Anno Mortis

by Rebecca Levene

  And there were other sounds, harder to place and therefore more frightening. What was that sudden dry snap, over to her left? Was it a human voice she could hear humming that tune somewhere in the distance, or was it something else?

  Boda was unused to such unreasoning fear. She'd been training as a warrior since she was big enough to hold a sword, and killed her first man before she saw her first moon as a woman. She'd screamed and cowered when the men danced round the fire at midsummer and midwinter, wearing the masks of the tribal gods, but she'd known it was only in sport. She knew the stories of Asgard, the home of the gods, and Hel, where the evil went when they died. She knew that the world was filled with demons; she'd just never expected to meet any.

  She never thought she'd see the dead walking. She didn't know if they walked here, but she imagined them, lurking in the darkness her eyes couldn't penetrate. And now she heard footsteps, echoing through the caverns. She told herself they were just a product of her mind, giving flesh to the spectres of her imagination.

  But the footsteps grew louder and nearer and soon they brought with them a glimmer of light. Her captors, then. Were they coming to feed her again? Or was this finally it, the moment when they would spill her blood in a sacrifice to gods who were not her own?

  As the light grew nearer she could see the slab over which she hung suspended. A body lay on top, wrapped in fresh bandages. Four animal-headed jars surrounded it. She couldn't say how, but she knew that Josephus's mutilated corpse lay beneath the white cloth. Around him, the ancient rock was splattered with the black of old blood.

  The torchlight grew nearer and brighter, and the bloodstains brightened to a rusty scarlet. She couldn't take her eyes from them, even as she heard the newcomer walking towards her.

  "Boda!" he said.

  It was Petronius. She was shocked into silence. It had not occurred to her, even in a second of desperate hope, that the Roman would come for her.

  Now he was here, of course, he was looking characteristically clueless. "How do I get you out of there?" he asked helplessly.

  The cage locked from the outside. She'd tried to force it in the days she'd been here, but it was solid iron and impossible to shift. No doubt her captors had taken the key with them. "Try breaking the lock with a stone," she said.

  He fumbled on the floor for a loose rock, then juggled his torch uncertainly when he found one.

  "There's a sconce on the wall behind me," she told him, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice.

  "Oh, yes, right." He fumbled for a second before finding it, and the quivering yellow light settled into a steady, comforting glow. She realised that he was shaking and terrified.

  "Thank you," she said, meaning it.

  He grinned at that, suddenly looking very young. "I knew if I put myself in enough danger for you, you'd say it eventually."

  He had to balance himself on the slab beneath her to reach the lock. He braced his feet to either side of Josephus's corpse, averting his eyes from the body. It took him three strikes with the rock before the lock broke.

  Then the side of the cage fell open, hitting Petronius on the head and knocking him to the cavern floor. Boda tumbled after, landing beside Josephus on the stone slab. She groaned in pain as cramped joints slowly unknotted. Petronius groaned too, rubbing his hip and thigh as he stumbled to his feet. Metallic echoes of the lock breaking washed back into the chamber.

  They masked the sound of approaching feet. Boda didn't realise they were no longer alone until the light in the cavern brightened unexpectedly and she heard a coughing laugh.

  "So," Seneca said. "It seems you couldn't wait to get started."

  Behind him, the other cultists began streaming in. They were dressed in their festival best, chatting and smiling, but a dark current moved beneath the social surface.

  "I won't let you get away with this!" Petronius said. His throat bobbed as he swallowed nervously.

  Seneca smiled. "My dear boy, there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The sailors had gone to ground in the Royal Library. It took Narcissus and Vali an hour to trace them there, by which time the sun had set and the insect-rich African night had descended. The chirping of crickets was louder than the daytime crowds had been.

  Every monument in Alexandria seemed to be built on a grand scale, but the library dwarfed them all. Narcissus had heard of it - everyone had - but he'd always pictured it as just one building. It wasn't. There were scores of interconnecting structures arranged around courtyards both open and closed. The place was almost a city in its own right.

  The fifty-foot high wooden doors stood open even at night, the warm glow of torchlight spilling out from within. He expected trouble when they entered, but the bored-looking guards didn't even glance their way, just stayed crouched on the marble floor over their dice. Red-kilted librarians were everywhere inside. Deep-set black eyes peered suspiciously out of the palest Egyptian faces Narcissus had yet seen, but nobody moved to stop them.

  "This place is huge," Narcissus said.

  Vali nodded. He asked a librarian if there was a map they could follow, but the man sneered that any true scholar would know his way around. He strode off before they could ask him anything further. And the endless rooms of the library stretched away to either side, doorways framed within other doorways like reflections within paired mirrors.

  Narcissus looked around him in despair. "We'll never find them here."

  Vali nodded gravely. "You're right. We may as well give up now."

  Narcissus glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "You're mocking me, aren't you?"

  "Yes." Vali strode forward, deeper inside. To his left, a doorway led to a circular lecture hall, ranks of stone seats surrounding a central podium. There was a lecture in progress now, a stooped professor holding court over three hundred or more students. Narcissus only caught a few words as they passed, but he thought the man was talking about the work of Archimedes. It was here, of course, that the mathematician had laid down the principles for calculating the surface of a sphere, and invented the device used throughout the empire to pump water.

  "So you know where we're going?" he asked as they walked on.

  Vali shook his head, and Narcissus repressed the urge to hit him.

  "This is just aimless wandering, then? A pleasant walk on a quiet evening?" He'd never spoken to a freeman in such a tone before, but the barbarian was infuriating.

  Vali stopped at last, turning to face Narcissus. "We don't know where they are," he said, "but we know something. We know that they like to carry out their business in secret."

  Narcissus looked around him, at the shelves stacked high with scrolls and the never-ending progression of rooms. All the knowledge of the world was here. "Yes, but there could be a million places to hide and we'd never find them."

  "True, but remember this is a library. There are books here that are meant to be read - and some that aren't."

  Narcissus began to see what Vali might mean. "You think they're hiding among the banned works?"

  Vali shrugged. "These are people who covet the forbidden. And only a select few are allowed to read the texts that are held to have the power to corrupt."

  "A select few that doesn't include us," Narcissus pointed out.

  The other man smiled crookedly, and the smile somehow transformed his face. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but his skin seemed to darken, and his hair too, and Narcissus couldn't believe he hadn't noticed before how long his tunic was. Long and black. Only his eyes remained the same, the colour of banked flames.

  He winked at Narcissus, then turned into the path of an elderly man walking head-down towards the library's exit. "Teacher," he said. "May I beg the favour of a word?"

  The old man stopped and stared. He was dressed in the same long black tunic that Vali now wore, and over it a fringed shawl that draped his head and shoulders. "Of course, my brother. What is it you would ask?"


  His accent was lilting and round and Narcissus realised that he was a Jew. There were said to be many here in Alexandria, a community second in size only to the Greeks.

  "It's knowledge, I seek," Vali said. "I've heard that treasures are held here, lost books of the Torah. I seek the Martyrdom of Isaiah, and the Fourth Book of the Maccabees, which speaks of reason's triumph over the body. But the librarians will tell me nothing."

  The old man's face lit up at this, the gleam of enthusiasm in his eyes. "You've heard the truth. They are indeed here, if you know where to look. But -" and a flicker of suspicion played over his face. "Their words are not for everyone. The unwary may be led off Hashem's true path. Is your virtue strong enough to withstand that which is inside them?"

  Vali bowed his head. Narcissus strongly suspected it was to hide a smile. "If Hashem is willing, I will keep to the Law and gain only knowledge, not sin."

  It seemed to be the right thing to say. The man nodded approvingly, and slipped a small silver key into Vali's hand. He told him to come to the Room of Anatomy when he wished to return it.

  When the man had gone, Vali turned back to Narcissus. His face looked the same as ever, pale and freckled, and how could Narcissus have thought that his tunic was long and black? It was quite clearly knee-length and a light brown.

  "So," Vali said, flipping the silver key from hand to hand. "Now we know where to look."

  Petronius didn't think Seneca could have devised a better way to torment him. He could see Boda the entire time. They hadn't put her back in the cage, just closed a metal collar around her neck and chained her to the wall. She glowered at the people around her, but they stayed out of her reach, and Petronius could see that her neck was already chafed raw from her futile efforts to escape.

  He thought he could have borne it if they'd just got on with it. But the fifty or more people crowded into the small cavern didn't seem to want to do anything more than sip at goblets of wine and exchange small talk. A particularly irritating woman to his left was coaching her husband on what to say if Senator Trebonius should deign to speak to them. Her voice was shrill and affected and it grated on his nerves like a serrated knife.

  Seneca was looking at him with a smug smile he very much wanted to wipe off his face.

  "Why don't you just get on with it!" Petronius hissed. "Do you think killing her is some kind of entertainment?"

  "No. Unlike that vulgar spectacle in the Arena, this is not for pleasure. It's an act of worship."

  "For some jumped-up African god!"

  "Not a god," Seneca said coldly. "A goddess. And you should be wary of offending her. You've already seen the evidence of her power."

  He nodded to the side of the room, where the bandage-wrapped corpses once again twitched in their coffins. Petronius had stopped pretending to himself that it was all some kind of trick. He felt a trickle of cold sweat down his back, because Seneca was right. Any goddess who could do that was indeed to be feared.

  Seneca bowed sardonically and moved away as a white-haired slave sidled nearer, offering Petronius a plate of delicacies. He raised his hand to slap him aside, then let it fall again. Boda would hate to see him do that. And none of this was the slave's fault.

  "You're a new face here, aren't you?" someone said behind him. It was the woman he'd heard before, with the annoying voice and meek husband.

  He nodded and looked away, hoping that would end it.

  It didn't, of course. "I'm Publia," she said, extending a hand, "and this is my husband Antoninus."

  "I'm Petronius of the Octavii," he said stiffly.

  "And this is your first time, is it?" Her tone had shifted to become a little patronising, a result of his family name, no doubt. Not prestigious enough for sycophancy, but too rich to offend.

  He sighed. "This is my first meeting as a member of the Cult."

  "How exciting for you," she gushed. "I remember our first time. Don't you, Antoninus?"

  Her husband nodded glumly. He had grey-sprinkled hair and the sort of long, morose face that always looked faintly equine.

  "I was terrified, of course." She giggled, and he wanted to tell her that she didn't know what terror was. That perhaps she might like to ask the woman who was about to be sacrificed for her amusement. He looked at Boda, blonde hair awry and cheek bloody and bruised where they'd subdued her, and felt a boiling anger like none he'd ever experienced.

  "And they were all like this, were they?" he asked, biting back on his fury. He nodded at the coffins - and then at Boda. "They all ended the same way?"

  She must have detected something in his tone, because her expression grew more serious. "Yes. The goddess demands a heavy price of her worshippers."

  "Of her worshippers?" Petronius said incredulously. His hands balled into fists and he thought that it would be worth it, worth any consequence, to wipe that sanctimonious look off her face.

  "Don't listen to her," Antoninus said suddenly. "We've been to several meetings, but never a ceremony before. This is our first time, too."

  "So you don't actually know what's going to happen tonight?"

  Antoninus shook his head as Publia said sententiously: "The mysteries of Isis reveal themselves to mortals only gradually."

  Petronius felt marginally less like hitting her this time. His eyes met Boda's across the room and he felt the first faint stirring of hope. If these people didn't know what the ceremony involved, then perhaps they might object to it. Perhaps they'd help him to stop it.

  "Listen," he said. "I do know what—"

  "Brothers and sisters in Isis," Seneca's voice cut across him. All around, the cultists turned to look at the old man as he approached the stone altar where the bandage-wrapped corpse lay. Petronius realised for the first time that it was the only one that wasn't moving.

  "I'd like to welcome our newest initiate," Seneca said, smiling sardonically at Petronius. Then he looked back at the crowd, watching him with rapt attention. "And I'd like you all to take your places. Tonight's ceremony is about to begin."

  When Narcissus and Vali found the room the elderly Jew had directed them to, it seemed like a dead end. The only door was the one through which they'd entered, and all four walls were lined with shelves, each stacked high with scrolls.

  "The stories of the gods of Egypt," Vali said, reading a sign written in both Greek and hieroglyphs.

  Narcissus glanced along the shelves. There were labels beneath the scrolls, and he saw that they were arranged according to era. The very oldest drew him, so brown and frail it seemed the slightest breath of air would crumble them.

  "These are an ancient people," he said.

  Vali nodded. "A civilisation older than your own, and gods more powerful and strange." He picked up a scroll and unrolled it. The papyrus crackled but it didn't crack.

  Narcissus studied it in fascination. The old writing was interspersed with illustrations, animal-headed beings who strode through a world of sand. He saw a picture of the sun, carried on a barge down a great river.

  "Can you read it?" he asked.

  Vali made a non-committal sound and replaced the scroll on the shelf.

  Narcissus turned away, scanning the room. "This can't be the place he meant, can it?" There was nothing to stop common entrance here, no lock that fitted the silver key.

  "The entrance must be hidden." Vali said.

  Narcissus searched the floor first. An ornate mosaic covered the whole thing, satyrs at each corner and a depiction of Dionysus springing full-grown from Zeus's thigh in its centre. The lines of a trapdoor could easily have been lost in the pattern, but Narcissus stamped on every square yard of it, and nothing rang hollow.

  It was only when he reached up to straighten a crooked scroll - the instinct for tidiness of a house slave - that he realised what the trick was. The scroll didn't move, stuck fast to the shelf beneath. He ran his hand along the edge of the wood until he came to the gap that he knew he'd find, and when he looked above it, the keyhole was there.

  "Th
is is it!" he said excitedly. "The old man was right."

  Vali fitted the key in the lock, and the whole wall swung out, shelves and fake scrolls attached.

  There was light within. Torches lined a short flight of steps leading down to another, larger room. When Narcissus and Vali followed them down, they found themselves in a hall so large the far end was lost in darkness.

  There were more books, thousands of them, some more ancient than those above. Down here they were separated by nation rather than age. Within that category Narcissus saw that they'd been subdivided further, each different heresy with a section of its own.

  "Imprisoned knowledge," Vali said. "Locked up for its sins." His words echoed loudly from the vaulted ceiling, and Narcissus looked around nervously, though there was no one to hear.

  Vali scanned the shelves, drawing out volumes here and there and reading them with raised eyebrows.

  "Anything interesting?" Narcissus asked.

  Vali smiled. "Well, the old man was right. They do have a copy of the Fourth Book of the Maccabees."

  "And does it, in fact, explain how reason triumphed over the body?"

  Vali laughed and put the book back. "Possibly." He moved deeper inside the room, where the shelves lay parallel to the walls, row after row of them that left little space to slide between.

  "This one's more along the lines we want," Vali said, drawing out a thick scroll, bound with a black silk ribbon. It was ancient, but unlike the others it didn't seem to be made of papyrus. The scroll was parchment, old and grey, and it gave off a putrid smell as it was unrolled.

  The first image Narcissus saw was a jackal-headed man, holding a flail in the crook of his arm. "One of the sailors!" he said.

  Vali nodded. "Or their master."

  "What is that book?"

  "The Book of the Dead, banned but not forgotten these many years."

  He unrolled the scroll further, and Narcissus flinched when he saw the picture of a beetle. There was a red-gold sphere clasped between its mandibles, and he realised after a moment that it was a symbol of the dying sun.