Chapter 17 Blood Ritual
Blood Ritual
He landed lightly on his feet on the stone.
Like upstairs, he froze once he had, and tightened the chimaeras and shields around his aura even as he used several mudras to reinforce the invisibility spell. He didn’t hear anything. When he looked around with his magic, he didn’t see anything, either.
Even so, he waited.
His magic couldn’t see as well down there, probably because very little appeared to be alive.
Normally, the glow of moss, mold, insects, and magical remnants from other living beings passing through was enough for him to see, but down here, everything living appeared to have been stripped off the stone floors and walls.
The only dim glows came from those same red threads rippling slowly along the walls, floor, and ceiling as they came and went from deeper below the chamber where he’d landed.
From the direction and angle of those, they mostly appeared to be heading down a narrow corridor.
Sirena must have used a magical flame to see her way through it, which he obviously couldn’t do, or even a mirror to reach another part of the cavern.
He could only maneuver carefully with the cane until he reached what looked like the left side of the corridor’s opening. He reached out with his free hand.
His fingers found stone, and he relaxed marginally.
Moving slowly, cautiously, he began making his way down the corridor, his hand lightly following the stone wall while he moved the cane and his feet as silently as he could.
He watched the red flows of magic for any irregularities in the floor that might make noise.
He already knew there were strange, rounded shapes along the wall, so he couldn’t walk right up against it.
After he’d walked maybe thirty feet down the dark hall, he found himself wondering what they were.
If nothing else, he wanted to know what would happen if he had to stand on top of any of them to avoid brushing someone in the corridor.
He came to a stop, and reached down carefully to touch one with the tips of his fingers.
His magic detected bone.
He pulled his hand away, startled, then touched it again, smoothing over the front with his palm and fingers. The shape was unmistakeable.
They were skulls. Magical. Or possibly human.
Probably human, his mind corrected.
Whatever species they were, they’d been stripped of any trace of their previous owners. Not a single whisper of the person to whom they belonged remained on the bone, which wasn’t something he’d ever encountered before.
Straightening carefully, he took a breath, then resumed walking down the corridor.
He followed the stone as it curved slowly around, then paused when he felt a door on his left, the metal also stripped of any hint of its origins. In that case, it was less strange, but even iron usually carried more than absolutely nothing.
He stopped long enough to carefully test the door’s handle, but it was locked.
He passed five more doors after that one, spaced maybe fifteen feet apart.
All of them were locked.
He contemplated checking inside a few of those rooms at random, but in the end decided to keep going.
If the corridor ended up leading nowhere, he’d simply come back, attempt to phase through one or more of the doors then.
For now, his instincts guided him forward, if only to determine how deep the tunnels went.
He could feel the floor under him gradually sloping more and more obviously downward as he progressed.
He probably shouldn’t have been surprised when the floor abruptly ended on a set of stairs plunging downward with high, stone steps.
He began taking the stairs carefully.
His leg didn’t like that, even with the cane.
He wrapped his magic more tightly around himself, even as he sent out cautious feelers every few steps to make sure he wouldn’t hit into an alarm barrier or chimaera on his way down.
He felt both trepidation and relief when he noticed torches far below him, right after he followed the stairs around a gradual curve.
The staircase was long, though.
Alyana Elmasry, the witch who’d built both the church and the structure underneath, truly had impressive architectural magics.
Caelum knew from both his father and his own reading that she’d been famous for those skills at the time.
She’d been the architect of the Gaol of Giza, as well as the overall designer of the Central Magical Authority in London.
She’d also built parts of the Black Tower, including the main temple, the newest wing to the south, and the walled garden.
She’d also designed, planned, and led the second phase of building that took place at Malcroix Bones Academy.
That included the three temples north of the Faerie River, the Mausoleum, the two follies in Hader and Bonescastle Woods, the library building, the standalone medical center, the bestiary, and the last three colleges: Rasputin, College of Runes, and Evernight.
Supposedly there were hidden passageways, catacombs, and other hidden design elements all through every one of her contributions.
She’d also been close friends with Valefor Bones, Caelum’s great-great grandfather, and the ancestor Malefic most admired, which wasn’t surprising given that Valefor had been viewed as a power-hungry, sadistic bastard, and all-around prick by pretty much everyone else.
It seemed to take forever to reach the first torch.
Caelum paused again when he reached it, and did a cautious scan of every part of his surroundings, including as far ahead on the staircase as he dared.
He could feel that rumbling under his feet more distinctly now, and the red threads were wider and moving faster than they had been upstairs, but other than that, very little had changed.
He couldn’t feel any additional chimaeras yet, which was beginning to make him nervous.
They must have something over this area of the catacombs?
What would prevent parts of the structure from being seen?
Or did they figure it was enough to boobytrap all of the entrances with bewitched gold to give them a head start?
Caelum frowned, thinking about that, then decided it was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.
For now, he’d go in, see what he could, and get out.
After all, he could still phase. If he really got in a jam, he’d leave.
If he did it while invisible, they’d think he ran or hid, and waste their time looking for him down here, or wait for him to emerge by one of the exits.
Meanwhile, he’d be back at Malcroix with his witch.
Reassured by the thought, he ventured forward.
When the stairs ended, he nearly stumbled, but managed to catch himself in time before making a sound.
He moved carefully towards the wall, and saw the skull shapes lining the corridor again.
He was just thinking this might be a damned wild goose chase, coming all the way down here without any idea where the passages led––
––when an elongated scream echoed over the stone from up ahead.
Caelum froze.
The scream broke, then got louder. It choked on itself, then grew hysterical, blood curdling, filled with horror and pain. It sounded like someone in more pain than they could vocalize, more than they could bear and remain sane.
His chest clenched tighter when the scream abruptly cut off.
Chanting rose in the silence that followed, growing louder as it went.
Caelum took a breath, then forced his feet forward, one after the other. He walked just to the right of the skulls, one foot in front of the other, using the cane carefully, his fingers lightly grazing the wall. He made it around another slight curve, then he saw it.
Firelight filled the wide opening ahead.
For the first time since he’d been in the square, he saw everything in near-perfect detail, primarily from the heat of the flames.
The stone corridor stretched maybe fifteen feet across and close to twenty feet tall.
The stones appeared black and lifeless, like they had upstairs, but he could now see the skulls lining the floor on either side.
Skulls also formed a second line on the last straight part of the wall before the arched ceiling took over.
Tearing his eyes off the bones, he looked into the opening itself.
High flames burned green and blue in two massive fires on either side of a cavernous room.
A high dais stood in the center, surrounded by unmistakably Magical forms, if only because he could see their primals with the black, flaming crystal over his head.
His eyes found Sirena Calvarias first, standing by her husband, Sergius.
Unlike Caelum’s own mother, who’d somehow kept her own primal from before she’d been married, Sirena’s familial had morphed into that of her husband’s, the gold-headed jackal of the Calvarias House.
Caelum knew his father hated that his mother’s hadn’t changed.
He viewed it as a personal insult, an overt rejection of his mastership.
Memories began to rise from that stray thought, making him wince.
He pushed them aside, out of his mind as much as he could, and scanned through the rest of the crowd.
He saw Yorrick Orrin there, and grimaced.
His father’s lapdog, who enjoyed his responsibilities a little too much, particularly when they included violence against families who wouldn’t toe the line.
He saw Maskey’s father there, too, and Panzen’s, both of them looking eagerly up at the dais, their eyes showing them to be drunk on magic or alcohol or potions, or, most likely, some combination of the three.
A ghostly being hung over the dais.
It rippled in an imaginary wind, its arms raised in the darkness.
Something about the bone-white face made him deeply uneasy.
If it was a god, or even a demon, it wasn’t one he knew.