Thomas Harlan - The shadow of Ararat

"Then let us go," he said, his voice still low.

The door to the temple was a heavy iron grate, ornamented with a heavy cruciform lock. The bars were closely set and very thick. Abdmachus knelt next to the lock and carefully felt it with his fingertips. After a moment he began chanting in a very low voice, almost inaudible, yet Maxian could feel the shape of the words clearly. The air around the two men changed, becoming oppressively heavy, then there was the sound of rusted gears and rods scraping and the lock clicked open. Abdmachus stood and breathed out a shuddering breath. He wiped his forehead, then pushed the door gingerly open.

"It's been too long since I practiced that," the Nabatean said, his voice wry.

Within, a long narrow room led to the back of the building. The walls on either side were lined with deep-set niches, each holding a portrait bust. At the end of the room was a curved wall and a small altar. Behind the altar stood the mossy statue of a woman. Maxian stepped close and could barely make out the visage of a grim-faced goddess. Minerva, he thought to himself. Behind him, the Nabatean was rooting about in the heavy bag.

"Here," Abdmachus whispered, "there should be a circular hole in the side of the altar." He handed Maxian an iron rod, sixteen inches in length, with a handle at the end. The Prince knelt by the side of the marble block that comprised the altar. He felt along the side in the gloom; the lanterns were almost completely shuttered to prevent their lights from betraying them to passersby. His fingers found a smooth-sided hole, and he guided the bolt into the receptacle. On the other side of the block, Abdmachus had done the same. The Nabatean peeked up over the stone.

"Are you ready?" he asked. Maxian nodded. "Then on the count of two."

"One, then two… heave!"

The Prince grunted as he put his shoulder into dragging at the handle. Between the two of them, they managed to dislodge the block, revealing a dark opening under the altar and a draft of icy air. A smell of dampness and decay rose from the pit as well. Abdmachus shifted the hood on his lantern and peered down into the darkness.

"Excellent!" he breathed. "There is still a ladder."

Maxian laughed softly.

"You've done this before, I see," he said to his companion.

Abdmachus' white teeth flashed in the light of the lantern. "My family was poor, and the hills around my home city of Petra are riddled with the tombs of the nobility… sometimes an apprentice magi must make do with what he has. It has been some time, but one does remember some things."

The Nabatean tied off a line on the handle of his lantern, then leaned over the pit and lowered it slowly down. When it rested at the bottom of the pit, he swung his legs over the lip and onto the first rung of the ladder. Maxian watched while the old man's head disappeared into the shaft, then took one last look around. The empty eyes of the ancient heads gazed curiously back at him from the funereal niches. He shook his head in amazement at the desecration he and the old man were about to perform. No matter, he thought, the dead care nothing. I need a tool, and many who would die will live because of what we do.

– |The tunnels of the catacombs were narrow and low-roofed. Abdmachus led the way with his lantern, now unhooded, while Maxian carried the bag of tools and the other light. The air was fresh and a soft breeze blew into his face as they clambered through chambers strewn with bones, skulls, and decaying burial goods. After fifteen minutes the Prince realized that they were tending downward. Tunnel after tunnel branched off to the side of their path. A huge warren of narrow holes, pits, and cavities filled with skulls had been dug under the tomb of the Julians. A fine drift of finger bones crunched under his boots as they walked.

"Master Abdmachus, how big is this place?" Maxian asked at last as they descended another ladder.

The Nabatean laughed and stopped at the bottom of a corroded wooden ladder, steadying it as the Roman came down. "This valley has been the burial place of Rome for over a thousand years, my young friend. All of those millions of bodies have to go somewhere. Worry not, we are almost there."

At the bottom of another ladder, unaccountably, the tunnel veered sharply left and climbed steeply. Maxian scrambled in the loose dirt to climb up, then caught hold of a firm edge of stone. He pulled himself up and found that it was a marble step. A staircase now ascended, and the light of Abdmachus' lantern was far ahead. It was easier going than the loose dirt but still difficult as the steps were tilted sharply to the left. After a moment they joined a wall with a smooth marble facing. Maxian paused, staring in amazement at the bas-relief carved into the marble. A Roman family sat around a table, raising wine cups in the blessing of the fall harvest. The face of Bacchus was graven above them, laughing from a wreath of holly leaves.

"Come, my friend." Abdmachus' voice echoed from ahead. "This is the place."

At the top of the tilted staircase, Maxian crawled out into a large chamber. High above, a rough earth ceiling showed the twisted roots of trees. The floor was uneven and loosely packed with gravel and dirt. By the light of the two lanterns, three tomb-houses jutted from the floor and walls. Dirt spilled around their marble doorways, but they were unmistakably of the vintage of the temple they had entered through. The Prince stared around in amazement.

"How…?" His voice faltered.

Abdmachus looked up from where he was squatting by the door of the middle tomb-house. "As I said, young master, the people of the city have been burying their dead here for over a thousand years-once the valley that we rode through was not flat and level, but a long, low, swale running south from the city. Hundreds of tombs like these dotted that valley. There was, if Cassius Dio is to be believed, a Temple of the Magna Mater, not too far from where we entered. Then, when during the glory of the Republic it was decided that the Via Appia should be built, the Claudians filled in the valley, burying all of those tombs, temples, and monuments. Like these…"

Abdmachus turned back to the door of the tomb-house. His long fingers traced an inscription cut into the door, brushing dirt away. He grunted noncommittally as Maxian leaned close with the other lantern. The inscription was shallow and hard to read.

"I think that this is the one. The patterns coalesce around it in the right way."

The Nabatean looked up at the Prince, his eyes shadowed in the lantern-light. "The door is sealed in such a way that I cannot open it. You must, and it will be difficult. The body within was lain here after a long journey, and the men who buried it feared that it would not rest well-not unexpected from a man foully murdered by his supposed friends. A working was laid on this tomb, particularly upon this door, and it has only grown stronger with age, not weaker. It will take plain force to overcome it in the time available to us."

Maxian nodded and laid the bag of tools down at his side. Abdmachus moved aside, and the Prince knelt in the loamy dirt before the door with his hands on his thighs. He calmed himself and then silently chanted the Opening of Hermes. After taking a circlet of twisted yew branches from the bag, Abdmachus settled the crown on the Prince's head. The darkness of the cavern seemed to close in on Maxian for a moment, but then his sight blossomed.

The door to the tomb-house was a deep viridian abyss. Trickling currents of fire crawled across the marble facing and descended into unguessable depths. For a moment he quailed before the strength of the door ward. Then he centered again and reached out to draw power from the crusty loam of the floor and the tree roots high above.

There was an instant of emptiness as the Prince drew on the fabric of the unseen world around him, then a stunning rush of power burst to him from the walls, the floor, from the litter of bones that were scattered about the cavern. Blinding white-hot energy coursed through the corridors of his mind.