Lord of the Hollow Dark (38 page)

“Will you take on substance, Alexander Fillan Inchburn?” the Archvicar cried. “Will you obey one who calls himself Master here? Minotaur of this labyrinth, will you rise?” Marina clutched at the broad shaft of the stone cross behind her. There stole into her consciousness a remnant of her early doubt of the Archvicar. Was he Apollinax’s subtle servant, tricking her, trapping her? Were they all allied against her and Michael? Would this Archvicar indeed raise the Bridegroom, the Minotaur?

Silent minutes trickled away. The Master took up a tall antique hourglass from beneath the butcher-table altar, and set it upon that table. “I give you three minutes of sand,” he told the Archvicar, his voice cutting as the sickle on the table. “If you fail, I shall deal with you as Kronos dealt with Uranus, and here in this place.” He picked up the sickle.

Now the Archvicar flung his arms outward. In a cry like a long hiss, he sent out the message: “Lord Balgrummo, come unto us to complete what you began in this place.” The cave was so silent that all could hear him, low though he spoke.

More minutes went by, seeming like as many hours. Nothing moved.

Then Grishkin the Raven stood up, hideous to the shoulders, splendid below. “Master, the priest has tricked us.”

The Master glanced at the hourglass. “You’ve flouted me, Gerontion, and I’ll unman you.” His voice was a shriek from the Pit.

The Archvicar, saying nothing, bowed his white head over the pulpit.

“There’ll be no wedding of Death and Life,” the Master shouted to them all, his fingers playing with the sickle. “But that, my brothers and sisters, shall not delay the Timeless Moment. I give you the sacrifice! Let the Child be brought to me. Let the Bride be brought forward. Let her be stripped and scourged. Let her then be fixed upon her cross!”

Badger and Dog, acolyte-boys, went toward the baby in Fresca’s arms. Wasp and Weasel jerked Marina away from the stone cross, and tugged at her bridal gown eagerly.

“Wait, Master!” the Archvicar roared in a voice of command. He pointed his outstretched arm toward the passage which led to the vestibule. “Hear him: one returns from the hollow dark!”

All the beast-faces turned toward that doorway. But at the same moment, someone screamed near the wider gap which opened upon the second chamber to the Weem.

A tall man had appeared from the second chamber, and was striding toward the stone cross. Releasing Marina, Wasp and Weasel started back at the man’s approach.

In this confusion, casting off his black robe, the Archvicar sprang to the top of the pulpit, and flung himself through the air like some bird of prey, upon Apollinax.

Forms shifted, tumbled, fought around Marina. Madame Sesostris thrust Weasel away; Sweeney sent Wasp sprawling. Coriolan caught up Marina in his arms and fled within the second chamber of the Weem, and across it, and beyond.

She was being carried very swiftly down a narrow black passage, screaming “Michael, bring Michael!” There were footfalls behind them, and a cry, Fresca’s, “I have the baby!”

And more distant could be heard a mighty confused yelling in the first chamber. They ran on, Marina flung across Coriolan’s shoulder.

“Let me pass,” the Archvicar’s voice panted. “Ah, there’s the cord again.” He thrust by Coriolan and Marina, taking the lead. They turned corners, slow and groping now, slipped down inclines. Coriolan halted.

“Can they follow?” Fresca’s voice came out of total darkness.

“I’ve snatched the cords after me,” the Archvicar answered, invisible. “I’m carrying part of that cache we made here in the labyrinth last night, and Phlebas has the tools, and Grizel the hamper, and Sweeney’s to bring what remains. Did you see him bowl over Sam,
con gusto?
Ah, he’s worth saving.” The Archvicar chuckled amidst his ardent panting for breath.

“I think we’ve come to the pit you told us about,” Madame Sesostris said. She seemed to be a little in advance of them, an electric torch in her hand, flashing it toward further darkness.

“Lower that torch!” the Archvicar said urgently. “Yes: beyond that dry channel, we’re safer. Ah, there’s the plank!”

Marina had been set down, but she found it hard to stand. Someone shorter than herself was supporting her; it must be Phlebas.

“Can you take her across?” the Archvicar was asking. “She might lose her balance.”

“I’ll carry you over, Deborah Fitzgerald,” said Coriolan. “That’s why I was sent here. Close your eyes.” He put her upon his broad shoulder again.

The plank quivered and creaked beneath them, but they made the further side. Madame Sesostris’ torch explored the new passage beyond them. Oh, Michael was here! Fresca surrendered him to Marina; he was sobbing. She could not see even her baby’s face, it was so dark.

The noise from the outer Weem came to them so faintly now that it was only like the humming of insects.

“I’d not known whether to expect you, Coriolan,” the Archvicar was saying. “Much thanks.”

“We’re well awa’,” Coriolan’s voice came. “Being quit of that damned Master now, you can call me Bain. I say, you gave him a tumble!”

“And lost my confounded goggles doing it-good riddance. But there wasn’t time enough to damage him badly; I had to be up using my stick on de Bailhache and Pereira; gave Grishkin a good thump on the rump with it, too, and then ran for it. I had to whack Albert and Bleistein—if they were the ones with the sheep-mask and the wolf-mask-on my way out: wow, were they surprised at the old cripple’s vigor! Then, while Sweeney was giving Snow a karate chop, someone snatched my stick away, and I scampered into the second chamber just in the nick of time. If they’d not had so much
kalanzi
in them, those disciples and acolytes, they’d have caught us after all; but they were muddleheaded.”

The Archvicar has gasped this out, but it now sounded as if he had his wind back. “To be quite safe for the present,” he continued, “we’d best press on to the water, and see if we can get through that to the center, which we’ve not found yet. I’ve the directions in my pocket, of course, and can read them with a pocket torch, when we reach that stream. That’s the difficult part, the crossing. We’d best draw up that old plank on this side of the pit, now that we’re all across and have the cache with us. I trust you have another pickaxe, the tarpaulin, and one of the big torches, Sweeney. You were good at need, my friend.”

Someone dropped a pick; the sound reverberated hideously. “Knock, knock, knock, eh, Sweeney? Well, we may hear the Third Laird and his Dead File on their appointed rounds, farther in, but they’ll not molest us, nor will we see anything, I fancy: they’re nothing but echoes, so to speak, my boy, vestiges of past despair, not to be evoked for good or ill; their essences are elsewhere. Well, then, pull over the plank, Sweeney, and we’ll press on.”

“Apollinax has no notion of tracking us down, I suppose?” Coriolan inquired.

The Archvicar, having taken the lead again, answered back from the head of their little procession; Marina could see the beam of his torch vanish round some bend, and they hurried to keep up with him. “He’s a fool if he does,” the Archvicar’s voice echoed back, “for his dunderheads would fumble their way into the lower levels of the labyrinth, and perhaps tumble off into crevices or streams. What clues I left with him were false. Still, we’ll not show more lights for the present than this one torch I have here: prudence is the chief virtue in a soldier-statesman like myself. Keep close together-ah, sorry, Grizel, I shouldn’t have halted quite so abruptly—and I’ll lead you as far as the water without much trouble.”

“Besides, Apollinax wouldn’t have time to pursue us, would he?” Madame Sesostris’ high old voice was wonderfully distinct in this utter tomblike silence. “He must get through his ritual by midnight sharp, if I understood Your Excellency aright: according to his spells, the Timeless Moment escapes him if all’s not accomplished by then. And it must be nearly midnight now.”

“We’ll check my watch when we’re at the water,” the Archvicar’s reply came. “I fancy that our dear Master has less than twenty minutes remaining for his cherished sorceries. One more turn, now; then down this rough slope... Look sharp-but then, fool that I am, you can see nothing-and mind your feet; it won’t do to stumble at this spot... Well done, if I do say so myself! Look at that underground burn: a deadly-seeming thing, isn’t it?”

The Archvicar swept his torch beam across the surface of the fast-flowing dark water; Marina shuddered. Of her companions, she could see nothing; they too were gazing in silence at this Styx. She knew that the Archvicar’s garrulity was meant to keep up their spirits.

“How can the pilgrims possibly have got through this?” Coriolan murmured. “I came down here again by myself, while I was left alone in the Weem-do you know, that devil of an Apollinax locked the bronze door upon me?-but I couldn’t think of a way to pass through this, except as a drowned corpse. Are we going to have to make our way back and fight through Apollinax’s crowd? At least his communion will be over soon, and no victims for it. I’m game, Arcane, if you are.”

The Archvicar continued to study the cavern, now searching the walls with his torch. “What, and be riddled with their bullets, Bain? Even if we returned after Apollinax had done, he’d have shut that bronze door upon us, leaving us to starve like the Third Laird and his people. And as if that door with Kronos’ mask on it weren’t enough, I know that he means to flood the monks’ sewer by raising the old sluice gate at the pond: that will fill the drain to the brim, and we’d never be able to get through the sewer and up into the Lodging; the finest swimmer ever born couldn’t manage that, not without a diving suit and an oxygen tank. No, Bain, it’s either find the pilgrims’ way through this stream, or else join the Third Laird-no cheerful prospect that, eh, Sweeney?”

“Your Excellency, we can’t possibly take Marina and the baby into that water, if it’s six feet deep and more, as you say.” It was the old lady speaking. “Time was, in Kenya, when I could swim like the crocodile I resemble; but I fear I’m not quite up to this river, not at my present age.”

“Did the medieval pilgrims pass through, Manfredo?” Fresca-Melchiora seemed to have crept up close to her husband, to judge by the spot where her voice came from.

“Some may have, Pomegranate, but no record survives of such a case; of course what records we have of the Priory are scanty. I judge from various sources, chiefly Balgrummo’s notes, that the
possibility
of splashing in here, and winning through to the center of the labyrinth, did exist. For that matter, the reality must exist, for I know that Balgrummo passed this dark way often.”

Marina was finding her voice at last, now that she could be sure that Michael wouldn’t be given up to Apollinax’s sickle, and that she would not be nailed to the timber cross. “Were the Weem Fathers evil? Why did they send pilgrims down to die in this water?”

Now the Archvicar had set down his big torch, apparently, for he was consulting notes with the use of a tiny pocket torch; Marina could see the papers, his hands, and his chin in the black pit, a candle in the wilderness. He replied to her rather absently, as he studied the paper that he held.

“Why, Marina, the monks probably used this stream as a symbol of baptism and rebirth. Now did Balgrummo mean the
bed
of the burn? His code symbol had an inkblot on it... Or, for that matter, dear girl, they may have diverted this water from some other course, perhaps the dry channel with the plank across it, earlier on-they were remarkable engineers, the people in those orders of the Middle Ages, particularly if this part of the Weem was improved by the Templars, before the Weem Fathers-what was I saying? Ah, yes, the Templars, perhaps, with their mysteries, may have designed this Scottish Styx here as a symbol of baptism and rebirth of the soul. A bold pilgrim was expected to fling himself into this black stream, swim into the unknown as into death, and then, if lucky or favored by Providence, emerge on the other side of that mass of coal to our right, under which the stream passes.”

He lost himself in his notes. “No, I’ll swear that Balgrummo didn’t mean the
bed:
he meant the left-hand
wall
above the water, where it enters this cave. He must have, for a man couldn’t get down to the bed of this torrent, not with this water’s velocity, without being swept away. I think I have it now!”

The others had been silent, resting as best they could on the floor of the passage. Fresca had surrendered Michael to Marina. There was no sound from the tortuous way by which they had come here. How grateful Marina felt for these minutes of respite from imminent peril! Of course Arcane knew how they needed this rest; for, as if he had solved his particular problem of how to cope with the underground river, there in the darkness he resumed his reply to Marina. One would have thought that this old man had all the time in the world!

“Let me be brief, Marina. If a pilgrim should pass through this water, that would be the symbolic equivalent of the washing away of sins through baptism. Then, if the pilgrim should get to the center of the labyrinth-which, I suspect, lies fairly close to our present refuge—he still would have a hard and intricate way to climb out of this purgatory. The worst would be over. Yet, having once passed through these waters of death, he would be unable to return this way. Thereafter he must press on manfully to the outer light, or else perish in this hollow dark, and his bones lie in the Weem forever. I’ll be candid: just that is our hope and our peril, here and now.”

What control of his voice the Archvicar had! His calmness here in the abyss, his lecturing as if he were a schoolmaster, put some heart into Marina; it must be comforting the others, too, even Sweeney. Could it just possibly be that even Michael might win through this Scottish Styx?

“Suppose that a pilgrim was old and sick?” Marina’s interest in the question was not abstract: she was thinking of Michael and herself. “Or suppose that there were women pilgrims and child pilgrims?”

“There must have been few of those, Marina, what with the rather sinister reputation of Saint Nectan’s Weem; probably the monks wouldn’t admit women and children; none is mentioned in the records. Still, occasionally a favored infirm pilgrim may have been admitted, one that the monks wished well-perhaps an ecclesiastic, or an old baron. This gate was strait for nearly all, as Purgatory must be; but the wind, or rather the water, may have been tempered to exceptional cases; it appears that the monks had contrived means for such tempering. And my father-Balgrummo, that is-must have discovered their means, and so contrived to pass through this particular strait gate many times. How many years did he spend before unearthing that secret of passing Styx little scathed, poor man? Well, he has saved us from Apollinax’s sickle and Apollinax’s nails.”