Chapter 60
CHAPTER SIXTY
While it has been centuries since we’ve exercised the alliance between our two cities’ Strata, it may at last be time to do so again.
—Chancellor Grace O’Malley, intercepted missive to Luxor, Egypt
I led my friends down the Abyssal Steps, barely able to hold up my lantern.
Sweat drenched my face, and the ache in my sutures was getting tough to bear.
With Church’s help, I staggered down the stairway passage, which had been chiseled from cold ground.
Here and there, it had caved in, forcing us to crawl over piles of rock and dirt.
The old pressure started to trip-hammer behind my eyes.
I finally had to stop. The shimmering pattern in my shadow had gotten hard to see against the bright amber glow of my largest occlusion.
The Essiene sutures still held the wound closed, but gold light seeped through gaping holes where they were stretching . . .
. . . I finish my prayer to the statue of Mary at St. Frances—the same prayer as every Sunday—to be with Mama. Then I blow out my candle and take it with me . . .
. . . Lady is sitting across from me in my flat, talking me through a breakup after the only girl I ever loved told me it was over. Lady never left my side for three straight days . . .
I remembered wanting to thank her but not being able to find the words. I wasn’t sure I knew how to deal with kindness any better now than I did then. I’d put this stuff away for so long.
We got moving again and soon reached a plain wooden door with iron bands nailed at its top and bottom. The wood was heavily knotted but still a smooth dark brown, as though oiled in recent years. A rusted deadbolt had been thrown back.
“Saxon Stratum,” Lakshmi said. “You need to rest again before continuing down.”
I nodded, traced the Who quote, and we stepped through into a curing pantry.
Blocks of wood hung from pegs, aging. Animal skins were stretched against the wall—for drumheads, most likely—and animal gut and horsehair had been twisted and pulled taut in an instrument string loom.
I dropped to a knee to catch my breath. Chuey doubled over, his macuahuitl dangling from one hand, his rosary clenched in the other.
Lady knelt beside me. “Your sutures are threatening to tear, Jack. And the rest of your pattern is quivering. I’m not sure you’ll make it down.”
I pushed myself up. “I just need to catch my breath.”
We found a door from the curing pantry and opened it. The sound of cracking wood and shouts echoed mutely from the next room.
“Lakshmi,” I said, “you better go in first.”
The raptorial led us into a large workshop, where, just ten feet from the door, several men were fighting back a mob. A few of the men were snatching instruments from the benches and walls, and trying to slide or throw the instruments our way—inside the ward—to save them.
Against the wall next to us, a man in a leather apron, holding a luthier knife, stood protecting a small boy and a handful of men and women. At their feet were lutes and fiddles and lyres.
Beyond the fight, a mob ripped tabors and pipes and bells from their stands—some they threw down and crushed beneath their boots, others they held up to taunt the luthier, who begged them not to harm the instruments or the musicians.
Just then, the whole front of the building rumbled and collapsed outward into the street.
Stone and wood clattered around rearing, whinnying horses that were tied to the front of the building.
The crowd outside cheered and stomped their feet, raising a thick cloud of dust in the twilight.
Beyond them, London was little more than a village beneath a dusky sky.
I staggered to men and women standing at the back of the shop. They stared wide-eyed at the mob beating the shop workers and dragging them out into the street.
“Damnable Danes. Heathens!” shouted one of the women.
A muscular blond man at the front of the mob pointed back at her. “Christians!”
From the back of the riot, a tall fellow cried, “We all have the right to fight Heavenfield.”
Henry’s manual said that “Heavenfield” was one of the names for the topside world.
A moment later, from across the road, flaming arrows came hurtling toward us. We all instinctively ducked, before the arrows careened harmlessly off the ward. The archers, like most of the mob, wore the Shiguan mark, but also a cheek brand in the shape of a diamond atop an inverted V.
“That’s the pagan rune for Odin.” Lakshmi’s brows gathered.
“A lot of metal bands use runes in their art,” I explained.
Lady found a water pitcher and poured it over the back of Chuey’s neck. He shook his head as if whiffing smelling salts and worked his rosary. Chuey seemed to steady himself and looked out over the growing mob. “This whole place is straight-up crazy.”
“There’s a lot of good people in the Strata, too,” I said, “and they’re in just as much danger as the world above.” I turned to the luthier. “You may have to fight, but use the ward for as long as you can. We’re going down to try and restore her to what she was.”
The luthier shook my hand with an iron grip, then we hurried back through the curing pantry. I pulled my lantern and bow, played it to a bright shine, and we started down again into the dark.
The Steps from the Saxon Stratum were little more than earthen notches, and hardly that in some places, though we passed a few small alcoves cobbled with rocks. I stopped at one that had a small stone bench and sat down, my lamp dangling between my knees.
It felt as if ice picks had been stabbed through my temples, and my brain was swelling. Fragments of memory surged against my sutures. My entire network of soul scars burned inside me. And shards of bright gold light streamed through the gaps . . .
. . . Alone in my room, I get out the secondhand guitar I’ d bought at Sam Ash. I stop playing “Smoke on the Water” and begin writing a song for Mama . . .
. . . Church is standing with me at Hyde Park, where he somehow secured me a place to bury my dog, King, so I could visit him . . .
I’d brought King with me from LA. Hadn’t thought about him in years. Damn but I missed that dog.
Lady put her arm around me. “Your sutures have started to tear, Jack.
The wound is opening. I need to close—”
“Thanks, Lady, but we don’t have time,” I said. “Help me up.”
We continued down until we reached a small portico in the darkness.
White pillars framed a set of tarnished bronze doors.
I traced the password and stepped into a dimly lit amphitheater. Rings of stone seating rose around a circular stage about fifty feet across. Much of the stone had crumbled and was overgrown with grass and weeds.
A few semblances sat on the stone benches, holding candles.
The scrape of my boot on the broad earthen stage reverberated back from the tiers of stone—great acoustics—but there was no music to strengthen me.
Chuey wandered a few feet away, gasping, strangling his rosary beads, though he looked better than I felt.
He’d always been better about letting things go than I had.
With Church’s help, I climbed the crumbling stone to the top of the amphitheater and peered south. A column of Roman soldiers marched in sharp formation on a razed field about a half mile from us. Beyond them, an encampment lay across the rolling hills.
“Londinium,” said Church. “The Roman Stratum.”
Cassius jumped to mind, but I tried to shake it off. He and I had known each other, what, four or five days? Stupid to go soft over it, even though we’d covered so much ground in that time. But damn it . . .
The long call of horns rose in the distance. The legionnaires broke formation and started marching in two lines toward us.
The sound of the horns did little to soothe my burning scar. I hummed a few lines of “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” hoping to relieve the aches, if only a little. No help.
We slumped back down the amphitheater steps, headed for the Steps again. “I’ve read about the Ancient Stratum in Henry’s books,” said Church.
“There is no sufficient preparation.”
I didn’t doubt it. When we reached Lady I asked, “How’s Chuey?” “He’s hurting,” she said, “but he’s cleared a few regrets.”
I glanced at him clenching his rosary and macuahuitl.
“But you also bear the weight,” Lady continued, “of stewarding us down the Steps. On this last descent, you need to focus on anything that might keep your mind from your wound.”
“That’ll be a trick.” Then, with Church’s support, I led us down toward the Ancient Stratum.
There were no steps, only a beaten path on a descending slope down what looked like an ancient mine.
Here and there we passed the calcified skulls of creatures I couldn’t name, and stones arranged in patterns, which I assumed were grave markers.
The entire descent smelled of old earth and stale air.
Everything was so still and untouched that no dust motes shone in the light of my lamp. Even the silence felt old.
And down here, the dark seemed more aware, pushing harder at the occlusive scar inside me.
Despite my sputtering lantern, the whole wound now shone bright gold—the main scar, all the tributary smaller scars, and the light escaping from beneath.
I could feel my sutures stretching, memories pressing for release.
I forced myself to mentally play Zep’s “Stairway to Heaven”—for the irony—which kept some of the old memories at bay as we climbed down this last stretch.
At last, we came to a large circular stone set in a deep groove. Rune engravings all across it. I traced the lock and the stone rolled left, grinding in its track.
At the door, Lady paused. “If your sutures tear completely, Jack . . .”
I nodded, took a long breath, and led my friends through the portal.
We emerged on a rocky dirt plain. The desolate ground was hard and cracked, with dead holly and thistle patches every few yards.
The plain stretched away into darkness, broken in the distance by the flicker of a small fire or two.
A few people huddled around them. The brittle cold clouded our breath and froze the sweat in my clothes.
My lantern offered a little light but, unfortunately, no heat.
Worst of all, it felt like the darkness knew my very thoughts. Then a light flashed behind us.
We whirled and found ourselves standing just inside the edge of a circular plot rimmed by a faint amber glow.
It was maybe twenty yards across and covered in frost. On the far side, beyond the circle, stood the Ward woman from the grotto, radiant in translucent blue and violet.
In her hands she snapped great whips that shone crimson, amber, and evening sun.
Facing her was the giant human form of Handel, impossibly dark and shot through with veins of gold.
The black figure raised his hands, twirled ethereal black whips in the air, and sang a loud harmonious chorus with its countless voices. My lantern sputtered. The Ward’s luminous body flickered.
Then the wraith lashed out, cords of darkness slicing the air like rotors.
The Ward struck back with her threads. Their whips tangled, and a shower of amber light and darkness rained to the hard earth.
The wraith wove more cords from its misty substance and snapped them down on the Ward, leaving dark cracks in her luminous body.
I tried to raise my lantern but couldn’t lift it. I tried to grab my knife, but my fingers had gone numb. I collapsed to my knees, overcome by memories of regret and relief that had not only returned but now came amplified by the depth of history. My sutures tore away.
The Ward was fighting for her life, and I couldn’t move. Paralyzed by the weight of my own past, the rawest moment of my life filled my mind, and I was forced to watch what I had tried so hard to forget.