The Burning Altar

by Sarah Rayne

  They had decided to do this part alone; Baz had said that bringing along the Anchor crowd, never mind that rabble from the Wayfarer, would balls up the whole thing on account of the noise.

  He apologised for swearing again, and Raffael said, ‘I think we’d better set the record straight once and for all – I don’t give a tuppenny fuck how much or how violently you swear. All right?’

  Baz said all right, thought that people never ceased to amaze you, and got down to work. It was a bit awkward to free the spigot and get down to the wheel-crank itself, and not being able to make any noise made it even worse. There was no trick to the job, of course; you just stripped the wheel down until you reached the turning mechanism. Like picking a lock. He did not say this aloud, however, because some things were best left unsaid.

  What with the darkness and the ban on noise, it took longer than either of them had thought, and Raffael was drenched in sweat by the time Baz straightened up and said he thought they were there.

  Raffael glanced at his watch: just on ten o’clock. Timur had said the sacrifices would take place at midnight, but there might be all manner of rituals leading up. Ginevra might be facing death even as they stood here.

  Baz began to spin the wheel, and at once there was an answering grating of metal which made both of them jump and look uneasily over their shoulders. The ancient sluice gates began to unfold and Raffael said softly, ‘This is where we impose complete silence, I think. Once through those gates we daren’t risk being heard.’

  ‘What if there’s guards? On the other side, I mean? Is that likely?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yes, it might be possible.’

  ‘Do we knock them out?’

  ‘Could you?’

  Baz thought about Georgie’s possible fate and Ralphie’s and all the other laddies who had vanished, and he thought about the very classy Ginevra Craven who had gone so enthusiastically into this. He said he would be very happy to disfigure the whole bunch of evil wankers for life, and this time made no apology for his language.

  ‘Good,’ said Raffael, pocketing the heaviest of the small spanners. ‘That’s what I hoped you say.’

  A breath of old sour air gusted into their faces as they moved through the darkness, but there was still a faint thread of light from somewhere. I’m going towards the light, thought Raffael, caught between fear and sudden exhilaration. I’m going towards the light and I’m going towards Ginevra. His hand closed about the heavy-headed spanner in his pocket. Knock out any guards, he had said. If it comes to it, will I really do it? Violence is never justifiable, Father. Yes, it bloody is! thought Raffael.

  The tunnels were not as maze-like as he had feared; there was a main passageway with a curved roof and groyned brick archways buttressing it. Small intersections branched off the main tunnel, and several times they had to step over noisome iron grids. At each intersection they paused for Baz to make a faint chalk mark on the walls to keep track of where they were and where they had been.

  Even with the thin ingress of light it was still very dark and they did not dare use the torches. The tunnels picked up every breath of sound and magnified it over and over, so that Raffael kept thinking they were being followed, or that they were being watched, or that someone was crouching up ahead waiting to pounce . . .

  And then the whispering echoes suddenly coalesced into pounding footsteps, and two men, dark-clad and wearing some kind of nightmarish snarling-cat heads, erupted out of the darkness.

  For several seconds Raffael and Baz both stood stock-still, unable to believe their eyes. And then they shared the thought – only masks! -and met their attackers head on.

  Baz, child of the East End docks, swung out at once, aiming the wrench not at the protected head, but at the shoulders. There was the sickening crunch of steel on bone and the man yelped and fell back, one arm hanging uselessly at his side. Baz launched forward instantly, ripping away the masked head, the wrench lifted to deal an even more disabling blow.

  Raffael had been knocked to the ground, and his attacker had pounced on him, one hand pushing into his throat, the other raised, ready to smash down. Raffael brought his knee up and rammed it hard into the man’s groin, and he gave a grunting sound and doubled up at once, rolling away, clutching himself in agony. Serve you right, you bastard! thought Raffael, but for all that, he was glad that it was Baz who again lifted the wrench and dealt the second blow, aiming at the base of the neck. The man crumpled into unconsciousness, and Raffael scrambled to his feet, slightly shaken, but feeling not the least trace of guilt.

  ‘What now?’ said Baz, staring down at the two prone bodies. Raffael was bending over his attacker, but he looked up and grinned briefly.

  ‘They’ve given it to us on a plate,’ he said. ‘We don their identities. We put on the cat heads and we go into the lions’ den.’

  As the Tashkarans made to fall on Grendel, Ginevra started forward as if to help, but Elinor dragged her back.

  ‘Stay where you are!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘If we try to escape now they’ll tear us to bits and throw us on to that thing!’ said Elinor in a furious whisper.

  ‘Oh.’ Ginevra swallowed and collected herself. ‘Er – this is Georgie. He’s been helping us—’

  ‘Good,’ said Elinor impatiently, without looking at the boy, her eyes still on Grendel.

  It was then that Grendel began to speak, and at his first words the Tashkarans froze. The hair prickled on the back of Elinor’s neck.

  ‘Clio sings of famous deeds and restores the past to life.

  Euterpe’s breath fills the sweet-voiced flutes.

  Thalia rejoices in the careless speech of comedy

  While Melpomene cries aloud with the echoing voice of gloomy tragedy.

  Terpsichore with her lyre stirs and governs the emotions.

  Erato bearing the plectrum harmonizes foot and song in the dance.

  Urania examines the motions of the stars.

  Calliope commits heroic songs to writing;

  Polymnia expresses all things with her hands and speaks by gesture.

  The power of Apollo’s will enlivens the whole circle of the Muses—’

  Grendel paused, surveying the Tashkarans, and for the first time there was amusement and arrogance in his expression. When he resumed the strange, apparently patternless chant, he did so with cool deliberation.

  ‘But Touaris, fiery cat-blooded Touaris, dons the masks of them all:

  Taurt she is and Apet; Hesamut she is and Smet;

  Shapuit she has been and Hathor she will be.

  She sits with Horus, with Thoth at her right hand and Osiris at her left,

  And consorts with Khnum and Ptah, the creators.’

  He stopped again and the Tashkarans stared at him, apparently stunned into silent immobility.

  ‘It’s some kind of key,’ said Ginevra softly. ‘Elinor, it’s a – a password of some sort.’

  ‘Whatever it is they recognise it.’ Elinor looked around the warehouse frantically. Was now the time to make a run for it? She glanced towards the trap door. Could they be down the stairs and through the tunnels and out into St Stephen’s Road? No, a watch had been posted. Even with the thought, she saw the trap door lift, and the two guards stepped up into the warehouse, and stood on each side of the open hatch. Don’t want to miss any of the fun, thought Elinor bitterly, and turned back to Grendel.

  Grendel was facing Iwane and he seemed to be waiting. The silence stretched out and when Iwane finally spoke his voice was slow and unwilling. He said, ‘You have the race-memories of our ancestors.’

  ‘I have. The exodus from Egypt, the building of Tashkara’s first city in the valley that stands beyond time . . .’ He paused, and again the fearful murmur brushed the watchers. ‘The city gates that were ranked alongside Artemisia’s mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the lighthouse of Alexandria and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus,’ said Grendel, softly, and then said, clearly quoting, ‘“We shall raise up
our city in the wilderness, and there we shall pursue the worship of the One True Religion and the blasphemies of the world shall never prevail against it . . .”’

  ‘“We will build two gates to the city,”’ said Grendel, and now the soaring note of exultation was unmistakable. ‘“And one will be of sawn ivory and one of horn . . . And where the ivory gleams there will be my people and my truths . . . And where the burnished horn shines, there will be my enemies and their falsehoods.”’

  He smiled at Iwane. ‘You see,’ he said. ‘I know what is written in the Chronicles of my people. And I know the secret chant of the goddess. As you have just heard.’

  ‘You could have found that out.’

  ‘How? Where?’

  ‘There might be ways—’ Iwane stopped and then said very deliberately and very slowly, ‘Are you the messenger that stands before the face of the gods?’

  ‘I stand at the door and knock,’ said Grendel, and a ripple of emotion stirred the watchers.

  Iwane said, ‘The gods are athirst.’

  And again Grendel responded: ‘I will raise up a Table in the Wilderness and my people shall hunt the gods and feast on them and therefore feast with them.’

  It was like a dark catechism or a travesty of a religious litany. Question and answer. Challenge and response. And whatever it means, he’s giving the right responses, thought Elinor. And it’s shocked them.

  ‘You could not know that,’ said Iwane, staring at him, ‘not possibly. Not unless—’

  ‘Not unless I had the spirit of the goddess reborn?’ Grendel smiled and began to advance on Iwane, and Elinor heard Ginevra gasp. She looked back at Grendel and her stomach churned with fear. Grendel’s face, bloodied and slimed as it still was, was unquestionably changing. The dark slavering thing surfacing . . . Like this he’s a match for Iwane, and he’s probably a match for any of them. But he’s still chained . . . Oh God, I’d forgotten that he was still chained . . .

  Grendel leaped on to Iwane, the curled fingers of both hands reaching for his throat. The chains jerked taut and Iwane flinched and tried to pull away but it was too late; Grendel had caught him, and the nails of both hands were gouging deep into his jugular veins. Blood spurted, spattering Grendel’s face.

  ‘Doubter!’ screamed Grendel. ‘Disbeliever!’ His nails tore into the thin cloth of Iwane’s shirt, and ripped it aside in maniacal fury, and with a cry of triumph he pushed Iwane back on to the Altar. The most appalling scream Elinor had ever heard tore through the warehouse, and then there was a fierce hiss of heat as Iwane fell into the centre of the fierce glowing heat.

  The Tashkarans surged forward at once, holding out their hands to pull him clear, but the heat was too intense, and they flinched back, throwing up their hands to shield their faces and eyes.

  Iwane was lying on his back across the Altar’s surface, his face contorted, his hands flailing helplessly at the air as he struggled to get free. His mouth was stretched in an endless scream and his eyes were starting from his head, the whites suffused with crimson. Hissing curls of steam rose up all around him, enveloping him. This is the moment, thought Elinor wildly. If ever the attention was away from us, it’s away now. She looked about her. To run to the main doors at the far end? But that meant going straight through the centre of the Tashkarans. And behind them, although the trap door was open, it was guarded. Elinor stared at it in despair and at the two guards. Had she imagined it, or had the nearer of the two made a small, almost imperceptible gesture of beckoning? No, there it was again.

  At her side, Ginevra said in a whisper so low that Elinor barely caught it. ‘Elinor. Start edging back to the trap door.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that’s Raffael.’

  Elinor stared and then said, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘All right. But slowly. Inch by inch. Keep your eyes on what’s happening and if anyone looks our way, freeze.’

  The Tashkarans were still grouped about the Altar, vainly trying to reach the squirming dying Iwane, and Grendel was raising his fists above his head in maniacal triumph. Madness, stark and wild, glared from his eyes, and he began to laugh, great insane peals of terrible mirth tearing through the crimson-lit warehouse. He’s covering us, thought Elinor, suddenly. Dear God, I believe he really is! He’s forcing the madness to the surface so that we can get free! Here we go. I hope Ginevra’s right about this guard being Raffael.

  Holding hands, they began to retreat towards the waiting square of darkness, going so slowly that Elinor found herself wanting to scream to them to hurry, because at any minute the Tashkarans could look up and catch them. She fixed her eyes on the scene before her, and concentrated on moving slowly and noiselessly.

  Grendel was still in the red glare from the altar, exulting over the dying Iwane. ‘Scream!’ he cried. ‘Scream until your throat bursts! Scream until your lungs shred and you vomit them on to your cooking body! When you are done, I will feast on you, I will eat you, shred by shred! And then I will rule from my mother’s throne!’

  Elinor saw the shudder go through the watching people. But in another minute they would remember their prey . . . How near to the trap door are we? Ten paces? I think we’re going to make it.

  And then they were there, and the two guards who were not guards at all, were grabbing them and almost throwing them down the stair.

  As Raffael reached up to pull the trap door down over their heads, the last thing Elinor saw was Grendel standing over the squirming screaming body of Iwane, still laughing with demonic delight.

  Chapter Thirty

  They ran through the subterranean passages with the sounds of the Tashkarans’ shouts of fury echoing after them.

  ‘Outrun them!’ cried Raffael. ‘We must! They’ll be after us within minutes! Through here!’

  ‘How do you know that’s—’

  ‘We marked the tunnels as we came,’ said Raffael, grabbing Ginevra’s hand and pulling her along with him. ‘Along here and as fast as you can!’

  Ginevra flung breathless scraps of information at Elinor as they ran: something about finding Elinor’s handbag in the flat, and something else about Raffael working for the Vatican and employing the two boys, Georgie and Baz, as decoys to find the warehouse.

  ‘And it worked splendidly, didn’t it work splendidly, Georgie?’

  The thin, faintly weasel-featured Georgie was understood to say that it had worked too bloody well.

  Raffael was moving ahead, scanning each intersection of the tunnels as they came to it. Leading us out of the darkness, thought Elinor, and as if he had caught this, he looked back at her. He seemed somehow less disreputable than she remembered, but he still looked untidy and haggard. He said, ‘It’s all right, Elinor – you’re safe. We’ll get out.’

  ‘Well, of course we’ll get out—’ Ginevra retorted.

  ‘Are they following us?’ said Elinor abruptly. ‘I can’t hear anything, but—’

  ‘No, that’s because we’re making so much noise ourselves.’

  ‘Do hush, you abominable child,’ said Raffael, and Ginevra subsided at once. ‘Listen.’ He held up a hand for silence, and they listened. Nothing. No sound save the echoes of their hurrying footsteps and the faint dripping of water from somewhere. But Timur’s people had known these tunnels, and at any minute the dank sewers might fill up with the cat-headed creatures— Elinor shut off the thought abruptly. Safe. This is safety. We’ve been rescued.

  She said, ‘Surely they’d come straight after us? It might be a trap. We might get to the end of these tunnels and find them waiting for us.’ Panic rose in her voice and she quelled it at once.

  ‘I think they’d have to remove the evidence,’ said Raffael. ‘They’d assume we’d go straight to the police and they’d be more concerned about their own skins. Also,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘they’ve still got Grendel, and that’s probably their main concern.’ He glanced at Ginevra, and Elinor saw something flicker in his eyes. ‘But I don�
��t think we dare go back to Chance House,’ he said. ‘That’s the first place they’ll look.’

  Elinor shivered but managed to say, ‘Then where?’

  Raffael grinned suddenly, and in the dim light, the years fell away. For a moment he looked like a gleeful child who has outwitted his elders. He said, ‘Unless Baz and I muffed it earlier on, we’ll come out into an abandoned sewer in the docks.’

  ‘At any minute,’ affirmed Baz, pointing to a faint chalk mark on the brick wall.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Georgie in a sepulchral voice.

  Raffael laughed. ‘It’s all right, Georgie, from there we’re going into asylum. Into sanctuary.’ And then, as they stared at him, ‘The Roman Catholic Church has ever looked after its own,’ he said.

  And Georgie said, in a voice of extreme horror, ‘Oh Jesus Christ, he’s taking us to a frigging church!’

  The Underground had stopped running, but once clear of St Stephen’s Wharf there were several cruising taxis and they hailed one and fell thankfully into it. Elinor felt a layer of the horror peel away, and a thin carapace of safety begin to form. With every mile, I’m farther away from it. With every minute, I’m a little bit safer.

  At her side Ginevra said, ‘Where are we really going, Raffael?’

  ‘Bloomsbury. The house of friends.’

  ‘In a minute you’ll pat everyone’s hands and say, “Trust me,” in a patronising tone.’

  ‘No, I won’t. But you can,’ said Raffael. ‘I mean you can trust me.’ He sat back, looking through the taxi windows at the night streets. From the forward seat Georgie remarked that it was to be hoped they had enough money between them to pay for the journey, and was told to hush by Baz.

  But when the taxi pulled up in front of the tall Bloomsbury house Raffael pressed four ten-pound notes into the driver’s hand and said brusquely, ‘You have not seen any of us tonight.’

  ‘Not on the run nor anything, are you?’ demanded the taxi driver, scanning Raffael’s face suspiciously.