The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 (22 page)

Vettius and his half-section of troops in armor filled the innkeeper's narrow office. "The merchant Dauod of Petra," he said, pointing his finger like a knifeblade at the shocked civilian's throat. "Which room?"

"S-second floor," stuttered the innkeeper, his face gone the color of tallow when the Emperor's soldiers burst in on him. "Nearest the ladder."

"Ulcius, you watch him," nodded the big legate to the nearest of his men. The other soldiers and Dama were already swinging toward the ladder that served as sole means of access to the inn's upper floors. Dama was half the bulk of any of the burly troops, an elfin man of Cappadocian stock whose blond hair was now part silver. He was not visibly armed, but neither had Vettius brought his friend on the raid to fight

The fat teamster who had started down the ladder had sense enough to change direction as the soldiers came scrambling up. Their hobnailed sandals rasping the tiles were the only sound they made as they formed a semicircle around the indicated doorway. Dulcitius, the Thracian centurion with a godling's face and a weasel's eyes, drew his sword silently. Vettius checked the position of his men, shifted so that his own armored body masked Dama, and kicked in the latched wooden door. All five of them were inside before the room's gray-haired occupant could sit up on his mattress.

"Your name and business,
nowl"
Vettius thundered in Aramaic. He had not drawn his own long spatha, but either of his knotted fists was capable of pulping the frail man on the bed.

"Sirs, I'm Dauod son of Hafiz, nothing more than a trader in spices," the old man whined. His hands trembled as they indicated the head-sized spice caskets arrayed beneath the room's barred window.

"You were told right," Dama said with flat assurance. He had traded in more countries than most of the Empire knew existed, and the local dialects were as much a part of his memories as the products the people bartered. "That's not an Arab accent," he went on, "it's pure Persian. He may be a spice trader, but he's not from Petra or anywhere else inside the Empire."

The legate's square face brightened with triumph. "Amazing," he said, irony barbing his words. "I didn't realize there was anybody in Antioch who wasn't too busy listening for treason to bother telling us about a Persian spy."

The old man cowered back against the wall deforming the billet that served as pillow at the head of his beds Vettius' practiced eye caught the angular hardness in the cloth. His hand shot out, jerking away the billet and spilling to the floor the dagger within it. Briefly no one moved. The Persian was hunched as though trying to crawl backwards into the plaster.

Dama toed the knife, listening critically to its ring. "Silver," he announced. "I don't think it's meant for a weapon. It's magic paraphernalia, like the robe it was wrapped in."

"Uh?" Vettius glanced at the coarse woolen blanket he had snatched and found that when it unrolled it displayed a garment of gauzy black silk as fine as a spider's weaving. In metal threads on the hem were worked designs that appeared notational but in no script with which the legate was familiar. Vettius kicked the silver dagger, the arthame, into the passageway and tossed the robe after it. He deliberately turned his back on the man who called himself Dauod. Bending, he grasped a handle and snaked out one of the bottom layer of spice caskets. It was of leather like the rest, its tight lid thonged to the barrel; but the workmanship was exceptionally good, and a recent polishing could not hide signs of great age. Vettius fumbled at the knot, then popped the fastening with a quick flexion of his fingers.

The old Persian gave a wordless cry and leaped for the legate's back. Dulcitius' sword darted like pale lightning, licking in at the Persian's jaw hinge and out the opposite temple in a spray of blood. Vettius spun with a bellow and slapped his centurion down with a bear-quick motion. "You idiot, who told you to kill him? Was he going to hurt
me?"
 

Dulcitius clanged as he bounced against the wall, his face as white as his tunic except where Vettius' broad handprint glowed on his cheek. His sword was still imbedded in the skull of the dying man thrashing on the floor, but a murder ous rage roiled in his eyes. Unseen to the side, Dama freed the small knife concealed in his tunic.

"There was no call to do that," Dulcitius said slowly.

"There wasn't bloody call to kill the man before we even started to question him!" Vettius snarled back. "If you're too stupid to see that, you've got no business with officer rank- and I can see to that mistake very promptly, damn you. Otherwise, get downstairs with Ulcius. Find out from the innkeeper who this Dauod saw, what he did-every damn thing about him since he came to Antioch."

Vettius was by birth a Celtiberian, one of the black-haired, black-hearted race who had slammed a bloody door on the Teutoni and sent them stumbling back into the spears of Rome and Marius. Four and a half centuries had bled neither the courage of his forefathers nor their savagery from the tall legate; Dulcitius stared at him, then turned and left the room with neither a curse nor a backward glance.

"Start looking through his gear," Vettius said mildly to the remaining soldiers. "He's not going to tell us much himself."

The casket in his own hands sucked as he opened it to reveal a scroll and a glass bottle, round and nested in a leather hollow that held it firm. Vettius weighed the sphere in his hand. The silvery mercury that filled it had just enough air trapped with it beneath the seal to tremble.

Dama was already glancing at the scroll. "It's in Greek," he said, frowning, "most of it. The record of the researches of Nemesius-'"

"His real name was Nemesius?" the legate interrupted.

"'-of Nemesius of Antioch,'" continued Dama unperturbed, " 'in the third year of the reign of the Emperor Valeri-anus.'"

The line troops had paused from opening chests filled only with spices. Vettius himself had the look of a man uncertain as to who is playing the trick on him. "Valerian," he re peated. "But he was killed-"

"Almost a century ago," the Cappadocian finished for him in agreement. "What was a Persian wizard doing with a parchment written a century ago by a Greek philosopher?"

Vettius' tongue prodded his left cheek. He could command troops or seduce women in eight languages, was truly fluent in five of them; but only in Latin could he claim literacy. "I'll be pretty busy the next few days," he lied unnecessarily. "Why dont you read it yourself and tell me what you think of it?"

"Sestia'll probably be glad that I've found something to do for a few days besides pester her," Dama said with a fond smile. "Sure, it can't hurt for me to take a look at it."

The moon and three triple-wicked oil lamps lighted the pillared courtyard. Servants had cleared away the last of the platters, leaving the two friends to Chian wine and the warm Syrian night.

"I'm sorry Sestia got a headache at the last minute," Dama said. "I'd like the two of you to get better acquainted."

"She got the headache when she heard I was coming for dinner," remarked Vettius, more interested in straightening his tunic than in what he was saying.

"You don't usually have that problem with women," gibed the merchant.

"She knows the kind of guy I am, that's all."

"Nobody who really knows you, Lucius, would think you'd seduce a friend's wife."

"Yeah, that's what I mean."

Dama drew an aimless design in wine lees on the marble tabletop. The legate glanced up, flushed, and gulped down the contents of his own cup. "Mithra," he apologized. "I've drunk too much already." Then, "Look, have you gotten anything out of the scroll? Neither the innkeeper nor anything we found in the room gives us a notion of what this Dauod was up to."

The Cappadocian set the leather case on the table and drew the parchment out of it. "Umm, yes, I've got a notion… but it's no more than that and you may want to call me a fool when I tell you."

"You aren't a fool," said Vettius quietly. "Tell me about the scroll."

"Nemesius of Antioch was searching for the secret of life and a way of turning base metals into gold. He wrote an account of his attempts here-" Dama spread the scroll slightly to emphasize it-"after he succeeded in both. Or so he says."

"Even that long ago I'd have heard of him if that was true," the soldier snorted.

"Except," Dama pointed out, "that was the year the Persians sacked Antioch. And Nemesius' villa was outside the walls." He spun the parchment to a passage he had noted. "'… leaving in place of the lead a column of living gold, equal to me in height and in diameter some three cubits.' Now, what I suspect is that your Dauod was no spy. He was a wizard himself, not of the ability of Nemesius but able to understand the processes he describes and to believe they might work. He was a scholar, too, enough of one to read this scroll in a casket looted on whim a century ago; and a gambler besides to risk his life on its basis in a hostile empire."

"But for what?" Vettius demanded. "You said the place was sacked."

"Nemesius had an underground laboratory. He describes the secret entrance to it in this parchment," Dama replied. "It just could be that the Persian who found the chest-and probably Nernesius-above ground missed the passageway below. If so, the gold might still be there."

Vettius' intake of breath was that of a boy seeing for the first time a beautiful woman nude. "That much
gold,"
he whispered. He sat up on his couch and leaned forward toward his friend, mind working like a tally board. "Hundreds of talents, maybe thousands… If we could find that, we'd each be as rich as the Emperor's freedmen. What would you do with wealth like that, Dama?"

"I'd leave it to rot in the ground," the merchant said without inflection. Vettius blinked at the violence of the words and the Cappadocian's hard blue eyes. "I read you what Nem-esius created," Dama went on. "I didn't read you how he went about it. Neither for eternal life nor for all the gold on earth would I have done half the things he claims to have done. There's an evil to that gold. It's dangerous, the danger reeks all through this parchment, though Nemesius never puts a name to why. Maybe he was afraid to. Let the gold lie for somebody in more need of trouble than you or I are."

Vettius took the bulb of mercury from the casket to occupy his hands while he pondered. The bubble danced through the transparence, a mobile facet in the light of the oil lamps. The cap was of thin, carven gold, but the short neck of the bottle had been sealed with wax before the gold was applied.

"Why two seals, do you suppose?" Vettius asked rather than voice what was really on his mind.

"Quicksilver combines with gold, rots it into a paste," Dama explained. "The wax is the real closure, the metal over it just for show." He paused, continued when he saw the soldier was still not ready to speak. "Nemesius used quicksilver in his searching, both for life and for gold. He says he always carried this bottle with him; why, I don't know. The manuscript doesn't explain."

"You've spent your life gathering gold, trading for gold, haven't you?" the big Spaniard rumbled, slipping the mercury back into the case and then looking at his wine cup.

"Yeah, I have," Dama agreed, his posture a conscious disavowal of the tension lacing the night. "Spices from Ta-probane, silks from India. Once I Went all the way to the Serian lands for silk, but the extra profit wasn't worth the danger."

"All your life looking for gold and you tell
me
not to dig an emperor's ransom out of the ground when it's right here waiting. I don't understand it, Dama." Vettius raised his voice and his eyes together. "You're playing a game of some sort and I don't know what it is!"

"No game at all," said Dama, still quietly. He faced his friend as he had once faced a gut-shot bear. The merchant had seen other men suddenly besotted with an idea-a cavalryman hammered into fanaticism by the majesty of his Arian God, a shipmaster so certain that a fourth continent lay west of Ireland that he convinced a full crew to disappear with him in search of it. A jest, even a misspoken word, would send such men into murderous frenzies. "Sure, I love gold, but I know it. I'm not joking at all, Lucius, when I say there's a wrong feel to this hoard. I'll help you any way I can to see that you find it, but I'll have no portion of what Nemesius left."

Slowly Vettius reached for the wine bowl and bent a rueful smile onto his face. "That's fair," he said as he poured for both of them. "A good bit too fair, but we'll worry over that when the gold's in our hands, hey?" He paused; then, too eagerly for his pretense of calm, he blurted, "You think there's a real chance of locating Nemesius' cellars after this time?"

Dama nodded. "Let me think about it. There's a way to do most things if you think about them a while."

The soldier sipped, then gulped his unmixed wine to the lees and stood up. The light bronzed his skin and made each bristle of his nascent beard a spearpoint. "I'll be off, then," he said. "I-I really appreciate all you've done, will do, Dama. It isn't for me, not really; but if I had wealth enough to make those idiots in Constantinople listen to what I say about the army…"

Dama clapped him on the arm. "As you said, we'll talk about that when the gold's in your hands."

After his friend had left behind his lamp-carrier, drunken but erect and with a vicious smile on his face that no footpad would dare to trouble, Dama returned to the courtyard. Ses-tia's room would be locked. From past experience Dama knew to stay out of her wing of the house and not make a fool of himself before her servants, trying to wheedle his wife out of her pique through bolted wood. Instead, he fingered the bulb of mercury, then re-opened the scroll beside it. When dawn began to sear the marble facings of the court he was still at the table dictating notes to the sleepy clerk he had dragged from bed three hours before.

"You're sure that's the place?" said Vettius, a neutral figure in the dusk unless one noted the tip of the scabbard lifting the hem of his long travelling cloak. The mud-brick warren around them scampered with the sounds of furtive life, some of it human, but no one approached the friend.