Labyrinth (13 page)

Engraved on the other side was a labyrinth, identical to the pattern carved on the back of the wooden board.

Alais caught her breath. “I’ve seen this before.”

Pelletier twisted the ring from his thumb and held it out. “It is engraved on the inside,” he said. “All guardians wear such a ring.”

“No, here, in the chateau. I bought cheese in the market today and took a board from my room to carry it on. This pattern is engraved on the underside.”

“But that’s impossible. It cannot be the same.” I swear it is.

“Where did the board come from?” he demanded. “Think, Alais. Did someone give it to you? Was it a gift?”

Alais shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said desperately. “All day I’ve tried to remember, but I can’t. The strangest thing was that I was sure I’d seen the pattern somewhere else, even though the board itself was not familiar to me.”

“Where is it now?”

“I left it on the table in my chambers,” she said. “Why? Do you think it matters?”

“So anyone could have seen it,” he said with frustration.

“I suppose so,” she replied nervously. “Guilhem, any of the servants, I cannot say.”

Alai’s looked down at the ring in her hand and suddenly the pieces fell into place. “You thought the man in the river was Simeon?” she said slowly. “He is another guardian?”

Pelletier nodded. “There was no reason to think it was him, but yet I felt so sure.”

“And the other guardians? Do you know where they are?”

He leaned over and closed her fingers over the
merel.
“No more questions, Alai’s. Take good care of this. Keep it safe. And hide the board with the labyrinth where no prying eyes can see it. I will deal with it when I return.”

Alai’s rose to her feet. “What of the board?”

Pelletier smiled at her persistence. “I will give it some thought,
Filha
.”

“But does its presence here mean someone in the chateau knows of the existence of the books?”

“No one can know,” he said firmly. “If I thought there was any question of it, I would tell you. On my word.”

They were brave words, fighting words, but his expression gave them the lie.

“But if—”

“
Basta
,” he said softly, raising his arms. “No more.”

Alai’s let herself be enveloped in his giant embrace. The familiar smell of him brought tears to her eyes.

“All will be well,” he said firmly. “You must be brave. Do only what I have asked of you, no more.” He kissed the top of her head. “Come bid us farewell at dawn.” Alai’s nodded, not daring to speak.

“
Ben, ben
. Now, make haste. And may God keep you.”

Alai’s ran down the dark corridor and out into the courtyard without drawing breath, seeing ghosts and demons in every shadow. Her head was spinning. The old familiar world seemed suddenly a mirror image of its former self, both recognizable and utterly different. The package concealed beneath her dress seemed to be burning a hole in her skin.

Outside the air was cool. Most people had retired for the night, although there were still a few lights shining in the rooms overlooking the Cour d’Honneur. A burst of laughter from the guards at the gatehouse made her jump. For a moment, she imagined she saw a person silhouetted in one of the upper rooms. But then a bat swooped in front of her, drawing her gaze, and when she looked again the window was dark.

She walked faster. Her father’s words were spinning around in her head, all the questions she should have asked and had not.

A few more steps and she started to feel a prickling at the back of her neck. She glanced over her shoulder.

“Who’s there?”

Nobody answered. She called out again. There was malice in the darkness, she could smell it, feel it. Alais walked faster, certain now she was being followed. She could hear the soft shuffle of feet and the sound of heavy breathing.

“Who’s there?” she called again.

Without warning, a rough and callused hand, reeking of ale, clamped itself over her mouth. She cried out as she felt a sudden, sharp blow on the back of her head and she fell.

It seemed to take a long time for her to reach the ground. Then there were hands crawling all over her, like rats in a cellar, until they found what they wanted.

“
Aqui es
.” Here it is.

It was the last thing Alais heard before the blackness closed over her.

CHAPTER 11

Pic de Soularac

Sabarthes Mountains

Southwest France

MONDAY, 4 JULY 2005

“Alice! Alice, can you hear me?”

Her eyes flickered and opened.

The air was chill and damp, like an unheated church. Not floating, but lying on the hard, cold ground.

Where the hell am I?
She could feel the dank earth rough and uneven beneath her arms and legs. Alice shifted position. Sharp stones and grit rubbed abrasively against her skin.

No, not a church. A glimmer of memory came back. Walking down a long, dark tunnel into a cave, a stone chamber. Then what? Everything was blurred, frayed around the edges. Alice tried to raise her head. A mistake. Pain exploded at the base of her skull. Nausea sloshed in her stomach, like bilge water at the bottom of a rotting boat.

“Alice? Can you hear me?”

Someone was talking to her. Worried, anxious, a voice she knew.

“Alice? Wake up.” She tried to lift her head. This time, the pain wasn’t so bad. Slowly, carefully, she raised herself a little.

“Christ,” muttered Shelagh, sounding relieved.

She was aware of hands beneath her arms helping her into a sitting position. Everything was gloomy and dark, except for the darting circles of light from the torches. Two torches. Alice narrowed her eyes and recognized Stephen, one of the older members of the team, hovering behind Shelagh, his wire-framed glasses catching in the light.

“Alice, talk to me. Can you hear me?” said Shelagh.

I’m not sure. Maybe.

Alice tried to speak, but her mouth was crooked and no words came out. She tried to nod. The exertion made her head spin. She dropped her head between her knees to stop herself passing out.

With Shelagh on one side and Stephen on the other, she edged herself back until she was sitting on the top of the stone steps, hands on her knees. Everything seemed to be shifting backward and forward, in and out, like a film out of focus.

Shelagh crouched down in front of her, talking, but Alice couldn’t make out what she was saying. The sound was distorted, like a record played at the wrong speed. Another wave of nausea hit her as more disconnected memories came flooding back: the noise of the skull as it fell away into the dark; her hand reaching out for the ring; the knowledge that she had disturbed something that slumbered in the deepest recesses of the mountain, something malevolent.

Then nothing.

She was so cold. She could feel goosebumps on her bare arms and legs. Alice knew she couldn’t have been unconscious for very long, no more than a few minutes at most. Such an inconsequential measure of time. But it had seemed long enough for her to slip from one world into another.

Alice shivered. Then another memory. Of dreaming the same, familiar dream. First, the sensation of peace and lightness, everything white and clear. Then plummeting down and down through the empty sky and the ground rushing up to meet her. There was no collision, no impact, only the dark green columns of trees looming over her. Then the fire, the roaring wall of red and gold and yellow flames.

She wrapped her bare arms tight around herself. Why had the dream come back? Throughout her childhood, the same dream had haunted her, always the same, never leading anywhere. While her parents slept unawares in their bedroom across the landing, Alice had spent night after night awake in the dark, hands gripping the covers tightly, determined to conquer her demons alone.

But not for years now. It had left her alone for years.

“How about we try to get you on your feet?” Shelagh was saying.

It doesn’t mean anything. Once doesn’t mean it’s going to start all over again.

“Alice,” said Shelagh, her voice a little sharper. Impatient. “Do you think you can manage to stand? We need to get you back to camp. Have someone take a look at you.”

“I think so,” she said at last. Her voice didn’t sound like her at all. “My head’s not so good.”

“You can do it, Alice. Come on, try now.”

Alice looked down at her red, swollen wrist.
Shit.
She couldn’t quite remember, didn’t want to remember. “I’m not sure what happened. This—” She held up her hand. “This happened outside.”

Shelagh put her arms around Alice to take her weight. “Okay?”

Alice braced herself and allowed Shelagh to lever her to her feet. Stephen took the other arm. She swayed a little from side to side, trying to get her balance, but after a couple of seconds, the giddiness passed and feeling started to come back to her numb limbs. Carefully Alice started to flex and unflex her fingers, feeling the pull of the raw skin over her knuckles.

“I’m all right. Just give me a minute.”

“What possessed you to come in here on your own anyway?”

“I was…” Alice broke off, not knowing what to say. It was typical of her to break the rules and end up in trouble. “There’s something you need to see. Down there. On the lower level.”

Shelagh followed the line of Alice’s gaze with her torch. Shadows scuttled up the walls and over the roof of the cave.

“No, not here,” said Alice. “Down there.”

Shelagh lowered the beam.

“In front of the altar.”

“Altar?”

The strong white light cut through the inky blackness of the chamber like a searchlight. For a fraction of a second, the shadow of the altar was silhouetted on the rock wall behind, like the Greek letter
pi
superimposed on the carved labyrinth. Then Shelagh moved her hand, the image vanished and the torch found the grave. The pale bones leaped out at them from the dark.

Straight away, the atmosphere changed. Shelagh gave a sharp intake of breath. Like an automaton, she walked down one, then two, then three steps. She seemed to have forgotten Alice was there.

Stephen made a move to follow.

“No,” she snapped. “Stay there.”

“I was only—”

“In fact, go find Dr. Brayling. Tell him what we’ve found. Now,” she shouted, when he didn’t move. Stephen thrust his torch into Alice’s hand and disappeared into the tunnel without a word. She could hear the scrunch of his boots on the gravel, getting fainter and fainter until the sound was eaten up by the darkness.

“You didn’t have to shout at him,” Alice started to say. Shelagh cut across her.

“Did you touch anything?”

“Not exactly, though—”

“Though what?” Again, the same aggression.

“There were a few things in the grave,” Alice added. “I can show you.”

“No,” Shelagh shouted. “No,” a little calmer. “We don’t want people tramping around down there.”

Alice was about to point out it was too late for that, then stopped. She’d no desire to get close to the skeletons again. The blind sockets, the collapsed bones were imprinted too clearly on her mind.

Shelagh stood over the shallow grave. There was something challenging in the way she swept the beam of light over the bodies, up and down as if she was examining them. It was disrespectful almost. The light caught the dull blade of the knife as Shelagh squatted down beside the skeletons, her back to Alice.

“You say you touched nothing?” she said abruptly, turning to glare over her shoulder. “So how come your tweezers are here?”

Alice flushed. “You interrupted me before I’d had the chance to finish. What I was about to say was I picked up a ring—
with
the tweezers, before you ask—which I dropped when I heard you guys in the tunnel.”

“A ring?” Shelagh repeated.

“Maybe it’s rolled under something else?”

“Well, I can’t see it,” she said, suddenly standing up. She strode back to Alice. “Let’s get out of here. Your injuries need seeing to.”

Alice looked at her in astonishment. The face of a stranger, not a good friend, was looking back at her. Angry, hard, judgmental.

“But don’t you want—”

“Jesus, Alice,” she said, grabbing her arm. “Haven’t you done enough? We’ve got to go!”

It was very bright after the velvet dark of the cave as they emerged from the shadow of the rock. The sun seemed to explode in Alice’s face like a firework in a black November sky.

She shielded her eyes with her hands. She felt utterly disorientated, unable to fix herself in time or space. It was as if the world had stopped while she’d been in the chamber. It was the same familiar landscape, yet it had transformed into something different.

Or am I just seeing it through different eyes?

The shimmering peaks of the Pyrenees in the distance had lost their definition. The trees, the sky, even the mountain itself, were less substantial, less real. Alice felt that if she touched anything it would fall down, like scenery on a film set, revealing the true world concealed behind.

Shelagh said nothing. She was already striding down the mountain, mobile phone clamped to her ear, without bothering to check if Alice was managing all right. Alice hurried to catch her up.

“Shelagh, hang on a minute. Wait.” She touched Shelagh’s arm. “Look, I’m really sorry. I know I shouldn’t have gone in there on my own. I wasn’t thinking.”

Shelagh didn’t acknowledge she was speaking. She didn’t even look round, although she snapped her phone shut.

“Slow down. I can’t keep up.”

“Okay,” Shelagh said, spinning round to face her. “I’ve stopped.”

“What’s going on here?”

“You tell me. I mean, what precisely do you want me to say? That it’s okay? You want me to make you feel better that you fucked up?”

“No, I—”

“Because, you know what, actually it’s
not
okay. It was totally and unbelievably fucking stupid to go in there alone. You’ve contaminated the site and Jesus knows what else. What the fuck were you playing at?”