The Sinister Booksellers of Bath by Garth Nix

Author:Garth Nix
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-12-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Aquae Sulis, Date Uncertain

Sovereign. A strangely misspelled word, the last syllable being mistaken for the word reign.

BEYOND THE DOOR THERE WERE NO WALLS AND NO CEILING. THEY were outside, it was not winter, and it was deep night. Susan could see a clear, starlit sky, and the air was no longer bitingly cold on her face. Though it wasn’t warm, it felt like a cool autumn day. In the light of Dr. Prester’s torch she could see they stood on a well-paved road that was lined on both sides with Doric columns, only two or three feet taller than Susan, each one topped with a small gilded figure, all owls in different postures.

To either side of the road, there were rows and rows of larger than normal olive trees, the fringe of some vast grove that eventually disappeared into formless shadow in the night. Susan looked at the closest tree, which bore a great quantity of fruit, black or very dark-green olives dangling in thick bunches. It was further confirmation that wherever they were, it was not really Bath but some mythic concept of it, Sulis Minerva’s dream or idea of what it should be. Olive trees might grow in Somerset, but not to that size, nor did they deliver fruit in such abundance.

The road didn’t go very far, only twenty yards or so, to an impressive gate of six fluted columns more than twenty feet high that supported a pediment carved with the head of a Gorgon surrounded by cavorting dolphins. This pediment seemed to be illuminated from within, for the whole thing had a soft silvery glow that was not from star- or moonlight, torch or oil lamp.

Through that gateway the ground descended. Susan saw terraced levels and realized there was some sort of sunken Roman theater ahead.

“After you,” said Dr. Prester.

Susan walked along the road and through the gate. She paused there for a moment. The theater had a dozen terraced levels, but the center was not a stage or gladiatorial arena. It was the hot spring, civilized and contained by Roman engineering into a perfect circle some fifteen yards in diameter, the sides paved with marble edged in a narrow mosaic bordered with strips of beaten gold. Steam rose from the spring, and the waters roiled and bubbled.

There was no one else around, no one sitting on the honey-gold Bath stone terraces. Only the stars in the night sky above and the turbulent water below. It was very quiet save for the surprisingly prosaic washing-machine-like noise of the spring.

“Sulis Minerva awaits you,” said Dr. Prester. She sat down on the topmost terrace. “Go down. Cast the tablet into the waters.”

There was no separate stairway. Susan simply stepped down each terrace until she reached the paved area around the pool, stopping short of the mosaic, which she saw depicted a turquoise sea where dolphins and owls co-habited happily among underwater olive trees and jaunty crabs.

She could feel the warmth of the spring, and the iron stench was strong, but weirdly not unpleasant, not a rotten egg smell at all.

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