Christopher Golden - The Chamber of Ten

And located where it was, on an island where invasive archaeology had ceased long ago, it never would.

The journey down had been strange, passing through doorways that looked like blank walls to Geena, and along a short corridor whose atmosphere had felt thick and heavy as molasses. And emerging into the underground room, waiting at the doorway while Nico went around and lit a dozen candles, the true turmoil of Volpe’s family history came to light.

“So all these were your enemies?” she asked, and Volpe smiled.

“A man without enemies has lived an unremarkable life.”

“Nice outlook.”

“It’s almost over,” Nico said. “Can’t you feel that, Geena?”

She wasn’t sure. She felt a change coming, for certain, and she knew it was more than simply putting what had happened with the Doges—and poor Ramus—behind them. Ramus’ death would echo for a long time, because the police investigation would be a part of their lives for months to come. But there was something else beyond that, a feeling embedded in the roots and heart of the city.

“I don’t know,” Geena said. “I know that something new is about to begin.”

“That, too,” Nico said. He came close, and looked into her eyes for the first time since meeting beneath the tree. Even lit by candles, she knew his eyes were different. She’d seen them last as she fled that chamber of death and blood, and they looked exactly the same now. Volpe was still in residence alongside Nico, merged with him and, perhaps, subsuming him a little.

He would deny that, of course. And this was why she knew she could never live with him like this.

“Not long,” he said.

“Good-bye,” Geena said.

Volpe chuckled, a deep guttural laugh that could never belong to Nico. And yet there was a lightness to it she had not heard in his voice before.

“A sense of humor is good,” he said. “And, perhaps, something I should have tried to develop more in myself.”

“Nico laughs.”

“And I will again.” Nico moved away and finished lighting the candles. The soft light shone yellow from old bones, and he shoved a few scattered skeletons aside as he walked across the room. Skulls stared at Geena, eye sockets dancing with shadowy amusement. She wondered who they had been, and whether they had thought themselves good.

“Good and bad,” Nico said, reading her mind. “We have to learn that sometimes neither matters. Where the city is concerned, such human foibles are petty and meaningless compared to its survival. This is such an important place. There are other cities around the world with their own Oracles, and each one is important in its own right. But Venice is a jewel in a pile of coal. You understand?”

“I understand that’s the way you think.”

Nico smiled, shrugged. “Perhaps I am biased.” He picked up the urn from where he had placed it close to the door and moved to a pile of skeletons mounded against one wall. “Will you help?”

Geena surprised herself by helping Nico lift the bones aside. They worked well together, shifting the skeletons quickly, though she tried to ignore the cool chalky feel of them and the way they clicked tonelessly together as they touched. When there were only two skeletons left against the wall, Nico nestled the urn in one of their rib cages. Then, without pause, he started piling the others back on top.

“No final spell or last words?” Geena asked as she helped.

“For him, no.”

“But for you?”

Nico was panting by the time he’d finished stacking the bones, and he wiped his hands across his front. Sweat speckled his forehead and upper lip. He smiled.

“For me,” he said. “And as for me, so for you. I’m going to keep my promise, though you suspected I would not, because it’s my time to move on. The city chose me, and the city has chosen again. You and Nico. And who am I to question the will of a city?”

“You’re Zanco Volpe,” she said. “A powerful magician.”

“I’m a breath in a hurricane,” he said.

“So what do we do?”

“We accept the will of the city,” Volpe said. “In doing that, I will leave this flesh and rest in an object that must then be broken to release me fully.”

“Everything’s broken down here,” Geena said, looking around at the piles of bones and skulls.

“It’s the fresh breaking that matters,” he said. “Symbolic.” He walked slowly around the subterranean room, and then paused, kneeling before a pile of skulls and drawing one out. “Ahh, Gualtiero,” he said, running his finger across a ragged rent in the skull’s dome.

“Who’s that?” Geena asked, but Volpe did not reply. He remained kneeling for a while, and Geena opened her mind to his memories. But there were none. She felt Nico holding back, too, and realized with shock that he was granting Volpe some measure of space and respect. That was the first time she believed that the old magician meant to keep his word.

After a few more moments of reminiscence, Volpe stood and returned to Geena. He sat on the floor before her and motioned her to follow suit.

“Welcome the city’s choice,” he said, “you and Nico both. Open your minds to its influence. Breathe deeply, and when you take your third breath you will become what I have been for so long. Oracles.”

“And you?”

He nodded down at the skull. “Trapped, for a fleeting moment, before the shattering that grants me release.”

Geena was shaking. Volpe had threatened and abused her and Nico, but he had also saved their lives more than once. He had not chosen Nico in which to commit the acts he had performed. Accident and fate had brought them together. And now, close to having her own love back with her, whole and unblemished, she felt a curious sadness.

“Oh, I could have stayed,” Volpe said softly, and he smiled—an ugly expression. Perhaps he’d never had much cause for it.

“Thank you,” Geena said. She closed her eyes and caught a momentary stab of surprise from Nico—or from Volpe, perhaps—and then they held hands and started breathing together.

She breathed in once, deeply, and Nico did the same. She smelled the dust of old bones.

On the second breath, Geena felt a staggering attention focusing on her, as if everyone in Venice had stopped what they were doing and were thinking of her, and her alone. She gasped and tasted Nico’s expelled breath as well, heard his own gasp, and squeezed back when he clasped her hands.

They breathed in together for the third time.

Her beating heart settled. Calmness descended. She felt Nico shaking, just for a second, but enough to force her eyes open. Looking down at the skull on the ground between them she saw nothing different. She held on while Nico calmed more slowly than she had, his shoulders slumping, and he seemed to lessen before her, shrinking down into something …

Into something she knew. He was becoming Nico again, and the realization struck her that, over the past few days, Volpe had changed her lover so much. Can he ever really recover from that? she wondered, squeezing his hands. Can he ever be himself again?

She stood and Nico stood with her, his eyes still squeezed shut. She raised one foot and brought it down on the skull, the old fractures snapping under the impact, bone fragments and teeth scattering around her feet.

The room gasped. Nico’s eyes snapped open, and they were fixed directly on Geena. Shock froze the moment for them both. In her mind, and through the unique link she had with Nico, she felt a widening of perception, and an expansion of knowledge. She knew the city like never before—its shape and quirks, its people and places, those that lived good lives, and those not so good—and for a moment she and Nico felt as if the city was inside them, not the other way around.