Christopher Golden - The Chamber of Ten

He blinked and changed course slightly.

As larger waves began to slap against the boat’s hull, Nico was shocked by a series of images that flashed across his mind, each one accompanied by the fresh impact of a wave:

A circle of men, each of them grim-faced as if attending a wake, each of them holding a small, curved knife in one hand and in the other—

A ceiling painted in extravagant colors, intricate symbols and sigils intertwining, and each spread of the color red still drips—

Chanting that terrifies, in words he does not know, its rising and falling cadences seeming to penetrate to the heart of him and—

Nico cried out, leaning against the tiller as the images snapped away. He probed after them, because he knew they needed to be seen. Timing the impacts of wave against wood with his own psychic surges, he reached into what he knew were Volpe’s memories. The old magician was struggling, and Nico so wanted to know more:

A hand rises and then comes down slowly, the knife glinting, the bare flesh of his chest speckled with spots of perspiration … only, the knife and hand are a woman’s head, hair long and luscious, and she closes her lips around the head of his cock and looks up at him, smiling .

Nico shook the image away and probed deeper.

Hands rise and fall, twelve of them in quick succession, and then the first hand returns with a different knife, penetrating deep into his chest and … and the woman’s rump rises and falls, and he can see himself buried deep, and he has seen her before with a knife in one hand and a soldier’s member in the other. She turns and looks at him over her shoulder, eyes hooded and mouth open, still moving .

“No!” Nico shouted. His voice winged across the water and echoed from the boundary wall of San Michele, now drawing very close. Volpe was trying to hide that memory from him, flooding him with other memories to distract him. But Nico had a grip now, and he was clasping onto those flashes that felt so real. His claws remained in the past, and he groaned with effort as he began to reel it in.

He sensed Volpe’s anger, but he was wounded. He felt the raw rage brewing deep inside, and knew there would be consequences … but this was something he needed to know.

“If you truly want my help to save this city,” he said, “then you have to let me see.”

When he did see, it was not because of a weakening of Volpe’s opposition. It was because, for a short time, Nico was stronger.

The men have finished painting the necessary wards and sigils on the chamber’s ceiling, and two of them have removed the wooden bench they used to reach that far. Each has a bloodied cloth bound tight around his left hand, and Nico knows that their palms are slashed and sore. But these men do not betray their pain. Their faces are grim and spotted with droplets of their own blood. The ceiling drips, and when Nico looks down he sees the droplets splashed across his bare body .

Volpe’s torso is withered and old. Skin hangs from his frame, his ribs protrude even when he’s lying down, and there’s a grayness to him that not even this subterranean place should impart. Nico is merely a witness here, yet when his arm raises and he draws his finger through blood splashes, it feels as though he is giving the command .

“Here,” Volpe’s voice says, “and here.” He has drawn two intersecting lines across his breast, skin wrinkling and stretching to follow his finger .

“Zanco, there must be another way,” a man says, and Il Conte Rossi steps into view. He is bloodied again now, the cloth around his hand dripping blood as if he has cut himself deepest .

“There is no other way,” Volpe says. “My spirit is strong but my flesh is weak, and we must not let that spirit rot away with this flesh.” He motions Il Conte to him and lowers his voice. “I’m trusting you to complete this ritual, when the others might shy away.”

“I’m not sure I—”

Nico’s hand flashes out. He claws his fingers into the man’s robe and pulls him even closer, and he sees Il Conte turn his face away from the rotten smell of his breath. “I have been dying for a long time. What you do here today is of little significance to me, but vital for the city. You understand? This time is over, a new time is to begin. And it’s imperative that those three bastards are not allowed to even look upon this city again without fire scorching their eyes.”

The standing man nods. He understands .

“Vital!” Nico says. Volpe’s voice, Volpe’s grasp, and Volpe’s final moments. Because then Il Conte stands back and motions the other men around him, and together they raise their knives .

This time when they bring their blades down into Nico’s stomach and chest, the view does not change afterward. Il Conte steps in and carves at the ruptured flesh, cracking ribs, ripping the chest cavity open, his face set grim and lips tight .

And all the while, Nico is muttering words that he has heard before .

Il Conte finally pulls Nico’s heart free, and there is no pain. The heart continues to beat, and even as the man slashes away the final connecting arteries, the muscle looks strong and healthy .

But the Chamber bleeds. Blood flows from the ceiling, and Nico hears the men’s feet splashing in fluid that is too thick to be water. One of them brings an urn that Nico has seen before, and as Il Conte lowers the heart inside, his vision begins to blur .

But he sees the Red Count’s final gestures over the urn, and he remembers them. From the hands of another member of the Council of Ten, he takes the severed hand of a soldier, dips its fingers into Volpe’s blood, and uses it to run a symbolic seal around the urn’s lid .

Nico feels his body swaying and shifting as vision fades, sounds drift out, and then against all expectations the pain comes in, and—

It was immense.

Nico screamed. The boat nudged against a wooden jetty. Volpe rose in him again, and before Nico was shoved way down into his own injured body, he felt the old ghost’s rage.

Leave alone what is not yours! Volpe roared, and then Nico knew nothing.

XVI

THE ONLY reason the bastard had let go of her hair was that it made it easier to walk.

They’d already passed two groups of people who had protested at his treatment of her, and both times Aretino had merely glanced at Foscari. The first time, the other Doge had chosen one of the complaining men and beaten him, flooring him quickly and then stomping on his knees until Geena heard the sickening crunch of bones and the heavy silence of shock. The second time, Foscari had only approached the two young couples and they’d seen something in his eyes that made them flee. Such casual violence was nauseating, made her sick to her soul. But it also made her realize that these two men—if indeed men they still were—were totally in charge.

Aretino walked ahead, his old man’s body moving with confidence. The white knotted beard and shriveled face were misleading. When he’d let go of her hair at last, he had not even instructed her to follow, but she knew if she did not she would suffer. Besides, Foscari was behind her. Close behind. Sometimes she swore she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, and she had felt his hand brush casually across her ass several times. And if I turn and punch him in the fucking nose? she thought. She had no wish to find out. Aretino had said they needed to talk, but he had not said she needed her knees unbroken to do so.

She was terrified. That evening she had been stupid enough to believe that she could find a few hours away from this madness—from Nico and his crazy ghost, the deaths she had witnessed, and the fact that she’d been infected by some black magic plague less than twelve hours ago. Repair the foundations of the existence she and Nico had together, in the hope that they would be able to reconstruct the walls of their life when this whole bizarre mess was over. Now she saw how foolish she had been. And perhaps blind. Maybe she had been driven a little mad by what had happened, and though she had a mind that she thought was open and willing to explore, the certainty of what was happening might have been too much for her to handle.