“Blood elves, they used to be the shadow elves, yes?” Leonardo asked. “Before the civil war with the sun elves? Before they lost and were sent to be watched over by the dwarfs?”
“Yes, that’s them,” Zamek said. “Before that, the elves and dwarves lived and worked side by side for hundreds of years, right up until the point they attacked us, killing thousands. You say the crystals here have had no effect? Well, we didn’t think they affected the elves until they became crazed monsters.”
“But the elves are the only species the crystals affected,” Selene said. “And that was after hundreds and hundreds of years of exposure. Before then the humans worked with the crystals with no ill effects.”
“That’s true,” Zamek said. “But who wants to bet that certain people in Avalon will want to experiment with those crystals? You really think that Hera won’t try to create her own blood elves, but with a different species?”
“Zamek, can I discuss the crystals with you?” Leonardo asked.
Zamek nodded and walked off with Leonardo and Antonio.
“I’ve seen what those crystals do in the wrong hands,” I said. “You had us all arrested to appease people in your government. What happens now, Galahad?”
“Now we make out that you were all questioned at length and you’ll be helping with inquiries. I am their king, but I’m not all-powerful. I can’t have my council and advisers fighting amongst themselves.”
“So, why not just question us in the prison?” Sky asked.
“Because you needed to see this,” Caitlin said. “Specifically, the cell over there.”
“It’s a very nice cell,” Selene said. “Asmodeus isn’t inside.”
“No, it appears to be empty,” Galahad said. “It was shut when Leonardo found it during an expedition into the mountain. And then, a month ago, we came here and it was open. Back in the room with all of the purple writing, there was one dead blood elf. That was the first time I’d ever seen one of their kind. It was a bit of a shock, and it took more than a few calls and favors to even figure out what it was.”
“Okay, so it’s quite possible that Asmodeus was inside and is now free,” Selene said. “In fact it’s probable considering that it appears someone turned this Lee guy into a powerful vampire.”
“Couldn’t another master vampire have turned him?” Sky said. “They can make powerful people quickly. It would have been within the last month, so that’s a lot quicker than usual, but it’s possible.”
“It is, but it’s also unlikely,” Lucifer said. “I’d need to see Lee to be sure. Asmodeus’s vampires had a very specific way about them. They were more bloodthirsty than most, capable of acts of depravity that shocked people. They murdered whole families just to bathe in their blood.”
“He did that,” Harrison said. “My men found him lying in a bathtub full of the blood of the family he’d slaughtered.”
“Sounds like Asmodeus to me,” Lucifer said.
“Have any of you been in the cell?” I asked as Leonardo rejoined us.
“Of course,” Leonardo said.
“Is it safe?”
“It appears to be, why?”
I got up. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Did you know he was trying to make a realm gate?” Zamek asked me as I walked toward him.
“Who, Leonardo?” I replied.
“Yes, I’m trying to see if I can manipulate the crystals to make a larger realm gate,” Leonardo said. “Essentially I want to operate one of the gates we have and then use the crystals to widen the gate. It should allow a lot more people in and out of a realm.”
“Or blow up,” Galahad said.
“That’s why I haven’t tried it yet,” Leonardo said.
“That and they won’t let you,” Antonio sniped.
“Yes, and that,” Leonardo replied.
I walked away, across the bridge, repeatedly telling myself not to look down. I took a moment to myself when I was over, and looked around at the four stone giants, trying to make it appear as though the walk over a narrow, old bridge wasn’t something completely awful.
Writing I couldn’t read had been carved into the legs of each of the giants. “I presume this is elvish?” I called back, and discovered that Leonardo had crossed the bridge and was closer than I’d expected. “Sorry, didn’t mean to shout at you.”
Leonardo smiled. “It’s elvish, yes. And no, like everything else I have no idea what it says.”
I walked to the door of the cell and looked up at the writing above the thick metal cell door. “That says Asmodeus, though.”
“Yes. I’ve found his name in a few pieces of writing, but the elves didn’t have an alphabet like we do, so translating an A in ‘Asmodeus’ isn’t the same as an A in ‘apple.’ It’s a . . . frustrating exercise.”
“I can imagine.” I pushed the door open fully and stepped into the cell. “Give me a minute. I have an idea.” I took a deep breath, and in my head I called for Erebus.
“Hello, Nate,” Erebus said. He sat on the bare floor of the cell, wearing a pair of black jeans and a white T-shirt. “I didn’t expect to hear from you again so soon. This isn’t back inside your head, by the way, so we’re operating on real time here.”
“You said the last mark would gift me with knowledge.”
“Yes, your mother told me that.”
“What knowledge?”
“Whatever it was decided you needed to know. Things about history, about the various players in the game of Avalon, all kinds of things.”
“Elven writing?”
“Ah, not so much, no. Elven writing is a by-product of their magic. The elves had a very odd magical ability. Part nature magic, part blood magic. They could instinctively understand one another’s writing. It was the intent of the word, not the word itself, that mattered. It makes it almost impossible for anyone to learn more than a word or two, and even then not everyone would have written that word the same way.”
“Okay, so there’s no way to know what any of this all meant?”
“Not unless you can absorb the spirit of an elf. And even then you might not be able to.”
“And the elves here died thousands of years ago, so that’s out.” I thought about the problem for a few seconds. “Any chance you know any elvish?”
Erebus smiled. “No, unfortunately not.”
“Any chance you could just pour all of the information that the mark held back into my head at once?”
“Only if you’d like to be turned into a vegetable for the next decade. My role now consists of giving you that information at a rate your brain can cope with. This has nothing to do with your power of a sorcerer, and everything to do with the fact that too much of this information at once will overload your synapses.”
Okay, so that was out. “You know, it’s weird you’re Erebus, but you still look like me. Any chance you could . . . not?”
“No. I’m still essentially the nightmare in your body, so I get to look how your nightmare would. Most sorcerers don’t even get a chatty nightmare. You could always use the elven magic echo.”
“The what?”