The Chamber of Ten

by Christopher Golden; Tim Lebbon

  Ramus poked his head through the last remaining space between the columns, but then withdrew, his eyes replaced by Sabrina’s camera.

  “What do you make of it, Nico?” she asked.

  Nico did not reply. She flashed the beam of her Maglite up to his face and saw that his expression had gone slack. He seemed so entranced that when he spoke, it startled her.

  “Do you hear it?” he asked. “Like there’s electricity in the walls.”

  But Geena heard nothing of the kind.

  “What’s he talking about?” Finch said, appearing just behind Nico, rising up on his toes to try to get a look at what had drawn all of their attention.

  Nico slipped between the columns. Before Geena could speak, he reached out—eyes glazed with fascination—and lifted the jar off of the marble table.

  “What are you—” she began.

  He shook the jar like a child trying to figure out what a gift-wrapped present might contain. That alone might have destroyed whatever was inside.

  Sabrina swore.

  “Nico, no!” Geena cried, pushing between the columns.

  She reached for the jar with her free hand, but never laid a finger on it. Nico went suddenly rigid, eyes wide, and he began to shake as if in seizure. His hands spasmed and both the jar and his flashlight fell, crashing to the stone floor. The jar shattered, shards flying, and Geena caught a glimpse of something gray and damp spilling out.

  Nico’s mind touched hers. It began with that familiar prickle at the back of her neck, but then a spike of pain thrust into her head and she screamed, jerked back, and cracked her skull against a marble column.

  And she saw …

  This very chamber, illuminated by a ring of sconces high on the circular walls. A circle of heavy wooden chairs surrounds the three marble columns at the center of the room—ten, of course. Upon each chair sits a dark-robed man. They are not dressed identically; this is no cult. Some have jackets beneath their robes, checkered in combinations of black, red, tan, or green, while others appear far more severe, even monastic. The robes vary in length and cut, but they are all black, as are the hats the men wear, for none has a bare head.

  One of them speaks in an old Venetian dialect. This is …

  What is that final word? Something like “foolish.” No, not that. “Unwise.”

  She sees not through her own eyes, but the eyes of another. She—he—is standing in the midst of the three stone columns at the center of the chamber, in the shifting pattern that the intrusive candlelight pushes into the shadows around her. She can feel his body, tall and thin and male. Unlike the others, his robe is stylishly slit in various places to reveal crimson cloth beneath and he wears no hat to cover his thick hair. He fixes the man who had spoken with a withering stare.

  This is for Venice, he says. The Doge must be banished. And if you think it unwise, consider your fate should he ever return.

  The one who had questioned his wisdom falls silent. Satisfied, he vanishes back into the shadows of the columns and begins to sing. His voice rises in what might be song, or chant, or ritual. Light begins to radiate from an empty space amongst the columns—in the exact center of the room. It is dim at the start but glows more and more brightly until it obviates the need for candlelight.

  At some signal amidst that song, the Ten draw small identical blades from within their robes. Glancing anxiously at one another, each makes a cut on the palm of his left hand, la sinestra, and then makes a fist, squeezing drops of blood onto the floor.

  The light emanating from within the columns is washed in pink, and then deepens to bloody scarlet.

  The chamber goes dark.

  Geena collapsed, spilling out from between two columns and onto the floor of the round chamber. She blinked away the vision that had filled her mind and the pain that accompanied it. Someone called her name. The light from Sabrina’s camera blinded her and she winced. Closing her eyes tightly, she felt a torrent of images sweep over her—Nico’s blank expression, the stone jar shattering on the floor, the dark-robed men slicing the flesh of their palms, drops of blood falling.

  Feedback, she thought. Nico’s touch made him what, in times gone by, some had referred to as a sensitive. He’d had some kind of psychic—no, “psychometric,” that’s the word—episode. And their rapport, the intimacy of their minds, had caused it to spill over to her.

  Christ, it had hurt.

  “Nico?” she said, starting to rise.

  She spotted her torch, frowning as her ears picked up a new sound in the circular chamber. A trickling of water. That made no sense. The room had been sealed for centuries, dry as a bone, despite the proximity of the Grand Canal and the spongelike foundations of the city.

  But as she reached for her Maglite, her eyes followed its beam to the chamber wall and she saw glistening tracks of water drizzling over the stone. It bubbled from pockets of ancient air.

  “What do we do?” Sabrina asked, sweeping the camera around, trying to get it all on film.

  “Son of a bitch,” Geena whispered, snatching up the light and shining it along the base of the wall. The beam found a chink in the stone where water gushed in, sliding over the floor in a rapidly widening pool.

  Geena?

  It was Nico, but he had not spoken aloud. His voice was in her head. And it was afraid.

  Howard Finch loomed in front of her, a ghost-man with wide, panic-stricken eyes. “What are you waiting for? We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Only then did the real danger occur to her. But by then it was too late.

  A section of wall gave way and the water rushed in.

  II

  FOR A moment as they were frozen in shock, Geena’s gaze settled on Nico. His expression was pale and twisted with fear, but not of the water. His eyes looked beyond those ancient walls, perhaps lingering in the vision they’d just shared, wondering whose eyes he had been looking through.

  Then someone grabbed her shoulder and pulled, and the room erupted into chaos.

  A voice shouted in Italian, so fast that she lost track of what it was saying. Something about steps and cold and black, but she could not place the words in order or context. Water washed around her feet and splashed up at her ankles and shins, cold and thick with slime. The chamber filled with the rumble of tumbled stones and the roar of gushing water. The shouts and cries of her friends echoed strangely around the round room.

  “Dr. Hodge!” Ramus shouted, grabbing her shoulder again, but she tore herself away to focus on Nico.

  What’s he seeing? she thought, and then she saw Nico turn and trip over something on the floor. She grimaced against the flash of sensation she expected from him—

  Pain, that must have hurt, and I’m sure I heard him cry out.

  —but none came. Nico was on his hands and knees, feeling around under the rapidly rising water as if he’d lost something valuable.

  “Nico!” Domenic shouted, hauling at the old wooden door with the X stamped on the metal bracings. “Geena! All of you, come here and help!” He pulled harder, but the water was up to their knees now and rising quickly. It was not only the weight of the water against the door that kept it closed, but the force of the flow. Finch went to help, grabbing the wooden jamb and prizing at the door.

  Geena thought of all the submarine suspense films she’d ever seen, every one of which featured a scene when a heroic submariner would sacrifice himself to save the rest of the crew. She let out a burst of terrified laughter, and Ramus grabbed her arm and hauled her toward the door.

  “Nico!” she shouted.

  He was still scrabbling about on the floor, dipping his head under the rising flood again and again. The water carried a rich, oily chemical smell, and beneath that was the rank odor of sewage. The darting flashlights could not pick out color, but she knew the waters would be almost black with filth and shit. “Nico, come on!”

  He surfaced at last, standing, backing against one of the three central columns for support. He had something in his
hands, a thick substance that slipped slowly through his fingers. He’s gone insane, she thought briefly, opening her mind and urging him to touch her. But there was nothing there at all—no excitement or fear, no joy or confusion.

  “Nico,” she said, so quietly this time that she could hardly hear her own voice above the roar of water. He looked up and met her eyes, but he did not see her.

  A higher, larger section of the curved wall fell, and the flow of water became a torrent.

  “Help us!” someone screamed. As Geena turned she saw Domenic prop one foot against the wall and pull against the door. Finch helped, and Ramus, and old timbers crumbled and split. The door disintegrated, metal bracings dipping into the water, and Sabrina and her camera were ushered through first.

  Ramus went next, standing with his back against the curving staircase wall and helping Finch after him. The producer disappeared, his jerky shadow thrown back by Sabrina’s camera light.

  Geena was leaning against the flow of water now, feeling almost solid things grabbing at her thighs, trying to pull her down. Just the rush of water, she thought, and she cursed her imagination as she felt long fingers, curved nails …

  “Geena!” Domenic shouted from the open doorway. He was two or three steps up and leaning into the room, and seeing him there made her realize how high the water had already risen. She jumped for him and grabbed his hand, then tripped on something she was sure had not been there before. She’d lived in Venice for long enough to know to squeeze her mouth shut, not cry out, as she fell forward into the water.

  Domenic’s hand closed tight around her own as she went under, crunching her fingers together. She closed her eyes and exhaled through her nose, but still she tasted the rankness of the water, a slick touch across her tongue. Then she kicked, Domenic pulled, and she surfaced to fresh shouting, finding her footing on the staircase’s first step.

  Nico was pushing past her, reaching for purchase.

  “Take my hand,” she said, reaching out to him. But he forged on past the others and toward the flashlight beams waving frantically from above.

  “Come on,” Domenic shouted. “We have to save what we can from the library!”

  The library, she thought, and the staggering weight of ages pressed down around her. This was just another moment in the endless history of this city, and in years to come no one would know of what had happened here. They might save much of Petrarch’s library and find a moment of fame amongst the archaeological community, and perhaps even further afield. Or if the ceilings came down and the walls fell in, burying them and destroying the manuscripts, perhaps there would be a plaque with their names on it. Either way, the effects on the city would be minimal.

  But screw that. The past was her passion, and she was here to make sure it was known.

  They rushed up the curving staircase into the library room, panting, soaked and stinking, and she looked for Nico. Members of the team were bustling around, asking if they were okay, and then Ramus pointed across the chamber at the far wall. Beside where the preservation tent had been set up, several spurts of pressurized water were gushing against a polythene curtain.

  “Get everything out!” Domenic shouted. “We’re below sea level here. We’ve got to assume the chamber’s going to flood.”

  “What happened down there?” someone asked.

  “They disturbed something and the waters came in,” Finch said, a hint of accusation in his voice.

  “No, that’s not what happened at all,” Geena said, but Domenic and the others frowned at her, because it wasn’t clear what had happened. Disturbed something, yes, she thought, but none of us touched that wall.

  “Nico?” Ramus called. “Help me with …” But he looked around the chamber, and Nico was nowhere to be seen.

  Geena turned back to the door into the lower chamber as Domenic was about to push it closed.

  “No!” she shouted.

  “It might hold the water back for a minute more,” he said. “Geena, we have to save—”

  “In case he went back down.” Saying it made her feel sick. That stuff slicking between his fingers … She closed her eyes briefly and opened herself up to his touch, but there was nothing there at all. No fear or pain, for which she was glad. But no thoughts for her, either.

  “Where the hell is he?” Ramus asked.

  “I saw someone running a load of books up,” Finch said. “It could have been him.”

  “Then let’s get the rest of this stuff out of here.” The archaeologist in Geena took over, and her mind settled around what needed to be done. Nico would have to wait. One crisis at a time.

  She barked orders, and her team reacted. Confusion and fear had given way to a plan of action, and they appreciated that. She darted around the chamber, dodging between polythene sheets, shadows cast by the lights strung from the ceiling moving around her, bumping into people, loading her arms with manuscripts that should have been removed in airtight containers, moisture content measured, tests carried out for acidic contamination, and she could already see dampness from her clothes soaking into the old books.

  She had instructed Sabrina to continue filming for as long as she could, concentrating on the several tables and old shelving units where so much material was stacked. But she also saw the girl aiming her camera at the chaos around them, the water now spewing in great gouts from the crumbling western wall, and the BBC man, Finch, following like her shadow. He should be helping! she thought, but she could see the stunned, hungry look on his face. It seemed that the BBC would have their documentary after all.

  The door to the lower chamber drifted open and water from below gushed into the library. At the same time, the far wall crumbled and fell, a huge drift of rock and silt slumping across the chamber’s floor. Water washed in farther, and Geena saw an old bookcase leaning forward as waterlogged sand built up behind it.

  Ramus ran for the bookcase, and she saw in a blink what was going to happen.

  “Ramus!” she screamed, but the noise filling the chamber stole her voice away. She grabbed a student dashing past with a heavy Hessian bag, dropped her armful of ancient, priceless texts into the bag, and sent him on his way to the surface. Then she splashed across the room, lifting her legs high to move faster.

  Ramus was at the tilting bookcase, trying to select which books and rolled manuscripts to save. His eyes were wide and smarting from the stench … or perhaps he was crying.

  Geena grabbed his arms and pulled him back.

  “Dr. Hodge—” he shouted, but she pulled harder, tugging him back past a polythene curtain as the bookcase fell and followed them through, a slick of silt rushing after it.

  “We get our legs stuck in that and we’ll drown!” she shouted.

  Ramus nodded grimly. She pushed him on his way, then turned and shoved another curtain aside, looking desperately for any sign of Nico. Not here, she thought, rushing back toward the door to the lower chamber. To her left she saw Sabrina filming her, and behind her Finch stood with mouth open and eyes wide, perhaps assessing which prime-time slot this could fill. She waved them away.

  “Go!” she shouted. Sabrina obeyed immediately, and for a moment Finch grabbed her arm and frowned, saying something unheard and gesturing to the flooding chamber. Sabrina pulled away and ran for the staircase leading up, and Geena thought, Good girl.

  She pushed back toward the far end of the chamber, knowing how foolish she was being; the water was around her thighs now, pulling at her, the silt trying to suck her down. But she stood transfixed for a moment, looking at that doorway and trying to figure out just what the hell had happened down there. Thirty feet below sea level for hundreds of years, and it was as if their arrival had broken a seal.

  Or a jar, she thought. When she closed her eyes to squeeze filthy water from them, she saw those men cutting their palms, and when she opened them again the water around her legs looked red.

  “Nico!” she screamed. “Nico!” But there was no answer. If he had gone back down, ther
e was nothing she could do for him now. He’ll be dead already, she thought, and that unfamiliar blankness she felt from him—no sensation, no images—suddenly felt darker and more ominous than ever.

  Then she turned and left the chamber, scooping up one last handful of books on the way. And started to cry for everything she knew was lost, and everything that might yet be.

  They were gathered in the main library, carefully depositing all that they had rescued on one of the long tables there. The few readers were standing back in surprise, and the librarian was helping, laying each book and manuscript flat. An air of panic hung over the scene, and when they noticed Geena approaching she saw their eyes flit past her at the shadows. She turned, but there was no one behind her.

  “Has anyone seen him?” she asked. Heads shook.

  “I’ve called the police,” Ramus said. “Told them what’s happening. They’ll bring the engineers.”

  “Divers,” Domenic said, and the room fell silent. They all knew what divers would mean. Air pocket, Geena thought. If he’s anywhere down there, he might have found somewhere to breathe. But it was a foolish thought. Nico had hardly seemed to know where he was the last time she had gotten a good look at him.

  “Dr. Hodge,” Finch said, his voice fraught with concern, “I was close to the staircase, and I’m fairly sure I saw …” He trailed off when he saw how everyone else looked at him.

  “If he made it out of there, he’d be here with us,” she said, and felt the shakes closing in. “He must have banged his head, something like that.” But even as she spoke she was reliving those few strange moments before the wall had started to give way, and wasn’t sure. The look in his eyes … he hadn’t been himself.

  “Did you see anything?” she asked the room, and was met with confused, uncertain frowns.

  “After he dropped that jar, he fell,” Ramus said. “Then you hit your head and said something.”