The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) by Garrett Robinson (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

his steps hesitant. I thought about sending him back to wait outside the house, but I wanted him close to protect Dryleaf, in case of danger.

Below, I felt the air open up into a large space. But everything was pitch black, with no faintest light reaching us from the stairway.

“Is there a torch?” I said. My voice vanished into the empty space.

I heard the sound of Mag fumbling along the wall. “Here is one,” she said at last. “Give me a moment to light it.”

Sparks glinted in the shadows as she worked. Finally a flame sprang to life, and Mag lifted the torch high.

The chamber was large—larger than the first floor of the house, which meant it extended under the buildings on either side. There were desks and tables around the edges of the room, some of them littered with papers. But in the center of the room was a massive cauldron filled with a liquid I thought was entirely black. It was only when we took a few steps forwards, and the light of Mag’s torch fell upon the cauldron, that I saw a glint of red.

“Sky above,” I breathed.

Mag walked up to the cauldron and took a closer look. Oku went with her, growling in his throat at the cauldron. Mag sniffed. When she turned back to me, her expression was grim.

“Blood,” she said. “Old blood. It smells almost … rotten.”

I knew instinctively that this must be the source of the evil feeling in the house. But how could that be? It was a great deal of blood, true, but it was not as though we could smell it through the floor.

“Let me get another torch,” I said. I removed Dryleaf’s hand from my arm and went to the wall, fetching another torch and lighting it with Mag’s.

“What is it?” said Dryleaf. “Tell me.”

“My apologies,” I said. “There is a cauldron here, filled with blood. It is paces across.”

“Sky,” whispered Dryleaf. “How much? How many …”

He did not finish, but I heard the words as plainly as if he had spoken them. How many people died to fill this cauldron?

I went to Mag’s side and knelt, thrusting my torch close to the ground. A pit had been dug beneath the great iron bowl. The stones within were blackened and twisted. I could see no fuel. Whatever had burned there had burned away … but it had melted a great deal of the surrounding stone.

“Darkfire,” I whispered. “These stones have been melted by darkfire.”

“Darkfire?” said Mag. “What is that?”

“An evil magic,” said Dryleaf. “You have heard of magestones?”

Mag frowned. “I know that they are a dangerous substance.”

“Forbidden by the King’s law,” said Dryleaf, nodding. “When a wizard eats them, they gain immeasurable power according to their branch. Firemages gain the power of darkfire. It is a black flame that consumes light instead of giving it, and it will melt almost anything.”

“But there is another way to create darkfire,” I said. “Setting fire to magestones will do it.”

“I have never heard that,” said Dryleaf.

“Neither had I,” I said. “I learned it only recently.” It had been in the Greatrocks, with Loren.

“So these Shades you were hunting,” said Dryleaf. “They used darkfire to heat the cauldron. To … to boil the blood.”

“But for what purpose?” I said.

“The vampire,” said Dryleaf. “It must have been. The feeling in this place … the smell. Mayhap that is what summoned the vampire. I was right all along, though I wish I had not been. The Shades did bring the creature. But why? What did they hope to gain?”

“Some sort of weapon,” said Mag.

I looked up in surprise. She was across the room, standing by one of the desks that lined the walls, and she had a stack of papers in her hand through which she was riffling. “These mention the vampire. The cauldron appears to be part of some ritual to summon it—to unleash it on the Shades’ enemies. Using a magestone fire infuses the blood with the stones’ essence. It increases the strength of it, gives it some sort of … magical property. I am not certain. There are many things written here I do not understand. But that is what brought the vampire out of the mountains, if indeed that is where it came from.”

That was a thought so dark, I was stunned to silence for a moment, and Dryleaf seemed to feel the same way. Only Mag still moved or made a noise, flipping through more and more of the papers.

“I do not understand,” I said in a hushed voice. “A vampire cannot be controlled. But even if you could set it loose in a town and unleash it, it is … well, it is still just a creature. If we had not arrived to kill it, the people of Lan Shui would have done so in time. They would have gotten word to the Mystics eventually. And if the Shades mean to use this as a weapon of war, it is an even worse idea. In a large city, one worth conquering, there would be many guards and constables, and even Mystics, to hunt it. That is what happens whenever a vampire is desperate enough to attack a city by its own choice. That is why they prey on the weak and the isolated.”

“There is more,” said Mag, scanning a page. “Something about … empowering the vampires. Strengthening them. I cannot entirely understand, but it seems they had some scheme for making the beasts even more fearsome.”

“The beast, you mean,” I said. “Only one.”

Mag stopped short. “I suppose you are right,” she said. “Though … though they speak of more than one in these pages.”

I felt a sensation like ice sliding down my throat and into my gut.

“Mag,” I said, my voice coming as a whisper. “How far would this ritual reach? How close would a vampire have to be for the magic to draw it in?”

“Sky above,” said Dryleaf. But Mag only stared at me. My words were still