by Paul Kearney
H E was able to stand. Hardly aware of Avila’s urgent enquiries on the other side of the wall, Albrec straightened and held up his lamp.
The room—for such it was—was high-ceilinged. Like the catacombs he had just left, its walls were solid rock. But this chamber had not been carved by the hand of man. There were stalactites spearing down from the roof and the walls were uneven, rough. It was not a room but a cave, Albrec realized with a shock. A subterranean cavern which had been discovered by men untold centuries ago and which at some time in more recent history had been blocked off.
The walls were covered with paintings.
Some were savage and primitive, depicting animals Albrec had heard of but never seen: marmorills with curving tusks and gimlet eyes, unicorns with squat horns and wolves, some of which ran on four legs, some on two.
The paintings were crude but powerful, the flowing lines which delineated the animals drawn with smooth confidence. There was a naturalism about them which was totally at odds with the stylized illustrations in most modern-day manuscripts. In the flickering lamplight one might almost think they were moving, coursing along the walls in packs and herds and following long-lost migrations.
All this Albrec took in at a glance. What claimed his attention almost at once, however, was something different. A shape jumped out of the shadows at him and he almost dropped his lamp, then made the Sign of the Saint at his breast.
A statue, man high, standing at the far wall.
It was of a wolf-headed man, his arms raised, his beast’s mouth agape. Behind him on the stone of the wall a pentagram within a circle had been etched and painted so that the lamplight threw it into vivid relief. Before the statue was a small altar, the surface of which had a deep groove cut in it. The stone of the altar was discoloured, stained as if by ancient, unforgivable sins.
There was a rattle of loose stone which made Albrec utter a squeak of fear, and then Avila was in the room brushing dust from his habit and looking both stern and amazed.
“Saint’s blood, Albrec, why wouldn’t you answer me?” And then: “Holy Father of us all! What is this?”
“A chapel,” Albrec said, his voice as hoarse as a frog’s.
“What?”
“A place of worship, Avila. Men paid homage here once, in some dark, lost time.”
Avila was studying the hideous statue, holding his lamp close to its snarling muzzle.
“Old stonework, this. Crude. Which of the old gods might this one be, Albrec? It’s not the Horned One, at any rate.”
“I’m not sure if it was meant to be a god, but sacrifices were made here. Look at the altar.”
“Blood, yes. Hell’s teeth, Albrec, what about this?” And Avila produced from his habit the pentagram dagger they had found in their last visit to the catacombs.
“A sacrificial knife, probably. What made you bring it with you?”
Avila made a wry face. “To tell the truth I intended to lose it down here again. I don’t want it anywhere near me.”
“It might be important.”
“It’s more likely to be mischievous. And can you imagine me trying to explain it to the house Justiciar if it were found?”
“All right then.” Albrec swung the lamp around to regard the other, darker corners of the cave. “We’re forgetting what we came here for. Help me look for more of the document, Avila, and throw that thing away if you have to.”
Avila tossed the dagger aside and helped Albrec sift through the rubbish which littered the floor of the cave. It seemed as if someone had tossed half the contents of a library down here a century ago and left it to rot. Their feet rested on the remains of manuscripts, and a jetsam of decaying vellum was piled against the walls like a tidemark. They knelt in it and brought the remnants to their noses, squinting at the faded and torn lettering in the light of the lamps.
“It’s dry in here, or these would have been mushrooms long since,” Avila said, discarding a page. “Strange—the wall beyond is damp, you said so yourself. What happened here, Albrec? What are these things, and why is this unholy chapel here in the bowels of Charibon?”
Albrec shrugged. “Men have lived on this site for thousands of years, rebuilding on the ruins of the settlements which went before them. It may be that this cave was nearer the surface once.”
They found sections of texts written in the Merduk tongue with its graceful lettering and lack of illuminations. One group of pages had diagrams upon them which seemed to outline the courses of the stars. Another bore a line drawing of a human body, flayed so that the muscles and veins below the skin might be seen. The two monks made the Sign of the Saint as they stared at it.
“Heretical texts,” Avila said. “Astrology, witchery. Now I know why they were walled up in here.”
But Albrec was shaking his head. “Knowledge, Avila. They sealed up knowledge in here. They decided on behalf of all men what they might and might not know, and they destroyed anything which they disagreed with.”
“Who are ‘they,’ Albrec?”
“Your brethren, my friend. The Inceptines.”
“Maybe they acted for the best.”
“Maybe. We will never know because the knowledge they destroyed is lost for ever. We will never be able to judge for ourselves.”
“Not everyone is as learned as you, Albrec. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing in the hands of the ignorant.”
Albrec smiled. “You sound like one of the monsignors, Avila.”
Avila scowled. “You cannot change the way the world works, Albrec. No one man can. You can only do as you are told and make the best of it.”
“I wonder if Ramusio would have agreed with that.”
“And how many would-be Ramusios do you think they have sent to the pyre in the last five hundred years?” Avila said. “Striving to change the world seems to me to be a sure way of shortening one’s tenure of it.”
Albrec chuckled, then stiffened. “Avila! I think I have it!”
“Let me see.”
Albrec was holding a few ragged pages, bound together by the remains of their cloth backing.
“The writing is the same, and the layout. And here’s the title page!”
“Well? What does it say?”
Albrec paused, and finally spoke in a low, reverent voice. “ ‘A true and faithful account of the life of the Blessed Saint Ramusio, as told by one who was his companion and his disciple from the earliest of days.’ ”
“Quite a title,” Avila grunted. “But who wrote it?”
“It’s by Honorius of Neyr, Avila. Saint Honorius.”
“What? Like The Book of Honorius?”
“The very same. The man who inspired the Friar Mendicant Order, a founding father of the Church.”
“Founding father of hallucinations,” Avila muttered.
Albrec tucked the pages away in his habit. “Whatever. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got what we came for.”
They rose to their feet, brushing the detritus of the cave from their knees, and as they did there was a rattle of stone. They turned as one, the lamplight leaping in their hands, to find Brother Commodius appearing through the hole in the wall which led back to the catacombs.
The Senior Librarian dusted himself down much as Avila and Albrec had done whilst the pair stared at him in horror. The mattock they had left outside dangled from one of his huge hands. He smiled.
“We are well met, Albrec. And I see you have brought the beautiful Avila with you too. What joy.”
“Brother, we—we were just—”
“No need, Albrec. We are beyond explanations. You have overreached yourself.”
“We’ve done nothing wrong, Commodius,” Avila said hotly. “No one is forbidden to come down here. You can’t touch us.”
“Be quiet, you young fool,” Commodius snapped in return. “You understand nothing. Albrec does, though—don’t you, my friend?” Commodius’ face was hideous in its humour, the mien of a satisfied gargoyle, his ears seemingly too long to be rea
l and his eyes reflecting the lamplight like those of a dog.
Albrec blinked as though trying to clear the dust from his eyes. Something in him seemed to calm, to accept the situation.
“You knew this was here,” he said. “You’ve always known.”
“Yes, I have always known, as have all the Senior Librarians, all the custodians of this place. We pass down the information as we do the keys of the doors. In time, Albrec, it might have been passed on to you.”
“Why would I want it?”
“Don’t be obtuse with me, Albrec. Do you think this is the only secret chamber in these levels? There are scores of them, and mouldering away in the dark and the silence is the vanished knowledge of a dead age, lost generations of accumulated lore deemed too harmful or heretical or dangerous for men to know. How would you like to have that at your fingertips, Albrec?”
The little monk wet his dry lips. “Why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
“Why are you so afraid of knowledge?”
The mattock twitched in Commodius’ fist. “Power, Brother. Power lies in knowledge, but also in ignorance. The Inceptines control the world with the information they know and that which they withhold. You cannot give mankind the freedom to know anything it wants; that is the merest anarchy. Take that document you found down here, the one you have hidden so inadequately in your cell along with the other heretical books you have been concealing: your pitiful attempt to save a kernel from the cleansing fire.”
Albrec was as white as a winding sheet. “You know of it too?”
“I have read others like it, all of which I have had destroyed. Why else do you think there are no contemporary accounts of the Saint’s life extant today? In that one document resides greater power than in any king. The old pages you discovered hold within them the ability to overturn our world. That will not happen. At least, not yet.”
“But it’s the truth,” Albrec cried, almost weeping. “We are men of God. It is our duty—”
“Our duty is to the Church and its shepherdship of mankind. What do you think men would do if they discovered that Ahrimuz and Ramusio were one and the same? Or that Ramusio was not assumed into heaven, but was last seen riding a mule into oblivion? The Church would be riven to its very foundations. The basic tenets of our belief would be questioned. Men might begin to doubt the existence of God Himself.”
“You’ve told us why you are going to do what you are about to do, Commodius,” Avila said with the drawl of the nobleman. “Perhaps now you’ll be good enough to do it without wearying our ears further.”
Commodius gazed at the tall Inceptine, as haughty as a prince before him. “Ah, Avila, you are always the aristocrat, are you not? Whereas I am merely the son of a tanner, as humbly born as Albrec there despite my black robe. How you would have graced our order. But it was not to be.”
“What do you mean?” Albrec asked, and the tremor was back in his voice, fear rising over the grief.
“It’s plain to see what has been happening here. Two clerics become victims of the unnatural urges which sometimes beset those of our calling. One lures the other into black magic, occult ritual”—Commodius gestured to the wolf-headed statue with the mattock—“and there is a falling-out, a fight. The lovers kill each other, their bodies laid out before the unholy altar which poisoned their minds. Not that the bodies will be found for a long time. I mean, who ever comes down here, and who will think to look beyond the rubble of a sealed wall?”
“Columbar knows we have been coming here—” Avila began.
“Alas, Brother Columbar died in his sleep this night, peacefully and in God’s grace, his head resting on the pillow which stopped his breath.”
“I don’t believe you,” Avila said, but his haughtiness was leaking away.
“It is immaterial to me what you choose to believe. You are carrion already, Brother.”
“Take us both then,” Avila said, setting down his lamp as though preparing for battle. “Come, Commodius: are you so doughty that you can kill the pair of us?”
Commodius’ face widened into a grin which seemed to split it in twain and displayed every gleaming tooth in his head.
“I am doughty enough, I promise you.”
The mattock clanked to the floor.
“The world is a strange place, Brothers,” Commodius’ voice said, but it sounded different, as though he were speaking into a glass. “There is more lurking under God’s heaven than you have ever dreamed of, Albrec. I could have made you a glutton of knowledge. I could have sated your appetite and answered every question your mind ever had the wit to pose. It is your loss. And Avila—my sweet Avila—I could have enjoyed you and advanced you. Now it will have to be done a different way. Watch me, children, and experience the last and greatest revelation of all . . .”
Commodius had gone. In his place there loomed the brooding darkness of a great lycanthrope, a bright-eyed werewolf standing in a puddle of Inceptine robes.
“Make your peace with He who made you,” the beast said. “I will show you the very face of God.”
It leapt.
Albrec was shoved out of the way and hit the floor face-first. Avila had thrown himself to one side, scrabbling for the mattock. But the beast was too fast. It caught him in midair, its claws ripping his robe to shreds. A twist of its powerful arms, and Avila was flung across the cave, to strike the wall with a sickening slap of flesh. The werewolf laughed, and turned on Albrec.
“It will be quick, my little colleague, my tireless bookworm.” It grasped Albrec by the neck and lifted him up as though he were made of straw. The vast jaws opened, bathing him in the stink of its breath.
But Avila was there again, his face a broken wound and something gleaming in his fist. He struck at the creature’s back, trying to pierce the thick fur and failing. The beast spun round, dropping Albrec.
The Antillian watched in a daze as the werewolf that was Commodius smashed his friend across the breadth of the chamber once more. His own lamp had been broken and extinguished, and only Avila’s light on the floor illuminated the struggle, making it seem a battle of shadowy titans amid the stalactites of the ceiling.
And kindling a glitter of something lying amid the detritus of the floor.
Albrec scrabbled over and grasped the pentagram dagger in his fist. He heard Avila give a last, despairing shout of defiance and hatred, and then he threw himself on the werewolf’s back.
The creature straightened and the claws came reaching over its shoulders, raking the side of Albrec’s neck. He felt no pain, no fear, only a clinical determination. He stabbed the pentagram dagger deep into the beast, the blade grating on the vertebrae as it shredded muscle and pierced the flesh up to its hilt.
The werewolf’s head snapped back, its skull cracking against Albrec’s own with a force to explode bloody lights in his head and make him release his hold and tumble to the floor like a stringless puppet.
The beast gave an odd, gargling moan. It was Commodius again, shrunken, naked, bewildered, the pentagram hilt of the dagger protruding obscenely from his back.
The Senior Librarian looked at Albrec in disbelief, shaking his head as though circumstances had baffled him, and then he crumpled on top of Albrec, a dead weight which crushed the air out of the little monk’s lungs. Albrec passed out.
EIGHTEEN
T HE blizzard struck as they were crossing the mountain divide. The pass disappeared in minutes and the world became a blank whiteness, featureless as a steamed-up window.
The column halted in confusion and the men fought to erect their crude canvas tents in the hammering wind. A numbing, aching time of struggle and pain, the fingers becoming blue and swollen as the blood inside them slowly crystallized, ice crackling in the nostrils and solidifying in men’s beards. But at last Abeleyn and the remnant of his bodyguard were under shelter of a sort, the canvas cracking thunderously about their ears, the most accomplished fire starters amongst them striving to set light to the damp faggots
they had carried all the way up from the lowlands.
It was a diminished band which accompanied the excommunicate King up into the Hebros. They had left the sailors and the wounded and the weaker of the soldiers behind to be tended by villagers in the foothills, along with an escort of unhurt veterans to guard them, for the folk in this part of the world, though Hebrian, were a hard, rapacious people who could not be trusted to treat helpless men with any charity. So it was with less than fifty men that Abeleyn had started the climb into the mountains that formed the backbone of his kingdom. He was afoot, like his subordinates, for he had put the lady Jemilla on the only horse which survived, and the dozen mules they had commandeered from the lowland villages were burdened with firewood and what meagre supplies they had been able to glean from the sullen population.
They had been eight days on the road. It was the eleventh day of Forgist, the darkest month of the year, and they were still twenty leagues from Abrusio.
T HE lady Jemilla pulled her furs more closely about her and ordered her remaining maidservant to fetch her something to eat from one of the soldiers’ fires. “And none of that accursed salt pork, either, or I’ll have the hide flayed off you.”
She was cold despite the fact that she had the best tent in the company and there was a fire burning by its entrance. She was beginning to regret her insistence that she accompany Abeleyn back to Abrusio, but she had been afraid to let the King out of her sight. She wondered what awaited them in the bawdy old city, which was under the sway of the Knights Militant and the nobles.
She bore Abeleyn’s child—or so it would be believed. Were his attempt to reclaim his kingdom unsuccessful, her life would be forfeit. The present rulers of Hebrion could not allow a bastard heir of the former King to live. In carrying Abeleyn’s issue she harboured her own death warrant within her very flesh.
If he failed.
He would not talk to her! Did he think that she was some empty-headed, high-born courtesan with no thoughts worth thinking beyond the bedroom? She had tried to wheedle information out of him, but he had remained as closed as an oyster.