“He wasn’t known as a flashy monarch,” Tenzin said. “That didn’t mean he didn’t inherit a lot of wealth.”
“He locked it under a church,” Ben said. “Why?
“Maybe it wasn’t always a church.” Daniel dug his hands into another chest filled with gold coins. “Maybe Sadia was right. This wasn’t a church, it was a treasury. Lalibela consecrated it as a church to keep rivals from his wealth and protect the secret of the Ark.”
“That makes as much sense as anything.” She felt a tug toward a chest on the far edge of the room. “We need to hurry.”
Ben frowned. “Why? We have plenty of night left.”
Tenzin couldn’t tell him, just like she couldn’t tell him why she knelt in front of the single chest in the storeroom that wasn’t marked by some kind of royal seal or marker. There was no lion on this chest, and the box wasn’t finished with brass or bronze, but a series of leather straps that crumbled away when she tried to move them.
Gotcha.
Whispering voices filled her mind as she reached into the chest and withdrew a round object a little over a foot long wrapped in leather.
“Ben.”
Tenzin carefully unwrapped the leather, and her heart gave a hard thump when she saw the faded silk marked with Persian designs.
Embroidered pomegranates marked the edges of the silk while Huma birds chased each other across the blood-red scroll cover.
“Tenzin?”
She carefully unwrapped the silk from the heavy weight in her palm. She could feel the power of it even before she laid eyes on it.
“Tenzin?” He was at her shoulder now. “My God.”
“Not any god you know,” Tenzin said. “But maybe one you never expected.” She held it in her hand, marveling at the weight and the heft of it. Bone wasn’t as light as she’d anticipated. Oiled sinew was strung and stretched, woven through the polished human ivory of Ash Mithra, connecting the work of his eternity into one piece.
“The bone scroll.” Tenzin held it in her own hand, and she didn’t want to let it go. In one instant, the world and all its power opened to her, laying itself at her feet as she realized that this mythical object belonged to her.
It belonged to her.
In that moment, not a single vampire in the world was her equal. Not Zhang. Not Arosh. Not even Saba. None of them could do what she could. None of them held the power that she did.
Not four elements. Five. There had never been only four. A foolish presumption of the infantile West to only consider four. The potential of five elements sparked in her mind.
Wind.
Water.
Fire.
Earth.
* * *
Amnis.
Call it the ether or the void. The space between, which was Tenzin’s true home. She held the potential for all of it in the palm of her hand, her fingers curling over the etched markings that whispered their secrets.
Take me.
Use me.
I am yours.
“Tenzin.” Male arms came around her, and a stubble-roughened cheek brought her back to the cave. “Hey, Tiny.”
Her voice felt rough and unused. “Benjamin.”
“Hey.” His voice was achingly casual, painfully easy. “Why don’t you wrap that back up to keep it safe until we can get it back to Giovanni?”
Her fingers curled over the scroll.
No. It was hers.
“Tiny?” His cheek pressed to hers. “Wrap the bone scroll in the coverings. Please. We don’t want it to get damaged, right?”
In a swift moment of clarity, she wrapped the pile of bones in leather and silk, turned, and shoved it into Ben’s chest. “Take it from me. Don’t ever let me touch it again.”
34
Ben held the scroll in his hands, refusing to even look at it. He didn’t know what kind of trance had overtaken Tenzin in the chamber, but as they walked farther into the tunnel leading away from the Ark chamber, following the smell of fresh air, Daniel kept turning to him.
“Anything?”
“Nothing.” Ben had held the scroll with bare hands and tried to use amnis to manipulate the earth around them or draw water from the canteen they’d brought, but nothing happened. Whatever secrets were held by the bone scroll must have been in the contents of the writings and not the physical scroll itself.
“I can feel that thing,” Daniel said.
The earth vampire had already earned a handsome commission, but Ben was tempted to hire him on full time. He’d opened two doors that Ben hadn’t even been able to see, the rock was cut and set so finely. Without Daniel’s help, Ben knew they’d have been crawling back up through the church.
Ben frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know.” Daniel almost seemed to shudder. “Just… Can you stay back a little bit? There’s something very wrong about it.”
Ben reached for the backpack he’d brought to the site and took it from his shoulder. “Should I put it in my bag?” He didn’t understand what the big deal was. Maybe it was because he was so young, but nothing about the scroll felt any different to him. It was a bit heavier than similar scrolls made of bamboo he’d encountered in Asia, but the construction was similar.
“Don’t put it away,” Tenzin’s voice was low and almost a little strained. “Keep it in your hands.”
Daniel nodded. “Yeah. It feels duller somehow when you hold it.”
“Okay, I guess.” Ben frowned. What was up with the two of them? “Daniel, can you tell which direction we’re going?”
“North, but that’s all I can tell. The path is relatively even.”
As they walked, tunnels broke off and branched in different directions. Ben was depending on Daniel’s inherent sense of direction to get them where they needed to go.
It was pitch-black except for an old flashlight Ben had taken from his backpack and pointed at the ground. It had enough light that it illuminated the tunnels nicely with the enhanced vision that came with immortality. Daniel had more candles, but Tenzin had objected to them; she didn’t want the smoke or the scent, adding that she needed to keep her senses clear.
For what, Ben had no idea.
He heard nothing in the heart of the earth. He smelled nothing but stone, a little bit of damp, and every now and then a touch of frankincense. The silence around them was more than deep; it was profound.
Before him and behind him, however, he could feel his companion’s tension.
“It’s the scroll that’s making you both edgy?”
Daniel shook his head. “For the life of me, I cannot understand how you’re carrying it like that. Something about it makes me want to grab it and run away, but it also makes me want to cry.”
“Cry?”
The vampire’s shoulders shuddered slightly. “Something about it is very unnatural, Ben. That’s the only way I can describe it.”
Feels like a fucking scroll to me. He resisted the urge to put the damn thing away. He kept bumping into corners, and it would be nice to have both his hands back.
“The path leads up,” Tenzin said quietly.
A moment later, the slope started upward.
Ben looked over his shoulder. “How did you know?”
“I felt the air.”
It was going to be a long, long time until he felt as connected to his element as Tenzin was. For her, the air around her was a living organism, a true extension of herself.
For Ben, controlling the air sometimes still felt like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall.
“There’s light,” Daniel said. “Just ahead. It’s indirect, so we could just be entering a cavern that leads to another tunnel.”
Halfway toward the light, Tenzin stopped dead in her tracks. “He’s here.”
Ben didn’t need to ask to know who Tenzin was talking about—he could feel the shift in his bones. “They found us.”
“How?” Daniel asked. “We’re returning by a completely different route than we—”
<
br /> “If Saba always knew the scroll was here,” Ben said, “then she likely knew roughly where the king had hidden it. Maybe she didn’t want to enter a church. Maybe she just didn’t want to go crawling around in tunnels.” Ben looked at Tenzin. “We were wrong. She was just using us as errand boys.”
In the distance, a shadow partially blocked the outline of the doorway.
“Son of Vecchio,” the vampire called down the passage. “Bring Mithra’s scroll to me, and I shall spare your life and the life of your companions.”
Ben heard something at the back of his mind, a tangled rush of whispers that drifted into his mind and slipped away before he could grab them.
Take it.
You are more than he…
The blood of Mithra—
Fly.
We are more than…
Fly.
“Daniel.” Ben’s voice was barely audible. “All these branches in the tunnel—?”
“I have no idea where they lead,” the earth vampire said. “But I guarantee they’re a better option than the vampire barbecue that Arosh has planned for us.”
“That’s what I thought.” Without a word, Ben turned, grabbing Tenzin’s hand, and ran back the way they came.
He could hear Daniel following them; Ben ducked into the first dark corridor he found.
“Son of Vecchio!”
Ben could feel the heat coming.
“Foolish child.” The low voice behind him rumbled with displeasure. “Now you will taste my wrath. It no longer matters what Saba approves.”
The voice was coming closer and Ben ran faster—leaving him no time to examine that particular riddle. He clutched the scroll to his side as if carrying a football and pulled Tenzin with the other hand. “We have to get out of here!”
“We’re vulnerable in these tunnels,” Tenzin said. “Arosh’s fire will eat us alive as soon as he has the scroll.”
Of course. That was why he hadn’t struck already. The bone scroll was old, and the sinews holding it together were brittle. Bone could burn; no doubt Arosh knew that firsthand.
“As soon as he gets it,” Daniel panted, “we’re toast. Literally, he will toast us.”
Ben curled into an alcove and pulled Tenzin to his chest. “Daniel, you lead.”
“Oh, now you want my advice?”
“Shut up and find us a way out of here!” Ben shoved him ahead and Daniel moved, his legs pumping up and down as he ran down the corridors, faster than what should have been possible.
Earth vampires.
Ben ran after him, Tenzin behind him and clutching his hand.
“Wait.” She tugged her arm away and turned. “I can at least slow him down.”
She spread her arms as wide as she could, and Ben felt the cold wind from underground caverns sprinting toward her. The rush of cold air sent a chill down his spine, and he pressed his back to the tunnel wall as a roaring river of air swept through them and down the black corridor where the smell of smoke was rising.
Seconds later, there was a faint “ugh!” from the darkness. Tenzin smiled and turned to Ben. “It won’t stop him, but it will irritate him.”
“And we want that?”
She shoved Ben toward Daniel’s retreating form. “Of course we do.”
Ben continued to follow Daniel, trusting the earth vampire to lead them to some kind of opening. Everything was blackness around him, and the scroll lay in the curve of his arm like a contented child.
“Where are we going?” Tenzin asked.
“Just follow him,” Ben said. “We don’t have time to ask.”
The air remained fresh, but Ben could feel them sloping down, going deeper into the earth.
“You feeling okay?” He squeezed Tenzin’s hand.
“I’m fine. Focus on keeping that scroll away from Arosh. I want to grab it for myself and also throw it at him to keep him away, even though I know that is a very bad idea.”
Ben frowned, barely keeping his eyes on Daniel, who was an elusive shadow that darted to the right and into another tunnel. “It’s not like you to be so emotional about an object.”
Particularly one that wasn’t gold.
“I don’t have rational thoughts about that scroll, Benjamin. My urges are pure instinct.” She took a second to meet his eyes. “Do not give it to me. No matter what I say.”
“I won’t.”
Daniel pulled his arm, jerking him into another cavern, but this one was wider than the last and looked vaguely familiar.
He glanced around. “Have we been here before?”
“Not exactly.” Daniel walked to a wall of rock.
“What are we doing?” Tenzin asked, looking over her shoulder. “He’s coming.”
“Is Saba with him?” Daniel felt along the wall with his fingertips.
“I don’t think so.” Ben watched as Daniel pressed his fingertips into the wall and began to pull. “What are you doing?”
“There’s a door here.” Daniel grunted. “I could create a new tunnel and hide all of us, but doing it slowly would take too much time and doing it quickly could collapse everything down on top of us. This ground is riddled with passageways.”
The wall was slowly sliding away to reveal an oblong doorway.
“Tenzin.” Daniel nodded toward the door. “Go.”
Tenzin eyed the narrow sliver of blackness with suspicion. “No.”
“I’ll go first.” Ben reached for her hand, squeezed it, then headed for the door. “Just give me a minute to check it out.”
“I’ll close it behind us once you do.” Daniel’s voice was strained, but Ben knew it was more nerves than exhaustion.
Ben caught Tenzin’s eyes. The time underground was wearing on her. “Hey. We’ll get out of here soon. Taste the air, okay?”
She was silent but nodded. Ben turned and slipped through the narrow passageway, raising the flashlight to check out the room he was entering. He smiled with relief when he realized it was familiar. “Tenzin, I think we’re back under Bêta—”
A loud crash behind Ben spun him around.
The passageway was closed and a small woman stood in front of the door, pressing her hand to the rock. Ben saw the seams in the rock knitting together as Saba slowly turned to face him.
“Son of Vecchio.” Her eyes glowed. “I think your time is now.”
35
The rock crashed shut, and Tenzin spun on Daniel, knowing exactly where he was even in the immense darkness underground.
“What did you do?”
Daniel lifted his hands away from the rock. “I didn’t do anything!”
She reached over, put her hand around his neck, and lifted him in the air, baring her teeth. “Open the door, digger.”
“Hey!” Daniel frowned. “I didn’t do this. Do you understand me? The rock was… It was like someone pulled it from me and sealed the door shut. I cannot do shit like that. Don’t you understand?”
Tenzin dropped him to the ground, her mind racing. “Saba.”
“No,” Daniel said. “Arosh.”
Tenzin shook her head. “No, Arosh can’t control earth like that. He only—”
“Arosh!” Daniel lit one of the long ropelike candles he’d slung around his neck. “The Fire King is coming, Tenzin. And we’re sitting ducks.”
Tenzin swung her hand toward the door. “So make a tunnel there.”
“And risk collapsing the chamber? I don’t think it would kill him, but he might lose a few limbs for a couple decades.”
No, that wasn’t acceptable. She heard Arosh walking leisurely toward them in the distance and wanted to scream.
But she didn’t.
She did notice a narrow chamber in a corner of the cavern that looked like it might lead somewhere. “What is that?”
“I think it’s part of the ventilation system,” Daniel said. “I’ve seen them in a few larger rooms now. The underground cities in Cappadocia have something similar. Do you want me to—?”
“Break thr
ough one for me.” She walked toward the vent. “We’re going through.”
“What?”
“Our options are not good.” She walked to the round shaft and smelled the fresh air flowing into the room. “This is why the air is fresh everywhere.”
“Yes. Tenzin, you may fit through these ventilation shafts, but I don’t think there’s any way—”
“We couldn’t do it with Ben.” She examined the earth vampire, who was built in far more slender proportions though his height was substantial. “His shoulders are much broader than yours.”
“You shameless flatterer.” Daniel had his hands on the wall, shifting the stone to create a channel large enough for Tenzin to fit through. “Whatever will Ben say?”
“He’ll say nothing, because he’s with Saba.”
“Wait. That was Saba back there?” Daniel was gobsmacked. “I thought you were talking about who was following… How did she get—?”
“You think she doesn’t know these tunnels?” Tenzin shoved Daniel to the side as soon as the shaft was clear. “Give me your hands. We need to get out of here and back to Bêta Merkorios.”
“Why?”
Tenzin climbed into the ventilation chamber and floated there, taking a deep, longing breath of the fresh air and the promise of sky. “Just give me your hands.”
Daniel glanced down into what looked like an endless hole. “If you drop me…”
“I’m not going to drop you!” she hissed. “He’s almost here.”
Daniel tossed the rope candle into the black hole where Tenzin was hovering.
It fell, and it kept falling.
“Fuck me…” Daniel groaned. “Tenzin—”
“We do not have time for any other options.” She could smell the smoke of Arosh’s amnis and knew they had to hurry. She hung upside down and reached for his hands. “Saba has Ben isolated with that scroll. The night sky knows what she’s doing to him or saying to him. Just before the door closed, he said we were back under Merkorios. We have to get under that church and get him away from her.”
Daniel thrust his arms into the empty shaft; Tenzin grabbed his wrists and jerked him into the stone hollow just as a lick of fire crept around the doorway of the cave where they’d been hiding.
The Bone Scroll: An Elemental Legacy Novel Page 26