Douglas Preston - The Obsidian Chamber

The music stopped.

Throwing caution to the wind, she swept aside the tapestries and pointed her flashlight into the dark room, flashing the beam about, the hand holding the stiletto ready to stab at a moment’s notice.

There was nobody. The room was empty. The crimson-colored harpsichord sitting in the middle of the room stood silent and alone.

She rushed over to it, wildly flashing the beam around, probing every dark corner and doorway. But the player had vanished. She placed her hand on the stool cushion; it was still warm.

“Who’s there?” she called out. “Who was playing?”

Her voice echoed away into silence. She leaned on the instrument, her heart beating hard. The harpsichord was one of the finest instruments in the collection, once owned by Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory, the sociopathic serial murderer who — according to legend — had bathed in the blood of virgins as a means to retain her youth. What stain or varnish had given the instrument its crimson hue had never been satisfactorily explained — although Constance had her own theories.

She sank down on the seat, still shining the light into the darkness. “Whoever is there, I beg you, reveal yourself.”

No response. She waited, her fingers straying over the keys. The musical collection was the most curious of Enoch Leng’s cabinets of curiosities. Leng was not interested in music for itself. Every item in this collection was here for a reason beyond the ability to produce sound: its association with violence and murder. The Stradivari violin held in a glass case on the far wall, for example, had been owned by Gabriel Antonioni, the infamous killer of 1790s Siena, who cut his victims’ throats and then serenaded them as they died. Beside it was framed the silver trumpet, scarred and dented, that had been used to marshal Richard III’s troops at the Battle of Bosworth Field — a grisly affair indeed.

Her eyes strayed to the harpsichord’s music holder. Handwritten sheet music by an unidentified composer lay open on the rack. Curious, she placed the stiletto on the raised fallboard, within easy reach, touched the keys, and played a light arpeggio.

To the best of her knowledge, this instrument hadn’t been played or serviced in many years. And yet, as her fingers glided over the keys, she found it was in perfect tune.

She turned her attention back to the music. It appeared to be a transcription of a piano concerto, adapted for solo harpsichord. At the top of the first page was a dedication, in what looked like the same hand that had notated the book of love poems: TO CONSTANCE GREENE. Only now did she realize that the handwriting looked faintly familiar.

Almost despite herself, she began to play. It took only a few measures to be certain: this was the same piece that she had woken to; the music that had disturbed her dreams; the music that had wafted so recently through the sub-basement halls. It was achingly beautiful without sentimentality. Its wistful, haunted strains reminded her of the long-forgotten piano concertos by the likes of Ignaz Brüll, Adolf von Henselt, Friedrich Kiel, and other obscure composers of the Romantic era.

Reaching the first-movement cadenza, she stopped. And then — as the sounds of the strings died away — she heard a voice echo from the antique shadows. It said one word — one word only.

“Constance.”

Constance recognized the voice instantly. Snatching up the stiletto, she leapt up from the harpsichord stool, knocking it backward. Where had the voice come from? Feelings of humiliation, outrage, and violation mingled with surprise and homicidal anger.

He survived , she thought as she stood in the center of the room, torch darting from corner to corner, searching for his whereabouts. Somehow, some way, he survived.

“Show yourself,” she hissed in a low voice.

Silence reigned. She stood there, trembling. So it was he who had so artfully contrived this tableau. And to think she had allowed herself to enjoy it. To think she had admired an orchid he had discovered — brought by him into her own most private of chambers. To think she had eaten, enjoyed, food prepared by him . A shudder of revulsion passed through limbs already quivering with rage. He’d been spying on her, stalking her. Watching her sleep.

The flashlight beam revealed the room to be empty — but there were several doors and numerous hanging tapestries. He was there. Laughing silently at her consternation.

If he wanted to play a game, she would give him one. She switched off the torch, plunging the sub-basement into darkness. He was, it seemed, familiar with these spaces, but he couldn’t possibly know them as well as her.

In the dark, she would have the advantage.

She waited, gripping the stiletto, waited for him to speak again, to make a move, betray his location. The shame and horror of how she’d been toyed with continued to wash over her: those decadent meals he’d left, accompanied by wine… The poem with the feather of an extinct bird… His own little translation in the margin of the book… The new species of orchid, named after her… Not to mention that he had discovered the identity and location of her son — and then had a t’angka painting of him made for her.

My son… Anxiety lanced through her fury. What, exactly, was Diogenes doing — or worse, what might he already have done — with her son?

She would kill him. She’d failed once; she would not fail again. The basement collections were full of weapons and poisons, if it came to that. She might have the opportunity to better arm herself. But for now, the stiletto was exceedingly sharp and — if well handled — would be more than sufficient.

“Constance,” the voice came again out of the darkness.

It echoed strangely, distorted by passageways of stone and muffled by tapestries. The very sound of it was gall and wormwood to her; it caused an inner fury that was as physical as it was emotional.

She dashed forward, in the blackness, toward the uncertain source of the sound, plunging her blade into one hanging tapestry, then another, stabbing and slashing. Again and again the blade was deflected by stone, depriving her of the satisfaction of feeling it sink into tissue. She continued around the dark room, knocking over instruments and stumbling over display cases, the only sound the ripping and tearing of her knife through the woven tapestries that, she was sure, concealed the hiding figure of Diogenes.

At last, the heat of her fury abated. She was acting like a madwoman; she was reacting exactly as Diogenes expected. She returned to the center of the room, breathing quietly. The room, like many in the sub-basement, had been built with stone air shafts to withdraw the unhealthy vapors from the subterranean space and disperse them into the upper air. He was using those stone shafts to confuse her. He could be anywhere.

“ Fils a putain! ” she said to the darkness. “ Del glouton souduiant! ”

“Constance.” The voice came again from everywhere and nowhere. This time it had a mournful, but gentle, tone.

“I would tell you how much I hate you,” she said, in a low voice, “except that one does not hate the dung beneath one’s feet. One merely scrapes it off. I thought I had scraped you off. What a shame you survived. I do, however, take a certain consolation in the fact that you did not burn to death at Stromboli.”

“How so?” came the voice.

“Now you can die a second death by my hand — and this time I can watch you die in even greater agony .”

As she had spoken, her voice rose in both pitch and volume. But now the red mist fell away, to be replaced by an icy calm. She would not give him the pleasure of hearing her betray any more hatred. He was unworthy of any expenditure of effort — save for the thrust of a blade. She would aim for the eyes, she decided; first one, then the other. Out, vile jelly! And then she would take her time. But first, she needed to wait for the moment to strike.