Unus (Stone Mage Saga Book 1)

by Raven Whitney

Cradling it against my chest, I took a deep breath and faced the pipe again. It was encouraging to know that I was finally on the right track to freedom, but I didn't know if I could turn my whole body into water before I ran out of mimic magic or the icy drips made me pull my hand back. I wouldn't know until I knew, so I had to try again.

  The frigid droplets bit into the sensitized skin of my hands, but I couldn't think about it. I had to focus on being water.

  At some point, I heard Liam say something from behind me, but I couldn't understand what. He sounded muted and garbled, like he was speaking underwater. But I didn't have time to talk. I had to go up the pipe and into the castle.

  Suddenly, I couldn't feel anything from my entire body, but I wasn't numb. I was flowing and it was absolutely glorious. Up and up I went through a convoluted maze of pipes, gradually increasing in width until I reached a large tank of cold water. I knew I had to be at the top of the tower— not where I needed to be.

  To the side, there was a stream of tepid water pouring in from a pipe above the water line. Other than that stream of water, there was nowhere else to go. Flowing up against the pressurized stream made me sympathize more with a salmon. But once I was up and into the warmer waters of the pipe above, it was easier to flow through the other pipes. These were wider and ran like an elaborate horizontal network.

  I navigated this new level of labyrinthine latticework. As I went further along, the only way I could discern that I was moving forwards was that the water kept getting hotter and hotter. Even though I knew water this hot should be agonizing to be in, it only felt pure and ecstatic. Eventually, I reached a boiling cistern somewhere in the castle. It was a dead end. There was nowhere else to go from here.

  I'd have to double back and find some way out. This whole venture would be pointless if I was stuck in the pipes the entire time. Thankfully, one of the pipes was leaking a small amount of water. I hitched a ride, unsure of how to turn back. Did I need a hundred sixty pounds of water to become human again?

  Turns out, I didn't. Once I had dribbled onto the dust-encrusted floor, I turned back into myself. Wherever this place was, it was dark, cramped, and sweltering. I could only see a few feet ahead of me, courtesy of tiny shafts of light shooting up from the floor. From what I could see, it looked like I was in some sort of crawl space between two floors. Pipes filled with near boiling water that were now exactly as painful as I expected them to be ran in a grid elevated about two feet in the air just beneath the flooring above and between the brick support columns that were placed every few feet.

  It was so hot that I could barely breathe. If I stayed here too long, this oppressive heat and humid air would kill me. I peered down through one of the cracks of light to see a wide hallway. The black marble floor was veined with streaks of silver and gold. As far as I could see, it was the only color. Black stone blocks formed the walls, alcoved every few yards, though what was in the recessed areas was out of my sight. Below me, a guard walked purposefully through the hall. I held my breath and prayed that he wouldn't notice my thundering heartbeat.

  After his clacking footfalls were out of earshot, I tried to move the tile so I could drop down into the hall below me. But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get the leverage to move it lying down in this tiny space.

  My vision was starting to get blurry, but there was a larger source of light coming in somewhere to the right. Scooting forwards on my belly like a soldier through a barbed wire mud pit, I inched my way towards it. The scalding metal pipes in the way seared and burned the skin on my back as I passed beneath them, but I was already as low as I could possibly go. I just had to take the pain in silence, biting my lips until they were bloody at times to keep from crying out.

  Eventually, I made it to the thicker shaft of light. It was an access point to the crawlspace for maintenance. This tile was mounted just a tiny bit higher than the others on a pivot point. It was probably intended for someone to push it up and around from below, so I would have to pull it towards me. My sweat-slicked fingers struggled to find purchase to move the heavy stone, but I couldn't get enough of a hold.

  I rotated around the access tile for a better position, even though it placed my ankles directly beneath another pipe. Grimacing in disgust, I spit into my fingers and collected as much of the dead bugs, cobwebs, and dust into my hands for friction. In this new position, I could push the tile into moving around the pivot point if I could lift it just a few millimeters.

  Black spots started to form around the edges of my vision as I exerted everything I had, but it paid off. The heavy tile began to pivot. My arms gave out, but the wafts of fresh, cool air that breezed in from the six-inch crack energized and refreshed me as I paused to catch my breath. I was so exhausted that I didn't even care that my dripping wet cheek was in the dust and probably on a dead spider.

  I don't know whether it was fear and desperation or a rush of oxygen, but I pushed at that tile again as hard as I could and it swiveled open enough that I could slip through.

  11

  Through that opening was a lushly appointed bedroom. Seeing that the doors to the hall were closed and that nobody was in the room, I lowered myself through the opening. Even hanging from my hands, the drop to the floor was higher than the wall around Lexie's house, but it was still easy since I was used to jumping down from heights.

  Raising myself from the crouching position I'd landed in, I surveyed the room. Like everywhere else in this dark castle, everything was dark— blacks, crimsons, and mahoganies with sparse smatterings of gold. A large, ornate wrought-iron chandelier hung from the ceiling, but instead of lightbulbs or candles illuminating it, there were more of those tiny glowing orbs floating in it. For a second, they reminded me of tiny fireflies. But there could be nothing that innocent here.

  In the corner opposite me, a moderately raised platform held up an enormous canopied bed with mahogany bedposts carved with life-sized nude, rotting corpses of both sexes. Gross. Was this guy some kind of necrophiliac or something? Next to it, there was what I assumed was a very wide floor-to-ceiling window, but since it was covered with black and scarlet brocade curtains, I couldn't really tell.

  A fireplace large enough for me to stand in dominated the space to the right. Surrounding it was a wooden mantle carved with a scene of a stag hunt that extended all the way up to the ceiling. But it wasn't the fireplace that stopped me in my tracks, but the throw rug in front of it. It was a burnished red, scaly texture with an elephant-sized reptilian head attached that was frozen in a permanent snarl. Could that be a dragon?

  I turned to face the open wooden doors on the wall to my left and was about to walk through to the next room when something caught my attention from the corner of my eye. A large St. Andrew's cross stood in front of a wall that held dozens of whips, gags, knives, and several objects I recognized as Medieval torture devices. I could see small bits of discolored flesh still lodged in the metal straps that were bolted onto the warped, blood-stained wood. Bile rose in the back of my throat and I had to turn away back to the open set of doors to my right.

  Hiding behind the double doors, I peeked through. It looked like it could be an office or a library, also unoccupied. The first things I noticed were the huge, U-shaped wooden desk that sat in front of another wide, floor-to-ceiling covered window and the standing bookshelves that lined the walls.

  To my left, there was another set of closed doors. On the far side of them, there was a large chest of tiny drawers. On the near side, there was a massive glass trophy case that almost touched the ceiling. I couldn't help but look at its contents and had to swallow to keep my gag reflex in check. Inside it, there was a strange variety of things: severed hands, eyeballs, daggers, crowns, rings, necklaces, swords, and odd things that I couldn't even identify. All were neurotically well organized— evenly spaced and parallel to each other, facing forwards.

  I turned to move away from it, but I noticed that all of the eyeballs were following my movements, watching me. As i
f that wasn't making me paranoid enough, their pupils dilated as they stared at me and I was reminded that a cat's eyes did the same when they were about to pounce on their prey. I jumped when I saw one of the severed hands twitch itself an inch closer in my direction.

  I had to remind myself that the creepy hands were on the other side of the glass, but I still felt like a little girl standing on the other side of a glass wall from a tiger at the zoo. It didn't matter that I consciously knew it probably couldn't hurt me because my subconscious was screaming danger!

  Across from the doors to the bedroom was another set of doors, this time closed. That meant I'd have to open them when I didn't know what was on the other side. For all I knew, the next room was full of guards or even Octavius himself. He probably wouldn't be very happy to see me sneaking around his castle. But there wasn't anywhere else for me to go without entering the hallway to my left, where there was most likely a guard on duty.Mustering my courage— because what's the worst that can happen?— I pressed the latch and pushed it open just a little, intending to peek through before stepping inside. What I didn't intend on was the very loud, echoing creak that screamed from the hinges.

  I ducked behind the door and flattened myself against the wall, listening for the sound of charging boots or ringing alarm bells, but it was hard to hear over the rush of blood pounding through my ears.

  After a few seconds of no shouting guards, I slipped through the gap in the door, not wanting to open it any further.

  As I entered, the bibliophile in me had a seizure in sheer awe of the space. There could be no doubt that this was the library Liam told me about. Unlike the other two rooms, which were filled with death and darkness, this space was like a completely different world with not a single sculpture or painting of a dead body to be seen. The library itself was easily the size of a professional basketball court, bleachers included. I walked in under a lower ceiling and between two arching wooden staircases leading to a partial second story that flanked the entrance. The walls of the room were lined in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves which were filled with ancient-looking, leather-bound books.

  The only wall without a single book on it was the one that I faced as I entered. The only things decorating it were two portraits and a mirror. The portrait in the center of the arrangement was larger than a sedan and dominated the wall. It depicted a beautiful young woman with loosely curled, honey-colored hair, milky skin, and stunning, sapphire-blue eyes perched on a stool with a posed smile and her hands folded elegantly in her lap. She wore a Tudor dress fit for a queen with its fine fabric and fur-lined bell sleeves. Whoever this woman was, she was obviously very important to Octavius for her to have such an enormous portrait hanging centrally in this very personal space of his.

  The painting and mirror flanking it on either side were smaller than the centerpiece. The painting on the left showed Octavius with a young girl sitting on his lap with both wearing ancient Roman attire. The odd thing about it was that it wasn't painted on canvas, but on a framed piece of plaster. From what little I remembered about the art history class I took in college, the style did look like those from ancient Rome. It was in such good shape, though, with no cracking or fading that it surely couldn't be that old.

  The mirror on the right was of equal size to the second painting. The finely carved edges of leafy vines were gilded with what had to be real gold. The warping and metallic spots on the mirror's surface made it look centuries old.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed there was a platform with a sitting area on the right side of the room that extended outwards and was walled with windows. A whoosh of breath escaped my lungs when my mind put together what I was seeing. On the other side of those windows was an entirely different landscape than the Canadian Arctic Circle.

  Now, it was a vast forest of pine trees, crusted in heavy snow. Towering white mountains encircled the picturesque valley. Off in the distance, there was a stretch of what might be an ocean or lake. A full moon lit up the breathtaking scenery. We weren't in Kansas anymore. I shouldn't be too shocked since Liam had told me that the entire castle relocates itself every so often, but to see it for myself was another matter entirely.

  The sound of a pair of footsteps approaching down the hallway hit me like a bucket of ice water. I jumped behind one of the couches near the windows and prayed that nobody came in here. Images of what had happened to Selena flashed behind my clenched eyes.

  I could do nothing but listen as the footsteps drew closer. My thundering heartbeat was palpable in the base of my throat, and a heavy ball of ice formed in the pit of my stomach. Please, please, please, dear God, don't let anyone find out I'm in here.

  The door creaked open in the office next door and the unknown person walked inside. Whoever it was paused inside and I remembered that shapeshifters, vampires, and some other species had very keen senses of hearing and smell. My heartbeat was racing so loudly that even I could hear it and I couldn't remember the last time I had a bath.

  The footsteps slowly got louder and I heard a rustling noise, like he was sifting through papers. For several long minutes, the person rummaged through the office. The entire time, I was frozen, crouched behind the small sofa with my hands squeezed so hard that my nails bit into my palms. My legs were starting to fall asleep by the time I heard a man's voice mutter something unintelligible and walk away, leaving the doors to the office open behind him.

  I couldn't breathe until his footsteps were out of earshot. Exhaling a shaky breath I hadn't realized until now that I'd been holding, I nearly cried with relief. I rested my head against the arm of the sofa to catch my breath, but I couldn't afford the time. If I got caught, they would do worse things to me than they did to Selena. I had to find the vault as soon as possible and get back to Liam.

  I stood on quivering legs and made my way back to a big, round table in the center of the room and looked around. There didn't appear to be any entrance to a separate space, but then, I suppose there wouldn't be if there was a hidden vault. As I spun around, I stepped on a slightly loose tile underneath the Persian rug. That was odd considering the impeccable build quality in the rest of the castle.

  Kneeling, I peeled back the rug to see that this tile had an embedded handle with a tiny keyhole in it. This could be it! I just needed to find the key.

  I looked around to see that there was an entire ten-foot-tall section of wall on the second floor that was covered in keys. It would take me hours to try each of them. But I didn't have a choice. I had to find it.

  Running upstairs, I was awed by the sheer number of small, iron keys. It would have been helpful if the bastard had a labeling machine, but none of them had any indication as to what they were for. I was almost overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand and the ticking clock I was under.

  As I looked around, I noticed that there was a single key hook that was unoccupied near the bottom right corner. Perhaps that one was the vault key and Octavius had hidden it. If he had, then everyone in the tower was completely screwed. There were so many nooks and crannies in this gargantuan castle, that there was no way that I'd be able to find something so small. It could be hidden under a damn fake rock in the courtyard for all I knew.

  Furrowing my brow in thought, I crouched in front of it and ran my finger over the smooth metal. I jumped and nearly pissed myself when I heard a faint click behind me. For a moment, my pure terror held me motionless. When I didn't hear any guards yelling or booted feet running towards me, I turned around to see nothing was different.

  Certain I'd heard something, I went back downstairs to investigate. The floor tile was still closed. Before I could lift it to test whether it was locked or not, I noticed that the mirror was slightly off-center now. Leaving the tile, I walked over to the mirror to see that it wasn't hanging crookedly; it was open. This had to be the vault!

  I pulled it all the way open to see nothing but a black, empty cavity. The weight of disappointment slammed me hard and I couldn't help but stick my hand
inside to feel the walls. A moment of shock and confusion went through me as I realized my hand went through the back wall of the hidden space. Feeling around, I realized that none of the walls behind or on the sides of the mirror were actually there. It was an invisible doorway.

  Holding my breath and praying that I wasn't walking into a trap, I took a tentative step through the wall. It took a few seconds of nothing happening for me to gather the courage to open my eyes. What I saw took my breath away.

  The first thing I noticed was that even though this vault was entirely indoors and it was nighttime, that the vault was lit by sunlight. After being completely without the sun for who knew how long, I couldn't help but pause to bask in the spotty warmth of its rays. A sultry breeze carrying with it the sweet scents of a springtime forest and old books brushed delicately across my face and through my matted hair. Opening my eyes again, I tried to spot the friendly glowing disk, but it was masked behind the dense, umbrella-like canopy of a thick-trunked pine tree. A tree growing in the middle of a dark, cold castle?

  My dingy, booted feet were standing on a bed of lush grass, interspersed with white and pink clovers and yellow dandelions. The entire space was only a few hundred square feet and was walled in on three sides with tall, standing bookshelves filled with more old, leather-bound tomes. In front of me, there was no bookshelf or wall, only the thick trunk of the thick pine tree whose canopy stretched the entire ceiling. Between the knoll the tree grew from and the level ground that I was on was a little pond that extended from one end of the room to the other.

  I would have thought that there was a water leak because of the way that it covered the lowest few shelves of the bookshelf/walls, but there were koi fish and thousands of tiny tadpoles swimming around in it. More of the grass grew completely unperturbed under the crystal clear water at bottom of the pond.

  To my right was a wooden chair and matching desk that was covered in stacks of books and scrolls. These stood out, since they were both so simple in design and worn with age and loving use.