John Roberts - Oracle of the Dead

I sighed, knowing when I was beaten. “Very well. Let me know when you have a hole I can get through.”

“Right you are, Praetor,” he said cheerfully.

I told Hermes about the problem and he, predictably, thought it was funny. “You’d have done better to get some convicts with sledgehammers.”

“I’ll know better next time,” I said, as if there would be a next time for this sort of work.

From time to time a workman would emerge with a bag of stone chips which he carried off to dispose of somewhere. These were truly men who believed in keeping their worksite tidy. At last, in late afternoon, Perna emerged from the mouth of the tunnel. “It’s ready, Praetor.”

Hermes and I went inside to view the work. We looked up an absolutely true, square, smooth-sided hole that went through about two feet of solid stone. Despite their fussiness, the carvers had cut stone fast. They had even swept the floor clean and the draft through the hole had sucked the rock dust out of the air. We were ready to begin our exploration. I sent the workmen and Perna out, but bade them stand by for further instructions. I didn’t really expect to need any more stonework done. I just didn’t want them heading for the taverns and blabbing about what we’d been up to here.

“This won’t take many of us,” I told Hermes. “Get two of the men and plenty of torches. I’ve no idea how far we’ll have to travel and I don’t want to do any of it in the dark.”

Hermes went out and was back minutes later with two of the men, the ones he regarded as his best sparring partners. Both wore swords and one carried a bundle of torches. Hermes and the other man boosted the third up through the hole in the ceiling. He reached down and they passed him a torch. Hermes went next, then, with the two above pulling and the remaining man boosting, they hauled me into the tunnel overhead. Then the two reached down and hauled the other man up.

I held up a torch and had a look around. The tunnel was nearly identical to the one below. The chisel marks on the walls looked the same. It was probably carved out simultaneously with the main tunnel. This one hadn’t seen much traffic over the centuries and its ceiling hadn’t collected as much soot. But this one didn’t follow the other all the way to the entrance. Instead, it ended right at the first vent slots. The only way to go was downward.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We followed the tunnel, examining everything as we had before. This time, naturally, the slots were in the floor instead of in the ceiling. The niches in the walls were not neatly carved in this tunnel, just rough alcoves for holding lamps. Undoubtedly, these had been for the benefit of the miners, since this tunnel was probably not intended to be used once it was finished. I counted the slots we passed, and when I came to one I thought was significant, I stopped and got down to peer through it.

“What’s this one?” Hermes wanted to know.

“This should be the one that ventilates Hecate’s shrine,” I said. I couldn’t see much through a slot carved through two feet of rock, but there was more light coming through it than through the others. I thought I could make out Hecate’s altar below.

I stood up and raised my torch, taking a look around. This area was different from that we had come through. There was a pad like a thin mattress on the floor, and there were the remains of meals here and there; bread crusts, old cheese rinds, fruit pits, and so forth. There were a couple of pitchers for wine or oil. Someone had been accustomed to spend the better part of a day here. I bent and picked up a pit.

“Cherry,” I announced. “Poor people don’t yet have cherry trees in their orchards. This came from somewhere prosperous.”

“Anyone can raid an orchard,” Hermes said.

“So they can,” I mused. “Someone has been visiting this spot for some time. They can lie on that pad, probably with one ear to the slot. When they hear their cue, they can utter the agreed-upon prophecy.”

“Wait, that can’t be right,” Hermes said. “This is Hecate’s shrine and altar. The Oracle speaks from the lower chamber, where the Sty-where that river goes through it.”

“That’s the way we got our Oracle,” I agreed. “Still, something occurred to me. It was what the woman Floria said: that her master was given his prophecy in the shrine of Hecate. If at the time I thought about it at all, I thought it was a slip of the tongue, that she meant the chamber of the Oracle. But she had meant exactly what she said. You recall that she said he came back a second day. This is where the ones they intend to fleece get the Oracle that sends them to their death.”

“So the Oracle of the Dead has more than one meaning,” Hermes noted.

“Let’s see where this leads,” I said. We began walking. From this point the niches had lamps in them, most of them holding fresh oil. We lit some of these so we would have light on our way back, should we run out of torches.

The floor sloped up after the chamber of the shrine, and we climbed for a while. Then it leveled out. At intervals we found holes in the ceiling, these ones round and about six inches across, but these were either choked with rubble or else they had been deliberately covered over. Doubtless they had been intended to supply air to the miners when the tunnel was being driven.

“How far have we come?” Hermes asked after a while.

“About a mile as I figure it,” I said.

“It seems like more than that,” Hermes said, “but I suppose distances are deceptive underground.”

“There’s light ahead,” I said.

“It’s not much light if that’s the exit,” Hermes noted.

Indeed, the light that came through what I could now see was a doorway was rather dim. Surely we hadn’t been underground long enough for night to overtake us. Then we were out of the tunnel and looking upward. Overhead, the light of late afternoon streamed down through a round, stone-rimmed orifice about twenty feet overhead. We were at the bottom of a well.

“Now,” I said, “where have we seen stonework like that?”

“The mundus on Porcia’s property?” Hermes said.

“I don’t know of any other within a mile of the temple,” I said. “Then again, there’s a lot I don’t know about this district.” I looked around on the ground. We were walking on a litter of leaf mold several inches deep. I wondered how long it would take to build up this mass from the leaves that drifted through the opening over the years and centuries. There was a path trampled through it that led from one side to the entrance of the tunnel.

“That’s where they lower their ladder,” I said, pointing to the end of the path opposite the tunnel. I looked around some more and spotted a rock lying in the path. It was about the size of my fist, black with streaks of green. “Unless I’m much mistaken, this is the stone I tossed in a few days ago.”

“Then it’s her mundus all right,” Hermes said. “So it was a real mundus, of sorts, not a well. It leads to the underworld, though it takes a detour. So, do you think Porcia is involved?”

“I’ll need more evidence before I can level an accusation,” I said. “It’s on her property, but she claims she never comes here and it would be hard to prove otherwise. She has a crowd of slaves and tenant farmers, and any of them might come here. The property isn’t fenced, and with all the wildland she keeps, they could get here without being seen. We know that someone left offerings at that shrine to the genius loci. No. I can’t bring charges against a very rich woman of this district on this alone. We’ll need more.”

“Praetor,” said one of the men, “what are these?” He had been on one knee sifting through the leaf mold and now he showed me what he had found: a handful of miniature arrows. We looked around and found many more, and plainly some of them had been down there for centuries. We found many more points than complete arrows, their shafts and fletching having rotted away over the centuries. Some of these were bronze and we found a few tiny points made of finely flaked flint or obsidian. Once again, I felt the tremendous age of the place.