The Priest of Blood (34 page)

As I came closer to these mortals, I saw they were not bound in rope at all, but some kind of blown glass, in tubes that wrapped and curved about the bodies. Blood pulsed between these unfortunates. More than twenty such human cattle hung suspended like this. In their backs were a series of thick blades thrust into their spinal columns, fixing them to the curved wall of the chamber.

My heart began to beat fast, for I was thirsty for what would sustain me, as I knew my companions would be. And yet, this terrible hanging garden of flesh and pulsing blood was beyond even our monstrous imagination. Ewen was the first to touch one of the maidens, just around her belly. “She’s like ice,” he said.

I followed the lines of glass tubing as it descended to a point behind the stairway. There, at its base, was a long, wide crystal box of thick and workmanlike design.

Within it, the blurred form of a man.

Blurred, because it was surrounded by some kind of darkness or shadow that I could not fully make out. As I touched the crystal tomb, I heard Kiya cry out on the steps above me. I looked over at her, then in the direction she moved. It was Ewen—he had already pressed his teeth into a maiden’s arm to drink from her.

The thirst had overwhelmed him, despite the danger.

Kiya grabbed him by the shoulders and drew him back, but he turned and said, “She’s good. The blood is good.”

The blackest of blood soaked Ewen’s face.

An image arose in my mind that was perverse and wonderful at the same time.

We were in a wine cellar. This was where he kept his best vintage.

Or someone kept it stocked for him. Some servant who had not abandoned him in his tomb.

For it had to be the resting place of the Priest of Blood.

2

The interconnecting network of glass tubes curled and wrapped from body to body, thrust into the artery at the throat, at the legs, or straight into the area of the heart. The tubes all met and dripped into a large bulb-shaped crucible, as the kind I’d seen the surgeons use to heat when curing old women of maladies on their flesh. The blood welled there, and it was no more than a wineskin might hold. From this vessel, a single tube descending into the crystal tomb of the priest.

That was the darkness within it.

It was filled with blood. He slept in it, this priest-king.

It kept him alive, but entombed.

Who had been the architect of this mouth of Hell? Had it been the goddess Lemesharra herself? Her aspects of Datbathani and Medhya, the monstrous pagan goddesses of fertility and destruction?

But why would a vampyre do this? Why a god? This was all of mortal hand of some kind. It had to be. Only a mortal would be devilish enough to create these puzzles within puzzles. Only a mortal would slaughter vampyres for the sport of creating statues. Or hang them upside down and carve the word “Maz-Sherah” into their skulls to frighten us off.

For that had to be why this show had been staged. To keep us out or to slow us. To play with us.

Only a mortal would take his brethren, like these who hung around me, and turn them into a winter storehouse to feed a vampyre more powerful than all others. No vampyre would do it—it took away the hunt. Only mortal man tormented others of their kind for long periods of time.

But the blood would not be so rich, would it? These bodies had been hanging for many years. Kept alive like meat in an icy environment, just enough to keep their sluggish blood manufacturing itself. Their bodies cool enough that the process of death was slowed. The tubes running between them such that they lived off each other’s blood, as well, in whatever basic way a human might. But such living death would not last long. Whoever had done this had to replenish these bodies every several years or risk the blood stopping, surely. Mortal blood was not endless. The heart would eventually stop. The flow would thicken.

Someone, some alchemist of the world, kept this well-engineered chamber going. Some mortal. Or organization of mortals? A cabal of some kind? While we had slept during the day, had one or many been there, studying us, watching us? Perhaps even taking from us? In this underworld, what devil presided? It could not be the one in this tomb, for he could not rise from it. We were his rescuers, in fact. And yet, why would anyone who existed there let us awaken to the night? Why would any mortal man allow us to survive the day’s hours?

Kiya approached me as I took in the chamber and wondered at its origins. “The watcher,” I said. “It is some human being. Or a group of mortals. I would say this is magick, but it looks like a series of spinning wheels above us made of bone, and. below, an alchemist’s laboratory.”

“The alchemy of Hell,” she said.

3

There was no time to waste. I felt more than the chill of the place. We were in a trap of the kind made for rats, and somewhere the razor’s edge was above us and might descend at any time. We had come to find our power and our source. We had come for the ancient sorceries of our kind.

We had been enticed. Pulled as if by magnets.

We all three lifted the lid of the crystal tomb.

Dark blood overflowed its edge.

I reached into the congealing blood, which was like tiny particles of red snow. I drew up in my arms the skeletal remains of the Priest of Blood. In the corpse’s arms, cradled like a scepter, a great staff made of gem and bone.

Chapter 17

________________

T
HE
P
RIEST

1

A sound like the rush of birds through an echoing hallway—we all heard it as I brought the body from the tomb of blood. As I laid the body down, I saw more clearly the staff that it clutched. It was the Staff of the Nahhashim that I had known of from my vision. I did not know what it meant, but I felt it must be of some magickal significance. It was this that I took first from the remains, having to cut the shackle at his wrists, then pry the bony fingers back from the staff. The Nahhashim staff was too important to the vision for me not to take it.

Surprisingly, the staff seemed very light in my hands, and warm to the touch.

The priest’s body had been wrapped in some magnificent fabric. I noticed a gleam of gold filigree and a bright blue pattern in the bits that had not been destroyed by the chilly blood.

His skull was oddly elongated, and his jaws thrust out like a wolf’s, with great incisors that were nearly tusks, while the rest of his teeth were sharp and serrated like shark’s teeth. As the blood dripped from his form, I saw that his eyes had been sewn shut. My mind flashed on the image of the vampyre woman sewing with the needle of bone. While his mouth had not been similarly sewn, it was sealed in its own way—a bone hinge and lock of some kind had been fashioned around and through his teeth. It was to become known to me as a trick of mortals who stopped up a vampyre’s thirst by binding the mouth with bone that cracked, unhinged, then bound the jaw. His left ear had been sliced clean off, and the skin there was scarred and burned. Tattoos encompassed his scalp, and on his right ear, the piercing of many small jewels and rings had elongated it.

His shoulders seemed too bony, and when I turned the corpse to the side, I saw that there were strange protrusions of bones almost like pronged horns from between his shoulder blades, connected to a thickened spinal column. His wings had been cut off. He had once had them, but whoever had imprisoned him in this blood sleep had torn them from him as a child might tear the wings from a fly.

His chest was sunken in, and over his heart, metalwork of a strange design. It was a small sphere the size of my fist. Protruding from the sphere, a thin small blade that was thrust into the heart area. I reached out to touch it, but felt a strange repulsion—nearly a vibration—which made me feel sick to my stomach.

His legs were bound together, fastened with lengths of human hair that had been braided again and again to form a tight rope. And yet, it was easy enough to cut through—its purpose had been merely ceremonial.

Ewen leaned over the body, marveling at the tattoos that brightened as we wiped the blood from the body. The corpse had a particular sheen to it. Kiya quickly read the story of the tattoos in a language she understood well. “He is Merod Al Kamr, and he was truly the king of Alkemara. He began his life as a slave of the field. He lived in a fertile valley. He first heard Medhya’s voice in the wind and found her flesh growing, a weed among grain. But it was the reading of what are here called the ‘words,’ and the stealing of the ‘flesh of Medhya’ that brought him into the realm of immortality.”

“If he’s immortal, then why...” Ewen began, looking at the skin drawings with wonder.

“He sleeps,” Kiya said. “The sphere holds him, the blood feeds him. But he cannot awaken.”

Then she turned to me. “You must open his jaws. He has been bound at the heart, at the mouth, and feet. His wings are shorn.”

“Our tribe had wings as this?” Ewen asked.

“Wings, and more. I have heard that some could become wolves, and others ravens. Still others could enter a village as the plague itself and spread across human flesh like fire, drinking the blood of all within a single night. All the powers of Hell.” Kiya laughed as she said this, for the vampyre phrase was that Heaven itself was hell, and Hell was heaven.

Ewen’s eyes shone with excitement. “And we will have all this?”

I saw some danger then in Ewen’s eagerness to embrace this ancient sorcery of vampyrism. “Treasure is to be used wisely,” I cautioned. “What we seek should not cloud our judgment of it.”

Kiya grinned, showing her polished teeth. “You are the conscience of our kind, Falconer. I am as hungry as a wolf bitch for this knowledge. My time is coming. But if we can discover the secrets...”

“The watcher,” I said, cautioning.

Ewen glanced at both of us as if we had kept a great secret from him. “Someone else is here with us,” I said. “No vampyre would slaughter other vampyres to show us the trophies and scenes in the chambers above. Pythia may have known of this kingdom, and she may have escaped it. But some other agency is behind this. During the day, I believe this person or persons have watched as we slept.”

“Then we must quicken our hand,” he said with alarm. He reached for the metal sphere above the priest’s heart, but it was as if he received a shock—his hand was flung back, and he let out a brief cry. Kiya moved closer to the sphere and sniffed at it. “Quicksilver.”
 

“The man who made this sphere knows our weaknesses.”

She got as close as she could to the sphere and said, “There’s a slender blade running from it to his heart. It is keeping him from waking.”

“We must remove it,” I said. I drew the black sword from its scabbard and nudged it against the sphere.

“You must be careful!” she said. “If the blade in his heart does not come out clean, it will destroy him.”

I sheathed the sword again.

“The needle,” Ewen said. “Use the bone needle. And the thread.”

Kiya thought for a moment then brought the needle out of her pouch. The hair-thread was just a few inches long.

She dipped the thread between the metal curves of the sphere until it came out the other side.

Although the quicksilver seemed to sting her a bit, she managed to grasp the end of the thread and draw it back up. Once she’d made a loop with it, she tied it in place. Ewen held it with his fingers. Then she lay down beside the corpse and, using the long, slender needle, pressed it into the nearly healed wound in which the blade had been carefully set. She was able to work open the wound. It was dry—no blood released from the corpse.

Then Ewen gently tugged at the sphere. It gave slightly. I looked at Kiya with some feeling of tension. Ewen tugged again; Kiya worked the bone needle a bit more about the blade.

Finally, the blade rose a quarter-inch.

Then another.

And another.

A long slender blade emerged that had, at its sphere end, seemed of metal, but as it went down was a slender glass tube with slight barbs along it as if to help keep it in place in the body. Quicksilver filled the tube. Thus, the engineer of this device had created something that would keep the priest in a state of constant dreaming, like the Extinguishing but without the destruction of the body or the ability to awaken and rise.

As the glass tube came out, a gassy emission erupted from the wound.

Then it closed, healing itself.

A foul stench rose up from between the vampyre’s teeth. I swiftly went to break the hinged lock along his teeth. For this, I used the sculptor’s tools that we’d retrieved from the chamber above. I tapped at the bone hinge, and it finally gave. His jaw, which had been broken, hung down against his throat. Yet, as soon as his lower jaw was free, I positioned it against his skull. It snapped into place.

I reached back for the Staff of the Nahhashim and held fast to it. As I touched it, I felt a shock go from my fingers up my arm. It was as if I held a live snake in my hands, and although it was some illusion, I felt the staff wriggle as I held it, twisting as if trying to get away from me. Still, I held it fast. The last of the blood fell from it, and I saw white, ivory-like bone with carvings upon it, and this intertwined with wood of some tree unknown to me. Embedded along its spine, also, bits of amber and glasslike gemstones. At its tip, a blood-red stone that seemed to reflect darkness.

I had heard of ancient mages with great power within their staffs.

And yet I did not know how to wield it, yet, or what its purpose might be.

Nor did I trust who this priest might be. I wanted to make sure that if there was power in the staff, I had it on my side.

We watched while the body rippled as if serpents moved beneath its skin. Then blood pumped from the heart outward. His body filled and plumped until a gaunt but living man lay before us. His skull cracked and snapped and churned against itself until the face was less wolf-like and more of the vampyre I’d seen at the altar in my dream.