The Tale of the Bloodline

"No need,” Erik's sharp eyes were adjusting. “The dark is our friend. Place your hand on my shoulder and I'll guide us down. The passage seems to curve to the right.”

In a minute the dim glow of a fire, the flames not yet visible, appeared at the base of the stairs. The flickering illumination revealed the lower walls were covered in Mongolian Cyrillic writing and ancient Coptic glyphs. They descended a total of seventy steps into the earth before entering a sparsely furnished chamber. They were in one of the oldest levels of the buildings. An obscene body odor mingled with tobacco smoke and the sweet smell of opiate saturated the air.

Before the meager blaze of a central fire pit sat a thin nearly naked fellow, bony ribs jutted from beneath the dark brown skin of his chest. Sooty-faced with a short scraggly beard upon his chin, he sucked on a hookah. Bald directly on top, his straight gray hair was oiled and drawn back, flat at the temples, into a tail. He favored a sleek greyhound whose crown had been shaved. On the floor beside his hip sat a worn turban with a large central emerald fastened in the yardage of twisted cloth. Not a hint of expression could be viewed from the closed restful eyes. Displayed on the wall behind him, painted in beautiful fluorescent pigments and gilt, was the image of a Hindu deity: a man with four arms and hands riding atop a lavishly draped pachyderm.