‘The crone? Is that what she was? I was sightless when she came to me. In fact, I wondered if she was real at all and not just a voice in my head.’
Pavo’s eyes darted this way and that, trying to make sense of it all.
Falco pushed the phalera back into Pavo’s hands. ‘It does not matter how the piece came to you. What matters is that you have had it these past years. I prayed it would give you strength, to remember me and all that I taught you. I have never felt guilt such as that which overcame me when I was first sent down here. I realised just how alone you would be, so far away.’
Pavo nodded, tucking the phalera into the waist of his loincloth, tears dripping from his chin. ‘Father, the phalera, the memories of you. They have made me everything I am today. I was never alone.’
‘That warms my heart like sunlight itself,’ Falco sighed, clasping both hands to Pavo’s shoulders. Then his face wrinkled in concern. ‘But I never wished to draw you here, to this gods-forsaken realm. Indeed, my few moments of rest and sleep in this place have been plagued with nightmares of you setting out to find me. Every time, I saw you, reaching out to me . . . ’
‘Across the dunes,’ Pavo finished for him.
Father gasped. ‘Before the sandstorm would pick up.’
‘And bury us both, deep below Persian sands,’ Pavo finished again.
A shiver crawled over Pavo as he and Father saw the reality of the nightmare. Pavo glanced up the main shaft. Nothing, not a glimmer of light. The nightmare had won.
‘How did you end up down in this chamber, Father? What did you do to poison the guards against you so?’
Falco let out a weak sigh. ‘We were betrayed.’
Pavo’s brow wrinkled. ‘Betrayed? By whom?’
‘It matters little now. You should not have come here, Pavo,’ Falco whispered.
From above, as if confirming Falco’s warning, a chorus of shouts broke out. Then came a scuffling of feet, rushing towards the shaft.
Pavo shot a glance to Sura. Sura stared back.
‘They’ve found the guard’s body,’ they said in unison.
A grinding of cane on rock sounded, growing closer and closer until the bottom of a ladder thudded down nearby. Pavo shepherded Father back from the ladder, Sura and the other slaves stepping away with him.
‘By the gods,’ Arius’ jaw fell agape. ‘They’re coming for us! They will not be satiated with the flexing of their whips.’
‘Then it is time,’ Falco growled as the group backed up against the ring of stalagmites, ‘we must go to the passageway.’ He jabbed a finger downwards as he said this.
‘The passageway?’ Arius’ face visibly paled. ‘No, death awaits us there, surely?’
‘What is life down here, but a slow, lingering death? You are one of the bravest I have ever fought alongside, Arius, yet you have forgotten your valour in this place. Now come!’ Falco hissed, backing away from the cane ladder, pulling Pavo with him. The ladder before them bent and creaked as a troop of yet unseen figures descended in haste.
Pavo stumbled backwards, following Falco and the others to the edge of the stalagmite ring. Here a narrow pathway wound through the jagged debris.
‘Tread carefully,’ Falco said, stooping to lift a knotted cane resting against the first of the stalagmites, then using it to tap his way through the tight corridor between the forest of stone.
The serrated ground felt like blunted blades in the soles of Pavo’s feet. Soon the jagged ground was replaced by the dry crunching of bones and wet slipping of putrid gristle underfoot as they passed over the pit of corpses amidst the stalagmite ring. The stench of death was rife here. The path was erratic, and every few footsteps saw someone slide or stumble, but after a few hundred feet, the stalagmites became shorter, blunter and free of the corpses of dead slaves. After that, the ground levelled out and a small cave lay ahead. Pavo heard the murmur of those pursuing them and made to hurry ahead, but Falco pulled him back from his next footstep.
‘Slowly, Son,’ he hissed. He stretched out to tap his cane on the white, circular bed of salt powder where Pavo’s foot hovered, then stooped to pick up a small rock.
Pavo frowned as Falco lobbed the rock onto the salt bed. The rock sat still for a moment, then the salt there puckered under its weight and a heartbeat later it was sucked under – gone, as if never there. Pavo nodded, then turned to Sura. ‘Slowly. Follow my father’s step.’
As they picked their way around the salt beds dotted over the floor. He peered into the darkness ahead and saw that the cave they were in tapered away and descended slightly as they continued along the path, the walls closing in swiftly and the ceiling growing ever-lower until it was only a little more than head height.