Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [304]
Men were shouting in terror, a sucking wind rendering their cries wordless. At the edge of the rooftop, I staggered, the rain-spout careening in my vision. Strong hands hauled me back and Eamonn's voice bellowed in my ear, anchoring me.
In the tower, Gallus Tadius crumpled.
Oddly, my head cleared.
Faster and faster, the waters spun. In the pit of the maelstrom, darkness blinked open like an eye. A fetid taste filled my mouth. Water, foul and stagnant. My hell, my memory. But this wasn't mine.
The pit yawned wide; no pit, but the mundus manes itself. It had grown as wide as the tower, as deep as… I don't know what. There was no measuring it. It opened onto darkness, utter and complete blackness. A sigh of wind breathed forth from it, and it was at once fair and foul as anything I'd ever smelled; as sweet as a dew-laden rose, as horrid as a rotting corpse. A thousand emotions flickered through me, quicker than thought, bitter and joyous. All around me, men were laughing and crying.
Water cascaded into the mundus manes, falling and falling. It no longer spun in a maelstrom. Whatever drew it, drew it straight down, and where it fell it was black, as though the abyss cast darkness the way the sun casts brightness. Cataracts of gleaming blackness, spilling over the edge. There was a roar like a waterfall, as deafening as the Great Falls of Jebe-Barkal. There seemed to be no end to it, no bottom to the abyss. On and on it went, rippling curtains of smooth obsidian descending in a sheer, endless plunge.
A strange exhilaration filled me. I yearned to follow the black water, to descend into those lightless realms. What an adventure it would be!
To walk the underworld like a hero out of legend, to speak with the storied dead…
No.
The word brushed my thoughts, as soft as a bronze-edged feather. I shuddered and drew back from the edge of the roof. My place was among the living. I clung to the thought and kept a firm grip on my place in the world.
In the city, the level of water began to drop.
How long it lasted, I couldn't say. It felt like hours, and I daresay it may have been. And yet it all took place like a dream. It may have taken minutes. The abyss gaped, the cataracts roared, the water fell and fell and fell…
And then it was gone.
All of it.
Atop the roof of the basilica, we blinked at one another like men waking from a shared dream, dazed. The streets of Lucca were wet and shining, filled with shallow puddles and strewn with debris, but the flood was gone.
"Straight to hell," Eamonn said.
In the tower, the abyss was gone. There was only an earthen pit some five paces in diameter, damp and muddy. No offerings, no dead lamb, no wax death-mask. The cracked halves of the marble slab that covered it lay on either side. Even as we looked, priests hurried down the winding stair and began dragging the slabs back into place, their robes trailing in the mud.
Others attended to Gallus Tadius, obscuring him from sight. A sentry appeared, descending from a high post. He leaned in close, nodding, then trotted back up the winding stair, vanishing behind an intact portion of the wall.
A few seconds later, we heard his horn sounding. Three short blasts, high and piercing: Stand and await orders. Our sentry replied with a single, brief note: Acknowledged.
He turned to us. "You're to assemble downstairs. Captain Arturo will be here presently. Check the upper tiers, there should be dry supplies."
"What of Gallus Tadius?" one of the other squadron commanders asked. Others echoed the query with rising anxiety. "Where is he?"
"He'll need time to recover," the sentry said wearily. "So we were told. Until then, Captain Arturo's in command."
There was some grumbling, but most of the men were too shocked to protest or wonder. The squadron leaders began shouting commands and the Red Scourge began trooping down the four narrow stairs.
I lingered atop the roof as long as I could, gazing toward the