The two rose and walked toward the fire temple, and then beyond to the guesthouse, a small domed structure well apart from the temple.
Alhazen stopped short of the door. “It’s open for you. Good evening, Corvyn of the shadows.”
“Good evening.” Corvyn inclined his head, then watched as the athornan turned and walked toward the temple, still without any hint of power, not that there should have been, because that would have shown that the unnamed town was not what it was.
As Corvyn started to enter the guesthouse, he saw the two doves descending to alight on the roof. He smiled, then stepped inside the small dwelling, noting that it had no locks, only a simple door bolt. Nor could he detect any other shadows or powers.
But then … why would they bother?
Those in the town without a name were hardly likely to support any of those involved in the shadowy contest to place Heaven under one hegemon … or any single belief.
Neither will they fight, except reluctantly.
Corvyn could scarcely blame them.
Raven seeks the hostile unfamiliar space,
leaving hallowed truth behind in place.
17
Another day and a half passed before Corvyn finished making his way through the lands of the Poetics to reach the outskirts of Jannah itself, the city that many of the Poetics would have preferred to be named after their original sacred city, but that unmentioned name was too sacred to be used for a successor too far away in time and space, as was the name of the city where the Prophet was buried. Now and again Corvyn caught sight of the doves, enough to see and sense that the poor birds were looking more than a little ragged.
Since Jannah proper was only open to true believers, Corvyn took a room in the adjoining city of Ummah, where outsiders were free to come and go and conduct commerce, or almost anything else permitted elsewhere in Heaven. The exception was the availability of alcoholic beverages, but then, Corvyn was also fond of tea, especially bergamot tea. He settled into the Al-Houda, hoping the name was a favorable omen, not that he believed in omens. He decided on a meal in the hotel and then returned to his room, where he sought out the singer and poetess through the aether. After discovering that neither was near, he went to bed. Eventually, he slept, if fitfully.
Just after dawn, he woke, showered, and dressed, then headed down to have breakfast.
The lobby of the hotel was moderately full. He was among an obvious handful of individuals not in a thobe or the equivalent, and even fewer were fairer than he was, although, in Helios, his natural complexion would have been considered on the swarthy side. The hotel restaurant was as yet uncrowded, and the host seated him at a corner table. Corvyn called up a menu and made his choices by the time a server appeared.
“Peace be with you, sir.”
“And with you,” returned Corvyn, smiling warmly. “I’m thinking about having the chicken omelet with sheermal, figs, and tea.”
“That is the meal of a man who has a long day before him.”
“That is very likely,” replied Corvyn. “Most days are long at present.”
“Then it would be a good meal.”
“Thank you. As for the tea, which would you recommend to go with the omelet, cardamom or black?”
“That’s a matter of taste, sir. We have both.”
“The cardamom, then.”
“That’s a good choice.” The server smiled, an expression of approval, then turned and moved away.
Seemingly, in instants, a small tea glass, a pot of tea, and a bowl filled with small clumps of raw rock sugar appeared.
Corvyn did not attempt to drink the tea with the rock sugar in his mouth but dropped several lumps into the pot, waiting slightly before pouring the tea into the glass, then sipped the tea, which he found satisfactory.
While he waited for the remainder of his breakfast, he surveyed the restaurant, now partly filled. He could sense several glances in his direction, but none of them appeared prolonged, as if the stranger had been noticed, assessed as likely in some business or another, and relegated to the background. For the moment, that was more than acceptable to Corvyn.
His breakfast arrived. He ate all of it, then paid and left a generous gratuity, before returning to his room.
There, he considered his options for undertaking what he felt necessary, much as he knew that what he might face could be painful, if not worse, unless he was both prepared … and careful. Deciding that procrastination, as well he knew, only created more agony and increased the odds of failure, he set forth amid his shadows. An open approach to his immediate destination would only result in some form of confrontation before he was close enough even to sense, let alone view, what he must in the way that was necessary.
Unlike Yerusalem, the focal point of Jannah was not white and gold, but white and black, a black cubical building, the Kaaba, made of white polished alabaster, of which the upper four-fifths was covered in black silk, a practice dating back to Earth-Eden and the prophet and only true voice of Allah the Poetics recognized. The Kaaba was surrounded by a mosque of white stone, ornamented in gold. Only the angels of Allah were permitted to worship in the Kaaba, and only the most faithful of the Poetics were allowed to enter the circular court around it to pray. Since the angels were well-versed in blocking the approach of lesser powers by concealing themselves among worshippers, unless Corvyn wished to create a great deal of consternation and conflict, he would need to use other means to determine if a trident had arrived near or in the Kaaba, whether it remained in place, and how the Poetics had dealt with it.
Clad in unseen shadows, Corvyn assumed the countenance and shape of a raven, leaving only the raven form visible as he flew across Ummah and over the streets and white buildings of Jannah toward the mosque that surrounded the Kaaba. Descending toward the mosque, he located a near-empty balcony and perched on the white stone railing. The location mattered little, since the mosque was circular. He sensed that the trident had been embedded in the white alabaster shrouded by the black silk, but was now covered by a thin layer of alabaster, the only practical way of dealing with it, since the power necessary to remove it might well damage, if not destroy, the Kaaba.
Since the Poetics were similar to the Judaics in one respect—that there was no single leader of the faith—the only questions that remained were which angel would appear and in what guise to deal with the shadow interloper.
Those questions were partly resolved with a blinding glare and a wall of pure white light which encircled Corvyn. Since remaining in the form of a raven was confining, to say the least, Corvyn resumed his proper form and stood behind the white stone balcony wall, shielded from view of the worshippers in the mosque or in the courtyard below.
Within the circle of light appeared an angel, a figure imbued with overwhelming power, not to mention projecting a sense of absolute right, a figure so bright that most could not have looked directly at the angel.
“Creature of Iblis, without fear,
Why are you presently here?”
“I’m neither a creature of Iblis, nor a djinn, and I’m here to behold the Kaaba.”
“Here only the faithful may pray.
Depart now, for you may not stay.”
“I mean no harm to those who believe,” replied Corvyn, and those words were absolutely true, not to mention accurate, for truth and accuracy were not always the same, especially in the nether regions of theology.
“Allah on high weighs those who cry lies,
Binds them to fire that never dies.”
Corvyn noted that the words were more than chanted, less than sung, and melodious, nonetheless. They also revealed the angel and his purpose. “I never knew you were so poetic, Azrael.”
“He knows the souls who offer false praise,
And will dispatch the fallen to the Blaze.
Those who disbelieve the Prophet’s signs
Further Iblis’s unholy designs.”
“I don’t disbelieve the signs, Azrael,” returned
Corvyn pleasantly. “They just don’t happen to apply to me.”
“Which of God’s bounties will you deny?
Which of his commands will you defy?
Refuse him and face a fire of molten brass
And torments in Gehenna that will never pass.
Iblis refused the signs and gloried in the earth,
Lusting after fame, followers, and passing worth.
Although you fly, your raven wings will fail
For all you came to Heaven by starry sail.”
With the last of those words, the light surrounding Azrael turned eye- and soul-searing, as well as hot enough to incinerate anything.
Corvyn had already removed himself, knowing of Azrael’s lack of patience with those intemperate enough to resist his warnings and blandishments.
He waited until the containment vanished and the area returned to a reasonable approximation of normality and then reappeared, once more as a raven, wondering, with wry amusement, which of the angels would next appear.
The reverberations of a distant trumpet and another wall of light suggested the identity of the next angel, who did not speak.
Resuming his human form, Corvyn said mildly, “Welcome, Israfyl.”
“When that trumpet is blown with a mighty blast
Shouting the end of days at last
The Terror shall come and Heaven shall be cleft
In its frailty and the faithless left
In the desolation of the Fallen past.”
“You might be right about that, angel of the trumpet, but I’d rather that we not go through that again. Humanity’s had enough Falls already, don’t you think?”
There was a time of silence before Israfyl replied.
“For the righteous read the book in their right hand,
But others scorn it in their left and will forever stand
In the depths of Gehenna and the fires of hell,
Because they turned from faith and fell.
Do not obey those who cry lies.
Do not heed those who compromise.
Ignore those who claim faith is dead,
Or that science rules instead.”
Corvyn nodded. “Very poetic, and I’d expect no less from the angels who serve the Almighty and protect the words of the Prophet. But what about the other people of other Books? You know, those in the other mansions of Heaven? Or those who are good without a Book. Aren’t they worth a look?” Even before he sensed the sonic, the spiritual, and the pure energy about to be focused within the circle of light, Corvyn withdrew into the shadows and made his way back toward Ummah.
There was little point in tempting a third angel, for that angel would doubtless have been Mikail, or possibly even Jibreel, and he might just have arrived in full power and not been in a mood to listen, and that would have been unnecessarily painful for Corvyn, if not worse. It also would have accomplished nothing that his conversations, if they could be called such, with Azrael and Israfyl had not already achieved, or for that matter, failed to achieve.
Certainly, the amount of power focused on where Corvyn had not been was significant and had to have been noticed by some, if not all, of the other hegemons besides Jibreel, not to mention registering within the systems of the Pearls of Heaven.
In the shadows, Corvyn took the equivalent of a deep breath, then made his way across the two cities, both of which seemed somewhat larger than when he last visited, and emerged into his temporary quarters, where he made preparations to set out once again.
While it was more than clear that no one in the cities he had visited thus far had the power to embed the tridents, Corvyn had only narrowed the most likely prospects to powers in those cities of the Hegemons that he had not yet visited … or other places as well.
While silver birds look grave and proud,
the raven flies through time’s last shroud.
18
Directly to the east of Jannah lay only the Sands of Time, the Torrent of the River Styx, the Great Cataract, and Lake Lethe. Corvyn could have retraced his way back north to the River Jordan, then followed that river road to the last town close to Lake Lethe and then crossed the hills to Los Santos. For reasons he could not have logically stated, that route did not feel right. That was why, two days out of Jannah, he rode the electrobike eastward along a way little wider than a path that might or might not have existed prior to his arrival. Each individual traversed the Dunes of Memory created by the Wind of the Past on the Sands of Time by himself, even when accompanied. At the same time, even if unaccompanied, a traveler was never long left alone, especially not with his or her thoughts. That said, it was still often better to travel alone, if one remained strong of will. If one did not, traveling the Sands of Time was almost invariably fatal.
Corvyn had not seen Gabriel’s doves since slightly after he had entered the Sands of Time and feared they would not survive, but there was little he could do, for only Gabriel could recall them, and Corvyn doubted that would occur, not given the rigidity of purpose of the Paulists.
The white light that flowed from the Pearls of Heaven was pitiless in what it revealed and concealed amid the sands that constantly shifted, with or without wind.
To Corvyn’s left, almost unseen, protruding from the white sands, was a robotic sampling arm, a device of metal both shining and yet pitted by time, doubtless connected to a larger device deeper beneath the sand. As Corvyn rode past, the arm stretched, impossibly beyond its physical capability, and touched Corvyn’s shoulder. An electric-like jolt convulsed his arm, enough that his eyes watered momentarily.
That shock was only the beginning, he knew, but that was another reason why he needed to take the path he had chosen.
Perhaps an hour later, he saw an object that appeared at times to be an octahedron and at times a sphere, hovering over the top of a dune. As he neared the object, it began to spin, then vanished. A flash of light washed over Corvyn. For an instant, he felt as though he had been bathed in acid, if without the long-term effects.
He racked his memories for what that object might have been, then winced as he recalled the interlaced web of those octahedrons moving across a jade-green sky, turning all beneath them the gray of a long-dead world as they passed, a gray that remained for eons.
Despite the vividness of what he saw and sensed, and the sometime violence, only once in a great while did either the rough beasts or the avatars of sophisticated technology of destruction or deception escape the Sands’ clutches.
His thoughts circled like metal replicas of carrion birds, devoid of blood and sinew, lacking feathers, but well-endowed with claws sharpened by time.
He looked ahead and smiled, seeing sandships scudding across the flats that were not open to him, for the flats held the memories of what might have been and never came to pass. These ships searched endlessly and vainly for forgotten canals that were never built on the Sands of Time, nor had they existed anywhere except in the histories of the might-have-beens. Yet as memories of dreams, that recollection pleased him. The dreams that never came to pass offered both hope and consolation, and far too often in the length of history, both had been rare.
He continued onward, east toward the lake that he would not reach or choose to bathe in. For who else is left who wishes to remember? Especially what Corvyn continued to have to recall.
With that realization, he almost slowed the electrobike, but did not, since that would merely have added to the memories likely to assault him in any event, so he continued eastward.
Somewhere ahead, he sensed a rawness. Possibly a recent violent death or a disruption that should not have existed in the Sands, and that disturbed him. Immediate and violent deaths, rare as they were in Heaven, belonged in the lands of the Decalivre and the villages of belief, not in the Sands of Time, which were meant for other deaths.
The sense of rawness, recentness, and wrongness grew as he proceeded toward it, for, being who he was, he could do nothing else, at least not while amid the Sands of Time.
An hour passed, more or less, before he rode slowly between two dunes and beheld the abomination—two figures laid out in rings of fire, Brynhyld and Kara, the two Valkyries he had encountered on setting out from Helios.
Their blue eyes were open, but unseeing, and their faces were frozen in an expression of disbelief, with a preservation field around them that faded and vanished as Corvyn neared, as did the two rings of fire. The right hand of each held the sword that was the true shape of the walking sticks that they carried when they had conversed so briefly with Corvyn. Neither the swords nor their sun-bronzed skins, stronger than armor, had sufficed against the power that ripped them from the hills through which they had proudly strode. That transition had indeed been abrupt, given the freshly dismembered small leaves and pine needles strewn around them.
The immense amount of energy required for that transition, for the instant death of two Valkyries more or less invulnerable to most weapons, especially those powered by mere muscle, and for the field that had surrounded and preserved the two, suggested that no minor power or principality could have accomplished the abomination. Added to that, the field had been attuned to release itself at the arrival of any power or principality, or less possibly just to Corvyn …
… and the perpetrator has to be one of those heading a House of the Decalivre or an unknown of equal power.
The other factor that bothered Corvyn, more than a little, was the cold-blooded killing of two Valkyries who, insofar as was possible, were essentially minding their own business and had been murdered by a power to whom they posed no threat.
Or did they?
Were their deaths meant as a message to Corvyn? Yet that made no sense, because neither Brynhyld nor Kara knew anything about the tridents, and Corvyn had never offered a threat to any House or even to any but the most misguided of villages of faith.
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