Chapter 421: History
Liam was gone like a shot down the stairs, yet again leaving us to follow. But this time he was slowed by the writing on the walls of the narrow flight, twisting back and forth from one side to another, cries of joy and exclamation bursting from him, kind of like this:
"Mesopotamia! Holy, can't be, how cool is-Egypt! The pyramids are what? Now I have to go to-Greece. Yes, of course. Of course! Why didn't I guess that might be the-Rome? No, really? All of Rome? How did they control the flow of-"
He stopped below me, hand hovering over the wall, and when he turned to face me there was so much sadness in his eyes I descended to share his step and hug him while he shook.
"So sad," he whispered. "The Dark Ages."
Ouch. Not a great time for those with magic. "The Inquisition?" All witches knew about the Spanish Inquisition, their unholy need to eradicate all of us from the face of the earth, only to ultimately fail because we were simply too smart for them.
"It wasn't what we thought," Liam said, fingers stroking the etchings as the others crowded in to listen. "The Inquisition was run by sorcerers who claimed to serve the Church, but who had their own agenda."
"They missed us, at least," I said, squeezing his arm. "Though innocent women were killed in our place."
Liam's head hung a moment before he shook it. "Witches weren't the real target," he said, voice breaking. "They were hunting maji."
Um. What?
"Not pure maji," he said, "but their descendants. Look, it's all here." I wished I could read what he translated for myself. "The innocent women and men who died were the sons and daughters of powerful maji creators, gone while their blood lines carried on." He paused. "The sorcerers were too late, though, to catch everyone. The pureblood maji's children had already spread far and wide."
Liam turned and continued his descent, my witch light floating ahead of him and lighting his reading. I was a little startled to reach the bottom, stepping down onto ground level before passing under a curved entry and into another round stone chamber.
The iridescent glow I'd noticed in the writings above us was stronger here, flooding the place as we crossed the threshold, shining from everywhere and from nowhere. The very rocks glittered with it, making it as bright as day, if daylight was equivalent to stepping into a complex rainbow.
I let my witch light fade, looking around with awe, noting the threads of white, green, blue, brown, amber and red magic weaving themselves through the room. Liam was already studying and, for the first time, I worried he might hurt himself someday, rushing into a situation he couldn't handle out of the desire for knowledge. It took me this long to see it, but I no longer doubted Galleytrot's need to protect the absent-minded and driven O'Dane and, in fact, I was grateful to have him watch over my friend.
"This is different," Liam said, excited again. "The history is done. These are names." He looked over his shoulder at me with a little frown. "Lists of names?"
I joined him, touched the walls, though nothing glowed beneath my fingers. "What kind of names?"
He ignored me another moment before letting out a heavy breath of air. "Families," he whispered, reverential in his tone as he stepped back toward the middle of the room and the long, bed-like slab of stone resting there on a raised pedestal. I'd noted it when I'd first entered, along with the alcove-like seats placed at regular intervals around the chamber.
""Yes, of course, Syd. Brilliant." He turned to the door again, began his sideways motion around the room. "These are family trees, the lineages of the maji. The ones they left behind." I backed out of his way as he hurried past me. "With these, we can find every line of maji blood still here on this plane."
"To raise an army?" Galleytrot sank to his haunches. "For the war?"
Liam paused, shoulders sagging. "I hope that's not its purpose," he said.
I shook my head, crossing my arms over my chest. "This feels like a record," I said, "not some battle manifest."
Liam opened his mouth to say something only to freeze and gasp. When he looked up at me, he was grinning again.
"The Hayle family," he said. "Your blood line is here."
Sassy scampered to his side. "Who begins it?"
"I couldn't even start to tell you," Liam said, looking up the wall. "The story reaches way back here," he pointed to a line of text above his head, "mixed with this one," another line, this time on the other side of an alcove, "and has many, many branches."
Liam's hand fell to Sassy's head, stroking his fur as the Persian stood up and placed his paws against the wall.
"But it ends early," Liam said. "With someone named Auburdeen?"
"Auburdeen Thaddea Hayle," Sassy said, voice cracking for a moment before he cleared his throat and returned to all fours. "Why does it end with her? She had children, obviously."
"I don't know," Liam said, fingers tracing the bare stone below my ancestor's name. "It just stops."
"The record keeper must have passed on before he or she could find a replacement." Galleytrot's tongue lolled out, though his dark eyes were sad.
"Makes sense," I said, feeling a little sad myself, almost as if I knew my ancestor Auburdeen now that I stood here in the presence of her name etched in stone. Who was she and what was she like? I'd have to ask Sassafras. If he'd be willing to talk about it. I'd never been able to convince him to share any of his past with me before.
Maybe this would change his mind.
I turned from the wall, to look down at Sassafras, only to see a thin snake of red power coil around him and let go again. It drifted toward me even as a similar strand of blue flittered across Liam's shoulder, a fluttering piece of green teasing the ends of Charlotte's hair.
"All the magicks," Liam said. "The power of the creators."
I reached for the red strand, let it slide over my palm. "This is blood magic." Usually just thinking about the forbidden power made my stomach crawl. But standing there in the maji chamber, I had to wonder what all the fuss was about.
"Were you right, Liam?" Sassafras's voice was low, vibrating with wonder. "Did the sorcerers really find a way to prevent witches from using their magic?"
I'd known my Sidhe friend was correct all along, had told me ages ago how witches, working for the church, cast power over all of our kind to prevent the use of blood magic. The geas was still in place and even just the thought of using what we now referred to as negative magic made my stomach churn. And yet, knowing what I did, that the lie created to stunt our power still existed, I hadn't done anything about it, aside from tell Mom when she was in no position to act, still a prisoner of the Council. I had to talk to her about it.
It suddenly felt very important.
As I turned toward the door, the compulsion to speak to Mom growing more powerful as I considered what had been done to witches by the very sorcerers I now knew were the other side of this war I'd been warned about, my eyes settled on the slab and I paused.
Approached without thought. Heard a whisper of a voice I recognized, the same one from my dream, pulling me closer, asking me to reach out and touch the stone as power flared-
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