Sat alone by the main shaft, Gorzam’s breath came and went in fiery grunts and his head throbbed. Never had he been so humiliated, he thought, sucking hungrily on a fresh water skin and eyeing the polluted one with a low growl. The slaves were back at work and no culprit had been identified. But those responsible would be found, for he was the shahanshah of the mines. He ruled this dominion like a god. His lot on the world above was too meagre to bear – a filthy home, no woman to cook for him since his wife had vanished. ‘I should have beat her even harder,’ his shoulders jostled in a gruff, dry chuckle. He made to take another swig of water when a voice hissed by his side.
‘I know who did this to you,’ it said.
He turned to behold the shadowy figure stacking cane baskets by the pulleys. It was the cretin who had long informed him of the other slaves’ misdemeanours. The man dropped his gaze as soon as Gorzam met it.
‘Tell me,’ Gorzam demanded.
‘You will give me freedom, as we have discussed before.’
Gorzam bristled at this. He stood, towering over this figure, his shoulders broadening. ‘I have never promised you freedom. I might see to it that you are raised to the first chamber – the air is breathable there. But if you do not tell me who did this to me, I will throw you into the shaft without hesitation. Or worse, I will tell the other slaves that the traitor is still amongst them, Bashu.’
Pavo and Khaled hobbled into their cell and the bars clanked shut behind them. The shift that immediately followed their foiled escape plan had seemed to last for days. Now they would be afforded just a few hours of rest before the next shift began.
Pavo winced as he lay back on the stone shelf and tried to let his muscles relax. But his thoughts quickly jabbered with all that had gone wrong. He clasped his hands over his face and fought to clear his mind. They did not speak for some time, neither man sleeping, nor able to summon any words. What was there to say?
Eventually, Khaled slid from his cot and began scraping the bristles of his beard from his jaw with a sharpened slat of rock and a sprinkle of water from his cup. ‘Tell me, Roman; what did your friend – the big one with the squashed nose – mean when he spoke of a scroll?’
Pavo frowned. He had barely noticed Zosimus referring to it in jest up in the first chamber. Instinctively, his lips tightened and he thought carefully about his answer. Then his shoulders slumped and he shook his head. ‘It matters little now, for we are all going to live out our days in this place. My comrades and I were sent here, all the way from Roman Syria, to seek out a scroll. It is thought to contain some agreement between your empire and mine – one that might stave off war between our armies.’
Khaled said nothing, but his grin spoke a thousand words.
Pavo sat up. ‘Khaled?’
‘You speak of Jovian’s lost scroll. There were a few in here in years past who spoke of such a thing.’ He looked up, bemused. ‘The scroll is real?’
Pavo leant forward. ‘It is, or it was . . . it may no longer exist, but the mere possibility that it does brought us across the desert. Khaled, please, tell me what you know.’
Khaled shrugged, smoothing at his roughly shaven jaw with one hand, then twirling the ends of his moustache. ‘I know very little, only what you have already told me. There was a slave, long ago, who claimed to have held it in his hands.’
Pavo latched onto this, remembering Gallus’ description of the man who had hidden in the mountains with the scroll. ‘Where is he?’
‘He died many years past,’ Khaled replied, the words flattening Pavo’s nascent hope. ‘But he passed his knowledge of the scroll on before he died, to a group who worked with him.’
Pavo’s hopes picked up once more. ‘What happened to this group?’
Khaled’s face darkened and he shook his head.
‘Dead?’
Khaled fixed him with his gaze. ‘Worse. They were consigned to the seventh chamber, right at the foot of the mine. They say it is so far underground that the light from the top of the shaft cannot even penetrate into the darkness there.’
‘How long ago?’
‘The passage of time is difficult to record in this place. But I would guess that it was about a year after I came here.’
‘Twelve years ago?’ Pavo’s heart leadened. ‘Then surely they have perished down there?’
Khaled’s face grew weary. ‘Aye, I am almost certain they have by now. A year in those depths must feel like a lifetime . . . ’
As Khaled spoke of the seventh chamber, Pavo sought a grain of hope. Their chances of escape were gone. An ember of possibility that the scroll might be found had been extinguished too. He shook his head and pulled the phalera medallion from the waist of his loincloth. His fanciful hopes of finding some trace of Father were further away than anything else, he realised, absently tracing a finger over the engraving.