The Drawing of the Dark

Duffy glared at him. 'Meaning?'

'Meaning I can, if necessary, tell you certain things, show you things, remind you of things, that will bring back up to the surface the archaic personality that's dormant in you. Your body will come along in any case; it's up to you whether it's you at the tiller or...' He spread his hands. 'Or him.'

It required some effort for Duffy to conceal his sudden panic. He felt as if someone far away below in the darkness was chipping away at the pillars of his mind, and the steady crack... crack.. crack of it was the only sound in the universe. Just like at Bacchus' place in Trieste, he thought nervously; I am tremendously afraid of remembering something.. .and I emphatically don't want to know why, thank you. He raised the still half-full tankard, but paused and then put it down. At that moment the beer seemed to be a part of what was threatening him.

Slowly he looked up and met the sorcerer's eyes. 'I.. .will go,' he almost whispered. 'As I guess you knew all along.' He stood up wearily. 'In my life I've sometimes had to make men do things they didn't want to - but I've never soiled my hands with such a lever as that.'

'Fm sorry,' Aurelianus said. 'I wish the situation didn't necessitate it.'

'I'll get my doublet.' He sighed and rubbed his face gingerly. 'Is this to be a full dress sword-and-hauberk affair?'

'Dagger and hauberk. There won't be room to swing a sword.'

Duffy raised his eyebrows. 'I see. Going to fight dust-mice under the beds, eh? Give me a few minutes.' He walked out of the kitchen, consciously putting a bit of spring into his step.

The old man smiled sadly at the empty doorway. 'You always did need some prodding,' he muttered, 'and I never have played fair. But you've always been the only piece solid enough to stand in the breach.'

* * *

Chapter Ten

Aurelianus led the way down several halls, of varying age and architecture, to the side of the rambling old building farthest from the brewing cellar. The low ceiling of the last corridor was black and greasy from centuries of candle smoke, and the oil-lamp in Aurelianus' bony hand sent up its own infinitesimal deposit.

'Where the hell are we going?' Duffy demanded, in a whisper so as not to awaken any tenants in the rooms on either side.

'The old chapel.'

At the end of the hail stood two tall iron doors set in a Romanesque arch, and Aurelianus fished a ring of keys from under his gown and turned one of them in the lock. The doors swung open easily and the two men stepped through.

The moon lit the stained-glass windows in shades of luminous gray, and Duffy was able to see without the aid of Aurelianus' smoky lamp. The high, domed ceiling, the pulpit, and the pews and kneelers clearly identified the room as a chapel, in spite of the dustcovers pulled over the statues and crucifix, and the piles of boxes, buckets and ladders beside the doors.

Duffy waved at a stacked arsenal of mops and brooms. 'All you use this room for is one huge maid's closet?'

The old man shrugged. 'No one would hear of putting it to so low a use as an auxiliary dining room,' he said, 'and

I can't use it as a chapel because the Archbishop forbade mass ever to be said here again when I took over.' He closed and re-locked the doors.

Chuckling softly, the Irishman followed him up the center aisle to the communion rail. Aurelianus unhooked a dusty velvet rope and let the free ends hook clank on the marble step. 'Come on,' he said, striding up to the altar.

Duffy did, and was amused to find himself uneasy at not genuflecting. His right hand even twitched in the reflex to bless himself. I know what previous self that is, he thought. It's ten-year-old Brian the altar boy.

Aurelianus stepped around to the right side of the high altar and then edged his way into the narrow gap between it and the wall. Though not pleased about it, Duffy followed. In that confined, shadowy space Aurelianus' lamp seemed bright again, and the Irishman was surprised to see painted shapes on the wall four inches away from his face. A fresco, by God, he thought, completely hidden by the altar. He was pressed too close to it to see what its subject was, but he did shuffle past one clearly visible detail: a procession of naked women carrying sheaves of grain to a mill. Ho ho, he thought. Those rapscallious old monks.

'There's a step here,' said Aurelianus over his shoulder.

'Up?' inquired Duffy.

'Down.' Aurelianus peered back at him with a cold smile. 'Down and out.'

Duffy carefully set both booted feet onto the stone step before trying for the next. When he'd taken a dozen of them he was below the level of the floor, and he found himself in a claustrophobically tight and lowroofed spiral stairwell, hunching and groping his way by the reflected light from Aurelianus' lamp. The old sorcerer was about half a spiral below him, and though the Irishman could

clearly hear his scuffling steps and his breathing, he couldn't see him.

'Damn it, wizard!' exclaimed Duffy, lowering his voice in mid-word as he noticed how the tight-curled stone tube amplified sounds. 'Slow up, will you? This stairway was obviously built for gnomes.'

Aurelianus' head poked into view around the bricks of the curved inward wall. 'I must insist on complete silence from here onward,' he hissed, and withdrew below.

The Irishman rolled his eyes and continued his awkward descent, bent-kneed and crouching to keep from bumping his head on the stone roof. The steps were rounded as if by millennia of use, but every time his boots slipped on one it was easy to catch himself by bracing his hands against the close walls. No sir, he thought, this isn't a stairway in which you'd have to worry about taking a tumble. Though, he reflected uneasily, if you did fall, and got jammed head-downward in here, somebody would have to come with hammers and break your bones to get you unwedged. He took a few deep breaths and forced the thought out of his mind.