The Chamber of Ten hc-3

by Christopher Golden

  “Do it, you bastard!” he shouted.

  Aretino flinched in surprise. Thinking Nico had been talking to him, Foscari turned to leer at him.

  Take a deep breath and then let it out. When you inhale again, let it be with an invitation in your heart. Let me fill the spaces in you.

  Just hurry, Nico thought.

  And he did as Volpe asked. Closed his eyes. Deep breath in, let it out, another breath, let it out. It felt to him as if he were growing, as though when he opened his eyes he ought to be a giant. But when he did look, he had not changed physically. Inside, though … he bristled with vigor, alert to the slightest sound or shift in the texture of shadows in the Chamber. He could see skeins of light like spiderwebs throughout the room—gold and silver, green and red and black, purple as a bruise, pink as a woman’s secret flesh.

  Volpe did not like to call it magic because it did not come from within him. But the power—the magic—it was there, all around them, and if he could only reach out and touch those skeins, weave them together with the right gestures, the right words, he could bend the world to his whim.

  Nico had never been so terrified or so aroused.

  “Hello again, Pietro,” Volpe said with Nico’s mouth. Or is that me? It was impossible now to know where he ended and Volpe began. They were one.

  Aretino swore. He lifted his hands, about to cast a spell. A whip-thin gunman behind him sensed the change, saw it all happening, raised his weapon, and pulled the trigger.

  Water, Volpe thought.

  Even as the sound of the gunshot erupted in the Chamber, Nico twitched a finger, throat working a subaudible grunt that was in itself a spell so ingrained in Volpe that it required nothing more.

  The bullets splashed against him, dampening his clothes where they struck, nothing but water now.

  Foscari turned at the gunshot’s echo and threw up his hands, beginning a spell. Nico held up both hands, whispered words he had never learned, and the spells slid harmlessly away from him.

  “This city is under our protection,” Nico said. “And this Chamber … this is mine, laid with magical traps five hundred years ago. Fools, indeed.”

  Foscari roared and ran at him, drawing a dagger laden with curses.

  Nico dropped to one knee, slapped his open palms on the stone floor, and shouted two words to trigger a spell Volpe had cast half a millennium ago.

  “Expergefactum amicitiae!”

  A tremor ran through the Chamber, a groan from deep beneath the city, and dust rained down from the ceiling. One of the obelisks had shattered during the flood, and now the rest of them cracked, lines running through the identical Roman numeral X engraved upon each one, and split open. Arms thrust out, knocking black stone aside, and the Council of Ten emerged from their tombs draped in crumbling robes and flaps of withered skin.

  In amongst the three columns, Geena began to scream.

  The Doges’ hired killers swore and shouted and opened fire. A thick-necked brute bolted for the stairs. Aretino and Foscari began to cast spells. One of the dead men ignited in flames that blackened the ceiling and spread to the robes of another.

  But the dead were swift. They were not slowed by bullets. In seconds they were breaking bones and tearing flesh, and the Chamber resounded with the screams of killers as the Doges’ thugs were slaughtered. Several of the Ten grabbed Foscari. The Doge held one by the face and it decayed in seconds, withered flesh sloughing off of bones as its age caught up with it, and then turning to dust.

  Nico strode toward Aretino. He thrust out a hand, muttered a spell from The Book of the Nameless, and Aretino lifted off the floor and crashed into the ceiling, breaking bones and caving in the left side of his face.

  But the Doge had studied well in his centuries of wandering. He rasped the initial words of a spell to drive out an invasive spirit, and Nico felt as though he were being torn apart.

  Fight it! Volpe screamed in his thoughts. Without me, he’ll destroy you.

  Nico fought, but as pain ripped into him, he feared that he was now so inextricably bound to Volpe that separation would kill them both.

  Geena felt it happening, heard Nico scream inside of her head, and she saw what needed to be done.

  Bring him down! she shouted in her mind, praying Nico or Volpe would hear her thoughts through the haze of their pain. Drop him!

  With a roar of pain, Nico slashed his hands through the air and—as though he had cut the strings holding the Doge aloft—Aretino plummeted to the floor, crying out as the impact jarred broken bones. Snarling, sodden with canal water, he reached up to carve another spell from the air, but then two of the dead Ten attacked him. Geena had seen them waiting for the opportunity. From inside its tattered robes, one of them drew a long ritual dagger and hacked it down with inhuman strength, severing Aretino’s hand at the wrist.

  Blood sprayed the two dead men.

  Nico reeled backward and fell to his knees, but she felt the pain subside within him. For better or worse, he and Volpe were still joined.

  A cry of fury erupted nearby and she twisted around to see Foscari struggling with a cluster of the Ten. He screamed words in some guttural tongue, some ancient Babel language she would never learn, and grabbed one of them by the throat. Like the other he had destroyed, it began to unravel and collapse in upon itself. But the rest had his arms then, twisting them behind him, trying to keep him from touching any more of them.

  Foscari threw them off, staggering, wheeling across the floor to crash into the stone column right in front of her. His face had been clawed and beaten, cheek gashed to the bone, and his left arm was torn and bloody.

  As he started to push away from the column, he saw her there in the dark.

  “Bitch! I’ll have your eyes for this!”

  Another dead man tugged him backward. Knife in hand, Geena followed him out. The blade felt heavy in her grasp, but the weight of consequence—what would happen if she did not stop this man—was far heavier.

  Foscari laughed at the sight of the knife. “You can’t be stupid enough to think that will kill me.”

  One of the Ten got a fistful of his hair, began to drag his head back. Another of the dead caught his arm. With a muttered curse, Foscari tried to strike back, but by then Geena was already moving.

  He tore free, whipped his fist around and caught her with a skull-rattling backhand, but the dead man still held him by the hair. Blood dripped down her chin, her lip swollen and split, but she barely felt it as she lunged at him. Her free hand caught his wrist, held it back, and she swept the knife around in an arc that sliced cleanly through his throat. Blood sprayed her face and clothes; it stung her eyes as she blinked it away.

  Choking on his own blood, Foscari gurgled laughter.

  “Damn you, stop fucking laughing!” she screamed.

  “… plague …” he croaked, wheezed, pointed to her. “… dead.”

  Clutching a hand over his throat, sealing the wound, he sneered as he stumbled toward her. She thought of the sickness that had ravaged her and Nico after they’d killed Caravello and the spell Volpe had done to cure them, and she wondered if it had an expiration date.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said with a confidence she did not feel. She held up the knife. “But you won’t.”

  Foscari’s eyes narrowed with sudden alarm. He fell to one knee. Then, furious with his sudden weakness, forced himself to rise again. But he moved slowly now, reaching for her with a trembling hand.

  “This blade is stained with the blood of the chosen Oracles of Venice,” she said. “The city endures, but you’re not as immortal as you like to think.”

  With a choking, wordless rage, Foscari lunged for her. Cruelty and lust still tinged his gaze, even as he began to die, and she knew he was intent upon taking her with him into death.

  Geena stabbed him in the chest, putting all of her weight behind the blade, pulling him in close like a lover, and twisting. Foscari stiffened and then crumpled into her embrace. She could have laid him
gently upon the ground, but he did not deserve her tenderness. She recoiled from his diseased blood and his filthy touch—just tugged the knife out and let him slump wetly to the floor.

  The plague. If she was going to get sick again, how soon would she begin to cough? How quickly would the sores appear?

  Finish him!

  The words were Volpe’s, echoing in her mind. She’d heard little of Nico’s thoughts in the past two minutes, but had felt his fear and fury and pain. Now she spun, thinking for a moment that Volpe had been talking to her, that he didn’t realize Foscari was already dead.

  But the words weren’t for her.

  Four of the withered dead, the last remnants of Volpe’s loyal Council of Ten, were holding Pietro Aretino pinned against the wall. One of his hands had been hacked off and the other broken and bloodied, meaning that spells that required the use of his hands were out of the question. He began to chant something, still trying to stay alive.

  “I said, finish him!” Nico shouted in Volpe’s voice. Or the other way around. There was little distinction now between one and the other.

  Nico stood only a few feet from Aretino and began to claw his fingers at the air, summoning a spell that would end the life of the last Doge.

  “No!” Geena screamed, running toward him, but they didn’t seem to hear her.

  Nico, stop!

  He hesitated, glanced over at her. Through the rapport they shared she could sense Volpe trying to finish the job. Geena slammed into Nico, knocking him to the ground, straddling him there and staring down into his eyes.

  “The plague jars!” she shouted. “Didn’t you listen? If all three of them die, the waters will flood in and smash the jars and the plague will take all of Venice.”

  Anger had clouded the minds of both men who lived in that body, but now the eyes cleared. She could not tell who gazed out at her from within, but she saw that reason had returned, and she exhaled.

  “That’s all right,” Nico and Volpe said, in one voice. “I have a better idea.”

  The dead Ten—those Foscari had not destroyed—restrained Aretino while the magician, this strange combination of Nico and Volpe, silenced the old Doge with a spell. He could not speak enchantments, could not warp the air without fingers.

  Eyes wide with the terror he would have gladly brought to others, Aretino struggled uselessly as the dead men began a chant that sounded more like creaking hinges than voices. They cut the papery skin on their palms and held their hands forward, but only chalky dust fell to vanish in the water on the floor. When Nico sliced his palm open, true blood flowed and pooled and swirled in the water with that dust, and the ritual gathered its power.

  So much remained to be done. With the Doge’s life essence preserved just as Volpe’s had been, his heart still alive and still beating, the spells that had been woven around the plague jars and the chambers where they had been hidden would be maintained. She and Nico would have to find every single one of those chambers and destroy the plague jars with the cleansing flame Volpe would teach them how to use. It would take time, but Geena was beginning to realize that they would have that time. Time to learn. Time to love.

  But only if Volpe kept his word.

  When Nico—and Volpe, always Volpe—stepped in to drive their knives into Aretino’s chest and carve out his heart, Geena couldn’t watch any longer. She bolted for the stairs, knowing as she did that she had seen the Chamber of Ten for the last time.

  Aren’t you going to say good-bye? Volpe whispered in her mind.

  He had promised to leave Nico, to let his spirit pass into the next world and leave Venice to a new generation of Oracles, but she still did not trust him. How could she? The question followed her up the stairs into Petrarch’s library, and then up into the Biblioteca, and finally out into golden morning of the city that had chosen her and Nico to be the keepers of its soul and its secrets.

  Venice. La Serenissima.

  The Most Serene.

  XIX

  THE SUN shone bright on the day they buried him.

  She sailed to San Michele in a water taxi with Tonio, Domenic, Sabrina, and several other lecturers and students from the university. It was the first time she had seen them all since the melee that had ended in Ramus’ death. She’d arrived at the jetty moments before the water taxi, and stood behind them for a while, staring at their shadows. Today, they were as darkly attired as the shadows themselves, all visions in black. Domenic had seen her first, raising an eyebrow as he glanced back over his shoulder, and when they boarded the taxi the others offered her nods, or smiles, or awkward combinations of the two. Only Tonio had seemed unfazed by her appearance. He had granted her two weeks’ sick leave, on the proviso that upon her return she spend some time explaining. He knew, of course, that in the meantime she was helping the police with their inquiries.

  She had a week left in which to construct her watertight story. It was more than long enough. She hoped that Nico would be there for that week to help her.

  She had not seen Nico in five days, but she had always sensed him close. It was nothing like those usual sensations she picked up from him, because he was no longer himself. He was Nico and Volpe, Volpe and Nico—the merging of a 15th century magician with a 21st century academic. He was a stranger that she recognized, and today was the day she hoped everything would change. To face a new beginning, first she needed an ending.

  Aren’t you going to say good-bye? Volpe had whispered. Perhaps he had remained in Nico waiting for just that.

  The boat hit a small wave and Geena swayed, shifting her foot to regain balance. A hand held her elbow, strong and firm, and she glanced sidelong at Domenic. He smiled sadly, and in his eyes she saw something that she clung to, storing away for future reference in case the future became too harsh: the ability to understand. When she’d asked him to gather the soaked remains of Volpe’s heart and transport them out of Venice, he had not questioned her request, strange though it had been. She was beginning to suspect that perhaps he loved her, but it was more than that. Domenic could see past the normal and into the incredible, and maybe in his mind the line between the two had always been blurred.

  “How are you?” he asked. A simple question with so many answers.

  “I’m bearing up,” she said.

  “And Nico?”

  She shrugged, because she didn’t know. Nico’s future was not yet defined. If Volpe kept his word, today would be the day. But she could barely let herself hope.

  “Well, it’s a shame about him and the university,” Domenic said softly. The sound of the boat’s engine and its hull striking the low waves covered his voice, so that only Geena could hear. “He’s a clever guy.”

  “He is,” Geena said. “He’ll find his own way.”

  “So …” Domenic said. He still had a hold on her elbow, and she found herself comforted by his contact. Domenic was strong and firm, and there was no ambiguity about him. “So, that other thing? Those … remains I moved out for you? How did all that work out?”

  It didn’t, Geena needed to say, because the old magician’s spirit it belonged to lied, and he’s tenacious, and after we’d killed the Doges and those other people he promised to go and … But she could tell him nothing of that, of course. Not now. Maybe later.

  “It worked out fine,” she said, and the boat nudged against the jetty.

  Ramus’ coffin was already on San Michele, and there were hundreds of mourners milling around the entrance to the cemetery as they awaited notice that the service was about to begin. Geena saw many students and lecturers she knew from the university, and plenty more she did not. Ramus’ family was also there—a large group of adults and children keeping close together like an island in the sea of mourners. There was much crying, and little laughter. That more than anything made Geena sad, and brought on her first tears of the day. Ramus deserved much better than this. If he’d been killed in a cave-in while on a dig, or the collapse of an ancient building he was studying, perhaps the mood h
ere, though heavy at the tragic death of someone so young, might have also been lifted to celebrate the fact that he’d died doing what he loved.

  But he had been stabbed to death in a café by a mysterious assailant. He’d bled out on the floor waiting for paramedics to arrive, with Sabrina holding his hands and Domenic struggling to stem the bleeding from his many wounds. That was no way for such a bright light to be extinguished.

  Geena walked close to Domenic, looking out for Nico. She knew he would be here, because they’d arranged it. They had spoken that morning, mind to mind. They no longer had any need for phones.

  “Quite a turnout,” Domenic said.

  “He deserves it.”

  “What happened, Geena?” he asked, quietly again. Behind Domenic, Tonio glanced at her, and she wondered if he’d heard. She smiled over Domenic’s shoulder and her boss smiled back, but there was a distance in his expression that had nothing to do with today’s funeral. She knew that he would never fully trust her again. The ongoing investigation into the Mayor’s murder had been linked by the police to the fight at the café, and Ramus’ death. And one of the abiding mysteries of that evening revolved around Geena. Who had the men been who’d dragged her away? So far, she’d stuck with the insistence that she didn’t know. But Tonio was not stupid.

  “Domenic, one day soon we can talk,” she said, and she stepped forward to hug him tight.

  “And that book you want locked away at the university?”

  “A very old book about forgotten magic. It’s got to be kept secure and it deserves to be studied. But I need full access, at any time.”

  She felt him tense, sensed his confusion, and then she felt the moment that Domenic started trusting her again.

  “But is it over?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, and she thought, For everyone but me. At that, he returned her hug. It felt good.

  Moments before the service began she sensed Nico nearby. I’m here, he said in her mind, and I have it.