'Ah. I'm afraid that's as far as I've got with my planning.'
'Keen though I am to see its full extent,' Caroline said, 'I'm not sure if you've got time for a comprehensive plan.'
'P'raps we should just leave?' George said.
The shadows behind the stone table moved. 'Too late, I'm afraid.'
'Rarely good words, those,' George said.
Then, as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown, the chamber was no longer freezing. A drift of dust trickled from above. Aubrey glanced at the ceiling, held the lantern up and his eyes widened as the solid stone blocks rippled.
'How far are we from the stairs?' he asked.
A grinding noise, as if a tombstone were being dragged along rock, came from behind him.
'What stairs?' George said. 'They've just disappeared.'
'The room is reshaping itself?'
'A wall moved, swallowing the stairs. It's a bit crooked in that corner, but you'd never know they were there.'
'Careful,' Caroline said. 'The floor.'
Aubrey had felt it, too. The stone had flexed, as if a great beast had pushed up from underneath. He winced. There was such a thing as having too good an imagination.
A sudden, sharp blow from under their feet sent them staggering. 'George!' Aubrey shouted. 'Look out!' The wall near his friend bulged menacingly, but it was so slow and ponderous in its movement that George had no trouble avoiding it. 'It'll have to do better than that.' He straightened his jacket.
Caroline had ended up in the corner where the stairs had once been. 'Careful,' Aubrey said.
She looked irritated by his unnecessary advice, then on either side of her, the stone walls lurched inwards and tried to trap her in the corner.
Again, the ponderousness of the movement gave Caroline time to skip away and back off, grimacing. 'Slow. But it's getting faster.'
They came together in the middle of the room, back to back to back, as far from the walls as possible. 'Keep the lantern up, Caroline,' George said. 'And I'd suggest we find a way out of here very, very quickly.'
It seemed like a time for unnecessary advice – Aubrey's brain had been whirring at full speed for some time. The problem was that he was facing a magical threat and he couldn't meet it with magic. Not if he valued his soul.
Dread and terror. Aubrey could taste them, and he knew they were being generated by the room. They came from inside. A pulse fluttered at the side of his neck like a trapped butterfly. He swallowed and it was as if a grapefruit had lodged there.
The stones of the room quivered, sequentially, a ghostly finger running along piano keys.
It's not used to moving, Aubrey thought. He had the unnerving certainty that it was learning quickly.
It began with the floor. It suddenly lifted underneath George, tilting and sending him staggering until he met the nearest wall. Caroline, too, was thrown off her feet. She tumbled and landed easily, bouncing on her toes, ready for whatever came next.
The stones underneath Aubrey heaved. He fell and, spreadeagled, found himself on top of a column that burst from the floor and threatened to mash him against the ceiling. He flung himself to one side, tumbling to the floor. The column and the ceiling met with a crash.
Aubrey crouched, panting. George picked himself up and stumbled toward him. Caroline eased closer. 'Now what?'
'Nothing good.' Aubrey tried to look in all directions at once. When would the shrine realise that it could drop the entire ceiling and get rid of them that way? They were intruders. He had to convince the place that they belonged there.
The rear wall of lurched. It shuddered, stopped, then began to grind toward them.
Helplessly, they backed away. Aubrey's stomach was an empty, yawning hole the size of all creation.
'Time to pull something out of the bag, Aubrey,' George muttered.
Aubrey had a solution at his fingertips. He was sure that a variation of his identity spell, the one he'd used in Lutetia, would work. Not just identity, but texture and flavour of identity could be captured by the spell. He was sure he could cloak them in enough 'Romanness' to placate the shrine's awareness.
But he couldn't use magic.
George shouted and pushed Aubrey aside. A mass of stone fell, sending up a cloud of dust. Aubrey cannoned into Caroline. She twisted, keeping her balance, but Aubrey lurched to one side and slammed his head against the wall. Black streaks clawed at his vision.
Through his grogginess, movement caught his attention. Behind George, on the other side of the room, a huge mouth had formed and was snapping at him. Made of the stone blocks of the wall, its lips flapped and snarled obscenely. George cried out and recoiled, but the floor beneath his feet bucked, throwing him straight at the hungry teeth.
A few yards away, Caroline was on her back, scrambling away from a hole that had opened in front of her. The floor tilted, doing its best to slide her into the gap.
Aubrey flung off the last vestiges of terror. His friends were in danger. Nothing else mattered. He had to save them, even if it cost him.
The spell leaped to his lips, as if it had been waiting for the chance. He began to chant.
The spell was dense; each individual term was short, but the linking and sequencing needed to establish identity was demanding. Sweat sprang to his forehead as he spat out each Chaldean syllable, biting off each one as clearly as he could. The spell writhed on his tongue, having a life of its own. It looked for any chance to baffle him, to go wrong, or to tease him into slurring or mispronouncing.
He refused to be beaten. Each element came to him as he needed it, whole and clear. He shunted them to his mouth and marched them off, not allowing any mistakes.
Finally, he slammed out the final syllable, his signature and conclusion.
All strength vanished from his legs. He grunted and, boneless, he slumped to the floor.
He watched, blurrily, unable to move, hoping he'd done enough and trying to remember another spell, just in case he hadn't, but his mind was leaden. Nothing came to him.
All movement in the shrine – apart from Caroline and George's desperate efforts to avoid their traps – ceased. They scrambled to the centre of the room, breathing hard, eyes darting.
The mouth in the wall shrank, shifted, then disappeared. The stone made itself whole again. The gap in the floor closed up, the stone blocks rumbled back into place. In the far corner, stairs projected from the wall, floor and ceiling.
'Aubrey!' George called and hurried to his side. 'What have you done?'
Aubrey shook his head, then he bit down as a sharp spasm seized him.
His body and soul were coming apart.
Seventeen
AUBREY DOUBLED UP, HIS KNEES ALMOST TOUCHING his chin. He hissed, trying to let out the agony. Dissolution had never been this acutely painful before.
He felt George's hand on his shoulder. 'Steady, old man.'