Word of Honour

by Michael Pryor

  'Who?' Caroline peered at where George was working.

  'Dr Tremaine or whoever it was that drove this shaft through here. He's smashed through . . . Here.'

  George handed Aubrey a shard of rock. Aubrey turned it over and saw the incised letters. 'What is it?'

  'It's marble.' George grunted, then put the pry bar aside and used his arms to scoop earth away, ignoring the disastrous effect this was having on his jacket. 'Latin inscription. Tremaine has shorn off the corner of a Roman ruin.'

  A few minutes' work and George had enlarged the hole in the wall enough for Aubrey to see the remains of a pillar.

  George leaned back and wiped his brow. 'Roman. From when Albion was part of the empire. Nearly two thousand years.'

  'And what's it doing down here?' Aubrey asked.

  'Cities are built on the remains of what went before. I hadn't realised how literal this was, until now.' George leaned into the hole with the lantern. 'Mosaics.' He leaned back. 'It's collapsed, in places, but looks pretty solid.'

  'You want to explore,' Aubrey said.

  'This is exciting stuff,' George said. 'We're the first to see this place for thousands of years. We can't ignore it.'

  'It does sound exciting,' Caroline said.

  Aubrey had reservations, but shrugged. 'Two out of three. Who am I to argue?'

  Climbing down into the ruin was easier than Aubrey expected. Shattered sections of pillars acted as stairs. Some were wobbly, but plenty of handholds made the climbing simple.

  Once down, Aubrey could make out what had happened. The ceiling was curved – not a dome, a barrel vault. It had come crashing down, unevenly, but mostly in one solid piece, strong enough to resist being crushed as rubble piled around it and on top. It was a bubble, a gap in the earth that preserved the world of two thousand years ago.

  Inside, it was a ruin – mounds of broken stone, vast drapes of spiders' webs, collapsed pillars and broken floor tiles. The lantern threw shadows around that swooped as George swept his arm, surveying the space.

  'This would be a high-class building, originally, George?' Caroline asked.

  'It'd need a fair bit of study to work out exactly what it was,' George said. 'Private home? Municipal building? You're right, though, definitely not a worker's cottage.'

  Carefully, they picked their way through rubble and cobwebs. Ahead, maybe twenty yards away, was a wall of solid, compacted stone and earth. 'No way forward,' Aubrey said.

  'Hello. What's this?' George squatted on one knee, right where the edge of the vault met the floor, and inspected a slab of stone – low and about six feet long, running parallel to the line of the vaulted ceiling.

  'A bench?' Aubrey guessed.

  'Don't think so. Can you lend a hand?'

  Caroline took the lantern. Aubrey joined George.

  'Now,' George said, 'let's see if we can shift this thing.'

  'Shift it? Something that's been sitting here for two thousand years?'

  'If I'm right, it was meant to be shifted.' George pushed, and hissed with effort.

  Aubrey put his shoulder to the stone and added his weight. 'No good.'

  'Let's try the other end,' George said, wiping his hands together.

  Aubrey lost some skin from his knuckles, but the stone did indeed slide aside. Panting, he looked down into a narrow flight of stairs.

  'Now we're onto something,' George said, beaming.

  'How did you know, George?' Caroline eyed the gap into darkness.

  'Something I read. Some of these old Roman places had secret shrines underneath.'

  A small bell rang in the back of Aubrey's mind, something he'd come across in one of Professor Mansfield's recommended books. 'So these weren't the ostentatious, showy sort of public shrines?'

  'These were private, or only known to a small group. Not official, you see. These people were worshipping something that would get them into trouble if it was widely known.'

  'They used them for magic, too,' Aubrey said.

  'Outlawed magic.'

  'I hadn't heard that,' George said, 'but it would make sense. Fortune-telling, divination, magic like that went hand-in-hand with some of this sort of worship.'

  The possibility of discovering traces of ancient magic removed any doubts Aubrey had about this side expedition. ' Well, I can see that you're eager to inspect this shrine, George. I suppose we can spare the time.'

  'You're awfully keen, all of a sudden,' Caroline said.

  'Just being accommodating.'

  'That's why I'm suspicious. What about being careful?'

  'Ah. Yes. George?'

  'Looks sound enough. If it hasn't fallen down in two thousand years, I don't think it's about to collapse on us now.'

  'You mentioned magic, Aubrey,' Caroline said. 'Any danger there?'

  'Let me see.'

  Aubrey stood for a moment and extended his magical awareness.

  It was like listening hard for faint sounds. The world seemed to go away as he focused. Without realising it he turned slightly from side to side, as a sunflower turns to follow the warmth of the sun.

  'Aubrey?' Caroline said.

  He opened his eyes. 'There's magic down there. Weak, a trace of a residue, I'd say.'He rubbed his hands together, as if they had dirt on them. The magic was of a flavour that he'd never encountered before. Rough, coarse, even, but it held a ghost of power. In its day, it was probably impressive. Now, all he was feeling were echoes across the centuries.

  'Is it dangerous?' Caroline asked.

  'No. Probably not. Almost certainly not.'

  'Hardly reassuring, that.' George lifted his pry bar.

  'I hope this thing doesn't come in useful.'

  Aubrey bit his tongue. If magic were involved, a pry bar probably wouldn't be much help.

  'I'll go first. Caroline, can you take the lantern and come next? George at the rear.'

  The third step was where Aubrey started to feel uneasy.

  It was a gradual thing. He shivered on step three, but he told himself he was imagining it. Step four added to his sense of disquiet, but he decided he needed more proof.

  He took the next step down – five – and at that moment Caroline, behind him, said, 'Oh.'

  Aubrey stopped. 'You felt it too?'

  'Felt what?' George asked.

  'Yes,' Caroline said. 'It was like stepping into an ice bath.'

  'So I wasn't imagining it.' The chill he'd encountered at first was now swirling around his calves, biting right through the fabric of his trousers. The cold was ominous enough, but it was the swirling that made him even more alert. Something was moving down there.

  'Wait a moment.'

  Slowly, he stepped onto the sixth stair. The cold rose to his knees. 'Brace yourselves,' he said. 'It's freezing down here.'

  By the time he reached the bottom, he was totally immersed in frosty air. His breath steamed and he shivered. Any exposed skin was nibbled by icy teeth.

  Aubrey touched his cheek, then scratched it. Everything about the place made him alert – the shadows, the slightly dank smell, the sound of water trickling nearby – but his caution had nothing concrete to fasten on. The unfocused nature of the potential danger made things worse, and he clenched his hands into sweaty fists.

  The room was small – two or three yards long, half that wide. The blocks of the walls, ceiling and floor were roughly dressed. At the far end stood a stone table – a slab resting on a solid base.

  Caroline joined him. She'd wrapped her arms around herself and she held the lantern close for its warmth.

  'Why is it so cold?'

  George tapped a wall with his pry bar. His voice was harsh, strained. 'So this is our hidden shrine. Any clues, Aubrey?'

  'Don't move for a moment. I must think.'

  Hostility. Aubrey could feel it oozing from the walls. It was similar to the concentrated emotion spells perfected by Caroline's father, but cruder. He wondered, briefly, if Professor Hepworth had gone back to Roman roots for inspiration
for his particular branch of inquiry.

  The stone table shook.

  Aubrey shuffled back a few steps. He felt Caroline's hand on his shoulder, then George's reassuring bulk on his left. His heart threatened to crack a rib with its pounding.

  'We're intruders,' he said through a throat that was suddenly hoarse. He opened and closed his fists, realising they were aching from being clenched so hard.

  'Intruders?' Caroline breathed. He glanced to see that she was holding out her hands in front of her, as if feeling the texture of the air.

  'This is a holy place,' he said. 'A secret holy place. Guardian magic, I'd expect.'

  'What can you do about it?' George said.

  'We can try to convince the place that we're harmless, before it decides to use more active deterrents than just fear and cold.'

  'How do we do that?' George asked.

  'Ah. I'm afraid that's as far as I've got with my planning.'

  'Keen though I am to see its full extent,' Caroline said, 'I'm not sure if you've got time for a comprehensive plan.'

  'P'raps we should just leave?' George said.

  The shadows behind the stone table moved. 'Too late, I'm afraid.'

  'Rarely good words, those,' George said.

  Then, as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown, the chamber was no longer freezing. A drift of dust trickled from above. Aubrey glanced at the ceiling, held the lantern up and his eyes widened as the solid stone blocks rippled.

  'How far are we from the stairs?' he asked.

  A grinding noise, as if a tombstone were being dragged along rock, came from behind him.

  'What stairs?' George said. 'They've just disappeared.'

  'The room is reshaping itself?'

  'A wall moved, swallowing the stairs. It's a bit crooked in that corner, but you'd never know they were there.'

  'Careful,' Caroline said. 'The floor.'

  Aubrey had felt it, too. The stone had flexed, as if a great beast had pushed up from underneath. He winced. There was such a thing as having too good an imagination.

  A sudden, sharp blow from under their feet sent them staggering. 'George!' Aubrey shouted. 'Look out!' The wall near his friend bulged menacingly, but it was so slow and ponderous in its movement that George had no trouble avoiding it. 'It'll have to do better than that.' He straightened his jacket.

  Caroline had ended up in the corner where the stairs had once been. 'Careful,' Aubrey said.

  She looked irritated by his unnecessary advice, then on either side of her, the stone walls lurched inwards and tried to trap her in the corner.

  Again, the ponderousness of the movement gave Caroline time to skip away and back off, grimacing. 'Slow. But it's getting faster.'

  They came together in the middle of the room, back to back to back, as far from the walls as possible. 'Keep the lantern up, Caroline,' George said. 'And I'd suggest we find a way out of here very, very quickly.'

  It seemed like a time for unnecessary advice – Aubrey's brain had been whirring at full speed for some time. The problem was that he was facing a magical threat and he couldn't meet it with magic. Not if he valued his soul.

  Dread and terror. Aubrey could taste them, and he knew they were being generated by the room. They came from inside. A pulse fluttered at the side of his neck like a trapped butterfly. He swallowed and it was as if a grapefruit had lodged there.

  The stones of the room quivered, sequentially, a ghostly finger running along piano keys.

  It's not used to moving, Aubrey thought. He had the unnerving certainty that it was learning quickly.

  It began with the floor. It suddenly lifted underneath George, tilting and sending him staggering until he met the nearest wall. Caroline, too, was thrown off her feet. She tumbled and landed easily, bouncing on her toes, ready for whatever came next.

  The stones underneath Aubrey heaved. He fell and, spreadeagled, found himself on top of a column that burst from the floor and threatened to mash him against the ceiling. He flung himself to one side, tumbling to the floor. The column and the ceiling met with a crash.

  Aubrey crouched, panting. George picked himself up and stumbled toward him. Caroline eased closer. 'Now what?'

  'Nothing good.' Aubrey tried to look in all directions at once. When would the shrine realise that it could drop the entire ceiling and get rid of them that way? They were intruders. He had to convince the place that they belonged there.

  The rear wall of lurched. It shuddered, stopped, then began to grind toward them.

  Helplessly, they backed away. Aubrey's stomach was an empty, yawning hole the size of all creation.

  'Time to pull something out of the bag, Aubrey,' George muttered.

  Aubrey had a solution at his fingertips. He was sure that a variation of his identity spell, the one he'd used in Lutetia, would work. Not just identity, but texture and flavour of identity could be captured by the spell. He was sure he could cloak them in enough 'Romanness' to placate the shrine's awareness.

  But he couldn't use magic.

  George shouted and pushed Aubrey aside. A mass of stone fell, sending up a cloud of dust. Aubrey cannoned into Caroline. She twisted, keeping her balance, but Aubrey lurched to one side and slammed his head against the wall. Black streaks clawed at his vision.

  Through his grogginess, movement caught his attention. Behind George, on the other side of the room, a huge mouth had formed and was snapping at him. Made of the stone blocks of the wall, its lips flapped and snarled obscenely. George cried out and recoiled, but the floor beneath his feet bucked, throwing him straight at the hungry teeth.

  A few yards away, Caroline was on her back, scrambling away from a hole that had opened in front of her. The floor tilted, doing its best to slide her into the gap.

  Aubrey flung off the last vestiges of terror. His friends were in danger. Nothing else mattered. He had to save them, even if it cost him.

  The spell leaped to his lips, as if it had been waiting for the chance. He began to chant.

  The spell was dense; each individual term was short, but the linking and sequencing needed to establish identity was demanding. Sweat sprang to his forehead as he spat out each Chaldean syllable, biting off each one as clearly as he could. The spell writhed on his tongue, having a life of its own. It looked for any chance to baffle him, to go wrong, or to tease him into slurring or mispronouncing.

  He refused to be beaten. Each element came to him as he needed it, whole and clear. He shunted them to his mouth and marched them off, not allowing any mistakes.

  Finally, he slammed out the final syllable, his signature and conclusion.

  All strength vanished from his legs. He grunted and, boneless, he slumped to the floor.

  He watched, blurrily, unable to move, hoping he'd done enough and trying to remember another spell, just in case he hadn't, but his mind was leaden. Nothing came to him.

  All movement in the shrine – apart from Caroline and George's desperate efforts to avoid their traps – ceased. They scrambled to the centre of the room, breathing hard, eyes darting.

  The mouth in the wall shrank, shifted, then disappeared. The stone made itself whole again. The gap in the floor closed up, the stone blocks rumbled back into place. In the far corner, stairs projected from the wall, floor and ceiling.

  'Aubrey!' George called and hurried to his side. 'What have you done?'

  Aubrey shook his head, then he bit down as a sharp spasm seized him.

  His body and soul were coming apart.

  Seventeen

  AUBREY DOUBLED UP, HIS KNEES ALMOST TOUCHING his chin. He hissed, trying to let out the agony. Dissolution had never been this acutely painful before.

  He felt George's hand on his shoulder. 'Steady, old man.'

  'Trouble, George,' he managed to gasp. His vision wavered and blurred before settling. He felt as if he were being jabbed all over with icy needles.

  'I gathered as much. Here, can you make it to the wall?'

  Caroline brought the
lantern close. 'What's going on?'

  Aubrey gave a weak laugh. 'This is what I didn't want you to see.'

  'Your condition?' She glanced at George. 'I know, you know.'

  'Magic.' Pause, gather breath – not too deep. 'I convinced the shrine that we belonged here.' He shuddered as another wave of pain rolled through him, his soul wrenching at the confines of his body with enough force to make him nauseated. He used his magical awareness and wasn't surprised to see that the golden cord was shining brighter than ever.

  The mystical golden cord. Every soul was bound by two aspects of the golden cord. One disappeared into the portal that leads to the true death. The other linked the soul to the body. When the time was right, the golden cord that linked body and soul melted, and the surviving cord guided the soul to the true death.

  It was the natural order of things. The order that Aubrey had messed up with his experiment.

  His time was not due, but the true death called him constantly, tugging his soul towards the final journey. Now, its summons was greater than ever.

  George eased him down so his back was to the wall, near the stone table.

  Caroline crouched and held the lantern so it wouldn't shine in his eyes. A wisp of hair had escaped the knot she'd tied at the back of her head. She pushed it away irritably, but with such grace and economy of movement that Aubrey nearly wept.

  'You idiot,' she said. 'What have you done?'

  'That's all right,' he croaked. 'Any time.'

  'What?'

  'Sorry. I thought you were thanking me for saving you.'

  She thought about this for a moment. 'No. I was upbraiding you.'

  'Ah. That's what it was.' Aubrey closed his eyes for a moment. The darkness behind his eyelids swelled and surged in time with his pulse.

  'Is there anything you can do?' she asked.

  'I hope so.' He concentrated on his breathing. It seemed to help.

  'Is it like this all the time?'

  'Like this?' Small breath in, tiny breath out. 'No. Not all the time. My hold has been loosened.'

  'What caused it then?'

  'Magic. Strains me. Weakens my grip.' He probed at his teeth with his tongue, checking to see if any were loose.

  'I see. You tried not using magic, didn't you?'