Meanwhile Oriphiel’s broad and charismatic voice poured through the TV’s tiny speakers. It seemed to fill the apartment with a spectral luminance, to merge with the inflowing sunlight, to shimmer and shine. He introduced himself, and then made the announcement that he would be running in the 2013 presidential election. He then went on to give the brief background of himself, where he was from and what his political history entailed; but everything he said Carl knew to be utter bullshit, just a façade designed to persuade his listeners.
He felt sick and groaned as he rose up from the kitchen floor.
God help me.
He realized that, for the first time in his life, he sincerely meant it.
God, please help me.
He could barely bring himself to look at the TV. His insides shook at the sight of the Archangel Oriphiel in physical form, no longer confined to visions and dreamland, but alive and breathing—and there on the damn television, for Christ’s sake.
Carl had seen enough. But as he reached for the power button, a banner ran across the bottom of the screen, several sentences scrolling in italicized letters:
2013 is finally upon us! This is the year of the Galactic Alignment, when the stars and the planets will be aligned in a very special way! Are you ready for the intergalactic party?
He switched off the TV and stood quivering in the empty, silent room. He stood there for a very long time. Finally he said, “Okay, okay… I get it. I hear you.”
Then he hung his head and for once he began listening to his inner voice of truth—and he knew for certain that it belonged to the divine spiritual realm, that it would guide him toward light, clarity, and wisdom.
After he was satisfied, after he felt calm, tranquil, and somewhat drugged, he retrieved his breakfast from the table and brought it over to his desk. He had lots of writing he wanted to get done.
SHADRACH BESIEGED – Adrian Chamberlin
PROLOGUE: The Shadow over Jerusalem
“It is sufficient to relate that in the Temple of Solomon and the portico crusaders rode in blood to the knees and bridles of their horses. In my opinion this was poetic justice that the Temple of Solomon should receive the blood of pagans who had blasphemed God there for many years. Jerusalem was now littered with bodies and stained with blood…a new day, a new gladness, new with everlasting happiness, and the fulfilment of our toil and love brought forth new words and songs for all.”
– Raymond of Aguilers
The Holy Land, 1099 A.D.
On the day after the Fall of Jerusalem, Massoud went into the Desert of Judah, alone. Rage blinded him, even more than the glaring sunlight that turned the shifting sands into an ocean of fire. Heat and fury were his sole companions as he turned his back on the city he had spent his young life in – that he, and others of the faith knew as al-Quds and the hated Knights of the Cross called Jerusalem. It was no longer home, and because of the atrocities carried out there, it never would be again.
Unless I succeed in my mission. Then the city will be home to the faithful once more.
It was a mission he knew to be suicide. Each step onwards was agony; each grain of sand that burrowed in through the ragged holes of his sandals was a fresh ball of fire that made his legs quiver with pain. But as it agonised him, so too did it compel him.
My agony is naught compared to what my brothers and sisters suffered at the hands of the Franks, he whispered to the burning air. The privations of the desert must not weaken me; I must be strong. I must reach my goal.
He had repeated the same words over and over again, a mantra: whenever he felt compelled to stumble and fall into the desert and allow the shifting sands to cover what remained of his bones, he repeated the words and forced his dying body onwards.
I must be strong. I must reach my goal. His physical burdens were light, his possessions few. The last dregs of rank water had been drained and the waterskin abandoned miles back. Food was nothing but a memory. He did not know when he had last eaten, save that it was before the city fell to the Frankish knights who had taken the Cross.
His burden was a black leather sack hoisted on a shoulder rubbed raw from weight and friction. It contained his earthly possessions, and they were not even his. One, stolen. The other, an artefact no mortal man should be alone with.
He felt another blister on his back pop, and more fluid dripped down his shoulder, as acute as the misery that was only just bearable by the rage that powered his dying body through the sands. All other protection from the desert was denied him: his shemagh had been torn from him by the jeering soldiers as he fled along with Hassan through the East Gate, and his djellaba was nothing but rags. His skin, once a pleasing honey colour, was now black and tanned like an old man’s; his lips were split in countless places into raw, ragged strips. He no longer felt pain there, for the sun had burned away any ability for sensory perception. Neither taste nor pleasure would pass his once-youthful lips again: this he knew.
He also knew he would never again smile. Facial muscles had shrivelled and died in the desert furnace, ensuring his lips would never move far from the fixed grimace that showed only a sliver of clenched white teeth to a world that had changed beyond all recognition. This pleased him, for he had nothing and no one to smile for.
His last smile had been for Hassan ibn-Sadak, his companion in the Temple. A smile of comfort, a promise that they would meet again in Paradise and share in the joy of knowing that the salibyyun would suffer agonies beyond endurance for their crimes.
Bearers of the Cross, indeed! Massoud had spat the words like venom, but the only reply from Hassan had been coughed blood; great, black clots of congealed fluid that coated the boulders and spars of the siege tower behind which they hid. Have these followers of Christ learned nothing of His teachings? Did He not command mercy, to love your enemy as your own brother?
Hassan had not replied. Massoud felt his friend, tutor and mentor die in his arms, feeling the body temperature lower with every moment that passed. Palls of smoke from al-Quds blackened the night sky, blotting the moon and stars from view. Nothing but darkness above them, and the fires of Hell in a desecrated city before them, while the demon warriors of Christ roamed the alleys and streets searching for more riches to plunder and more blood to spill.
Massoud raged as Hassan spat more black blood, cursing the Franks for their bloodlust and profanity. Deus lo volt! went the cry from the knights of Christ with each fresh victim. God wills it!
Insh’Allah – God willing…Hah! No god would will this. Christian, Hebrew, Muslim – none. There was only one who would wish such chaos and bloodshed upon this Earth, as he and Hassan – and those others who served in the Temple – knew all too well. And the name God – or even Shaitan, the Great Adversary – did not do justice to such a being.
All this time, all those lives spent in service to guard the fragile barrier between worlds, all for nothing. Massoud wondered why Hassan had not felt the same rage he experienced when the Holy City fell, why he was as accepting as an old man awaiting death.
He saw the answer in his mentor’s dying eyes. As one who had yet to reach his seventeenth year he was more susceptible to the anger and sense of injustice so prevalent amongst the young. His mentor, who had seen four times as many summers as he, was the one to curb the excesses of the younger acolytes, with nothing stronger than a gentle admonishment. That, delivered in a softly spoken voice, with a knowing smile that said I too know what it is to be young, was enough to change the mood from youthful impetuosity to sage contemplation. The relaxation exercises and the chants to sooth the demon within them all, to acknowledge the human monster, to live with it and not to feed it nor rouse it to destruction, was one of the hardest lessons the acolytes had to learn, yet the most essential to their sacred task.
It is a lesson I have forgotten, he thought ruefully as he wiped a blistered palm over his sweat-sodden brow. I have given way to rage.
When the old man finally succumbed to the wound inflicted by the crusa
der’s sword, coughing away the remainder of his life fluid in black, clotted spurts of agony, Massoud had felt a strange calm come over him. Hassan ibn-Sadak’s spirit had gone, leaving only an empty shell in the ruins of the siege tower, but Massoud knew then what had to be done. He would continue the journey alone, would bury the idol deep in the desert, far from the avaricious grasp of the crusaders.
At first light, when he looked over his shoulder at the burning domes and pillars of al-Quds, a new sight greeted him, and the rage returned. It was all he could do to turn back and attack the knights who hoisted Hassan’s naked, stringy corpse onto the makeshift cross. It was all he could do to tear the nails from his mentor’s bloodless wrists and ankles and drive them into the grinning visages of the knights of Christ.
But Hassan’s eyes, open in death, glowed with dawn’s roseate light, and it seemed as though his spirit had returned. Those eyes stared in Massoud’s direction, warning him not to waste his life.
Your destiny lies east. The idol must be returned to the desert, buried in the sands. When al-Quds is no longer in sight, when you see the Dreaming Pillars, then you will know it is safe to dig the grave for the Hated One. Then clouds obscured the sun and light left Hassan’s eyes for good. Massoud was alone, and he now had only one thing to live for.
Hassan’s copy of the Al Azif was ashes, the first thing the old man had insisted on disposing of before they attempted their escape from al-Quds. But that would not be enough; the invocations necessary to bring the Hated One back still survived in the memories of the Order, and the crusaders may have tortured some of the Order into revealing it.
Perhaps it was the arrogance of youth that compelled Massoud to attempt the journey. Perhaps it was rage that prevented him from seeing how futile the quest was. As the desert sucked his life with every footstep and passing breath, he asked himself whether or not this was so.
But what choice do I have? It is not just the idol that must be safeguarded. The seal also must not fall into the crusaders’ hands. A pang of guilt struck him, with the remembrance of what he had stolen.
Should I have told him? Or would he have insisted I destroy it in the Temple before we fled?
Such power should not be in the hands of one so young, inexperienced in the ways of the Order – and so susceptible to rage. Hopefully he would find a new home for it in Damascus if he survived the desert, make it safe and secure as it had been in the cellars below the Temple of Solomon.
But maybe I can use it myself! Could he not use the power of the seal to raise the djinni, as its creator had done? His hand went to his throat, caressing the leather thong that held the clay seal to his heart.
There was a buzzing in Massoud’s ears as he turned to stare at the sun’s position in the sky. He blinked, noted the position and time – the fourth hour past noon – and glanced over his shoulder. As expected, his footprints described a gentle curve over the plain, indicating his direction was not as straight as he had expected. He thought back on what Hassan had told him.
“We must follow our inner direction, not the outside influences. The sun can lie to you. Not all the stars are right.”
The sun was very real and very truthful in its harm and damage to Massoud at this moment. There were no lies. The ramblings of a dying man, Massoud thought, shifting his scorched feet, attempting to correct his orientation. He paused.
The desert looked strange. The rocks and gravel had disappeared and the sand dunes in the east appeared larger, darker, as though leeching the sunlight from the sky. He dared to look up, to allow the sun to burn his eyes again. The grit must have finally damaged his eyesight, for Massoud could no longer discern the sun in the sky. No clouds obscured the burning orb; and yet nothing filled his eyes but pure white.
Have I gone blind at last? Is this what Hassan hinted at? Must I now rely on my “inner direction?”
No. He lowered his face and the dunes filled his vision. A sigh of relief was arrested as he saw the colour of them. Orange and scarlet bands rippled diagonally from left to right, then changed to shimmering purple and violet.
Massoud blinked. For a brief moment, he thought he saw the purple and violet bands solidify, become tall and vertical. Pillars.
He remembered a tale Hassan had told: of a lost city in the desert, a fabulous ancient settlement known as Irem, surrendered to the sands of time. But was that not in the Rub’ al Khali, the Empty Quarter, far to the southeast?
When al-Quds is no longer in sight, when you see the Dreaming Pillars, then you will know it is safe to dig the grave for the Hated One.
He stood still, no longer feeling the pain of the sand burning through the remnants of his sandals. A coldness took him as the buzzing sound transformed into a sound he knew all too well.
Horses, at a fast canter; heavily-laden. With armoured men, Massoud thought. He groaned, the sound barely audible against the clatter of spears and swords on chainmail, and the thunder of fresh horses accustomed to the desert.
The soldiers of Christ had followed him. So, they had ransacked the space below the Temple of Solomon, scoured the Dome of the Rock for the unholy of unholies…and discovered it to be missing.
The optical illusion of the sand pillars forgotten, he turned to face his pursuers. Three steeds and three riders; the speed and power with which they galloped through the desert kicked up the sand so it seemed that the horses had no legs, but approached on a violent tidal wave of sand. Sunlight glinted on the chainmail, turning them into scales: fish-like monsters approaching on a sullen sea.
The horses were short, well-muscled. These were no palfreys, designed for long-distance riding. These were the feared destriers, the war horses of the Franks.
The riders carried no lances, but Massoud saw three bars of silver appear in the sky, and knew they were drawn swords. Inverted teardrop-shaped shields confirmed their identity.
And yet he feared not their approach. Even his rage had dissipated. He felt detached from the desert, from the crusaders and their murderous intentions; even from the passing of his mentor and failing to fulfil his last order, to bury the idol of the Hated One.
Massoud let the sack fall from his shoulder, the sharp metal edges of the idol’s horns and multiple breasts gouging and tearing more skin from beneath his djellaba.
The horsemen came closer. Massoud could see flecks of foam on the destriers’ coats, and the whites of their eyes gleamed. They had been ridden hard.
The crusaders themselves, the hated salibyyun, dismounted. The white surplices with the scarlet cross were streaked with brown smears: bloody signs of battle and slaughter from the city. Wary eyes watched him from beneath conical iron helms; two pairs glanced back to the third, the tallest of the three, as if for instruction.
Massoud laughed, the noise alien to his ears. They fear me!
The tall knight – their leader – approached. He sheathed his sword and removed his helm, handing it to one of his minions; he then advanced slowly, closing the gap between them. His approach was slow, his eyes cautious yet confident; he expected no resistance from a mere Saracen boy who had foundered in the desert.
The knight’s hair was steel grey, cropped close to his skull, his face a mass of old scars. His skin was strangely colourless, tanned by years in the desert, yet it lacked vigour, had neither the healthy young hue of olive nor the parched older shade of walnut. The tan seemed more a memory of the sun, as though the light itself had been bleached from him.
A crooked nose, doubtless broken countless times, cast a shadow on his thin lips, making the sneer more apparent. A bird of prey, its hunting skills honed in the desert, with nothing but contempt for its quarry. He raised his sword and pointed it at the sack.
“Donnez-moi l’idole.” His voice thundered, and Massoud shrank back with the force, contempt, and thinly-veiled violence.
Massoud paused as the words sank in. His accent was not like that of the other Franks who had defiled the city and the Temple. This knight spoke Norman French, but it was pla
inly not his first language.
The grey knight turned and muttered to his underlings, and Massoud detected a few words of what was obviously the man’s home language. English. Massoud would have smiled if he were able.
“I speak your native tongue. It is unfortunate you did not bother to show knightly courtesy by learning ours. Peut-être que c’est un luxe en ces temps troubles?”
The knight froze, and the expressions of his followers showed the shock the hunting party felt. Massoud wondered if he would be able to change their demeanour once more: this time to fear. For it is obvious they know nothing of the true power of the icon. If they did, they would hide in the desert until the sun bleached their bones, gibbering with terror at an intelligence beyond their comprehension that cares nothing for their military prowess, nor their avowed faith in a human god.
There was no mockery on the grey knight’s features as he turned to Massoud again. He sheathed his sword, and after an uneasy silence, his companions followed suit.
“Your English is excellent for one so young,” he said. “And you appear to be well versed in French. Other languages as well, I’ll warrant.”
No mockery, no condescension; the knight respected Massoud’s intellect. And that, the last survivor of the Temple thought, made this Crusader even more dangerous. It was a leading question, an invitation for Massoud to boast of his learning and perhaps show off his erudition.
Massoud did not reply. He could have listed the languages he was versed in: all the tongues of the European Continent; the ancient speech of the Greeks and the Romans; and the long-dead languages of Atlantis and ancient Khem. The learning was essential, as the Order’s library contained parchments, scrolls, and books of wisdom from all over the world and all ages. But Massoud suspected this knight – who doubtless had sworn loyalty to the Norman invaders of his homeland – knew much of the Order already.
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