Daniel stepped forward, his eyes hard. “King of Kings and Glory of the Sun, I did these things as accused and would do so again, if it saved even one innocent life.”
Cyrus did not miss a moment, this playing out no doubt as Hab heard him and Daniel rehearse. “Then let it be proclaimed! Daniel of the nation of Israel has committed the crimes of religious intolerance and injury to the faithful of Bel and his temple. Daniel is sentenced to three years in exile and to pay a fine of one hundred pounds of silver to Belshazzar, the blessed plaintiff. Let the people of Babylon know their Father is just!”
A smattering of applause greeted the pronouncement, but the high priest was not impressed. Belshazzar objected, “Great Lord, I beseech you. In other judgments within your expansive kingdom, the King of Kings has sentenced to death those guilty of these crimes! Is Bel a less worthy god? Does the King of Kings not honor the law he himself made?”
This challenge to the King shocked Hab: not only was the King’s decision to be final once pronounced, but the boldness of Belshazzar’s challenge was breathtaking. Surrounded by Bel’s faithful, Hab felt the air grow tense, and he worried that the high priest had prepared his followers for an uprising if their demands were not met.
In a whisper that only Cyrus could hear, Belshazzar spoke, “If the King of Kings does not take Daniel’s life for the blood stolen from Bel, his faithful will create such a feast of carnage that Bel will become engorged enough to block out the very sun.”
Incensed by this challenge, Cyrus curtly declared, “If it be that Bel is so worthy of this man’s blood, then Bel may have it. Let Bel take it himself.”
Behind the fangs and tusks, Belshazzar’s face twisted from righteous indignation to a satisfied leer. “As you command, my King of Kings! This day, I beseech you to personally escort the guilty man to meet my god. Bel will be most glad to collect his due with Cyrus the Great as witness, from the justice given by his blessed son, the King of Kings!”
Hab was confused by all of this. While things were not going at all according to plan, Daniel had managed to embarrass the high priest by proving the stone idols in Bel’s temples did not actually eat the food offerings left to them, but these tributes were eaten by the priests instead. Surely Belshazzar did not intend to be exposed as a charlatan again, this time with the King there to witness. Hab could see the same thoughts crossing the King’s mind and, given the King’s hesitation, Belshazzar must see it, too.
The high priest rushed to fill the silence left by Cyrus’ hesitation. “Yes, great Cyrus, our god has chosen to destroy Daniel, the defiler, himself! Bel invites you to bear witness to his greatness in the flesh!” he triumphantly exclaimed. “When the King of Kings pleases, his humble servant and leader of Bel’s faithful will take him, by paths unknown to all but those favored by our god, to witness the glory of Bel and the fulfillment of the king’s judgment.”
Cyrus sat still no longer. Turning his head to face Daniel, he saw a contented man. Hab saw the same thing. No doubt, he thought, Daniel had already known this would come to pass.
The king rose. “Let us proceed at once, for justice must be swift for it to be justice in truth.” Nodding to the royal governor to take his place, Cyrus walked down the ziggurat as his elite bodyguard assembled around him.
Belshazzar smiled, his satisfaction clear even while masked by the skull of an unnamable beast.
That sick leer inspired Hab to wonder if there was substance to the high priest’s claim. If true, Hab worried, what good was Daniel’s faith against the wrath of an all-devouring god?
Cyrus rode with a dozen of the Immortals, his elite horsemen, escorting Belshazzar and his chief acolyte, and Daniel and his apprentice, out of the city. The high priest told them that, at the end of a day’s ride out to the west from the walls of Babylon and in the dying of the light, they would find the dwelling place of his god in the Earth. That his voice was absolutely certain in its triumph unnerved the Persians and the young man, who suspected that these Immortals were in no more of a hurry than he was to meet a god called the Devourer. Daniel was unshaken.
They rode hard into the wild on the King’s finest horses. That Cyrus, his men, and Daniel seemed tireless in their ride did not surprise Hab, but rather that one so soft, pampered, and fat as Belshazzar did not complain nor slow to a gallop behind the hardened warriors leading the way. Instead, the corpulent sadist seemed animated by a zealot’s spirit, by the absolute conviction that victory was his, and that the great enemy of his god would soon be destroyed.
The wind grew quieter the further they traveled toward the place of punishment; an unease over and beyond any fear of the unknown suffused the air. The soil became barren, the sky cast a strange tint of red, and the sun became obscure, as if a thin veil had been placed over it.
Then the mountain came into view. Jutting up from the forsaken desert, it looked alien to this world, as if it should not exist. In his many travels with Daniel, Hab had never seen this strange sight, nor heard any whispered stories about this black mountain. As they approached the towering basalt rock, Hab’s trained eyes could not shake the idea that he saw windows and portals carved into the rock, weathered by eons of sand and wind. He wondered if this mountain was really a mountain at all, if perhaps it might instead be the burned ruins of the tower of Babel, destroyed by God for the unspeakable blasphemies wrought by men there long ago.
Hab noticed the wind no longer blew at all. The air was still. The only noise came from the travelers’ breathing, and the horses stamping and snorting, their reluctance to be here evident. Belshazzar chuckled; the king looked resolutely ahead; Daniel seemed at peace.
One day perhaps, mused Hab, he would gain his master’s sense of invincibility. For now, he felt all too mortal. Something feels wrong here, Hab thought. With every breath he took, he felt sicker and sicker, as if the air was filled with poison.
When the party neared the base of the darkened mountain, Belshazzar motioned for the King’s men to halt their advance. As they objected, Belshazzar bowed in his saddle, noting aloud, “I have no weapons. Bel wishes King Cyrus no harm. He is to bear witness that justice has been fulfilled, and then he will return to you.”
The lead horseman was quick to take offense. “Watch your tone when speaking of the King!” He went to draw his sword.
The high priest’s leering smile engulfed his face. “Will violence ease your fear, soldier? There might be comfort in that familiar act, to ease your nerves. Be careful though, soldier. We are in Bel’s kingdom now. We are all equal in his sight. And to his hunger,” he said, looking each Immortal in the eye until they broke contact. “As I said, my god Bel wishes for his faithful servant, the King, to bring unto him the convicts for execution. Bel wishes to personally thank you for your offering,” he finished, looking at Cyrus.
Cyrus nodded for the Immortals to comply. Hab saw them pull their horses away from the mountain, no doubt slightly relieved to be even a few more paces distant from it.
“Come,” muttered the high priest, as he, Cyrus, Daniel, and Hab rode alone to the base of the mountain. The horses whinnied and bucked to the point of open revolt, their fear of what they sensed lay ahead overwhelmed their training.
Hab held on for dear life, while trying to keep from retching in his growing nausea, when he heard Belshazzar mutter an unintelligible incantation from atop his perfectly calm horse. The animals grew docile enough to walk quietly to the end of the trackless path.
When they stood a mere dozen paces from the black mountain, Belshazzar swung himself down from his saddle. Reaching down between his feet, he took a handful of parched soil from the earth, and Hab saw him mutter another incantation. When the high priest finished, a shadow cast on the rocks by the setting sun deepened until it became the yawning mouth of a cave.
“In you go, my King. Lead the prisoners to the inner temple. The way will be clear. Watch the sacrifice. And return,” he said, approaching the mounted King. “And your law, an
d empire, will be upheld, with the blessings of my god, who you will see is the greatest of them all.”
Cyrus bristled, but he was bound to his word. Dismounting, he walked toward the cave. Daniel dismounted, walking to join his monarch and friend.
“You, too,” grinned Belshazzar, looking at Hab. “You were his accomplice. You too must face judgment.”
Hab dismounted, reluctantly. He knew his guilt was real in this act he had never wanted to happen.
Before Cyrus’ foot touched the edge of darkness leading downward, Belshazzar called out, “My King! Wait a moment before descending. Return to me, so I may give you the marking of Bel’s blessing. With this sign, my god will not devour you in his righteous fury. He will honor those faithful to him, and you may escape to bear witness to the completion of your justice.”
Daniel shouted in defiance, “Bel thrives on devouring his own!”
Belshazzar laughed fully and deeply. “So he does!”
Cyrus turned to do as he was told, but Daniel stopped him. “My King, you will not be spared if you go with us. You must stay here, so that some light will be left to guide this fallen world, if we do not return.”
Cyrus understood and handed Daniel an unlit torch. “May the eternal flame of Heaven protect you.”
Hab noted that the King’s arm trembled. Hab realized he was not alone in his ill feeling.
There was no more time for speeches or grandstanding, and he might be about to be eaten by this damned mountain. Hab’s mind raced furiously, desperately grasping for any means of escape. He felt like he had a poisonous stone in his gut, and he wanted nothing more than to throw up and die, here, without further ado and not by being torn apart and eaten by an angry god, who he had wanted to leave alone in the first place.
His face green with sickness, he took his last deep breath to brace himself for what he was about to do, but then felt a hand on his back. He looked to see Daniel beside him, smiling, as hale and hearty as ever. “Come, boy. God is watching us, and we must not fail Him. I need your help to carry our small light into the great darkness.”
His stomach calmed unexpectedly, and Hab knew there could be no more delay. His master had decided his fate for him, once again.
The shadow had indeed become a gateway to beneath the mountain, and they walked down a dust-covered, smooth floor into the cavern. Hab judged this cave to be no natural formation: the opening was regularly spaced in both width and height, leading steadily downward, with what looked to be rib-like sections of stone carved at even intervals as far as he could see in the faint light.
Just as the light from the sun began to fade, Hab began scouring about the passage, trying to find a way to light his torch.
Daniel reached out to stop him, saying, “Habakkuk, fret not with such things. God will light our way.”
Praying quietly, Daniel reached his right hand toward the last of the dying light outside the cave and, to Hab’s amazement, pulled into his hand the last bit of sunlight. It floated there, weak, but still the light of the sun and of the world God created, not of this abyss.
“We will use this to guide our way. The fire of the torch will betray us too quickly to whatever foul beast is in here. This light is of the Creator, and it can be seen only by those with the light within them to see it.”
Hab had never witnessed this miracle before, even though he had seen Daniel work a number of deeds that defied explanation in his battles with the minions of Hell. He was entranced by the thin, warm ball of light, not noticing the fall of night outside, nor the strength that return to his body. He was ready to go, to follow his master wherever this light may guide them.
The path continued down into the depths, and it increasingly seemed as though the stale air itself pressed in around them, trying to snuff out the light guiding their way. Moments of quiet walking turned into tens of minutes, and then into hours, yet no assassins leapt from the shadows nor did any fire-breathing, roaring demon accost them with its horns and claws. The sights Hab thought he saw carved into the mountain above were mirrored by the specters of the same below, of broken archways, cracked columns, and windows filled with ruin. Sometimes, Hab thought he beheld doors which never had light spill across their thresholds, but which nevertheless beckoned him to enter into their mysteries. He ignored such temptation but he had to wonder why had he seen no trace of the men who wrought this? Not one bone, not one skull, not even one spider web presented itself.
At long last, when the strength of any soldier would have already been exhausted by the day’s ride and ensuing trek, the tireless master and student saw an unexpected site. Before them, at the end of their journey, so very deep beneath the Earth, a temple came into view. It was built in the fashion of the forgotten stargazers Daniel had taught Hab about: there was a series of cyclopean pillars placed in a circle and a stone ring connected the smooth, perfectly angled square pillars together. Hab had seen no seams in the rock, as if this entire structure had been built from one perfect stone.
As they looked upon the temple, Hab quietly asked, “Master, you have described such a thing as this to me before, a temple of the stargazers. Why did they build one underground?”
Daniel, not taking his eyes off the pillars, answered. “I beheld some such circles in the north lands, before one reaches Mount Ararat, and some to the west and south. There is powerful sorcery here, and devilry of which we must beware.”
As they tarried, a shrill whisper, of such intensity it nearly deafened them both, sounded from within the circle of the pillars. The light of the Creator wavered, but remained, while Hab doubled over in agony, his entire body overwhelmed with pain. Something in the whisper sent Hab’s mind through the trapdoor of barely-contained memory, and there he was again, eight summers old, screaming and struggling to grab Daniel’s outstretched hand, desperate to be free of the grasping, cold, dead hands clutching after his kicking legs.
As he screamed for help, he felt his master’s hand grab his once again, pulling him free of the clawing corpses in the darkness. The memory faded, but Daniel’s strong grip, like a lion’s paw, remained. Hab’s mouth was dry and his body was drenched in sweat, but he felt his breath returning. The light hovered above Daniel’s shoulder and his master kneeled before him, holding Hab up in a sitting position.
“Master,” he croaked, “You saved me.”
Daniel smiled comfortingly, and Hab wondered at his master being completely unshaken. “God has a purpose for you yet. I, His servant, will save you until His purpose is fulfilled. We have been summoned. That sound was but an invitation.”
Walking toward the pillars, Hab noticed strange runes carved, almost freshly so, into their exteriors. As they entered the circle, a sickly scent, composed in equal measures of honey and burning tar, grew in intensity. The ceiling of the temple disappeared into the darkness beyond the weak light taken from the sun so far away, and the smooth, stone floor was completely bare. Having expected a tomb filled with the horrors of human and animal sacrifice, this sterile emptiness was unsettling. A heavy silence filled the chamber.
The light flickered.
A rending sound erupted from the darkness in the form of jagged bass, shaking both Hab and Daniel inside and out, filling them with revulsion, and causing Hab to wretch uncontrollably. He was the first to fall, his eyes starting to bleed, and his ears filling with an unbearable ringing noise. Blindly, he reached out to Daniel for succor.
Daniel was not even looking at his student. Instead, he faced resolutely out into the darkness, beyond the light, fighting the sickness he felt in the core of his being. He ignored Hab’s weak croaks for relief. Daniel placed the dying sunlight behind him, just over Hab’s convulsing body, and walked to the edge of the light.
Hab saw a flurry of images as he rolled in agony, scenes from his worst memories and of things yet to come, yet he knew part of what he saw was right in front of him: Bel, the god. A shimmering, multi-mouthed thing of scintillating, hungry darkness that
snapped at his master, a dragon from Hell incarnate, built from mind-bending shapes and lines, warping reality as it moved. It was neither animal, nor insect, nor crawling thing, nor creature from the sea. Calling this thing a “creature” would be a fundamental error, as creatures have a creator and this thing surely had none.
The sight of this Thing From Before The Light became too much for Hab’s mind to bear, and his eyes rolled back, leaving him to see only the darkness inside his own mind. He rolled and convulsed, screaming as hard as he could, even though his lungs felt filled with a heavy, suffocating air.
Whether merely a few moments or an eternity later, everything grew quiet. Everything, once again, grew still. Hab’s eyes rolled back to their proper place, and he saw the light. He focused on the tiny mote of sunlight floating above him, all that was left of what Daniel plucked from the sky, barely more than a strand of golden straw at this point. He lay on his back on the temple floor, barely able to see more than a few inches beyond that golden thread.
He was bloody all over, but alive. There was no sign of Daniel or the thing from the darkness Hab shuddered merely to remember. Crawling around the temple, feeling his fate was decided and perhaps this devouring hell was where his soul would be trapped forever, he looked for his master.
Finding Daniel lying on the ground, Hab reached out to comfort his master.
“Master,” he whispered. “Is it gone?”
Nearly catatonic, Daniel gasped out a few words, none of which Hab could understand.
“Master, come back to me. I have you. You are with me, Hab.”
Daniel started crying uncontrollably, and Hab doubted his master even knew why. Daniel struggled to hand something to Hab, his hand barely holding the object, so large it was.
Hab took it, while continuing to whisper reassuringly to his troubled master. He had no idea what it could be: a deep blue crystal the size of a man’s skull, the likes of which he had never seen. It weighed nothing and, but for fear of its origin, Hab would have found it entrancingly beautiful.
In the Beginning (Anthology) Page 3