30

It was in one of the neglected trenches, long ago measured, scraped, screened, and photographed. It was a trench where work had not been taking place, he supposed, since the beginning of the dig. That was how he spotted it: the new crack in the side of the trench, down where the groundwater was deepest.

Davis would not have noticed it if he had not made himself familiar with the site long before this. It was hardly remarkable that the police had missed it. It was a slight fissure in the earth, nothing more.

Davis crept down the steps, and nearly slipped when he reached the bottom. This was all cold muck, and he doubted, now that he examined the fissure, that it was anything but a subsidence, a slippage. It was nothing of any special interest.

And yet he stayed where he was. Some of the Etruscan tombs, when they were discovered, looked like this. Some of them were found when a plow broke through the field, through the roof of a tomb, into ancient treasure.

He crept even closer to the fissure, and peered in. There was something here, after all. He could feel the cold of a great inner chamber, a cavern. There was a tinkle of groundwater somewhere far within.

It was a vault, the remains, he imagined, of an ancient fortress tower, perhaps the bottom story of a bastion. Once it had stood beside the river. Now it was underground, a reservoir.

On another day, in another place, this would have been an exciting discovery. He was about to climb to his feet, when he stopped himself. He took a sharp breath and tilted his head.

Surely he was imagining things, but it sounded as though someone inside this darkness had just whispered his name. He had heard it, but he had also not-heard it—hoping for it.

Because there was nothing here but emptiness. The cold exhalation from the earth kept Davis where he was, kneeling and wishing his cuts did not throb. His own pain did not interest him, really. It was the thought of Irene that burned in him.

This opening was large enough—a man could squeeze through it, and yet this was not the time for exploration. If only there were any real sound from inside, any evidence that Irene was here.

Kneeling there, listening, he heard nothing that sounded human. No sound that indicated that this was where Irene was hidden. It was an empty chamber—a scientific discovery, one that would have astounded him on any other day, but which today meant only that Irene was still lost.

He called her name, knowing as he did it that he was calling to empty dark, empty earth. The answer was silence, worse than silence—the absence of any answer at all. It was a cry into a void.

He dragged himself to his feet, and slogged through the brown water. As his hands gripped the cold steel of the ladder he heard it.

But surely not. It was impossible. He made himself listen harder, and then he was certain. It was a scream. It was Irene. It was Irene, trapped somewhere in the chamber, within the earth.

Davis dived toward the crack, and fought the wet clay, gasping, jackknifing his body. He had been wrong—the fissure was not wide enough for a man. Indeed, it seemed to be closing on him.

And then he was within, sprawling on a mud-slick stone floor. The music of the splashing water was louder, and the dark was nearly perfect.

He called her name.

“It is dangerous here, Davis,” said Irene somewhere in the dark. The sound of her voice ignited a feeling of joy that was nearly pain. Then something kept her from speaking, muffling her.

Davis fought himself upright, and it was as though a whip lashed his neck. A leather strap wrapped around his throat, and a leg snaked its way between his, and Davis fell.

He fell hard, and for a moment could not move his arms. When he could command his hands, he could not seize an opponent who seemed to be all shapes at once. His eyes could not make out his opponent’s face, but Davis did not have to see. He knew. It was one of those moments when the mind, in great danger, is lucid enough to survey the truth.

What he fought was fury, a fury beyond imagining. This dead man would not forgive the living for his unjust death. And even as Davis felt the breath squeezed from his body he realized how another member of the dead must hate him.

And for a moment Davis had an ugly thought: I deserve to die. For neglecting Margaret, I deserve this.

Then Irene’s voice woke him. He seized the boneless head, but it was an octopus he was fighting, a thing with no shape and tremendous strength, with a flexible, whipping skeleton, that empowered this wrath.

The wrath was just, and yet as Davis rolled in the cold stone he felt the wrongfulness of his own death. He cried out. “No!”

He was stunned at his own anger, the fury of a living man. “It’s wrong! You can’t do this!”

She was beside them. “We do not seek to harm you, King Sigan. Please forgive your subjects,” Irene was saying, in her musical voice.

Davis could barely whisper, “We want to honor you.” The leather tightened. “King!” Davis choked the Anglo-Saxon: “Kyning Sigan!”

Still, the leather tightened. Centuries of vengeance made Davis’s ribs creak. The leather lips were at Davis’s own, and there was a sound from them, a groan, as of effort or a breathy curse.

Feeling flowed from Davis’s body. Soon, Davis knew, he would have no thoughts, no fears—he would be gone. Already his legs and arms were numb.

“Your son is dead!” said Davis. “The people who killed you are dead!”

King Sigan’s answer was to thrust his boneless arm down Davis’s throat. The dead king was twisting and working his hand to seize the lungs, smother the heart—to uproot a living man. Davis felt himself wither, his consciousness destroyed. Strength was nothing against this Being, the angry dead.

Irene was beside them both. Davis could sense her in the darkness, and sense her voice as she said, “Forgive us, King Sigan. We want to honor you.”

Davis knew only that he would not die. He squeezed the soft skull of his adversary, and dragged the leather from his throat, pulling himself back to life with the knowledge that the dead, no matter how just their anger, did not have the right to destroy the living.

And he felt the ancient king falter. As though with doubt. As though the king realized for a moment that Davis was a living man, a man in love. As though King Sigan remembered his life, and did not want to kill.

At first Davis did not understand what was happening. Something splashed, and there was the chunky thud of stone on stone. And there was an immediate crush, a cold wave that half covered all of them.

The wave was very cold, and very heavy. It was followed by others. Even the king seemed to sense it, and went stiff with something like fear.

“The walls!” cried Irene.

The walls of the chamber were collapsing, burying them alive.