Furies (56 page)

The crush of masked, sweaty revellers pressed towards the platform, writhing to the pounding drums and cacophonic music. Two slaves in dragon masks led a snow-white goat towards the platform, garlands draped over its horned head. It bleated in confusion and fear, kicking and bucking, trying to escape, but its handlers prodded it forward with pine cone-tipped staffs until its white coat was stained with blood. The goat was hauled up onto the platform, bleating in terror at the blood-crazed fury of the worshippers, sensing what was to come.

“The first wine is offered to the immortal Dionysos,” the high priest Ralla cried, his voice echoing through the catacombs as he took up a cup and forced its contents down the poor beast’s throat. “God of the ancients, God of Arcadia, horned child crowned with serpents, you who take raw flesh.” The goat twisted and tried to turn its head away, eyes wide with panic, but Ralla held it fast, pouring until the cup was empty.

The undulating chants of the worshippers echoed all around, mixed with the pounding drums and the bleating of the goat as it was tied to the barren tree. “Dionysos, killer of the vine, fulfilled at last by his red and bleeding feasts, as we now fulfill ours,” Ralla proclaimed. He raised his arms, his hands spread wide, the revellers roared when the first stone struck the goat in the head. It bleated in pain and confusion as another stone struck it, then another, until its eerie cries of terror were drowned out by the drunken cheers of the worshippers as the stones rained down. Aculeo watched in revulsion as they descended on the wretched goat, screaming as they tore at its flesh. In a moment, it fell silent, a bloody, lifeless pulp on the ground. The revellers all stood and pressed forward, their faces and hands wet with the beast’s blood, their eyes alight with lust.

“As the vine is taken at harvest,” Ralla cried, “so Dionysos was devoured by the Titans, who gained his spark of divinity.”

I need to find Calisto, Aculeo thought, scanning the crowd, the wound in his side a dull, aching throb. We need to get out of here. He noticed a woman standing off to the side dressed in a bright red peplos and a bee mask, an ornate gold and topaz necklace around her fleshy neck, a fringe of scarlet hair sticking out from the edge of her mask. Panthea, he thought. He slipped through the surging revellers until he stood behind her, feeling the sour heat from her body as she swayed back and forth. He felt for his knife, readying himself to grab her, drag her into the shadows, force her to tell him where Calisto was.

“The initiate,” Panthea cried. A figure clad in purple robes, a myrtle crown and a dove mask was dragged onto the platform by the dragon-masked slaves. Aculeo’s heart stopped when he saw her – the way she held herself, the shape of her hands bound before her, the slenderness of her ivory neck, the curve of her hip … Calisto!

“In madness, we are released,” Ralla cried from his giltwood throne. “We start to comprehend the majesty of the universe revealed, the joy as our souls are freed from the shackles of this life!”

“Take her, take her, take her,” Panthea chanted drunkenly, rending her own robes as she writhed to the mad, grating music. “Take her!”

“Murderous whore,” Aculeo hissed, knocking Panthea to the ground. She looked around in shock, her mask askew, as she struggled to her feet. Aculeo shoved past the swaying, inebriated worshippers clustered about the platform. Two slaves noticed him then and made their way towards him as he continued towards the platform, towards Calisto.

The dragon-masked slaves dragged Calisto towards the barren tree. Aculeo was steps from the platform’s edge now. One of the guards seized him by the shoulder, trying to restrain him.

“Dionysos enters his worshippers through their eyes, their ears, their blood,” Ralla cried.

Aculeo swung his elbow against the guard’s head, grabbing the man’s short sword from his belt as he fell. The other guard ran at him, sword raised to attack. Aculeo stabbed him in the neck and the man went down, blood spouting like a fountain onto the platform as he collapsed.
Avilius Balbus
,
his flushed face suddenly sprayed with the dying slave’s blood, looked about in horror like a child awoken from a nightmare and began to bawl,
a sound few noticed over the screams of mad revelry. Other slaves noticed, though, and moved to protect the Prefect’s son.

The girl in the goat mask was dragged from the cage and now stood next to Calisto. She was terribly slight, with thin arms, child’s ankles – Tyche! Aculeo realized desperately. Ralla threw a pair of ropes over the highest branch of the barren tree, then slipped one of them in a noose about Tyche’s slender neck, the other about Calisto’s.

“We know true joy as our souls are freed from the shackles of this life and we become one with him!” cried Ralla, then he pulled Tyche’s rope taut, the noose squeezing against her pale throat as she lifted into the air.

The crowd cried out “Euoi!” in delight, their blood-lust rising to a feverous pitch.

“No!” Calisto screamed, struggling in vain against her captors.

More slaves were coming, too many now. There was no time. Aculeo grabbed a blazing torch from a sconce in the rock wall and threw it on Ralla’s throne, the bone-dry wood immediately catching fire. The tapestries draped about it ignited seconds later, orangey-yellow flames that crackled and leapt to set fire to several branches of the barren tree, inches from where Calisto stood. Tyche kicked her feet frantically, twisting in the empty air as she choked to death.

Someone screamed, then the revellers paused their mad dance, their bloodlust suddenly doused, twisting instead into blind panic as smoke filled the cavern. They pushed and shoved at one another as they tried frantically to escape, knocking Ralla to the ground. The rope released, Tyche dropped to the rock floor in a heap. Aculeo climbed onto the platform and knelt beside the girl, releasing the noose, slipping it off her head. Her lips were blue, her cheeks pale and lifeless. He laid her on her back and breathed into her mouth until at last the girl coughed and gasped for breath.

“Aculeo, how did you…? Oh, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Calisto cried, wrapping her arms about him from behind, kissing his neck as she wept. “Is Tyche alright?”

“I think so. Tyche, are you okay?” The girl felt her throat, blinking, and nodded, slowly climbing to her feet, disoriented.

The High Priest Ralla tried to stand as well, his mask askew, his worshippers gone. He seemed unaware that everything had just fallen apart around him. “We call … call upon Dionysos and beg you look on us … with favour,” the man said, his voice faltering.

Aculeo grabbed him by the tunic and tore his mask off. He looked at Zeanthes’ face in disbelief.

“No!” the sophist snarled, his face twisted in rage as he tore himself free, disappearing into the shadows of the catacombs.

“Let him go!” Calisto cried, coughing from the smoke. “We have to get out of here while we still can.”

They were caught up in the crowd of panicked, coughing revellers swarming up a stairway carved into the rock wall, fleeing the smoke-filled cavern to the villa above. They came to the top of the steps and through the doorway into the villa. Fresh, sweet air filled their lungs at last. They stood in a small ala at the edge of the atrium, the walls still decorated with olive branches and lit with torches. It was virtually abandoned, the revellers had all fled.

“What happened here?” Aculeo asked Calisto, weak from exertion and pain.

“I’m not sure,” Calisto said as she clung to him. “Ralla told me to come here tonight. I thought it was just another symposium but they seized me as soon as I arrived, bound me, drugged me …”

“You’re lucky to be alive. But where’s Ralla?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t see him,” she said.

“Wait,” Aculeo said, looking around. “Where’s Tyche?”

“She came up from the cisterns with us, didn’t she?” Calisto asked. Her eyes widened with sudden alarm. “Didn’t she?”

Aculeo looked back towards the stairway leading down into the cisterns. Down to the underworld, where Dionysos was still Lord.

Aculeo grabbed a torch and he and Calisto descended the stairway into the dark catacombs, the torchlight reflecting off the uneven rock walls. They could find no sign of Tyche. The smoke was still thick enough to burn their eyes and make them cough. Aculeo’s entire left side was throbbing in pain. He made his way to the walkways overlooking the great cistern.

“Tyche?” he called, his voice echoing off the cold stone walls. “Tyche?”

“Where is she?” Calisto asked desperately.

Aculeo spotted a dim light deep in the catacombs, moving away from them. His heart sank. “There,” he said.

“But she wouldn’t go there on her own,” Calisto said. “She’d have no reason.”

“Zeanthes must have taken her,” Aculeo said. “I have to stop him.”

“But look at you, you can barely stand!” She looked down at his tunic and gasped. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” he said, his left side throbbing with agony.

“Don’t lie to me! What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter now. Just go home and gather Idaia. We have to leave tonight before Ralla comes after us.”

“But what if…?” She trailed off, not daring to utter the words.

“If we’re not back by dawn you’re to leave without us.”

“Aculeo, no!”

“Promise me,” he demanded.

Calisto hesitated a moment, then held him close, kissed his cheeks, tears streaming down her face. “Be careful.” She headed back up the stone steps.

Aculeo moved as quickly as he could along the narrow pathways through the darkness, the only sounds the sloshing of water in the cisterns below and the echoes of his own footsteps. The catacombs were practically endless, a shadowy web beneath the city. Still, Zeanthes appeared to know its routes well enough, for even with Tyche in tow the distance between them never seemed to close. He was like a firefly always flitting just out of …

The ground suddenly disappeared beneath Aculeo’s feet. He twisted around and was barely able to catch the edge of the walkway before he fell into the water below. He gasped in anguish, his left side radiating with pain, soaked with blood. He managed to haul himself back up onto the pathway. It was completely, utterly dark. His torch must have fallen into the water. He lay there, trying to catch his breath, pain washing over him in aching, nauseating waves, afraid he might black out. Focus, he thought. Remember Tyche, the way she’d followed me into the alley from the Blue Bird that day so long ago, risking herself to help me find Neaera. She came to me, trusted me, and I let her fall into Zeanthes’ hands. He forced himself to sit up, then to stand, ignoring the dizziness and the pain.

Aculeo looked around. There was no sign of Zeanthes – the beacon of his torchlight had disappeared. He made his way tentatively along the pathways again, running his hands along the cool, dripping cavern walls until he came to a narrow opening in the rock wall. It was a fissure of some sort, the height of his shoulders, barely as wide. He could see a dim light emanating from within. Zeanthes, he thought. They must have gone in here.

He crouched down and reluctantly squeezed inside, the walls tight, pressing against him, the air stale and chalky with dust. The fissure’s ceiling dropped lower and lower the deeper he went, the passage tightening around him until he feared he’d become stuck if he went any further. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled, following the fissure as it cut deeper and deeper into the earth. And what if I’m wrong? he thought bleakly. What if I’ve taken the wrong path, a path that leads to nowhere? What if I get stuck in here beneath the earth? Tyche is murdered, Zeanthes escapes, all of this in vain? I can’t breathe, the walls are so tight, pressing on me, what happened to the fucking air? Enough! he thought, forcing himself to keep moving, to stop thinking, to just move!