The Book of the Beast (17 page)

And the nagging, the non-existent forgotten thing, went on nibbling away at him.

Something had made him take off the amethyst. He stored it in a box of bits and pieces, wrapped in its pouch.

One pale evening, as the days began perceptibly to lengthen, his Centurion Secundo, coming in to make some report, was obviously curious at finding Vusca alone. When pressed, the centurion said he had seen, so he thought, two figures at the window above the Praetorium, and meeting no one on the stair—

“Oh,” said Vusca, “I had the soldier in from the door a moment.”

A month later, he saw it for himself. He had been waiting, in his heart of hearts, aware he was haunted.

He had seen the form before. He was not startled, only afraid.

He had taken a mouthful of the healer’s draught, and slept, and woke suddenly, as if at a loud cry.

But there was no noise. The room was pitch black, but for the thinner darkness of the window. And across the window passed the creature from the amulet.

It was visible for less than a second, yet it left an imprint on his sight, as on the jewel. A tall, provisionally masculine outline, but winged, clawed, and with the hook-beak head of a bird.

Vusca heaved himself up and lighted the lamp. He shook so much that he could not manage it at first. But nothing came near him, and when the light poured out the room seemed empty.
He knew it was not
.

Like a child, he left the lamp to burn all night, sitting bolt upright on the bed.

And that was the beginning of his terror.

That spring Lavinia had joined the circle of initiates at her temple. This, he had to admit, as well as his position, assisted Vusca. Isis was not his goddess, but he had adequate reverence for her, which he demonstrated with a showy offering at the altar. She was depicted in decent Roman matron’s garb, a crown of corn on her head, and a moon in her hand from which shivered drops of crystal ‘tears’. After the offering, he was taken to a cell where a priest of the upper tier received him.

The man was shaven, jaw and skull, in the Aegyptian way, nothing like the priest of the dream.

Vusca did not prevaricate. He told the truth. A harlot had given him an amulet, quite precious, and he had found it benign. But latterly it had brought on some illness that deprived him of energy, though physicians pronounced him fit. Also, an entity was expelling itself from the stone, a ghost, that was sometimes to be viewed, and which seemed to become stronger as he, Vusca, weakened. The priest, Vusca concluded, must say nothing of this to anyone. The Commander’s respect for the goddess would not prevent his punishing an abuse of trust.

The bald priest, face like an egg, regarded him gravely.

“You may trust me.”

Then Vusca got out the amulet and put it before the priest.

“Here. She said it was Aegyptian.”

“No,” said the priest, looking at it, not touching it. “She misled you.”

“I thought that was the case.” Vusca spoke, less decidedly of the dreams. He had to fumble after them now. They had no coherence. The priest, however, listened carefully.

When Vusca finished, the priest said, “I must consult another, more widely-versed than I in these things.

Do you allow me to tell him what you’ve said?”

“If you must.”

“Yes.”

“When shall I return?”

“Tomorrow night, before the third watch.” (Even this temple told time by the Fort.) “I’ve seen it, now take it away with you.”

Vusca went, dissatisfied and nervous. He had not told Lavinia the truth, only that he wished the services of a diviner, and would like to favour her own chosen temple. He thought she guessed there was some other problem.

After he had done the Night Inspection and retired to his rooms, he sat by the lamp and accepted that the presence prowled about him. Now and then, something caused the lamp to flicker, although it was a windless night. A faint aroma, like musk and blood mixed, was barely detectable. The shadow appeared plainly once, twice, against the plastered wall, where his legionary’s sword was hanging, the old infantry shield, the knives, the dented breast-plate with the gouge of the .axe-man’s dying anger—

The shadow was, and then it was not.

The thing he found the hardest to bear was that it should be here that he was attacked, in this place which represented for him security, totality, reason—
here
—

He fell into deathly sleep at last, over the table.

The creature from the amethyst had sucked up his bad luck, and now it sucked his life. He dreamed he was with Lililla. She too sucked upon him, in that way she had taught him. He felt no pleasure but he knew he would spend his seed and she would swallow it. Her eyes were a weird dull mauve, and had no mind or soul inside them.

Three of the priests were in the chamber where he was led the second night. Lamps burned; other than a small statue of the goddess, nothing and no one else was there.

“You told me one other priest,” Vusca said.

“For this, three are necessary.”

It was pointless to practise hauteur and the Might of Rome now. He was as much at their mercy as under the surgeon’s saw.

“Very well. What will be done?”

The fattest of the priests, who had a blond skin (a barbarian in Isis’ order), approached him and said, in the beautiful Greek so many of them mastered: “Commander, the amulet the woman gave you is like this: it is, as you found, benign, but then it turns. Before the first symptom, one who knew its secret would pass on the gem to another, who must accept it willingly. That is how to be free of it, to escape the turning of the energy back upon you. The woman did this. You did not know to do it. Now the time for such passage is over. We must try another course.”

“Yes.” Vusca frowned. His hands were wet and his belly griped. “What course?”

“A casting out. A returning.”

He did not understand, but he followed their instructions. They made marks on the floor, and anointed them. One stood outside the marks, by the goddess. In an alabaster bowl he made fire. It was this priest, the one who had never addressed Vusca, who had been given the amulet.

They began to chant. Vusca did not know the words. The sounds they made, keening harmonics, droned up into the roof like mosquitoes, and set his teeth on edge.

He realised he was now more than terrified.

It was very hot in the room.

The priest who had the amulet had never touched it save through a cloth. It lay on the cloth now, before him. He spoke to it, and Vusca caught the names of Isis, and of Thot, and of Osiris. The priest sprinkled water on the cloth with the amethyst, and powders, and salt.

The ritual seemed to go on and on. All the while, Vusca felt his strength bleeding away. His head swam.

It was tedious, it was horrible. He realised he had grasped already that it could not work.

Finally, bellowing something, the priest beyond the marks raised the amulet in the cloth and cast it into the fire. The other two broke from their pen and hurled things into the basin after it. An unsuitable smell of cookery rose—they had thrown in onion, and some kind of fruit.

Vusca staggered. He went down on one knee, wiping the sweat from his face. He wanted it to be over.

It was useless. He would have to think of another remedy.

When the fire died in the bowl, the amulet lay there. The heat had done something to it, meddled with its colour in some way.

He must take it, they said. Go to the Fort. They tied a knot of little cords on his arm, above the elbow.

They invoked the protection of Isis.

He put a sum of money by the statue. They did not acknowledge this, aware themselves that they had achieved nothing.

The Roman commander lay down on his bed, the lamp alight, the sentry at his door.

He could not keep his eyes open. He drifted.

Vusca gripped the sword he had brought to lie beside him. The creature was not corporeal, yet maybe he could smite at it. Besides, there was a power in the sword. The power of what a soldier was. His last companion, the only one who could know everything, and would not betray—

The light fluttered and went out.

At first it was so gradual, he was not sure. It was like a constriction of the breath after too much food and wine. Only like that. But the pressure grew. It became heavier, sentient. In appalling horror he lay there, and felt the weight of the demon, crouching as the woman had done, on his loins and breast. The weight grew ever more sonorous, danker, seeping through him. He could not move. He was rigid with panic fear. And then there came the glow of two eyes, like meltings from the amethyst, hanging over him, watching him, as it sucked his life from every pore and vein and hair.

Vusca howled. By a galvanic effort, seemingly irresistible as the action of birth or death, he flung himself upward, dislodging the half-existent thing upon his chest. And as it dropped away, with the sword he cleaved it through and through,
felt
the blade go into it. But with no likeness to muscle or flesh, and not the jarring of a single bone.

When the sword ceased to penetrate anything at all, he stood panting in the darkness.

The sentry had not rushed in on him. It appeared Vusca had not even cried out as he thought he had.

That was strange. Strange…

He held the sword, hugging it to him. Here was the last solution, after all. One way to cheat.

He sat down by the table, in the dark, with his only ally. He propped the hilt against the table’s edge, the tip against his abdomen, the crucial spot, under the ribs and heart. He leaned, fractionally, on the sword’s sharpness, and felt its bite like sweet consolation. “If you’re there,” he said aloud into the dark, “I have my friend here. My friend will take me from you, if you come close tonight. Then you lose. Be warned.”

He fainted, propped there over the blade.

Barbarus came to the Fort with some display, two of his sons, and three servants.

In the room above the Praetorium, Vusca said to him, “You had no need to be anxious. Did you think I meant to admonish you for something?”

Barbarus said smoothly, “It is the Commander’s privilege.”

“Why, have you been doing something wrong?”

Barbarus said, “Never knowingly, Commander.”

Vusca forced a chuckle. As he had forced the coy opening gambit. Then he said, “What have you been hearing about me in the town?”

Barbarus raised his brows. His horse-boned Gallic face was bland, moving on oiled hinges worthy of a Greek.

“Nothing?” prompted Vusca.

“Merely that we prosper under your hand.”

“And how do I look to you?”

Barbarus considered, and decided on a fact.

“Not well, Commander. There’s been a lot of fever this spring.”

“It isn’t fever.”

“No, Commander?”

“Do you recall, Barbarus, last summer there was a woman in the town. She had a house behind the Julian Baths.”

Barbarus paused, to let the Commander see he had forgotten all that, could only remember if reminded.

Vusca reminded him.

“I thought nothing of it, when she left,” he continued, rather archly he felt, but could not summon the requisite irritation. “But the amulet she gave me—it’s begun to work me ill.”

Barbaras had now altered. He looked like a man listening for a distant, expected shout.

Vusca added details, as many as he thought were needful. When he stopped, Barbarus, with great deference, asked a couple of questions. Vusca replied.

Barbarus said slowly, “The Commander knows I am his slave.”

“Barbarus knows, I’m never ungrateful.”

“This is so. What may I do?”

“Is there anyone I can see who can—rid me—of this—thing—’

To his horror, Vusca found his voice was shaking, cracking like a boy’s.

Barbarus ignored the cracking voice. It had not happened. He said, “There’s a man in the hills. About a day’s journey in good weather—’

“He must come to me, here.”

“That may be more difficult.”

“The problem is,” said Vusca humbly, “I find I haven’t the strength, any more, to ride. Even to walk across this room is—a test.”

It was impossible to tell what Barbarus thought. You never knew. Doubtless, at any stumble they rejoiced. But they must still pretend to be sorry, try to assist, for as long as the idea of Rome remained.

“On the table,” said Vusca, “that box. Count the coins if you like.” Barbarus bowed, tapped the box with his fingers, did not count, since Rome was also perfect. “Pay the man—this healer, magician, whatever he is—pay him as you think fit. For you, I promise you now, if—if I survive, a talent of silver. There’s a letter in with the coins to that effect, having my seal.”

Barbarus lifted the box.

“I shall naturally destroy the letter, Commander. The Commander’s word is all that I require.”

Somehow, he lived, and did not go mad, for three more days, two more nights. By day he oversaw the machinery of the Fort, the drills, a parade under a burning white sun, carried out to it in a chair. He did such sedentary work as he could, even went through an interminable itemisation of stores with the quartermaster. Elsewhere he delegated via his capable Centurion Secundo and various other officers.

(Was the dead Pilum sneering at him?) The men put up with it all cheerily, and the rank and file even asked after him, it seemed, their Old Man, laid up with the bloody fever, too bad, and it was nice hunting weather, too.

Sometimes in the afternoons he slept. The steady diurnal rhythms of the Fort seemed to protect him then.

The nights he was alone, alone but in company. The three of them, himself, the demon, and the sword.

The sounds of the trumpets marking the watches were his sanity. They were the voice of human strength and human reason.

But he realised he did not have far to go. Barbarus’ man from the hills was the final throw of his dice.

Then it would be the sword. By the Light, he almost longed for it, now.

At sunset, on the third evening, they were sounding
gates
and he was writing a letter to Lavinia, telling her a crippling sickness had taken him, that he preferred the cleaner exit. It was awkward, this letter. He had wanted to put in some friendly, perhaps loving thing, to reward her for changing. But he did not like the written word other than in an itinerary or report, emotionless and exact. And the letter read just like a report, of course. He put it aside, and then they brought in the man.