Page 147 of Eldritch
MAEVYTH
An hour before …
Athunderous crack jarred me awake, and I sat up from the floor, holding the blanket at my breasts. Faint beams of light stretched through the slits in the drapes. Daylight? How long had I slept?
The space where Zevander had lain earlier in the night was empty. Cold. His clothes were no longer piled beside the tub. Trailing my gaze over the room showed no sign of him.
I pushed to my feet and looked out the window, to see Raivox flying overhead. The position of the sun beyond him, muted behind thick clouds, told me it was midday.
Beside the fireplace, the bloodstained shift I’d worn had dried some, but not enough to wear through the drafty temple. Quietly cursing to myself, I scurried back across the room, keeping the blanket wrapped around me, and swung the door open.
Aleysia stood midway down the dark corridor. In her white shift, resembling something spectral, the sight of her sent a chill down my spine.
“Aleysia?” I called out to her softly.
She didn’t move, not so much as a twitch at the sound of her name.
“Aleysia!” My voice was stern that time, and she slowly turned to face me. The void behind her gaze sucked the warmth right out of me and clenched my nerves.
“I have to find him.”
“Zevander?” Struggling to hold the blanket around myself, I glanced toward the room across the hall, where our dresses lay slung over the rack by the fireplace there. “Wait for me. I’ll go with you.”
Instead, she turned back toward her path and kept on.
“Aleysia!” Growling in frustration, I hustled into the other room and, fingers fumbling across the fabric, dragged the mostly dry dress over my head, then stuffed my feet into the boots without stockings. As I passed her dress, I gave a second’s pause, before swiping it up on my way after her.
Without light, I tore a stumbling pace through the corridors, fumbling through the darkness as I searched for her ghostly, white shift. It wasn’t until I reached the lower level that I caught her heading toward the ominous door. The one Sacton Crain had always forbidden parishioners to enter.
The one that led to the cells where I’d been kept all those years ago.
“Aleysia!” I yelled after her, but she didn’t bother to acknowledge me as she kept on, through that thick wooden door, the creaking from which echoed through the temple.
Maybe she’d seen Zevander head in that direction.
A glance back at the empty, gaping maw of the temple’s nave, from where The Red God seemed to watch me, sent a cold shudder down my spine. Following her was certainly better than standing there alone.
Cautious steps carried me toward that weathered door with its heavy, iron hinges that bled rust across the metal like wounds. It seemed smaller to me than it once had.
My eyes closed to visions of being dragged by my arm, nails digging into my flesh. The room tilted when I opened them again, and I took deep breaths to steady my racing pulse.
The aged wood groaned, as I widened the opening that Aleysia had slipped through. Stepping into a dark stairwell, I frowned on finding a distant light flickering below, illuminating the passage.
I stretched my arms out for the narrow stone wall at either side of me, Aleysia’s dress draped over my elbow as I blindly made my way down the stairs. Crisp air brushed over my skin like a whisper of the forgotten, swallowing me, the deeper I ventured. A phantom pricking of my fingertips brought to mind my nails scratching at the stones, as I’d been carried down to my cell. An echo of screams that hadn’t faded with time.
At the bottom of the staircase, the soft flicker of a flame danced across the walls, where the sconces along the corridor lit the way up ahead. I scarcely had a moment to ponder who’d lit them, before catching sight of Aleysia, who stood staring into one of the cells.
“Aleysia?” I called out for her, my quick strides bringing her close enough to see the cold expression cross her face, when she turned to look at me. “What is it?”
I closed the distance in slow, cautious steps, until I stood beside her, and the sight on the other side of the cell door stole my breath.
Three dozen, or more, children lay scattered over the floor, their pale, emaciated bodies starved, bones sticking out beneath the tatters of clothing that covered them. The stench of urine and defecation burned my nose, and the rims of my eyes stung with the threat of tears as I dragged my gaze over their lifeless forms.Crosses had been painted in what looked like blood on the stones of the floor and walls outside of the cell, along with a phrase that confirmed my suspicions for why they’d been imprisoned.
May the souls of the innocent spare us from death.
They’d been sacrificed.
Left to starve.
