn't it make sense if this did too? And -" he looked around the vast room "- where else do you think the sailors could have gone?"

  Vali shrugged. "I was only guessing that we'd find them here."

  "It was a good guess," Narcissus insisted. The floor was plain marble, a scuffed white, but he checked every inch of it for a trapdoor anyway. There was nothing. And the wall between the crocodile statues was a total blank. He clenched his fist in frustration.

  "Maybe it only opens from the inside," Vali suggested. "A way to stop unwanted intruders."

  "Yes," Narcissus said. "But then how does anyone on the outside let them know they want to get in?"

  Vali shook his head, but Narcissus knew the answer to his own question. He raised his fist and knocked on the wall between the two statues.

  The sound rang loud and musical, as if a gong had been stuck. Narcissus flinched and backed away from the wall. But the sound went on and on, ringing through the whole room. Then, as abruptly as it had started, the ringing stopped.

  At first, the line that appeared in the plaster between the statues was barely visible. Then, gradually, it widened and darkened until it was clearly the outline of a door. A polished gold handle protruded from the wall where no handle had been before.

  Narcissus froze, afraid now to finish what he'd begun. Vali looked at him a long moment, then shrugged, reached forward and turned the handle.

  The door swung silently open. Ice-cold air wafted out, raising goosebumps on Narcissus's bare arms. There was a noise inside, too quiet to place. Was it the murmuring of water, or voices? And were those skittering footsteps human or something else?

  "You were right," Vali said.

  Narcissus nodded, but he wished he hadn't been. Everything in him rebelled at the thought of stepping through that doorway. He thought suddenly of the ancient ferryman on the river of his dream. This library room was nothing like that bleak cavern, but he sensed a kinship between them he couldn't explain.

  Anything could be waiting beyond those doors. And the jackal-headed sailors who'd tortured him didn't seem like the most frightening possibility.

  "Do you want me to go first?" Vali asked.

  It was the hint of pity in his voice which spurred Narcissus to find his courage. "No," he said. "Side by side."

  Vali nodded and they stepped forward together, between the watchful black eyes of the crocodiles.

  The moment their feet crossed the threshold, all four eyes blinked.

  Petronius found himself squeezed between Seneca's large, silent slave and another man with darker skin and an even more forbidding face. Each held one of his hands tight behind his back, where the other cultists couldn't see. He was sure if he tried to protest he'd be silenced, maybe even removed. Better to keep quiet and stay and hope desperately that he'd have one final opportunity to rescue Boda.

  She'd been moved again. They'd tied her arms and legs to a light metal frame, then hung it from the ceiling above the bandage-wrapped body. He'd seen a similar arrangement at the Temple of Mithras once. Only then it had been a bull, hung above the worshippers so that when its throat was slit they could bathe in its blood. The thought brought a sour lump of bile into his throat.

  At least the ceremony preceding the sacrifice seemed to be a long one. Long and dull as most religious observances were. The priestess Sopdet officiated as the corpses surrounded her, swaying in time to her atonal chanting.

  Some of the cultists had joined the chant, eyes shut in either ecstasy or boredom. The sound reverberated from the walls and echoed back, low and distorted.

  Seneca knelt in front of Sopdet, head lowered and hands raised, a curved bone dagger resting on top of them. He was shaking, but Petronius thought it was with excitement, not fear.

  Boda was shaking too, rattling the frame from which she hung. Her eyes were wide and her pupils huge. They'd made her drink something before the ceremony began, holding her nose until she swallowed. Petronius thought it might have been an hallucinogenic. Maybe that was better. If his life had been about to end this way, he'd have preferred to be out of his head while it happened.

  Without warning, the chanting stopped. The circle of corpses shuffled back until they surrounded not just Sopdet but the stone altar and Boda's body above it. The priestess moved to each of them in turn, daubing a spot of red on their brows and chests. Petronius thought it might be her own blood.

  When the circle was complete she returned to Seneca and took the bone knife from his hands. Her eyes caught Petronius's for one second. Then she raised the knife and walked towards Boda.

  For things so large, the marble crocodiles moved with lightning speed. Narcissus heard stone rasping against stone as their jaws snapped just behind his ear, and he tucked his head down and fled.

  Vali ran at his side, though he sensed that the other man could have outpaced him if he'd chosen. A vague gratitude floated somewhere in his mind, subsumed by the overriding panic. His muscles burned with the poison of over-exertion. Today felt like one endless flight, and he was losing the energy for it. After a while, he'd discovered, even abject fear becomes boring. He longed for an end to it - even if it cost him his life.

  He didn't have time to examine the place they were fleeing through. But he caught flashes of it from the corner of his eye, mismatched and baffling.

  The first time he looked, he thought he saw sand, a vast undulating sea of it glittering white in the moonlight. But he blinked and looked again and no, they were inside as he'd thought. Though that marble pillar, twined with vine leaves, seemed to stretch too high to fit anywhere inside the library.

  A left turn down a corridor that somehow was also a woodland path, and the crocodiles were still behind them. Their breath was pure and odourless as no living beasts' would have been. Sometimes Narcissus felt them far above him, as if they'd grown since he'd last seen them. Other times they were low to the ground, snapping at his heels.

  Only the sound of their claws remained constant, nails scratching across marble.

  There were other noises here, too. That murmuring might have been the river they ran beside now, though when the water disappeared the sound remained. It was growing louder, and Narcissus began to think he could make out words. He strained to hear them, but they remained elusive, like a half-remembered song.

  He could feel himself slowing. It wouldn't be long before he could run no further. He decided that he'd turn and face the creatures. He might buy Vali some time, and it would be the closest to a dignified death he could contrive.

  He braced himself, ready to surrender. They seemed to be indoors again, running down a
mosaic-lined corridor that might actually be hidden beneath the Library of Alexandria. But in the moment before he stopped and turned, he saw something else - something that didn't belong.

  It lay fifty paces ahead of him, a perfect circle of rock, its rim carved with hieroglyphs, and a milling crowd of people visible through its centre. But when Narcissus looked to either side of the ring there was nothing but bare rock. It was a doorway in space.

  Hope filled Narcissus with energy. He pushed leaden legs for one last burst and saw that Vali was doing the same beside him. The crocodiles fell a little behind, the harsh susurration of their breath like the sound of wind across rock.

  When they were ten paces away, Narcissus could see what lay through the round portal. It was another chamber, a cave by the look of it, deep underground. Figures wrapped in bandages circled a woman holding a knife. And there was another woman, hung upside down above a stone altar.

  Narcissus realised with a sick shock that he was watching a human sacrifice. He flung himself at the portal, not sure if he was trying to save the woman or himself.

  The air between this place and that was as hard as stone. He bounced from it, face already swelling where he'd struck. Vali grabbed him as he tumbled, arresting his fall before it took him into the mouths of the waiting crocodiles. The other man's face was grim.

  There was nothing to stop the animated statues now. They slowed, as if taking the time to relish their victory, and the nearest yawned wide, displaying every glistening tooth in its long mouth. There was a thick black tongue inside, and then the darkness of its throat.

  It was big enough to swallow them whole. Narcissus supposed he should be grateful. It would be better than being torn apart piece by piece.

  But there was something else behind the crocodiles, something that made even them pause. It seemed to float in the air, a suggestion of a face that might almost have been a trick of the light. As it came nearer it grew more substantial, resolving into the form of a young woman with pale hair and something trailing from her back that might have been wings. She screamed soundlessly as she approached.

  "Grab hold of it!" Vali said.

  Narcissus didn't know why he obeyed. The spirit horrified him. But he found his arm clutching at one of hers. Her skin was clammy and cold but he held fast and then he was being dragged after her, towards the portal.

  Boda sensed that the ceremony was over. Her head felt so light she wondered if it might float away. She could see Petronius, helpless between two full-grown slaves. She knew he would have helped her if he could.

  Then Sopdet stepped closer, bone knife raised. The blade shone white, but Boda could see flecks of red on its edge from the last time it had been used. It was sharp, at least. Her blood would drain quickly and then she'd know nothing.

  The priestess's eyes locked with hers. There was no more fellow feeling in them than Boda felt for her father's cattle. She was just a beast to this woman. Boda turned her gaze on the cultists instead. Let them see the light die in her eyes and know whose life they'd taken.

  There was a collective indrawn breath from the crowd, a poised moment as the knife hung at the apex of its arc - and then the breath turned to screaming as something entirely unexpected happened.

  The air behind the priestess shifted and changed. Where Boda had seen Seneca behind her, still on his knees, now she saw two other men, standing somewhere else. She realised with a jolt that one of them was Vali. The other was young and thin-faced and looked as terrified as she felt.

  There was something between them, too insubstantial to make out, though the two men seemed to have hold of it.

  The men knocked Sopdet to the floor as they fell through air and on to the sacrificial slab, squashing Josephus's body beneath them. And behind them came something else, lizard-like creatures larger than any Boda had ever seen.

  The cultists were already fleeing, but Boda was unable to escape, and she hung right in their path.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  At the last minute, the great beast turned its head, and snapped its jaws at Sopdet. The priestess scrambled back. She didn't look so elegant now, with her mouth stretched tight with fear and her dress torn where the crocodile's teeth had caught it.

  Petronius heard somebody whimper and was rather surprised to discover it wasn't him. He saw the faces of the slaves holding him, frozen in fear, then they released his arms and fled. Seneca fell to the floor beside him, huddled into a ball. The keychain hanging from a belt at his waist jangled as he shook. Petronius snatched it, kicking Seneca when the old man tried to stop him. It felt good.

  The two men still lying on the altar grunted when he trod on them. He ignored them, fumbling through the keys as he tried to find the one which would unlock Boda's chains. The crocodiles glared balefully at him. Their scales scraped across the floor as they slunk nearer. Most of the cultists had fled, but the living corpses remained. They too were closing in, blank white faces watching what he did.

  To his surprise, one of the men on the altar - the red-haired barbarian - rose to help him. "I think it's this one," he said, picking out the slenderest key. He was right. The lock clicked open and Boda tumbled from her chains, bowling Petronius and the other two men to the floor beneath her. The giant crocodiles' jaws snapped shut on empty air.

  Behind them Petronius saw Sopdet. She still held the bone knife in her right hand and there was murder in her eyes. The circle of corpses closed around them.

  Boda flung herself at the nearest with a roar of rage, but she staggered as she moved, weakened and disoriented by her hours chained. The corpse fell back a step, then steadied. Its arms closed around her and she let out a choked gasped as the breath was squeezed out of her.

  But she'd had the right idea. Petronius closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see what he was doing and flung himself forward. His strength was greater than hers and both Boda and the corpse fell to the floor beneath him. A hideous green fluid oozed between the bandages but its arms fell away and Boda was free.

  They ran. The others followed, though Petronius was no sort of leader. He had no idea of the route out of the crypt, and even if he had, he wouldn't have been able to follow it. At every turning, bandage-wrapped corpses or fear-crazed cultists loomed to block their way. And within a minute they were running in darkness. Petronius hadn't thought to grab a torch as he fled and nor, it seemed, had any of the others.

  He could hear them behind him, breath panting as hard as his own. But one false step and they'd be lost to him. He reached back and grabbed a hand. Thin and damp, it probably belonged to the younger of the two men who had somehow saved Boda's life. Petronius pulled and after a moment's resistance the man's hand tightened on his and he followed after.

  Running was impossible in the darkness. When Petronius tried it he rebounded hard from a wall he hadn't seen, then tripped over a shelf in the rock beneath his feet. After that he slowed, sliding his feet forward and holding out his left hand to feel the way. The catacombs were huge and he knew that he could wander them this way for hours or days, until he died of hunger and thirst in the never-ending night. He tried not to think about that, or about the fact that his groping hand sometimes touched bone rather than stone.

  At least, moving slowly and near silently, they stood some chance of hearing their pursuers before they stumbled over them. For a while the voices were all around them, crying out in fear and sometimes screaming. There was a softer, darker sound too, of stone scraping against stone. Petronius thought it might be the crocodiles that had fallen through the gateway to nowhere along with the two men. He knew that the creatures weren't flesh and blood. He was choosing not to think about that, either.

  After an unmeasured time, words floated forward out of the darkness. "Head upwards. That's bound to take us out of here." There was the trace of a harsh, foreign accent in the voice. It must belong to the barbarian.

  "What a brilliant idea," Petronius hissed irritably. "Obviously, that hadn't occurred to me."

  "No, h
e's right," another voice said, the second stranger. "There's a slope to the floor, I can feel it."

  "You lead the way then, if you think you can do better."

  Petronius hadn't meant it seriously, but after a moment he felt the other man fumbling along his arm, pressing close as he inched along his body to overtake him. For a moment the man's breath was in Petronius's face, hot and moist, then his other hand was clasped and pulled as the man started moving forward again. For a moment Petronius's trailing hand was empty, then another reached forward to take it. It was harder and more callused but small and fine-boned.

  "Boda?" Petronius said.

  He heard her breath huff out in what might have been a laugh. "I should have listened to you back at the baths," she said.

  "And miss out on all the fun?" the barbarian said behind her. Unlike them, he wasn't whispering, and his voice echoed too loud through the tunnel. Petronius cringed and kept his peace, hoping that none of their many pursuers had heard.

  The minutes stretched on, but gradually Petronius realised that the man leading them had been right. They were going up. Around them, the tunnel was broadening, changing the quality of sound so that their footsteps seemed to ring a little louder while their breath faded into nothing. Petronius remembered the wider tunnels near the entrance and felt a relief so intense it left him faint.

  Soon a glimmer of light seeped in. It must be night still, and moonless, but after the absolute darkness of the catacombs the faintest illumination shone bright. Twenty more paces and they were out, the sky spread broad and star-speckled above them.

  Though Petronius would have lingered to enjoy the freedom, the barbarian hurried them on. "We don't know how close behind they are," he said. But after a few more minutes he stopped and looked around. "Where are we, anyway?"

  The question was directed at Boda but she shook her head. Petronius guessed that she'd been unconscious or blindfolded when they brought her to the catacombs. "The walls of Rome lie that way," he told the barbarian. "No more than fifteen minutes' walk."