Ancient Echoes by Robert Holdstock Read Free Book Online

impressions of goats, satyrs, bulls and sun discs.
    To his surprise, Garth agreed. ‘It’s a shrine to Minerva: two a penny stuff. But it’s all we could really get to, and that’s the frustration, because just beyond the far wall it starts to get very interesting indeed!’
    He moved round to a low door in the solid earth that bordered the excavation.
    ‘As you’ll have realized, if you’re any good at orientation, a bloody great office block is built between us and the place where the heart of the city begins. The foundations have gone down through a part of it, but it’s likely that most of what is really interesting is still there, just inaccessible. We can only get to a fragment of it. Older by far than Minerva and the dear, decaying Bacchus.’ He used a key to open the low door, then reached in to switch on a light. Beyond the door was an earthy passage, just wide enough to accommodate them if they crawledon all fours along the wooden slats. Garth pushed Jack ahead of him. The tunnel was bright with fluorescence, opening after ten yards into a roughly hewn, claustrophobic chamber some ten feet across and four feet high. There were hints of colour, here, on a peculiarly organic-looking mass in one corner. As Jack grew accustomed to the earth and stone textures of the place, he realized he was looking at a small part of a massive carved structure, deeply embedded in the earth, protruding in this one place with a ripple of muscle and knobby excrescences, animal certainly, but shapeless because of the partial nature of its exposure.
    ‘What the hell is it?’ he asked, running his hand nervously over the cold stone until Garth reached to pull his probing fingers away, for fear, perhaps, that the boy would dislodge some of the flaking ochre that still adhered.
    ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ the man said. ‘The truth lies very deep, far down below the town above us. But we found bones here, human and animal, and signs that the shrines and sanctuaries continue ahead of you. Which is below the Castle – Castle Hill. The narrow end of the hidden city. The heart of Glanum. The shrines within the inner city form a channel into the heart. And my feeling is: the further they go in that direction, the older, the more primitive they get.’
    The confined space seemed suddenly to shrink a little, and Jack ducked, feeling the ceiling come down towards him. The ground vibrated.
    They
were coming back, closer than ever. He could hear their voices
…
    Garth’s hand was on his shoulder, his voice concerned. ‘Are you ill?’
    ‘I can’t breathe …’
    They were almost on him, they were exhausted, terrified, running for their lives!
    ‘Time to leave, then. You go first.’
    Jack needed no second invitation. He crawled at full speed on his hands and knees away from the chamber to theglassed-off area where Roman murals played. He raced up the stairs to the shoe shop, bursting through the door – breathless as he plunged into the dense wood, running between the trees, weaving through the light wells, half blinded by the shafting glare of the sun as it broke through the canopy.
    Greyface loped ahead of him, head turning as he sought the way through the tangles. He was shouting.
Come on. Come on. I can hear water
!
    Jack could hardly breathe. His lungs were bursting with the humidity and the thickness of the forest air.
    Come on
!
    He put on a burst of speed, struck against a tree and stumbled, then ran on, while behind him loud breathing made him cry out, and a hand reached for him, jerking him back, away from the figure of Greyface, away from the thin light, back on his haunches, dragging him, dragging him …
    Onto the pavement!
    Garth was standing over him, blood running freely from his nose, his face twisted with concern. The sound of traffic was loud and a man’s voice was saying, ‘What the hell’s he up to? Running like that?’
    ‘Easy. Easy,’ Garth said and crouched by the trembling boy.
    Jack sat up and