Indigo(94)

Central to the room was a stone platform, which was also covered with carvings, but these were directly representational and showed scenes of murder and rape and torture. Atop the platform was a figure, stripped naked and helpless, her wrists and ankles tied with leather straps secured to iron rings set into the stone.

It was Graham Edwards’s twelve-year-old daughter, Anastasia.

Her eyes were wild with fear but also glazed as if drugged. Or, Indigo thought, maybe she had been pushed past sanity by the knowledge of what was about to happen to her.

Three people stood on the far side of the table.

One was Rafe, and Indigo wished she could tear his throat out with the power of her own desire. The second, Graham Edwards, was stripped to the waist, his body painted with the same symbols that covered his daughter. And the third was a boy of ten. Andel, Anastasia’s brother, son and heir to Graham. Like his father he was bare chested and painted. But unlike his father he was armed. In one trembling small fist he held a gleaming dagger. Indigo recognized that dagger. So did the others with her, for they all hissed and a shudder of hatred ran through them as they watched. The dagger was small but wickedly sharp, with a bronze blade and a crossbar fashioned like wings that swept down to guard the hand; and with a deep blood gutter that ran the length of the blade. Inside those sweeping wings was a black void that would send the flowing blood from this world into the next. The very nature of this abomination of a weapon was an offense against life itself. That it was held by a child made it worse, and that the child stood ready to plunge that knife into the heart of his own sister compounded the blackness of sin that filled the air with a toxic spiritual poison.

Rafe was leading the chanting, but it rose to a sharp crescendo, and with a shouted word he ended it. Silence crashed down on the chamber.

“We stand on the precipice above the abyss, my brothers and sisters.” Rafe raised his hands and spread his arms wide as if to embrace everyone. “We have worked so long, buried so many of our friends, faced so many challenges, and now here we are. All that we have endured has brought us to this moment. Everything we have fought for is now within our grasp. Listen to the heartbeat of eternity … can you hear it flutter? Can you hear the winds of fate catch their breath?”

The gathered Children of Phonos cheered Rafe, but he waved them to silence again.

“Ours is not an easy path.” His words echoed from the stone walls. “Ours has never been the easy path. Ours has never been a simple task because the easy and simple path is for the weak and the unenlightened. But we know, my brothers and sisters, we see. We are diligent and precise. We have taken all this time because greatness is only possible when everything is done exactly right. Every detail, every step, every facet. Rituals will fail if the slightest error is made. But the locks to the treasure trove of unlimited power open if the right key is used and if it is turned with the subtlest, deftest hand.”

The others nodded but kept their silence.

“And now we come to this moment and to what must now be done.” Rafe gestured to Anastasia Edwards. “Only two things need yet be done for us to claim our place as the masters of this world. Of this and many worlds. This boy will forever earn his place as a true Child of Phonos, as a warrior of our faith, as a hero whose name will be praised for a thousand years.”

Indigo looked at Andel, and the boy seemed to be feverish with excitement. Or fear. Or madness. She couldn’t tell.

“Andel will sacrifice his sister, and Graham Edwards will sacrifice his daughter, for us. For all of us.”

There was a massive thunder of applause and cheering. A strange and twisted smile came and went on Edwards’s face. The body shivered as if he stood in a cold wind.

The girl wept and begged, but no one heeded her.

When the applause died down, Rafe smiled a dark smile at the crowd. “But before that can happen, there is something I must do. Something that I have spent many years preparing. So many years of study, of preparation, of research and prayer. Behold!”

Rafe reached down and took Andel’s wrist, raising it and the knife high so that everyone could see it. The empty space in the knife’s complex crossbar was empty only for a moment. As everyone watched, the space seemed to blink. No, it was more like an eye opening. One moment it was a hole and the next it was a perfect circle of darkness. Not shadow precisely, but a deeper and more profound darkness. An eternal darkness that was as bottomless as space but yet totally alive.

It was suddenly there.

An ombrikos.

It did not come quietly. It ripped a hole into the world, clawing at the flesh of reality to impose itself into the fabric of the moment. Indigo recoiled as if its existence stabbed her through the heart. Beside her she heard the Androktasiai hiss. But the murder golem murmured a word in some unknown language, and whatever it was, Damastes loaded it with bottomless venom and hatred.

The crowd in the chamber gasped, and for a moment they froze, eyes wide, mouths gaping.

Then they cried out in passionate glory, shouting, screaming, jumping up and down, waving their arms, laughing, weeping.

Andel Edwards stood holding the dagger, and suddenly tendrils of blackness whipped out of the ombrikos and wrapped themselves around him, covering him as thoroughly as the ivy covered the tombstones outside. The boy shrieked in pain, but Rafe held his arm steady. Graham shook his head like a man coming out of a stupor and stared at his son, and for a moment—for one flickering, fragile moment—Indigo thought that the man was going to stop what was about to happen. That he would slap the knife from his son’s hand, snatch up his children, and run.