The room—for such it was—was high-ceilinged. Like the catacombs he had just left, its walls were solid rock. But this chamber had not been carved by the hand of man. There were stalactites spearing down from the roof and the walls were uneven, rough. It was not a room but a cave, Albrec realized with a shock. A subterranean cavern which had been discovered by men untold centuries ago and which at some time in more recent history had been blocked off.

The walls were covered with paintings.

Some were savage and primitive, depicting animals Albrec had heard of but never seen: marmorills with curving tusks and gimlet eyes, unicorns with squat horns and wolves, some of which ran on four legs, some on two.

The paintings were crude but powerful, the flowing lines which delineated the animals drawn with smooth confidence. There was a naturalism about them which was totally at odds with the stylized illustrations in most modern-day manuscripts. In the flickering lamplight one might almost think they were moving, coursing along the walls in packs and herds and following long-lost migrations.

All this Albrec took in at a glance. What claimed his attention almost at once, however, was something different. A shape jumped out of the shadows at him and he almost dropped his lamp, then made the Sign of the Saint at his breast.

A statue, man high, standing at the far wall.

It was of a wolf-headed man, his arms raised, his beast’s mouth agape. Behind him on the stone of the wall a pentagram within a circle had been etched and painted so that the lamplight threw it into vivid relief. Before the statue was a small altar, the surface of which had a deep groove cut in it. The stone of the altar was discoloured, stained as if by ancient, unforgivable sins.

There was a rattle of loose stone which made Albrec utter a squeak of fear, and then Avila was in the room brushing dust from his habit and looking both stern and amazed.

“Saint’s blood, Albrec, why wouldn’t you answer me?” And then: “Holy Father of us all! What is this?”

“A chapel,” Albrec said, his voice as hoarse as a frog’s.

“What?”

“A place of worship, Avila. Men paid homage here once, in some dark, lost time.”

Avila was studying the hideous statue, holding his lamp close to its snarling muzzle.

“Old stonework, this. Crude. Which of the old gods might this one be, Albrec? It’s not the Horned One, at any rate.”

“I’m not sure if it was meant to be a god, but sacrifices were made here. Look at the altar.”

“Blood, yes. Hell’s teeth, Albrec, what about this?” And Avila produced from his habit the pentagram dagger they had found in their last visit to the catacombs.

“A sacrificial knife, probably. What made you bring it with you?”

Avila made a wry face. “To tell the truth I intended to lose it down here again. I don’t want it anywhere near me.”

“It might be important.”

“It’s more likely to be mischievous. And can you imagine me trying to explain it to the house Justiciar if it were found?”

“All right then.” Albrec swung the lamp around to regard the other, darker corners of the cave. “We’re forgetting what we came here for. Help me look for more of the document, Avila, and throw that thing away if you have to.”

Avila tossed the dagger aside and helped Albrec sift through the rubbish which littered the floor of the cave. It seemed as if someone had tossed half the contents of a library down here a century ago and left it to rot. Their feet rested on the remains of manuscripts, and a jetsam of decaying vellum was piled against the walls like a tidemark. They knelt in it and brought the remnants to their noses, squinting at the faded and torn lettering in the light of the lamps.

“It’s dry in here, or these would have been mushrooms long since,” Avila said, discarding a page. “Strange—the wall beyond is damp, you said so yourself. What happened here, Albrec? What are these things, and why is this unholy chapel here in the bowels of Charibon?”

Albrec shrugged. “Men have lived on this site for thousands of years, rebuilding on the ruins of the settlements which went before them. It may be that this cave was nearer the surface once.”

They found sections of texts written in the Merduk tongue with its graceful lettering and lack of illuminations. One group of pages had diagrams upon them which seemed to outline the courses of the stars. Another bore a line drawing of a human body, flayed so that the muscles and veins below the skin might be seen. The two monks made the Sign of the Saint as they stared at it.

“Heretical texts,” Avila said. “Astrology, witchery. Now I know why they were walled up in here.”

But Albrec was shaking his head. “Knowledge, Avila. They sealed up knowledge in here. They decided on behalf of all men what they might and might not know, and they destroyed anything which they disagreed with.”

“Who are ‘they,’ Albrec?”

“Your brethren, my friend. The Inceptines.”

“Maybe they acted for the best.”

“Maybe. We will never know because the knowledge they destroyed is lost for ever. We will never be able to judge for ourselves.”

“Not everyone is as learned as you, Albrec. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing in the hands of the ignorant.”

Albrec smiled. “You sound like one of the monsignors, Avila.”

Avila scowled. “You cannot change the way the world works, Albrec. No one man can. You can only do as you are told and make the best of it.”

“I wonder if Ramusio would have agreed with that.”

“And how many would-be Ramusios do you think they have sent to the pyre in the last five hundred years?” Avila said. “Striving to change the world seems to me to be a sure way of shortening one’s tenure of it.”

Albrec chuckled, then stiffened. “Avila! I think I have it!”

“Let me see.”

Albrec was holding a few ragged pages, bound together by the remains of their cloth backing.

“The writing is the same, and the layout. And here’s the title page!”

“Well? What does it say?”

Albrec paused, and finally spoke in a low, reverent voice. “ ‘A true and faithful account of the life of the Blessed Saint Ramusio, as told by one who was his companion and his disciple from the earliest of days.’ ”

“Quite a title,” Avila grunted. “But who wrote it?”

“It’s by Honorius of Neyr, Avila. Saint Honorius.”

“What? Like The Book of Honorius?”

“The very same. The man who inspired the Friar Mendicant Order, a founding father of the Church.”

“Founding father of hallucinations,” Avila muttered.

Albrec tucked the pages away in his habit. “Whatever. Let’s get out of here. We’ve got what we came for.”

They rose to their feet, brushing the detritus of the cave from their knees, and as they did there was a rattle of stone. They turned as one, the lamplight leaping in their hands, to find Brother Commodius appearing through the hole in the wall which led back to the catacombs.

The Senior Librarian dusted himself down much as Avila and Albrec had done whilst the pair stared at him in horror. The mattock they had left outside dangled from one of his huge hands. He smiled.

“We are well met, Albrec. And I see you have brought the beautiful Avila with you too. What joy.”

“Brother, we—we were just—”

“No need, Albrec. We are beyond explanations. You have overreached yourself.”

“We’ve done nothing wrong, Commodius,” Avila said hotly. “No one is forbidden to come down here. You can’t touch us.”

“Be quiet, you young fool,” Commodius snapped in return. “You understand nothing. Albrec does, though—don’t you, my friend?” Commodius’ face was hideous in its humour, the mien of a satisfied gargoyle, his ears seemingly too long to be real and his eyes reflecting the lamplight like those of a dog.

Albrec blinked as though trying to clear the dust from his eyes. Something in him seemed to calm, to accept the situation.