Tales of Cthulhu Invictus

by Brian M Sammons

  “It was not Titus, but a new man, Zoninus. He had a job lot of Hispanics he wanted to get rid of.”

  She decided to pay a visit to the slave market. “Return Iberius to the store once I have seen which of my poultices work best. I don’t want such a savage near my son.”

  Iberius scrambled to his feet, screamed gibberish at Helvia, then spat. A small shiny pebble shot from his mouth and rolled near her feet. She took a second look and realized it was a tiny, glazed pottery toad. It gave her a start but she kept her cool, and did not recoil. Iberius’ eyes glittered with malicious triumph. She had seen the same look in Servia’s eyes. She was sure of it. She crushed the toad beneath her sandal. “Put the dust in a bowl, mix it with wine, and make him drink it,” she said.

  As she returned to the foyer, she passed Lucretius playing with his nurse in the garden. Lucretius laughed when he saw her, and held up his arms to be embraced. She picked him up and kissed him on the top of his head. She greedily inhaled the clean, sweet scent of her son, olive oil, honey and cumin. A great gust of love welled up from within. She kissed him a second time and reluctantly set him down again. She wanted to visit the slave markets today. The afternoon was drawing on and as a respectable matron she couldn’t be on the streets after dark.

  The slave markets were behind the Forum and the Basilica of Julius. The auctions always drew a lively crowd but Helvia viewed the drama from her litter with a distracted eye. Titus saw her coming and hurried over to welcome her. He was a large, solid man with a booming voice and a square face and a black beard. He ushered her into a curtained alcove at the back of his booth, while a favored slave brought dates and figs. She let him chat about the state of trade for a while before she introduced the real object of her visit. What had he heard of these cheap Iberians?

  Titus’ genial face darkened into a scowl. “Cheaper than a Sardinian,” he grumbled. Zoninus was a newcomer, and in Titus’ opinion a fly-by-nighter. He didn’t even worship at a proper Roman temple but at some new Iberian cult by the Public Baths near the Forum. This gimmick of selling slaves cheap was a trick. Titus thought the slaves were sick and Zoninus would collect his profits then skip Rome before they died. Half the patrician families of Rome had been at that booth getting their cheap slaves, putting a dent in the profits of loyal traders like himself. When she asked if she could see Zoninus, Titus parted a curtain at the back of his booth and pointed him out.

  Zoninus sat in his own curtained booth. He was a dark-headed man, like Titus, but his bulk was all fat. Helvia shuddered and looked away. The man’s face was disfigured by a birthmark. It was puffy and shiny, patterned blue and black.

  “Did Scipio Carvillius get one of these cheap slaves?” she asked.

  “The old skinflint was one of the first. But it didn’t work. The slave was returned a week ago. I urge you to return yours before Zoninus skips town.”

  Helvia thanked Titus and left. It disturbed her that one of the Iberian slaves had been at Carvillia’s house, too. She noticed a small, raw-looking temple squatting by the wall of the Public Baths, and ordered her litter to halt. Two short, sallow foreigners rose from the steps as she got out.

  “I want to talk to your priest,” she said.

  They looked at her blankly, then spoke. In Hispanic. She strode up the stairs.

  One of the men followed her into the temple precincts and gestured for her to wait. He ran through the dark entrance into the inner precincts. She had leisure to look around her. The temple was new and crude. The walls of the outer precincts were whitewashed but had no frescoes, and there were no statues or offerings. It was a place of stark light and deep shadows. Several snakes sunned themselves in patches of sunlight. The temple of the Good Goddess also had pet snakes. They were symbols of protection and regeneration. Although Helvia had never been here before she couldn’t shake off a puzzled feeling that the layout was deeply familiar.

  A scream made her jump until she identified the sound of an animal in pain. She relaxed. It was only a sacrifice.

  A tall woman wearing long robes slid from the dark entrance. She had a haughty foreign face and wore glittering earrings and a necklace of jet beads. The robes covered her feet, and gave the impression that she was gliding. She bowed her head, sinuously, as she approached. “To what do we owe the honor of your visit?” she asked, speaking Latin with a thick accent.

  The wait had given Helvia time to think of a reason. “This is the new Hispanic cult?” she inquired.

  “Yes,” the affirmation was a hiss.

  “I was just wondering which one,” Helvia said, innocently. “My husband wrote to me from Iberia of several fertility cults which he found fascinating.”

  The animal scream went on and on and on. The sacrifice was no short one.

  “You are interested in our gods?” the priestess’ eyes widened into dark pools.

  “I obey my husband,” Helvia said.

  “Come. I will show you.” The priestess plucked a torch from the walls and glided into the dark entrance, which led into a maze of small rooms.

  As Helvia followed she at last pinpointed the source of the persistent feeling of familiarity. With the identification came a sharp spurt of indignation. The temple was laid out, on a much smaller scale, in an identical manner to the temple of the Good Goddess on Aventine Hill. Why it was a deliberate desecration. Blasphemy! It was filthy, for a start. Mud and blood were tracked all over the floor. Besides, in the temple of the Good Goddess the small rooms were dispensaries, places of healing. In this black maze each room was in darkness until the priestess’s torch lit it. In each tiny, suffocating chamber an animal was being sacrificed—dogs and cats, then cows and goats, and in the innermost, sows and horses. The sight of the animals made Helvia nauseous; they were part flayed, eviscerated, crippled, yet kept alive in a most abominable manner. She gulped and stopped, trying not to be sick.

  The priestess’ eyes glittered with dark, malicious humor. She knew what ailed Helvia. “These sacrifices are for the glory of our god, the great Not-to-Be-Named,” she said.

  “That’s—fascinating,” Helvia managed. A snake slithered past. Startled she saw it was no harmless python but a hooded Egyptian cobra. “Look out, it is venomous,” she gasped.

  “Ah, the pet, he will not harm me,” the priestess said fondly.

  As Helvia watched the snake she saw a peculiar track along the floor, a pattern of pock-marks in the mud as if left by the fringe of a shawl. The pattern was unmistakable. How could Servia, the crippled slave, have crept all the way here? She recovered her composure. The priestess was watching her intently. “How interesting,” Helvia murmured.

  “So your husband wrote to you from Iberia?” the priestess said. “Then perhaps you understand. If a people have been invaded, conquered and enslaved don’t they have the right to use any weapon they have to wage war on their oppressor, even terror?”

  This nonsense restored Helvia to herself. “We brought civilization to the Iberian savages. You should kiss the hems of our togas,” she said.

  They had stopped by the dark door to the inner sanctum. A damp, earthy draft came from the door. A muffled drumming came from below, then suddenly a shrill scream. Helvia jumped. It was an animal. It must be an animal. Yet it sounded human.

  “You have seen enough, I think,” the priestess said.

  Helvia agreed. She returned to her litter, and measured the distance from the Iberian temple to Carvillia’s house. Her confidence wavered. There was no way a cripple could crawl that far without being trampled into the muck. The marks in the temple must be the tracks of a snake.

  The next morning she dispatched Thallus to the libraries. “Look for any reference to an Iberian god called the great Not-to-Be-Named,” she said. She sent a letter to Carvillia, asking after her Iberian slave. Then Felix reported that Iberius had caught fever.

  Helvia rose, exasperated by the slave’s obstinacy. “Fetch the longest tooth of a black dog,” she ordered.

  Iberius’s face
shone with sweat, and his eyes were sunken. Helvia checked her poultices. She was pleased to see that the wounds under the cobwebs were healing, while those under the boar’s dung were suppurating. Her experiment was a success.

  Felix fixed the dog’s tooth on a chain around Iberius’ neck. That brought Iberius round. He muttered something that sounded like sense. Helvia leaned close to hear. “To you, great Not-to-Be-Named,” he muttered, disjointedly. He opened his eyes, malicious triumph shining in his gaze. He spat.

  Helvia stepped swiftly back as a small shiny object shot from his mouth and rolled near her feet. She thought it was another pottery frog until it uncoiled itself, pallid and glistening, and spread out two toad-feet. She did not hesitate. She squashed it flat. Blood spurted beneath her sandal. She scooped the remains into a cup then added wine. “Drink your own curse, you foul Iberian dog.” She poured the crushed toad straight back down his throat again.

  Iberius screamed, a long low animal whine. His eyes glazed, and he convulsed. Bloody froth ran from his lips as he bit his tongue. Then his body contorted and stiffened. Black and green markings appeared on his skin in diamond patterns, then the skin broke. Foul black blood spurted around the diamonds. He writhed and died like a crushed snake.

  Thallus returned in the afternoon. He had found a reference to the great Not-to-Be-Named in a military records office. It was a god worshipped by wild hill tribes of the Pyrenees near the town of Pompelo. Several centuries ago, a provincial quaestor called Lucius Caelius Rufus had filed a report on them. Rufus called the hill tribes the Miri Nigri, the Strange Dark Folk, and said the local Celtiberians feared them. The Miri Nigri spoke a language that no Roman, Celtiberian, nor Gaul could understand. That sounded like Iberius all right. They were rebellious and Rufus led the 5th cohort of the XIIth Legion against them. The record ended abruptly on the eve of the last day of October.

  “Caelius Rufus was a civil official. We can find out all about him,” Helvia said, impatiently, sending Thallus straight back out again, this time to the Tabularium, the official records office near the Forum Romanum. “You’ll be there and back before nightfall, if you run.”

  As Thallus left, a slave arrived with a letter from Carvillia which said her Iberian slave had been returned to the dealer after he was caught talking to Servia. Helvia shuddered. She wondered if one of those poisonous toads, placed among the fruit, could be mistaken for a fig.

  She was inattentive during the morning salutio, and forgot several of her clients’ names. Afterwards, she dictated a report on the new Iberian cult, that the so-called Iberian slaves were the Miri Nigri, part of a rebellious plot by Zoninus and his priestess. The slaves were sent into households to find weak points. In Carvillia’s house they discovered Servia. Helvia was proud of herself. There were no weak points in her house. Iberius had been reduced to creeping around to spy on a sleeping child. She waited impatiently for Thallus to return. The afternoon wore on. At last she could endure no more. She ordered her litter and returned to slave market, determined to talk to Zoninus.

  Titus met her with raised hands. “Too late,” he boomed. “The snake has fled.” Zoninus’ stall was empty, his stock gone. Titus thought he was already halfway back to Iberia.

  She had one other trail to follow. She headed for the Public Baths near the Forum, and left her litter in the courtyard. She walked through the baths, past the gymnasia, libraries and shops, and into the public lavatory at the back. The lavatory, she calculated, shared a wall with the Iberian temple.

  The latrine was paved in marble and ornamented with a statue of Hygeia. It was roofed but there was a gap between the roof and the top of the walls, to air the chamber. The walls were too high to climb but the statue provided convenient hand-holds. The gap at the top was wide enough for a nimble woman to crawl through. Praising Galen for his ball exercises, Helvia climbed the statue. From the top of the wall she looked down into a dirty, deserted courtyard. Several snakes lay sleeping in the sun.

  There was no handy statue or vine to climb down. Making a mental note of the location of the snakes, she lowered herself over the wall and dropped. She sprawled backwards, rolled over on her stomach and came to an abrupt halt. A cobra reared before, his hood extended. She had missed him by a hands-width. “Praise Hygeia!” she gasped.

  She lay still until the snake lowered his hood. Then she rose, slowly, crossed the courtyard and peered through the doorway into the temple. She hurried into the dark, anxious to leave the snake behind, and headed towards the inner sanctum. She had no doubt what to do next. The city magistrate could not act on reports of animal sacrifice, however cruel. The cult would argue they were sacred mysteries. But if she uncovered evidence of human sacrifice he would be forced to act.

  She stole along the dark passageways, expecting with every footfall to find a snake. Pitiful cries came from the mutilated beasts left to die in the dark. Then she heard footsteps ahead. She whisked aside into one of the rooms. A torch flared. She glimpsed a familiar face; the mottled features of Zoninus. He had not fled Rome after all.

  A faint twittering sounded around her, and the air was filled with fluttering. In the torchlight she saw that larks were pinioned to the walls by their wings. Their breasts were flayed so she could see their tiny hearts beat. Zoninus passed by. The torchlight faded. She slipped out of the room with a shudder.

  She reached the inner sanctum at last. The air was foul, the chamber dark, and the only sound was from below: the monotonous distant rhythm of the drums and screams. For the first time she hesitated. “I am not going to be scared by this pack of jackals,” she told herself. But she could not take one step inside. Bona Dea! This sanctum held a perversion of all that was good and great and holy. Such vile mysteries should not be lightly disturbed.

  Torchlight shone from around the corner. Someone was coming. She overcame her reluctance and hurried into the sanctum. An indistinct mass moved and rustled on the left-hand wall. She wondered what animal was being tortured, but whatever it was made no sound.

  A strong draft came from the far side of the sanctum, where deeper darkness pooled—stairs leading down. From below came the maddening sound of drums and screams, and a new sound of rushing water. She remembered the great Cloaca Maximus sewer ran below. The Forum baths fed their wastewater into it. Then the torchlight came nearer. She heard the voice of the priestess.

  On the right hand wall stood a statue, a huge, rough toad-like lump. She whisked herself behind it and flattened herself against the stone. It was cold and slimy and unpleasant. She was just in time. The priestess came in talking to someone, thankfully in Latin.

  “All Praise the great Not-to-Be-Named for our success,” the priestess chanted.

  “All praise!” echoed another voice—which Helvia recognized.

  Helvia peered around the statue. The priestess stood alone, hands raised before the mass on the wall. Helvia saw with fright and disgust that it was a writhing curtain of snakes.

  “All praise,” the voice said again. “They threw me out as rubbish. They threw out the murderer without a thought.”

  At last Helvia realized the direction of the sound. She looked down.

  Servia lay coiled on the ground. She moved into the sanctum on her shoulders and ribs, her arms clapped flat to her side and her head raised. Her body moved with sinuous grace, inhuman, boneless and fluid. She reached the far side but the wall did not stop her. She simply wound her way upwards. Halfway up she turned her head one-eighty degrees to watch the priestess.

  Helvia flattened herself behind the statue again.

  The priestess started chanting, in the same gibberish that Iberius had spoken. The writhing curtain of snakes parted.

  Helvia abruptly realized she could not stay here one more moment. There was a darkness in the sanctum that was animate and implacable. Her sanity would not survive. With a detached medical eye she noticed the first proof she was losing her senses, as the clammy stone of the statue stirred.

  Servia and the priestess wer
e intent on their devotions. Helvia crept from the room without looking at what they worshipped. She fled through the maze of torture without heeding where she trod. She slipped out the entrance, and thankfully gulped the sane, smoky, fishy air of Rome. She returned to the baths, flung herself into her litter and thrust the curtains closed. “Home!”

  Thallus waited for her in the foyer. His news was grim. Caelius Rufus’s expedition against the Miri Nigri was a debacle. The entire cohort, three hundred men, were massacred. Lucius Caelius Rufus perished with them.

  This was what she needed, proof that the Miri Nigri were dangerous. She finished her report, and her fright receded as she reviewed her results. She had not uncovered evidence of human sacrifice but she had uncovered something equally damning: black magic. She added a letter and signed it Marius, then went straight to the wife of the city magistrate.

  There the matter rested for a few days. Helvia held her salutio and attended a lavish dinner. She ordered Lucretius sets of carved ivory letters in Latin and Greek, so he could learn his alphabet by playing with them. Then a bewildered Uncle Marius received a letter from the city magistrate. Helvia soothed him, and read the letter. It promised swift action. At her next salutio she heard the result. The Iberian slaves were rounded up and executed. Zoninus’ shop was sealed. The Iberian temple was shut. She heard nothing of Servia, Zoninus or the priestess but the news sounded final enough.

  Helvia gave thanks at the temple of Hygeia, then visited Carvillia. As she entered the house she stepped into the shabby family dining room. This time she looked up. Imprinted in the soot on the ceiling was the final, irrefutable proof: the pockmarks of Servia’s shawl. She shuddered at the horrible dark vision of Servia creeping across the ceiling and spitting the murderous toad into her master’s meal.

  Helvia sat down with Carvillia, and broke the news of the murderer. “Savage usage drove Servia mad so she sought vengeance with black magic,” she explained.

  Carvillia’s soft, pretty features collapsed. “But I threw her out with the rest of the rubbish,” she wailed.