House of Stone

by R. L. King

  “So…” Jason said in a dull tone, “they lured him down here and…what? Did they give him work, helping to build this place, and then killed him? Why would they bury him alive, though? That’s the part I don’t get. If he was killed as part of a sacrifice, then why would he be bricked up alive? Assuming he was, of course. We don’t know what’s going on inside the alcoves that are still sealed, just the one we saw into.”

  “That’s a damned good question,” Stone said. He stared dully down at the ledger, flipping through the pages. Each one contained a number, a name, and a location, followed by a note about the person. Some pages included full names, some partials, and even a few nicknames. A couple had only descriptions: “a middle-aged trollop,” or “an elderly traveler.” Both men and women were represented, though the men outnumbered the women by nearly two to one, and a small subset of the entries included approximate ages marking the victims as children as young as ten years old. The locations were spread all over the country, from unsavory dockside districts in London all the way up to Manchester.

  He couldn’t be sure, of course, but he didn’t need to be sure. Something deep in his bones told him he was correct: each and every one of these entries represented a human being, either a poor unfortunate trying to eke out a living in a brutal age, or perhaps in some cases a wealthier individual who’d somehow landed on the wrong side of his family of monsters and paid the ultimate price for it.

  “I could see why they might do that with a small number of people,” he said. “Perhaps enemies of some sort. But…all of them? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I think I might be able to answer that.” Eddie’s tone was even grimmer than Jason’s. He pointed down at the box Verity had placed on the floor to make room. “Stone, d’you mind if I ’ave a look at that other book?”

  Stone narrowed his eyes. “What are you getting at, Eddie?”

  “Please. It’s not something I want to say unless I’ve got some proof. It’s—” He shook his head. “May I?”

  “Yes, all right. Do it.” Stone didn’t want to let him look—didn’t want to let him find something even worse so he could share it with everyone in the room. It was bad enough his family had been so thoroughly reprehensible, without having their crimes put on display in front of an entire audience.

  But they aren’t just an audience. They’re your friends, and none of them have been anything but loyal to you. He drove down the fear he didn’t even want to acknowledge: not that they would reveal his family’s sins to the world, but that they would begin to see him through the same lens.

  They all watched Eddie as he picked up the remaining tome and began paging through it. Stone moved around behind him, looking over his shoulder.

  Instead of more narrow, old-style text, the book mostly appeared to be full of complex ritual diagrams. Eddie turned the pages too fast for Stone to get a good look at them, so instead he watched his friend’s face. The librarian’s jaw set and his brow furrowed as he flipped through; he looked he had to force himself to keep reading.

  “Eddie…” Stone murmured. “Give me something. Please. Was your suspicion correct?”

  Eddie handed the book to Ward, then turned back to Stone and let his breath out. “Looks that way. You’re not gonna like this, mate. You sure you don’t want me to tell you in private first?”

  He almost took the offered chance. If it was something truly horrible, he could count on his old friend to keep it quiet. That was what he did, as a researcher and curator of one of the largest collections of magical literature in the western world. Discretion was a cornerstone of his job, and the reason why so many mages trusted him with their personal business.

  But yet…

  “No,” he said firmly. He looked around, taking in the serious faces of his friends, of his son. They were all looking at him, serious and tense, ready to accept his decision even if they didn’t like it. “No, you all deserve to know. Tell us, Eddie. What happened down there?”

  Eddie almost looked sympathetic. He glanced at closed book Ward held, then back at Stone. “’Ave you ever ’eard of a foundation sacrifice?”

  16

  Everyone except Ward looked at Eddie blankly.

  “Can’t say I have,” Stone said, but another chill began creeping up his back. It wasn’t hard to guess at least the gist of what his friend referred to.

  “What is it, Eddie?” Verity asked. Her voice was soft, tentative, almost as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  Eddie let out a long sigh and began pacing. “It’s a very old practice—mundanes mostly gave it up centuries ago. The idea is that you sacrifice living beings—often animals, but sometimes ’umans—to your deity, then entomb their bodies in the foundation stones of buildings as they’re being constructed. They believed that by doin’ this, the spirits of the sacrificed beings would serve as kind o’ guardians for the building, the city, whatever, and also that their gods would bless the project.”

  “That’s…horrible,” Verity said, going pale.

  “It is, which is why they stopped doin’ it as people got more enlightened. But you’ve got to remember, we’re mostly talkin’ about very religious people ’ere. They believed the souls they interred were immortal, so all that ’appened when their bodies were sacrificed for this ceremony was that their souls were freed to be re-inserted into another body. Believe it or not, some people actually fought for the honor of servin’ as a sacrifice.”

  “You’re kidding,” Jason said. He looked as pale as his sister. “People wanted this?”

  “Not all of them did,” Ward said. “In many cases, slaves, prisoners, or other low-status people were sacrificed and interred against their will, especially in the later years of the practice.”

  “But wait,” Ian said. “This is all terrible, but what’s it got to do with us? You said they sacrificed people and then put them in the foundation, right? They didn’t bury them alive.”

  “Not generally,” Eddie agreed. “I’ve read accounts where animals were imprisoned alive, but not ’umans. Not by mundanes, anyway.”

  “But mages did…” Stone said. He stood still, his body suddenly leaden. “Or at least…my ancestors did.”

  “I’d be very surprised if it was just your ancestors,” Eddie said gently. “Most of our lot, especially the powerful ones, weren’t exactly saintly back in those days.”

  “But they weren’t religious, either,” Stone said. “So why would they—”

  “I don’t think it’s about religion,” Ward said. “I think it’s about power.”

  Stone stared at him, then took a step back and dropped into Aubrey’s vacated chair as the truth he didn’t want to acknowledge hit him. “Dear gods…” he murmured. “Yes. You’ve got to be right.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jason demanded. “What’s he mean, power?”

  Stone spoke in a plodding monotone, and didn’t look at him. “It’s a basic principle of magic that the energies of birth and death are the sources of the most potent power. That’s why human sacrifices are so dangerous, and why they can add immense punch to rituals if properly handled. We already know my ancestors used sacrifices to power their rituals, but apparently that wasn’t enough for them.”

  “So…just to be clear,” Ian said slowly, “what we’re talking about here is that our ancestors actively went out looking for people who wouldn’t be missed, or enemies, shackled them in specially prepared holes, and bricked them up so the energy of their deaths could…what? Power some ritual?”

  Eddie nodded. “I don’t know about a ritual, but I think you’ve got the rest correct.” He indicated the book Ward held. “I’ll wager if we read through that thoroughly, we’ll get the rest of the story. My guess is they set something up in advance, probably as part of the design of the ’idden area. They placed the sacrifices in their alcoves, closed them up, and then covered the chamber and began buildin’ the rest. They probably worked out a way for the death energy to strengthen the magical protectio
ns on the ’ouse. Or possibly bound the spirits to the area, to provide perpetual reinforcement.”

  “But why?” Stone flung himself up from the chair, unable to remain seated as restless energy surged within him. He waved his hand, encompassing the area around them. “This place is built on three bloody ley lines. It’s one of the most magically powerful locations in all of Britain. The wards are some of the strongest around, so much that they’ve never needed to be refreshed since they were originally cast. What the hell were these people trying to guard against, that they’d have to torture and kill forty-one people to do it?”

  Verity must have heard something in his voice. She intercepted him, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Doc—” she began.

  “No, Verity.” He shook free of her hand. “It’s most certainly not okay. This is about as far from ‘okay’ as it’s possible to be.” He jerked his head toward the house. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to go back into that place again even if we do get rid of the echoes. I’m not even sure we should.”

  “Dad—” Ian began.

  “No, Ian. No. Just—don’t.” Stone resumed his mad pacing. His mind spun, sending him image after image of manacled people—men, women, even children—screaming in vain for someone to help them, to release them from their tiny, dark prisons. He pictured the cold, uncaring faces of his ancestors, ignoring their desperate and fading pleas as they finally succumbed to starvation and died dangling from their bonds.

  “Why should we get rid of them?” he demanded. He could hear the edge of mania in his voice, but did nothing to alter it. “They’ve got as much right to be here as we do. More, maybe. They didn’t ask for their lives to be sacrificed so our damnable family could gain more power. Of course they’re angry! Wouldn’t you be? I’m surprised they haven’t pulled the whole accursed place down around our ears—and I’m not sure I’d blame them if they did!”

  “Stone. Alastair.” Ward’s tone was calm, though it still shook a little, and his dark skin bore a hint of gray pallor. “Please. We can discuss all of this, but—there’s something else.”

  Stone pulled up short. “Something worse?” He’d stopped asking how anything could have been worse.

  But Ward shook his head. “No. Not worse. Just…something you might not have known.” He still held the book, open to one of the earlier pages. He turned it around so Stone could see.

  “What is it now?” Stone didn’t want to look, but as always his curiosity got the better of him. He took a couple of deep breaths and tried to slow his heart’s mad thundering.

  Ward pointed. “It’s possible that I’m reading this wrong—the script is difficult to make out, and the language is archaic—but it appears your house here was not the first to stand on this land.”

  “What?” Stone strode forward, examining the page. “There was another house here? When? What happened to it?”

  “I’m not certain. Sometime shortly before this one was built, obviously. They don’t mention much about it—apparently it was common knowledge at the time so they didn’t need to discuss it—but from what I can gather, it was destroyed, and violently.”

  “Violently?” Jason came over and looked at the page, even though it was obvious he couldn’t read a bit of it. “What, like somebody blew it up?”

  “Magic was almost certainly involved,” Ward said. “If my translation of this passage is correct, the place was literally razed to the ground.”

  “Bloody ’ell,” Eddie said, moving over to look at the pages too. “I’ve never seen anything about this in any of the library’s references. Not even when I was researchin’ Stone’s family tree last year.” He lifted his gaze to settle on Stone. “This could mean your line goes back farther than we thought it did. If the records beyond what I already showed you were lost…”

  “Or destroyed,” Ward added. “If someone hated your family enough to level their ancestral home to the ground, it’s possible either they or your own family did something to obscure the earlier records.”

  “That sounds like there was something nobody wanted anyone to find out about,” Ian said.

  “It does indeed,” Eddie agreed. “Stone, do you want me to look into this in more depth? I can dig into the oldest reference material back in London, and…”

  Stone didn’t know what he wanted to do. He continued staring with a kind of numb shock, shifting his gaze between the maps on the table, the open ledger with its pages of dispassionately numbered sacrificial victims, and the tome in Ward’s hands. “Do what you like,” he said. “Just…I think I need to go somewhere for a while, and be alone with my thoughts.”

  “No, you don’t,” Verity said firmly. “That’s the last thing you need right now.” She approached him again, slowly, the way she might have approached a wary young animal. When he didn’t move away, she put her hand on his arm. “And anyway, you’re not fooling anybody: what you want to be alone with is a big bottle of booze. It’s not going to do you any good at all to go off somewhere and drink yourself into a stupor, or destroy yourself thinking about all this stuff on your own. Stay here with us. We can help.”

  Stone snorted. “You can help?” His tone dripped with despair. “How? How can you help? Can you change any of this? Can you appease these echoes, who have every right in the world not to be appeased?”

  The others remained silent, looking discreetly away so as not to intrude. Verity pulled Stone into a hug and buried her face in his shoulder.

  “No,” she said, muffled by his coat. “No, we can’t do that. But we can listen. We can be here with you.”

  He almost pulled away again. His body felt as if someone were running a current through it, urging him to move, to run, to get away from here before it shook itself to pieces. His brain wouldn’t settle on a thought, fighting through more images of screaming, pleading victims.

  “Fine,” he said at last. “Fine. I’ll stay. For now, at least. But I’m not sure what good it will do any of us. I’m hardly fit company at present.” He raised his head, patted Verity’s back, and turned back to the box. “There’s one more thing in there. Let’s have a look at it, shall we? Might as well get all the nasty little secrets out at once.”

  Nobody moved for a moment, all of them exchanging glances and not wanting to make the first move. Finally, Ian bent and lifted the leather-wrapped bundle from the box. As the rest gathered around the table, he laid it on top of the map, undid the twine wrapped around it, and unrolled it.

  Stone bowed his head. “No…” he whispered.

  He didn’t need any help from Eddie or Ward to know what he was looking at.

  Spread across the dark-brown leather surface were several small objects, glittering in the overhead light: gold rings, some set with colorful gemstones; a pair of glimmering golden necklaces with jeweled pendants; an intricately carved cameo featuring the image of a beautiful woman; a handful of gold coins. The final item was a dagger with an elaborately carved and jewel-encrusted hilt, and an equally ornate scabbard.

  Everyone looked at the items in silence, and then Jason said, “Did these belong to the victims? They seem fairly fancy for poor people.”

  Stone scanned the small treasure with magical sight and saw no sign of arcane energy. “This reinforces the idea that the sacrifices weren’t all paupers. I suspect the murderers took this opportunity to rid themselves of a few enemies of the family. Possibly even the people who destroyed the house in the first place.” He looked at Eddie for confirmation.

  “It’s possible. Which means if we examine that ledger carefully, we might get some ideas about who it might have been.” He pointed at it. “If you’ll trust me with this and the other one, I’ll take ’em back to London and see what I can find out. If nothin’ else, Ward and I can get you full translations.”

  “Fine,” Stone said. “Do what you like. Of course I trust you.”

  “Hey,” Jason said. “Let me try to get some photos before you take those, if that’s okay, Al. That way if you
need to consult something, you’ll have something to look at.”

  “You’re welcome to give it a try. No idea if it’ll work, though.”

  Jason snapped a sample photo of one of the pages with his digital camera, then checked the photo roll and flashed a thumbs-up. “Looks like we’re good here.”

  Stone nodded, not terribly interested in the process of photographing the ledger and journal. Instead, he gripped the table and gazed down at the small pile of valuables. “I don’t feel right about keeping these,” he said to no one in particular. “If nothing else, they should go to a museum or something.”

  “Or to their descendants, if we can find them,” Verity said. She looked away, then met his eyes with reluctance. “And…Doc…I hate to say this now, but there’s something else you need to think about.”

  “What’s that?”

  She swallowed. “The…victims. The skeletons, assuming there’s one in each of those alcoves. You…can’t just leave them there.”

  Stone had already thought of that. “I know,” he said with a sigh. “I know, Verity. Something’s got to be done. They need to be properly buried, if nothing else, and…commemorated somehow.”

  “But…what about the authorities? Are you going to keep this secret?”

  Ian and Aubrey drifted over, catching the end of the conversation. “You can’t keep it secret, sir,” Aubrey said. He, too, looked reluctant. “It’s…not right.”

  Stone clenched his fists. “I know,” he said again. “I get that. And I suppose I shouldn’t be complaining about how inconvenient all this is likely to be for me. It can hardly beat dying alone in manacles, can it?” Bitterness once again tinged his tone. “But…first we need to sort this out. We need to deal with the echoes. And I haven’t got any idea how to do that.”

  “I think I do.”

  Stone turned. Eddie and Ward, who’d been talking quietly on the other side of the room, had approached him. He narrowed his eyes at Eddie. “You do?”