Blood Codex

Chapter 53

Landvik emerged into a small cavern, Jarn on one side of him, Levi on the other. Several more tunnels were ranged out before them.

“Well, well,” Landvik said. “You really did find something of interest here, Jarn. You have an eagle eye.”

Jarn nodded his thanks. “You told us to look for anything out of the ordinary while we tried to find Rose Black and her friends. Besides, that scraping sound tipped me off. It must have been the secret door closing behind them.”

“Even so, you did better than myself or Levi. Well done. Now, we can assume that Rose Black and her friends are down here somewhere, and we can’t discount what they may have found should we run into them. So I want them alive. You find anyone, you bring them back to this spot and you call out for me, understand?”

Jarn and Levi both said simultaneously, “Yes, sir.”

Landvik pursed his lips. “Right, well let’s each choose a passage to explore. Let’s make this quick.”

Crowley had crawled for what felt like a couple of hundred meters, worried he was traveling down a stony throat which might swallow him, when the ceiling above him finally began to rise higher. He stood, moving cautiously further ahead. After another twenty or thirty meters, he stopped, crestfallen. Before him was a wall of rock. A dead end. He shined his light across it and saw that between the stones there seemed to be leaking sand. He frowned. This wasn’t solid rock, but stones stacked and mortared in. A long time ago, it would probably have appeared like nothing more than an actual rock face, the dead end he had first assumed it to be. But time had caused the mortar to crumble, the stones had settled a little. The whole thing had the appearance of a tired wall rather than a rock face once he paid enough attention.

Cautiously, Crowley put one hand against the higher rocks, and pushed. They shifted slightly. He pushed harder and a couple moved, slid against each other with hollow knocks. One tumbled free, falling into a space behind. With a smile, Crowley pushed harder, putting his back and shoulder into the effort. Once he had started the movement, the wall lost its integrity and tumbled to a pile at his feet. It still blocked the lower meter or so of the passage, but he could easily climb over it and get through the gap above. He moved on, the air drier and more still than it had been before. Or was he just imagining that?

After another several meters, the passage flowered out into a wider tunnel. He froze at the sight of figures moving around ahead of him.

Holding his breath, he smothered the light with his arm and stood motionless, ears straining. No sounds of movement, no shouts of challenge. As slowly as he could manage, Crowley took his knife from his pocket and then began to reveal a tiny portion of his light. Under its weak illumination, now that he was still, he realized he had seen not actual people, but life-sized carvings. He unveiled the light entirely, panned it back and forth.

Figures in all manner of friezes were carved into the rock walls of the widening passage in which he stood. He moved closer, recognizing many. He strained his brain to recall his history lessons on Norse mythology, trying to place the characters and settings. Winged Valkyrie ferrid the dead to Valhalla, wolves flanked the god Odin who stood with a raven on his outstretched arm. Beautiful Freya, on a mighty steed, rode through fields of corpses. Ice giants roamed, and there was Loki, causing mayhem. And finally Thor, his hammer held high, about to crash down on the world below him. The carvings were incredibly detailed, unlike anything Crowley had seen in his life before. He moved his light slowly, made the deep shadows flicker and shift as though the scenes before him were truly alive. He had found something incredible here.

He moved along further and the passageway ended with a small opening, a lower tunnel once more. Crowley sighed, fell back onto his hands and knees, and crawled along. It was only three or four meters before the cramped way opened into a small square room hewn from the rock. As Crowley lifted one arm to see more clearly, the light of his phone glinted on something metallic.