The Orpheus Descent

by Tom Harper

  He clapped me on the shoulder. ‘You look nervous. Are you ready for the kill?’

  Animals watch us with dumb eyes, but we never know what they see. Did Dionysius know what was going to happen? Was I as doomed as Euphemus?

  ‘Make sure you keep an eye on my boy. I don’t want him getting hurt.’ He hung on, twisting my shoulder like a promise of things to come. Then he let go.

  ‘It should be a good day’s hunting.’

  Socrates had a routine he sometimes used, comparing hunting pigeons to the hunt for knowledge. I’ve no idea how he came up with it: he must have got chatting with some trapper in the market one day. The idea of Socrates crawling through the forest with lures and snares beggars belief.

  The metaphor never really worked for me. I love knowledge, but I hate hunting. That day, I hated it more than ever. The sun beat down through the forest; branches tore at me; my head ached from the hounds baying. The knife I’d strapped to my thigh chafed my legs and made me sweat horribly. In the end, I untied it and tucked it into my boot, hoping no one would notice.

  Quickly, our line stretched out across the mountain. Around mid-morning, we heard shouts from the distance.

  ‘They’ve picked up the boar’s scent,’ said Dion. ‘Let’s see if we can corner it.’

  In fact, there was little danger of that. Young Dionysius would have struggled to overtake a tortoise. His face burned, his nose ran, his lungs wheezed and coughed. As long as we stayed with him – me, Dion and two guards – we’d be lucky to see the boar before it was on the spit.

  But we had to show willing, and so we went on. The trees thinned; the air grew cooler. The sweat we’d built up in the climb now chilled us. Dionysius looked miserable, though I don’t suppose I looked any happier. I knew what was coming.

  We paused in a glade ringed by pale green trees. Back below, we’d sought out the shade; now, we chased the sunlight. It shone brightly, but somehow weaker than before. I stood in the middle of the clearing and tipped my face upwards, turning this way and that as I tried to catch the warmth.

  As I did, I found myself looking straight up the mountain through a gap between the trees. It framed the ridge above, where two hills erupted out of the slope like boils pushed up by the heat of the fires below. Perfectly symmetrical and perfectly conical. Silhouetted against the sky, they made a pair of triangles, with the dip between them like an inscribed circle.

  Cold sweat iced my skin as I remembered the picture I’d found on the manuscript in the temple.

  ‘What are those hills?’ I asked Dion.

  He laughed. ‘The locals call them Hybla’s breasts. It’s actually the place I told you about, where they found Empedocles’ bronze sandal.’

  I took out the gold tablet and unrolled it.

  ‘What’s that?’ Dion asked.

  The tiny words swam before my sweaty eyes.

  Travel further down the sacred road

  In glory, with the other initiated souls.

  Folded in the breasts of the Queen of Hell.

  I looked back at the hills, shading my eyes. ‘Is there a temple there?’

  ‘An old Sicel shrine: it’s mostly ruined. Only—’

  A trumpet interrupted him, blaring through the forest from further around the mountain. Not a fanfare or a rallying cry, but short, panicked blasts.

  ‘Something’s happened!’ Dion grabbed his spear and started running towards the sound. The guards followed. On the edge of the clearing, Dion glanced back and shouted to me, ‘Stay with the boy. Make sure nothing happens.’

  Their footsteps died into the forest. Behind me, young Dionysius sat on a boulder in the shade and picked apart a twig. Even the sudden rush of danger didn’t seem to have excited him. I could hardly bring myself to look at him.

  I pulled the knife out of my boot. Sunlight bounced off the blade onto the boy’s face, and he looked up. We both stared at the knife, equally surprised, as if an unreal object had suddenly appeared between us. Even with my fingers curled around the handle, the weight in my hand, I didn’t really understand that it was real. That it would cut real flesh, and a real life would end.

  I took three steps towards the boy and faltered. He stared at me, eyes wide.

  Can a good man do a bad thing in a good cause?

  Hunting knowledge isn’t the same as hunting pigeons or boars. Or men. I looked at the knife again, still trying to comprehend it. Two brown eyes stared back at me out of the polished blade – my own. We examined each other, I and myself, wondering what I was capable of.

  Something long and sharp whistled through the air and plucked at my arm. I dropped the knife and spun off-balance, clutching my arm in pain.

  One of Dionysius’ guards stood on the edge of the clearing. How did he get here so fast? He was dressed for battle, not hunting, with a helmet on his head and a sword at his side. His spear quivered in the earth just beyond me.

  I started stammering some kind of excuse, but neither of us believed it. He drew his sword and walked towards me. I searched his face for anger, hatred – any emotion that would add some meaning to the end of my life. He just looked like someone concentrating hard.

  A stone the size of a fist sailed out of the trees and struck the soldier’s head. His helmet rang like a gong. His knees buckled; he staggered forward, but recovered his balance and turned to see who had attacked him.

  It was all I needed. The stone had rolled past him almost to my feet. I picked it up and crossed the clearing. His head was still ringing from the first blow: he didn’t hear me coming. With my good arm, I brought the stone down on his head again, and again, and once more to be sure. He collapsed in a heap.

  Can a good man do a bad thing in a good cause? Apparently so, if his life depends on it and there’s a good-sized rock handy.

  A rustle in the trees. I lunged for the dropped sword, but my hand was shaking so badly I could hardly pick it up. Blood flowed down my arm where the spear had cut it. I was defenceless.

  The trees parted. Diotima emerged from the forest, moving softly as a fawn. She hurried over to me, tore a strip off the fallen soldier’s tunic, and bandaged my arm.

  I looked at the rock. ‘Did you …?’ Her slim arms, bare to the shoulder, looked too delicate to have thrown it so hard. ‘How—?’

  ‘Dionysius knows. He sets spies on his spies, and guards to guard his guards.’ Blood had already soaked through the bandage. She tore off another strip and wound it over the first, then picked a few stems from a plant growing under one of the beech trees. ‘Chew on this. It’ll help the bleeding.’

  The leaves were bitter and made me dizzy. I sat there, stupefied, while Diotima cocked her head and listened. All I heard was birds.

  ‘The assassination failed. Dionysius will be here soon.’

  I struggled to my feet. ‘I have to get away.’

  A cool look that seemed to mock something inside me. ‘It isn’t you Dionysius wants.’

  ‘Who?’ I searched her face. ‘You?’

  ‘You were the bait.’

  ‘And you came anyway.’

  She kept my gratitude at arm’s length. ‘I didn’t want you to end up like Agathon.’

  She turned her head again, and this time I heard it too: the crash and snap of heavy animals breaking their way through the forest.

  ‘You have to get down off the mountain. Head for Katane. It’s Carthaginian, so Dionysius can’t go there. You’ll find a ship going to Athens, or at least to Thurii.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll find you.’

  I hated to leave her – but there was no time to argue. I could hear the hunt coming closer. I turned to go, and saw young Dionysius still cowering behind a tree, too frightened to move.

  ‘What about him?’

  Diotima shrugged. ‘Are you going to kill him?’

  The knife lay on the ground where I’d dropped it, the curved blade like a coiled snake in the middle of the glade. I shuddered.

  ‘No.’

>   ‘Then let’s go.’

  We left him. Diotima glided into the forest, while I staggered and stumbled in the opposite direction. My arm burned, my head swam, my mouth ached for water and I had a stitch like a spear through my side. The golden chain bounced and swung around my neck. It snagged on a branch and nearly throttled me.

  I stopped, panting hard. My sweating, panicked hands struggled to disentangle the chain. As it came free, I almost hurled it away.

  But something stopped me. The golden locket seemed to throb in my hand. I knew I had to keep running, but I couldn’t move. All I could think of were the twin hills I’d seen from the clearing, the valley between them and the picture on Timaeus’ book. I heard its song in my ears: dark, ecstatic music calling me in.

  You have to get down off the mountain, Diotima insisted. I saw the harbour at Katane, and the ship waiting for me, its high-beaked prow turned towards Athens. I saw Glaucon standing on the cape at Sounion like old King Aegeus, shielding his eyes against the glare on the water as he looked for my return.

  What are you looking for, in the dark shadows of Hades? the tablet whispered. Have you come this far to give up? Don’t you want to know?

  Stay away, Agathon warned me. But it was too late.

  I turned up the mountain.

  The hunt was in full cry: baying, barking, closing its net like in one of my nightmares. I climbed and climbed, never resting, but each time I heard the pursuit it was closer. At least Diotima might have got away. The slope steepened. The stitch spread through my body like a crack. The ground became loose, crumbling underfoot, so that with every step I’d already slipped halfway back before I could take the next.

  I staggered over a rise and stopped. The two steep hills loomed over me, left and right. A silver birch grew in the saddle between them, and underneath it stood the temple.

  It was a simple building: a small white house, flat-roofed, blank-faced. Two columns supported a porch over a black doorway, with a marble garland winding across it and a black stone altar in front. Ants crawled over the altar, making a hairline procession into the bronze cup someone had left there.

  I touched the gold locket. It seemed to tremble, like a metal bowl placed next to a vibrating string. The birds had stopped singing.

  The Mansion of Night, the tablet said.

  ‘What’s inside?’

  Come and see.

  As I reached the steps, a white hound bounded out of the trees. I thought it would tear me apart but, just in front of the altar, it suddenly skidded to a halt, legs splayed, ears back, barking and growling. I didn’t look twice, but dived into the temple.

  The moment I crossed the threshold, something changed. I could smell it in the air. Dark as incense and sweet as poison. As the darkness covered my eyes, I saw a dull glow at the back of the empty room, a square hole lit by flickering flames from within.

  A black and nameless terror welled out of the hole. At the same time, shouts drifted through from outside, voices from another world. I remembered something Socrates said.

  If you’re out of your depth, it doesn’t really matter whether you’ve fallen into a little bath or the middle of the ocean. You still have to learn to swim.

  I went down.

  Thirty-six

  Jonah – Etna

  He was flying. A long way down, the blue sea raced by. Ahead, almost at eye level, the cone of Mount Etna swelled into the sky, a giant mouth exhaling a long plume of smoke.

  He looked over at Adam. ‘Are you going to drop me in the volcano?’

  They hadn’t given him a headset: Adam couldn’t have heard him over the clatter of the rotors. But he got the sense. He gave a tight, inscrutable smile and shook his head.

  Up front, the pilot glanced back and muttered something into his microphone. Adam peered forward between the seats at the smoke coming off the volcano, thick and black like an oil fire. A thin film of ash clouded the helicopter’s canopy.

  Jonah remembered how an Icelandic volcano had closed down European airspace a couple of years ago. Lily had been at a conference in Florence, trapped with the millions of others who’d suddenly woken up into a world where easy air travel no longer happened. If a volcano a thousand miles off could be so dangerous to jets, what about flying a small helicopter a few hundred yards away?

  He looked around the cabin – the three guards, dark shades over scarred faces; Ren; Adam, like the Angel of Death in his black clothes and bulging black flight helmet. And you’re worried about some ash?

  The helicopter buzzed over the side of the mountain. Jonah had never been so close to a volcano before. Black lava fields, miles wide, spilled down the slopes. Further around, a vast crater had been blown out of the mountainside, leaving a bare plateau of knotted lava. Strands of smoke and cloud blew past the helicopter, while a row of serrated peaks guarded the mountain’s flank. It felt like a lost world.

  As they came around to Etna’s southern face, Jonah saw the mountain spreading down to the Catania plain beyond. Well past the point where the slope levelled off, a series of rounded hills bulged out of the landscape.

  The helicopter banked and headed towards a pair of the hills which rose out of the middle slopes of the mountain. There was a strange, geometrical symmetry to them: each like the other, and both almost perfectly conical. Their tree-covered hilltops stood out like a pair of fertile islands in a frozen sea of rock.

  The pilot put them down on the tarmac road that wound up the mountain, below the hills. A black Mercedes 4x4, as long as a house, had parked across it to block off the traffic. Jonah gazed at it as if it were a creature that had sprung from his nightmares, remembering the rush of air as it blew past him on the road outside Sibari. He didn’t have long to look. The shades bundled him into the car, Adam jumped into the front seat and the helicopter flew away. Soon, the Mercedes was grinding its way up a track that led towards the twin hills. They were taller than they’d looked from the air.

  ‘Is this where you’re keeping Lily?’ Jonah shouted. His ears were still ringing from the helicopter.

  ‘This is the place in the tablets. Where hundred-headed Typhos shakes open the earth, I went down into the bosom of the goddess. Typhos was a titan who was chained underneath Etna.’

  Jonah looked out through the window. On the ashy track, a plume of fine black dust streamed out behind them. A smoky red haze covered the sky, like a solar eclipse or the end of the world. Sharp black rocks and spiky brown plants were the only things that grew here.

  He thought of Lily swimming; the moistness of her mouth; her skin softened by years of gentle English rain. This place was as far away from her as you could get.

  Ren leaned forward. ‘Is the volcano erupting?’

  ‘On the other side,’ said Adam. ‘We’re too far away for it to matter here. Even if it does come, we’ll have plenty of warning. Etna’s lava moves at about four miles an hour. You can walk away from it.’

  The car stopped in the valley between the two hills, at the edge of a trench excavated from the flow. In the bottom, white ashlar blocks lay where they’d been cut free from their lava prison. They made a simple rectangular foundation, with two round column bases together at the front like cats’ paws. At the back of the chamber, a second hole sank into a deeper darkness.

  ‘Did you do all this in the last week?’

  But even as Jonah said it, he could see that wasn’t right. The trench’s edges were weathered smooth; the rubble heaped up by the edge wasn’t nearly enough to have come out of the hole.

  ‘The original temple was buried in an eruption around 400 BC. The Italians excavated that in the seventies. We got here three days ago.’

  ‘Do they know you’re here?’ said Ren.

  Adam shrugged. ‘This is Italy.’

  He skirted around the edge of the pit to a green tent that had been pitched beside it.

  ‘I’ve brought them,’ he said through the canvas.

  The flap lifted and a man ducked out. He was bigger than Jonah and
built like a boxer: a short thick neck, a flat face, olive-black skin and bloodshot eyes. A mop of dark hair hung in lank ringlets almost to his shoulders. Jonah had never seen him before, but he knew him from his nightmares.

  ‘Ari Maroussis,’ said Adam.

  He didn’t even look at Jonah. ‘The tablet – you got it?’

  Adam gave it to him. The fragile leaf vanished in a fist the size of a brick.

  ‘I knew your sister,’ he said to Ren. He turned to Jonah. ‘And your wife.’

  Be still, Jonah told himself. He tried to imagine holding a chord, sustaining it as a single line against every dictate of rhythm, against the movement of the crowd and the fluctuating world. Perfect stillness.

  ‘Where is she?’

  Ari licked his lips, letting his tongue linger where a berry-red scab split the flesh.

  ‘You will find out.’

  The chord broke. Jonah launched himself at Ari. But he was tired, sore – and Ari was ready. He put out an arm and grabbed Jonah by the throat, holding him back. Jonah struggled, but Ari was strong as a horse.

  Hands grabbed his arms and held him from behind. Ari tightened his grip, squeezing Jonah’s neck so hard he thought he’d crush it. His sight misted over; he couldn’t breathe. An arm’s length away, the red-veined eyes stared at him with childish delight. Ari was smiling. Nicotine stained his teeth yellow.

  ‘Stamata!’ said a voice from close by. ‘Stop it!’

  With a final squeeze that nearly snapped Jonah’s windpipe, Ari pulled back. The hands holding Jonah’s arms let go. He collapsed in a heap on the ground.

  When he was able to look up again, a new figure had appeared. Socratis Maroussis, still dressed like an Edwardian gentleman who’d been snatched out of time. Two of the shades flanked him.

  Jonah spat out a gob of bile. ‘I thought you were a prisoner on your island.’ Every word was like drawing a fat steel cable through his throat.