Mary Reed - Ten for Dying

He could hear a rustling from the tiers of seats behind him.

Turning his head slowly he saw a shape rise and begin to step down.

Then more shapes. Animated shadows. Leaping and striding about.

Demons! The Hippodrome was filling with demons! The stands were alive with demons!

Cursing his imagination he forced himself to look away. But the effort did not free him from the nightmare, because he immediately saw, at the end of the track where the starting gates were located, a lone figure. Floating toward him, through bands of moonlight and darkness.

No, not floating, running.

A woman.

For a heartbeat Felix could see the cruel scimitar of Theodora’s smile, before he fought through the fog of horror engulfing him. “Anastasia!”

Dedi wailed in terror. “You’ve interrupted me! I warned you! The demons will descend upon us!”

“They’re already here,” Felix shouted back, grabbing Anastasia’s arm and turning to flee.

“Them?” She slapped his hand off her arm. “What are you seeing? You mean those beggars in the seats? A few always manage to get in here at night to sleep. Never mind them. I’ve got a message for you.”

Dedi moaned. “I should never have stood on those frogs!”

Anastasia put her face close to his. He felt her warm breath as she whispered. “Anatolius says you must meet him at his house. It is urgent.”

She had no time to say anything further before a contingent of armed men poured out onto the track, their raised lances and swords flashing coldly in the stark moonlight.

At least Felix had a destination. Not that reaching Anatolius’ house would be easy. Once he managed to get to the stables beneath the track he found his path blocked repeatedly by pursuers. How many were there? It seemed as if Narses had sent a whole army after him. At Anastasia’s urging he had bolted instantly. He knew the guards wouldn’t touch her and as for Dedi, he was a magician. Let him take care of himself.

Fortunately he was familiar with even the most obscure recesses of the Hippodrome’s understructure, having utilized those dark and deserted places for confidential meetings with charioteers and fellow gamblers.

He had managed to elude the hunters so far, but could not shake them off entirely.

Could they hear his pounding footsteps echoing in the stillness? If he stopped and kept quiet they would catch up.

He’d stolen a lantern. The light from the holes in the lid flung patterns against rough brick walls and a low concrete ceiling. At some point, without noticing, he had left the subbasements of the Hippodrome and entered the chaos of cellars, cisterns, and ruins beneath Constantinople. Was it any wonder the demons Dedi had conjured joined in the chase?

No, he told himself, the scurrying he heard was nothing but rats.

As he descended further into the underworld the darkness enclosing him seemed to call to some inner darkness. All of his fears rose up and filled his mind, a sickly haze over a dismal swamp.

More scuffling, louder this time.

“Rats,” he muttered. “Only rats.”

He looked back over his shoulder.

There! In the shadows!

The rat was man-sized and had extremely long limbs, spider-like, and a coat of black fur.

Mithra! A demon! Felix whirled and raced away.

He had completely forgotten the pursuing guards. Behind him he could hear the loud click of sharp claws on concrete as the thing came after him, never gaining but always on the point of being close enough to leap forward and grab him.

Wild-eyed, Felix raced down a passageway, rounded a corner, and plunged across a cavernous space half filled by piles of rubble, its ceiling vanished into darkness overhead. The shadows on the walls, writhing in the light from Felix’s swinging lantern, were huge bat-like creatures with squirming snake hair.

He flung himself down a set of mossy stairs. The drip of water plopping into the black mirror of a cistern below turned suddenly into the sound of regular breathing. He approached the cistern cautiously.

The huge head of a magnificent cat had emerged from the stygian depths and beckoned him with an immense paw, its breathing magnified by the walls of the vast chamber. Tattered strips of cloth, the wrappings of a mummy, hung from the gesturing paw.

“Come, Felix, I have been waiting for you for so long.” The cat thing spoke in a woman’s voice.

Felix pivoted and ran back up the stairway, slipping on the moss, while the cat roared its disappointment.

Demons! Dedi had loosed them on the city, he thought. When he emerged would he find a slaughter in progress in street, alley, and forum? Would misbegotten shapes be feasting on flesh while monstrous beings soared in flocks above the Great Church and the Hippodrome?

He paused, standing among rubble, panting, to listen for sounds of pursuit.

Nothing but his own labored breathing.

Had Antonina poisoned him after all? Had he died and gone to the underworld? He trudging wearily through a series of linked rooms containing only dust.

The flame in the lantern began to gutter, the oil nearly gone. When the lantern went out, he would be lost in impenetrable darkness with no means of escape. “And not a chance to climb the seven-runged ladder to heaven,” he murmured, his Mithran beliefs crowding out everything that Anastasia had tried to teach him.

And there, as if conjured up by the thought, stood a ladder outlined by a rainbow, reaching toward the ceiling.

He began to climb. Or was he dreaming? Or dead? The more he climbed, the longer the ladder seemed to become. Halfway up, holding on grimly with one hand, he batted away a flying monster blessed with large teeth and a small body that whirred up from the darkness below.

Finally he reached a trapdoor.

Pushing it open, he looked cautiously out.

He had arrived in a torch-lit courtyard over which loomed the walls of the Hippodrome, but as far as he could see there were only the usual beggars and whores on the street.

Then again, they could be demons in disguise, he thought, levering himself into the open air.

The star-pocked night sky dazzled him after the inky depths. It drove ideas of demons from his mind. Perhaps they had been partly the result of Antonina’s potion or the knock he’d taken on his head? As for his pursuers, he must have lost them underground.

He began to walk toward Anatolius’ house.

Felix waited impatiently beside the desk in Anatolius’ office. Why was Anatolius being so mysterious? Had he made a discovery about the theft of the shroud? Felix hoped so. He had had to slip past several patrols to reach Anatolius’ house. How much longer would be able to elude the grasp of the authorities, not to mention the Blues?

The damned skull in the mosaic desk top kept grinning at him. At least the icon in Maria’s hideaway hadn’t grinned. He pushed an unpleasant-looking legal paper over the horrid visage.

As he looked up an ill-clad man shuffled in, leaning on a staff. His sandals slapped the floor as he approached. “Captain Felix, I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Mithra! John!”

“Not so loud, Felix. You’ll alert the servants. I’ve kept on my travel disguise so they don’t recognize me. They think I’m from a country monastery, come to consult Anatolius about a property dispute.”

“You’re risking your neck, John. What do you think will happen if Justinian’s spies catch you?”

“I’m more worried about what Cornelia will say when I get back.”

“If you get back.”

“I thought it too dangerous to send a letter and I couldn’t trust a messenger.”

“It’s to do with the shroud?”