‘There’s a sorcerer…’ she told him. Castus shoved himself away from the wall in sudden anger.
‘Gods below!’ he hissed. ‘Is that what this is about? Black magic in a necropolis?’
‘Listen… Listen to me. You don’t need to worry – I only needed a companion to see me to the place where the ceremony will be conducted…’
‘Ceremony?’ Castus said. The practice of magic was strictly illegal, and punishable by a grisly execution; it was well known that Constantine hated it above all things. ‘What is this? Summoning spirits to curse your enemies? Bringing back the dead?’
‘Only divination,’ Sabina said quickly, pressing herself back against the wall. She had been nervous already, but Castus realised that his anger was scaring her more.
‘Tell me.’
‘His name is Astrampsychus,’ she said. ‘He’s a Babylonian, they say, an expert reader of the future. One of the most powerful.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Castus said. He had been to Babylonia, and had met no fortune tellers there.
‘The ceremony has to be a secret, for obvious reasons, but many people are going. Highly placed people. Who wouldn’t welcome the chance to know the future? I thought about disguising myself, but only those who share the secret will see me, so…’
‘And why does it have to happen in a necropolis?’
‘Don’t you know?’ she asked, and he saw her eyes widen in the darkness as she drew closer. ‘The presence of the dead makes the magic stronger!’
For a moment she stared at him, smiling, then leaned towards him and kissed him lightly on the mouth. ‘You can wait outside if you prefer,’ she whispered.
They found the tomb quickly enough; it was one of the largest, and would have been a grand edifice once. The stone and stucco around the black portal of the doorway was shaped to resemble pillars and a pediment, and there was a miniature courtyard before the door with an ivy-grown wall around it. As they approached they could see dark figures, cloaked and cowled, moving around the doorway and disappearing inside: others drawn by the illicit promise of magical divination.
Sabina left him in the overgrown courtyard, with only a silent touch on the shoulder before she stepped through the portal. There were long stones in the trampled grass, and Castus was about to sit on one when he realised that it was a sarcophagus. Probably dragged from inside the tomb, he thought, and shuddered.
Now that he was alone his senses became a lot sharper. He moved back into the shadows as a couple more people came stumbling between the tombs and passed in through the open portal. He could hear a low echoing murmur of voices from inside now. How many people had come to witness this ceremony? Out in the wilds of the necropolis an owl cried.
Time passed. Castus stilled his mind and forced himself to calm, remembering the long watches he had spent on night sentry duty. This was no different, he thought, in a way…
Then, with a quick prickling of nerves, he made out the strange roaring noise coming from inside the open tomb. Like the sound of wind rushing through trees; but the night was still and motionless. The roaring rose and fell, from a low hum to a high whine. Castus was on his feet, sword partially drawn, staring at the black mouth of the tomb: the sound was coming from within it. Then he heard the voices.
The first voice he could not make out: a sort of rapid cackling chant. The second voice rose above it, above even the continued hum and whine.
‘BARBARITHA CHENUMBRA ABRAXAS ABRAHAT! O Chthonic gods! O Dis Pater! O Mother Hecate! BARHARRANGES AOIA MARAAROTH AMARZA! Holders of the keys to Hades! Gods and Daemons of the Underworld! Spirits of the Untimely Dead! Rouse yourselves for me, bring yourselves to me! THOOTH PHOKENTAZEPHU BARBARITHU ABRAHAT! Demons who lie here! Spirits who reside here! I adjure you to aid this divination – Rouse yourselves! Bring yourselves…!’
Castus felt the sweat burning on his brow, but his heart was ice. He had drawn his sword and held it ready, as if to strike at anything emerging from the black mouth of the tomb. Panic beat in his chest – he wanted to run, needed to escape this foul place. It’s just a man, he told himself. Just a man, just some words.
The strange chant ended, with a dull dying echo, and the roaring noise fell away into silence. For a few heartbeats there was no sound, and then Castus heard other voices speaking, hushed but carrying. A pungent smell was coming from the tomb, like burning hair and incense.
Fighting down his nerves, Castus edged closer to the open door. At first he could see only blackness, then he made out the faint glow of lamps from deep inside. There were steps leading down from the doorway into a sunken chamber. The light and the voices must be coming from another, deeper, chamber beyond. Once again the roaring noise started, rising and falling. Castus slid his sword back into its scabbard, pulled his cloak over it, and began picking his way slowly down the steps.
Close black warmth engulfed him, and he stumbled from the fourth step onto the dusty floor. A moment, crouched in breathless silence. His eyes adjusted to the glow from the inner room, and he saw he was in a low chamber, arched alcoves on all sides. The walls were painted with figures and scenes: he made out the shape of a winged lion, a leaping dolphin. At the far end of the room was a low doorway with a heavy stone lintel, and he crept slowly towards it. The light wavered, and his shadow twisted and leaped behind him.
Now he could make out the speaking voices more clearly: one, high and cracked, was asking questions, and a few moments later a deeper and more sonorous voice seemed to be answering them.
As he neared the doorway, Castus noticed a gap in the wall to his left; the bricks of one of the arched alcoves had been knocked through to make an opening into the next chamber. Stooping, he thrust his head into the alcove and peered through.
The chamber beyond was much larger, twice the size of the entrance room. Scattered lamps burned from niches in the walls, and by their dim smoky glow Castus made out a crowd of figures almost filling the room. There were both men and women, some sitting on the floor and others standing around the walls. Surely twenty or thirty of them, but in the flicker of shadow it was hard to be sure. Castus picked out Sabina at once, sitting against the wall at the far side of the room, her face turned as she listened. He followed her gaze across the clustered heads and bodies to the far end of the chamber.
Between two heavy square pillars, a fire burned in a low tripod set on an altar. The man behind the altar, the speaker with the sonorous voice, was robed all in white. Linen bound his skull, and a white mask shaped like a dog’s head with staring black eyeholes covered his face. Behind him, a squat youth held a length of wood with holes bored in it; as Castus watched, the youth whirled the wood around his head on a cord; the weird rushing roar filled the chamber again.
The figure in the white mask – Astrampsychus himself, Castus assumed – stooped forward over the altar fire, raising his hands as he inhaling the fumes. There was a dead cockerel on the altar, its blood staining the stone and its feathers scattered around the fire. Now Castus could make out a second assistant, no doubt the man with the cackling voice, stepping carefully through the throng of spectators. He saw coins change hands, the glint of gold. The magician reared back from the smoking tripod, swaying on his feet.
‘The spirits bring good tidings,’ he intoned. ‘The child is yours, and will glorify your name…’
A ripple passed through the crowd, several people reaching out to a man near the front to congratulate him.
The assistant came creeping back towards the altar, holding what looked to Castus like a stack of broken pottery pieces. One of his legs was crooked, and he limped heavily. He placed the shards upon the altar, and the magician selected one without looking at it. The assistant picked up the shard and read from it in his cracked voice.