The Seventh Sacrament Read Online Free PDF Page B

pensioners walked their dogs and the older children from the school sneaked to take a quiet cigarette from time to time.
    Seven passageways, just visible in the sudden gloom at the edge of the illumination given off by the lights, ran off the room, each a black hole, leading to something he could only guess at. Treasure. Or nothing. Or a chasm in the ground that fell away so steeply no one could possibly return, only continue onwards, hoping to see light, not realising that they only worked their way deeper and deeper into the sour and poisonous gut of some subterranean world which would, in the end, consume them entirely.
    “Mithras liked the number seven,” Giorgio said confidently, as if he were talking about a close friend.
    “Everyone likes the number seven,” Alessio commented.
    “If you wanted to follow Mithras,” his father continued, ignoring the remark, “you had to obey the rules. Each one of those corridors would have led to some kind of…experience.”
    “A nice one?”
    His father hesitated.
    “The men who gathered here came with an idea in mind, Alessio. They wanted something. To be part of their god. A little discomfort along the way was part of the price they were willing to pay. They wanted to make some sacrament, at each stage along their journey through the ranks, in order to attain what they sought. Knowledge. Betterment. Power.”
    “A sacrament?” The word was…not new, but only half understood.
    “A promise. A penalty. A gift perhaps. Some offering that binds them to the god.”
    Alessio wondered what kind of gift could be that powerful. All the more so when his father said that the sacrament had to be repeated, perhaps made greater, through each of the seven different ranks of the order, rising in importance…
    Corax, the Raven—the lowliest beginner, who died and then was reborn when he entered the service of the god.
    Nymphus, the bridegroom—married to Mithras, an idea Alessio found puzzling.
    Miles, the soldier—led blindfolded and bound to the altar, and released only when he made some penance that was lost to the modern world.
    Leo, the lion—a bloodthirsty creature, who sacrificed the animals killed in Mithras’s name.
    Perses, the Persian—bringer of a secret knowledge to the upper orders.
    Heliodronus, the Runner of the Sun—closest to the god’s human representative on earth, the man who sat at the pinnacle of the cult, Mithras’s shadow and protector.
    Alessio waited. When Giorgio didn’t give the final name, he asked.
    “Who was the last one?”
    “The leader was called Pater. Father.”
    “He was their father?”
    “In a way. Pater was the man who promised he’d always look after them. For as long as he lived. I say that to you because I’m your real father. But if you were Pater you were a great man. You were responsible, ultimately, for everyone. The men in the cult. Their wives. Their families. You were a kind of greater father, with a larger family, children who weren’t your real children, though you still cared for them.”
    “You mean a god?”
    “A god living inside a man, perhaps.”
    “What kind of sacrament do you need? To become like that?”
    Giorgio Bramante looked puzzled.
    “We don’t know. We don’t know so much. Perhaps one day…” He looked around him. There was some disappointment in his features at that moment. “If we get the money. The permission. You could help me find those secrets. When you grow up…”
    “I could help now!” Alessio said eagerly, certain that was what his father wanted to hear.
    All the same, he wasn’t so sure. There was so much that was unseen in this place, lurking at the edge of the flood of yellow light bulbs above them, seeming to cling to one another, as if they were afraid of the dark. And the smell…it reminded him of when something went bad in the refrigerator, sat there growing a furry mould, dead in itself, with something new, something alive, growing from within.
    His father wasn’t