The Chamber of Ten

by Christopher Golden; Tim Lebbon

  Caravello carried the plague in his blood, under his control, like a weapon. We must assume they are telling the truth.

  Nico winced, both from the lingering ache of his healed-over wound and from the strange glee he felt coming from Volpe.

  “You’re happy about this?”

  We were going to have to face the two prodigals regardless, but I could not have chosen a better location. It was the locus of my power and influence for all these many years.

  “But they must know that, and they still plan to attack you there.”

  They want access to the well.

  Nico froze. “The well? You mean where Akylis’ tomb is buried?”

  The Old Magician’s remains were never buried, Volpe said, the tone—even in Nico’s mind—like that of an adult correcting an errant child. The well was dug, the dolmen erected around the corpse, and then the well was capped. There is no awareness there, nothing lingering of Akylis’ mind. But as his body liquefied, the magic and evil remained. All that power, down there at the bottom of the well. Though it had been capped, when I built the Chamber of Ten, I sealed it with magic of my own and a new stone cap.

  An image flashed across Nico’s mind and he realized he had seen the well cap. He had been too distracted when they had first entered the Chamber, too absorbed with the power emanating from the urn where Volpe had preserved his heart. But when he and Geena and the rest of the team had watched the footage Sabrina had shot, he had seen the granite disk set into the floor of the Chamber.

  “Why do they need to open it?” Nico asked. “You said they’re already leaching Akylis’ power.”

  Don’t you see? They want to bathe in it, to absorb it all at once. It would probably kill them, but I can’t risk the possibility that it won’t, never mind the potential that Akylis’ evil, unleashed from the well, could taint the hearts and spirits of all of the people of Venice. I can’t allow it.

  “But we’re still going to meet them there?”

  Are you suggesting we ignore this summons? That we leave your woman and all of the people of my city to die?

  “Of course not! But it’s obvious they’re not afraid of you.”

  They will be. They’ll never unseal the well. I won’t allow it. Besides, they don’t know what awaits them in the Chamber of Ten.

  “And what’s that?”

  The past.

  Nico felt Volpe shifting inside of him and he felt himself expanding the way he did when he drew a deep breath, lungs filling with air. But this wasn’t air—the empty spaces in his body and mind were being filled up with the spirit of Zanco Volpe. A flash of panic sparked inside of him and he thought of the impressions he had gotten from Geena, her certainty that Volpe intended to betray him and take over his body …

  “What are you doing?” Nico asked.

  Making myself comfortable, Volpe replied. We will have to work together as never before if we are to survive to see the dawn.

  “We?” Had Volpe not heard his thoughts and doubts?

  How could I not know of your suspicions? I would fear the same if our situations were reversed.

  “All right. So how do I know I can trust you?”

  You have no choice.

  Nico felt a chill that had nothing to do with the bones around him. Or perhaps it did … were these not the remains of generations of those foolish enough to make enemies of the Volpe clan?

  We are in swift waters now, Nico, and we have little influence over where they will finally cast us ashore. The magician’s presence and even his inner voice diminished. We have several hours before we must depart for this rendezvous and the best use of that time for both of us is to rest and heal. Sleep now. Soon you and your love will be reunited.

  Even as Volpe’s magic clouded his mind and dragged him down into a healing slumber, his suspicions were at work.

  “For how long?” he whispered.

  But the magician’s only reply was oblivion.

  Geena stood again in the courtyard of the church of San Rocco, paranoia creeping like spiders along her arms and up the back of her neck. The taverna where she and Volpe had burned the corpse of the Doge Caravello remained dark and undisturbed.

  The façade of the church had an appealing plainness to it, and its windows were just as dark as the shops. It seemed to be waiting for her, offering a sanctuary she only wished she could claim.

  The shops were dark, only a rare light visible in the windows of the apartments above them. Surely no one would be awake now, and yet she could not dispel the fear that even now she was observed. It was not the feeling that prickled her skin, not the certainty she had felt when Caravello had been stalking her.

  She took a deep breath and began walking again, not across the courtyard—that would have been foolish—but retracing the same roundabout route that she and Volpe had used to depart the taverna earlier in the day. If things went as she hoped, being observed approaching the church would not be a problem. But if she had to improvise, if there was damage done, she did not want anyone to be able to say that they saw her there.

  Is this my life now? I’m a criminal?

  The thought upset her, but only for a moment. The old rules no longer applied—if they ever really had.

  Geena worked her way around to the side of the church. Even the moonlight did not reach into that narrow alley between buildings. At the back of the building, another structure was attached. An arched doorway recessed into the stone marked the entrance to the rectory. She raised her fist and hammered on the door to the priest’s residence.

  The noise echoed off the walls, amplified in that enclosed space, and she left off seconds after she began, waiting to see if her pounding would bring anyone to the door. Again she pounded on the door and this time she kept it up, hammering away for ten or twenty seconds, pausing, then starting up again. The second time she paused she heard the scrape of metal on metal from inside, followed by the clank of a deadbolt being thrown back.

  She froze, swallowing hard, as the heavy wooden door swung inward and a thin, white-haired priest peered out at her.

  “What are you doing, coming here at this hour? Who are you?” the priest demanded, anger crackling in his imperious tone.

  But Geena would not be intimidated.

  “Do you believe in magic, Father?” she asked.

  The priest practically sneered, about to slam the door in her face.

  “Please, Father. The whole city is in danger,” she said, and when he hesitated she forged ahead. “Someone broke into the church earlier today. You won’t have noticed yet, but I swear to you, you’ve been vandalized. Something’s been hidden here, and if you don’t let me in, people are going to die.”

  Uncertainty rippled across his face. “Come in, then, and we’ll call the police together.”

  Geena did not move. “There’s nothing they can do. Look in my eyes, Father, and decide what you see. But if you don’t help me, when the sun comes up tomorrow every man, woman, and child in Venice will begin to cough and choke and bleed, and they’ll die in the thousands. Maybe I asked you the wrong question. Maybe ‘magic’ is too fanciful a word for you. So tell me, Father, do you believe in evil?”

  The confusion in his eyes gave her hope. He studied her, searching her face for some fragment of truth, and his anger gave way to fear and concern.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Dr. Geena Hodge. I’m an archaeologist in the employ of Ca’Foscari University.”

  “And does your employer know what you’re up to tonight, in the small hours of the morning?”

  She shook her head. “No one knows.”

  The priest stared a moment, eyes narrowed, and then he stepped back, swinging the door wide.

  “Come in, Dr. Hodge. It seems you have little time. We’d best not keep evil waiting.”

  He let her in and closed the door behind her, sliding the deadbolt. A small statue of the Virgin Mary stood upon a pedestal against the wall opposite the door, but otherwise the
entryway was as utilitarian as the exterior of the building. In the dim gray light, which filtered down to them from a room farther along the hall, she studied the face of the priest as he turned to her. His eyes were alight with interest instead of anger now, and he seemed years younger than he had when he’d first opened the door.

  “Come along,” he said, and led her toward a door she realized must lead from the rectory into the church.

  Geena followed him through the door into a back room of the church, which was lined with wooden cabinets. A big desk sat in one corner, and she was surprised by the clutter—microphone and music stands, two chairs in need of repair, stacks of old missals, the priest’s vestments hanging in an open closet. This disarray humanized him, and that troubled her. She wanted faith and strength, and a certain mysticism.

  He gestured to a chair, as if they had all the time in the world. Geena glanced at a clock on the wall—1:17 a.m.

  “Go on,” the priest said. “Tell me your story. Dawn is a long way off yet.”

  Geena shook her head. “I’m sorry, Father—”

  “Father Alberto.”

  “I can’t afford for you to simply humor me.” She glanced around the room. “If you let me show you where the vandalism took place, you’ll see soon enough that there are powers at work here you’ve yet to consider.”

  The old priest hesitated, and then sighed.

  “Lead the way.”

  “Wait,” she said. “Do you have a lantern or a candle or something?”

  He gave her an odd look, then walked over to open one of the cabinets. Reaching in, he produced a heavy-duty flashlight.

  “I know you must spend a lot of time living in the past, Dr. Hodge, but it’s the 21st century.”

  “So it is,” Geena said sheepishly as he handed it to her. “I’ve been losing track lately.”

  Father Alberto led her out into the vast hall of the church and past the altar. From there, Geena saw the door to the small royal chapel, and she started toward it. The priest turned on a single light switch, a few bulbs providing only wan illumination in the vastness of the church. Her own footfalls seemed too loud on the flagstones as they passed the Tintoretto paintings for which the church’s nave was famous, and then she led him through the door into the royal chapel.

  Although she knew the damage had been done, it still took her a few seconds of concentration, staring at the bookshelf under the stairs, before she could see through the spell of concealment that Volpe had cast. The spell could not withstand the scrutiny of someone who expected something other than the illusion. Books had been stacked and scattered on the floor near the wreckage of what had once been an ornate bookshelf. Broken boards leaned against the stone wall.

  “How did I not see this before?” the priest asked.

  Geena turned and looked at him in surprise. “You can see it now?”

  “What do you mean? Of course I can see it.”

  Now that she had drawn his attention to it, the spell of concealment could not hide the vandalism from the priest. She narrowed her eyes, stepping right up to the ruined bookshelf.

  “Is there a hole in the wall back there?” Father Alberto asked. “It’s too dark for me to make out, but … there is, isn’t there?”

  “There is,” she agreed, reaching out to touch the rough, broken edge of the stones that had been pulled out of the wall.

  Inside of that opening, a small door hung partially open, and she pushed it inward.

  “I’ll be damned,” the old priest muttered.

  Geena could not help smiling at him. “I certainly hope not, Father,” she said, and then she clambered through the opening. “Now I think it’s your turn to follow me.”

  She clicked on the flashlight and they descended together into a small square chamber Geena had seen before only through the dreamlike lens provided by Nico’s touch. The braziers in the corners were dark and cold and the room’s shadows seemed to resist being dispelled by the flashlight’s wide beam, but soon enough she located bloody sigils inscribed upon the flagstone floor and a cloth bag that she recognized as belonging to Nico.

  Father Alberto could not tear his gaze from the markings on the floor, even when she set the flashlight down and knelt to open the bag.

  “The Devil’s work,” he said.

  “Not the Devil, but a devil, most certainly.”

  Geena shone the light into the bag. She thought about how much to reveal to the priest, but she knew that if she wanted his help she would need to shock him. So she took out the ivory seal once used on the city’s official documents and set it on the floor. Then she withdrew the dry and dessicated hand of a dead man and set that down as well.

  Father Alberto whispered a blessing as he crossed himself.

  “Explain this to me, Dr. Hodge. What it means and how you knew it was here.”

  “It will have to be quick, Father.”

  “All the better,” he said.

  She sat back on the flagstones, the flashlight in her hands, and the tale spilled from her like a ghost story told late at night at summer camp. The flashlight must have contributed to that impression for her, but there was more to it than that. Those stories always felt to her both real and unreal at the same time, and so did the turns her life had taken these past days.

  When she had finished, she did not wait for him to reply, afraid that in spite of the evidence she had just shown him and his belief in powers beyond the understanding of humanity, he would think that she had somehow staged it all. Before he could say a word, she reached into the bag again and withdrew the grimoire that Volpe had so coveted. He had left it here for safekeeping, hidden behind a glamour until he could retrieve it, but he had not counted on her having seen it all.

  Seen the book. Seen the ritual.

  The cover felt unnaturally warm and damp under her touch and the book weighed more than it seemed it should.

  “This is Le Livre de l’Inconnu—The Book of the Nameless—and though its name is French, I’ve seen for myself that the incantations and other writings inside are not in that language, or at least not all of them are. It contains a great many impossible things that are nevertheless true.”

  She held the book in her palm and let it fall open where it would. Geena had seen it with textbooks and cookbooks and even well-read hardcover novels … after a certain amount of use, a book will fall open to its most frequently used pages. But when Le Livre de l’Inconnu spread its pages, she did not recognize the words and symbols there.

  Geena closed her eyes. Time was wasting. Fortune had been with her thus far tonight and she had thought her luck would continue. She opened her eyes and began to turn the pages, but nothing looked familiar. How far had he been into the book? She tried to remember and realized that the ritual Volpe had used had been from little more than a third of the way through its thickness. She paged backward in the book, training the flashlight beam on the hideous things uncovered there—images and words she only half understood and did not want fully revealed to her.

  Father Alberto had come around behind her now, reading over her shoulder, and several times she heard him mutter in revulsion or horror.

  “This is real?” he whispered at one point. “You’re certain?”

  “Are you asking about the authenticity of the book or the magic in it?”

  “Both, I suppose.”

  Geena glanced over her shoulder at him. “I’m sorry, Father. But both are very real.”

  He reached into his pants pocket and withdrew a rosary, which he wrapped around his fingers and then brought up to his lips, kissing the beads once before clutching them against his chest.

  And then she found the pages.

  “Here,” she said, pointing. “Most of this looks like an antiquated Latin to me—”

  “You can’t read Latin? I thought you were an archaeologist.”

  “I can make out some of it, but only some. I’m not a linguist, and the one I’d normally bring onto a project—”

  “Al
l right, all right,” Father Alberto said, waving her argument away. “You’re right. It’s an archaic Latin … or some of it is. Part of it is in Greek.”

  She caught her breath. “Then you can read it?”

  “I can translate it, if that’s what you’re asking. I can tell you what it says.”

  Geena shook her head, staring down at the pages.

  “No. I don’t care what it says. I don’t want you to translate it.” She looked up at the old priest. “It’s an incantation, Father. I want you to teach me how to speak the words.”

  In the hour before dawn, the night was blue.

  Nico wanted to run through St. Mark’s Square beneath the indigo sky, but Volpe held him back as if he were on a leash. He slipped through the deeper shadows of the arcade at the western end of the square and then in the lee of the buildings on the south side. Volpe had taken control for a minute, just long enough to cast a spell that gathered the darkness around him like a cloak, and then retreated.

  The magician wanted to conserve his strength. There were attacks and betrayals to come, and they both knew it.

  The humid air clung to him along with the dark. No breeze stirred the errant bits of rubbish strewn around the square. The basilica loomed against the sky, the stars fading with the oncoming dawn, and Nico’s heart pounded fiercely in his chest as though trying to escape the cage of his bones and flesh. He longed to reach out with his mind and touch Geena’s thoughts, but she had warned him against doing so.

  The temptation to turn and run was great. He would never have done so—it would have doomed Geena and all of Venice—but even if he’d tried, his puppeteer would have yanked the strings and put him right back on course.

  Watch for them, Volpe snapped.

  “I’m watching,” Nico whispered.

  He spotted the first of the Doges’ thugs on the steps of the basilica—a slim man in a gray suit who made no attempt to hide himself. He stood with the confidence of a Western gunfighter but, cloaked in shadow, Nico passed by without notice. There were others as well, in front of the Doge’s Palace and the Biblioteca itself. Two men leaned against the striped poles at the edge of the canal, where gondolas bobbed in the water, tied up for the night. As Nico approached the door of the library he saw a lovely blond woman standing in the trees at the beginning of the small park that separated the Biblioteca from the canal.