spirits.
‘You that roar in the mountain winds
You that sparkle in the waters
Spirits of sunlight and moonlight
Find your servant in this darkness.’
The prayer gave scant reassurance. The realm he was moving in was not governed by the spirits of rock and stream. This was the realm of the dark god Odin, the magical, the mad.
He threw off the loincloth the Greeks had put on him, wishing he still had the pelt that had been torn from him in the emperor’s tent. He would have been more a wolf in that, an animal that did not feel the creeping dread in that place.
He walked forward into the pool, fighting down an urge to gasp as the water came up to his thighs. The torch stretched its shadows over his head as he went. The pillars seemed a city themselves, stretching out to the limit of the light.
Each pillar had at its top a carving of a mythological beast, things of bursting eyes and ravening mouths. Reflected in the torchlight, they loomed below him like monsters from a dream.
Elifr moved forward on instinct, not sure what to do. The pillars went on and on. Tear shapes were carved into some of them, ruder than the carvings at the tops. A strong sense of their meaning came to him. People had died here, lots of them, constructing this place. The tears were the only record of the slaves who had worked to build it.
The ceiling dipped to meet the pool and he could go no further. Carved eyes, hundreds of them, watched him from the rock there. The water was colder. He walked the width of the wall. Yes, colder streams flowed in at two places. He felt beneath the water. There were inlets in the wall. Big enough to swim through? What to do?
Again, one of those voices from the dark of his mind: Magic is a puzzle, not a recipe.
He trembled with the cold. He did not have long. He needed to act.
Elifr could see nothing beyond twenty paces back in to the cave, the limit of his torchlight. This place hated the light. And light was no use down there where he needed to go. Then what? Only faith. Only belief in the purpose.
He put out his hands. Childish stories came into his head, of the trolls and monsters who were said to lurk in dark pools such as these. His mother had sung a rhyme to her children in the bleak winter nights.
Born before, of spirits obscure,
Where the mountain stream plunges into the dark
The mere stands, there you will the marvel foul behold
The heath stepper, fen dweller, war creature
His talons ungentle, his teeth the heroes’ bane.
At the time he’d been frightened, then later thought it a tale to warn children away from dark waters. Now it seemed to stir something inside him, a fear in his bones that sparked imaginings of bloody claws reaching out to grab him from the unseen depths of the pool. The fear comforted him. It was familiar. In his rituals on the mountainside the greatest terror had always led to the greatest insights, to an awakening of the senses and the mind of a wolf. Is there anything beyond this wall? He had to know what would be asked of him. A little sacrifice, a little bravery to prepare the way for the great sacrifice to come. This first sacrifice didn’t seem small, though.
He had to do it, had to risk it. This was the place that had been revealed to him. The torch guttered and went out. Now the dark was absolute and his mind made up. He cast away the useless brand, gulped in three quick breaths of air and kicked down to the smaller of the two inlets, pushing himself into the blind black waters.
The cold gripped him, his breath left him and he returned gasping to the surface. He tried again and again, but with the same result. He knew this was the way — he had learned that in his visions — but he could not go on, not with his human powers. To continue he would need to summon a wolf inside him, as he had summoned one when he freed himself from the guards. But for that he would need an enemy, a threat to trigger his fury. He would need to draw the guards after him. The wolfman sniffed the air, gaining his bearings in the darkness. Then he started back, up towards the Numera.
15
Azemar, Mauger and Snake in the Eye made their way down the steps of Hagia Sophia.
‘Here’s someone we can ask,’ said Snake in the Eye. He spoke in Norse, his accent thick, and Azemar felt at a disadvantage. He only knew the language through his parents. He wasn’t as fluent as the boy or as Mauger, who spoke it as natives.
Snake in the Eye pointed out a monk in dark robes and full beard who hurried up the stairs. From somewhere a lament sounded: ‘Having foolishly abandoned thy paternal glory, I squandered on vices the wealth which thou gavest me. Wherefore, I cry unto thee with the voice of the prodigal: I have sinned before thee, O compassionate father. Receive me as one repentant, and make me as one of thy hired servants.’ The people were asking forgiveness for their sins, convinced the terrible sky was a punishment from God.
‘Fellow,’ Snake in the Eye called to the monk in Greek.
The monk stopped and his eyes darted from man to man. He clearly wanted to be away.
‘Do not give my friend the answer he seeks,’ said Azemar in Greek. ‘No good will come of it for any of us.’
Snake in the Eye ignored him. ‘Where might we find the scholars of this town?’
‘You are not the sort for scholarship,’ said the monk. ‘Now let me on my way.’
‘It would be a convenience to you to die so near to the house of your god,’ said Snake in the Eye, touching the handle of his sword. ‘I ask a simple question and seek no money or food or anything else it can pain you to part with. Be civil, and we will remain so.’
The monk glanced about him. No one around, not even a beggar.
‘Try the Magnaura,’ he said, ‘for the good it will do you.’
He moved around them and all but ran up the steps to the great church.
‘Do not reveal this to my companion,’ said Azemar, still in Greek. ‘I will pay you to keep this secret.’
‘I don’t seek pay,’ said Snake in the Eye, in Norse, ‘but adventure and sword work.’
Azemar looked to the ground. Why did he have the luck to meet an earnest idiot like this?
‘Where do we have to go?’ said Mauger.
‘The Magnaura. I have no idea where that is, but it won’t take us a moment to find out. Look, here comes a man of the palace now.’
Down the street came a man in a scribe’s white tunic.
Mauger glanced at Azemar and smiled.
‘It seems our work here might be shorter than we thought, scholar,’ he said.
The scribe directed them where they needed to go, and two hundred paces later they came to the door to the compound of the Magnaura.
‘Do we go in?’ said Azemar. He really couldn’t think what to do if Mauger saw Loys. Throw himself in front of the knight’s sword, he supposed. But he knew what Mauger was capable of. Azemar would only be putting off the inevitable.
‘We watch,’ said Mauger.
‘Why?’
‘Because I need to know this place, its weaknesses and its strengths, before deciding on my course of action. I intend to survive my encounter with your friend, and it seems unlikely I will do that if I act too rashly. The soldiers of this land are no fools and there are enough of them. When I strike it must be quickly and in secret.’
‘I would take a thousand men,’ said Snake in the Eye.
Mauger laughed. ‘Perhaps, but we who have seen more wars cannot be so confident.’
Azemar waited with the two men, not knowing what to do. The sun laboured under the heavy clouds, the
