by Vox Day
The telephone rang. It was Terri, his grand-daughter, who was working as his personal assistant for the summer, giving her mother the luxury of a three-month vacation. Surrounding yourself with family was one sure way to keep yourself out of trouble; over his many years in the ministry, John David had seen far too many of his colleagues tripping over that old serpent’s favorite stone. While he himself had never found it necessary to abide by the Reverend Graham’s famous custom of refusing to remain alone in the company of a woman not his wife, he could certainly appreciate the wisdom of that policy.
“Granda, there’s a man on the phone who wants to talk to you, he says he’s, like, a pastor, from Minneapolis, I think.” Terri paused for a moment. “I forgot to ask his name, I’m sorry.”
John David chuckled affectionately. It was only her second week on the job. She would learn, in time.
“It’s okay, sweetie. You can put him through.”
There were several clicks, and the elderly evangelist smiled as he wondered if Terri had inadvertently hung up on the caller. Well, if it was important, the gentleman would call back. They always did.
“Reverend Collins?” he started as the voice from the receiver barked loudly in his ear. He winced and stabbed quickly at the volume setting. “It’s an honor, sir, a real honor. I know how busy you must be, Reverend, but the reason I’m calling is that there’s a group of us up here, pastors from different churches around the area, and we’ve been getting together regularly to, you know, just put our heads together and see if there isn’t anything we can do to work together across our various denominations. You see—”
“Excuse me,” John David hated to interrupt so rudely, but the man left him little choice. “I’m very sorry, but would you tell me who’s speaking, please?”
“Oh, well, I guess I didn’t tell you my name now, did I.” The caller had an informal manner of speech that made him sound very youthful. “I’m Bill Daniels, from Gethsemane Lutheran. I’m the pastor of a congregation in Maple Grove, that’s a suburb up here west of the Twin Cities, and, well, I guess you could say that I’m one of the leaders of this cross-denominational effort we’ve gotten started. There’s about twenty-five churches involved in our project, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, and even one of the more evangelical Catholic dioceses….”
John David sighed. It was all very wonderful, of course, but he didn’t quite understand where he, a Southern Baptist, happened to fit into this ecumenical picture taking shape on the other side of the country.
“Mr. Daniels, it sounds like you’ve managed to bring together a diverse cross-section of the Kingdom in your area, and that’s a wonderful thing, but I must admit that I do not understand what you are purposing to do. If you don’t mind my asking, sir, I’m curious to know what all of this might have to do with me.”
There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. Then the caller laughed, embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, I guess I thought that was, well, obvious. We’d like to invite you to come up and preach a crusade, of course. Minneapolis hasn’t seen one since Billy Graham was here in ninety-eight. The Metrodome, that’s the big football stadium, seats more than seventy thousand, and we know that an anointed speaker such as yourself won’t have any problem bringing in the crowd to fill it. We’ve certainly got enough souls in need of saving here.”
John David nodded. That was doubtless true, but he wondered if he still had the energy for this sort of endeavor. Despite his many years in the ministry, he wasn’t a natural speaker, and he found the peaceful seclusion of his office far more comfortable than the harsh glare of the spotlights. It was hard enough for him to continue meeting the demands of his weekly television shows, much less contemplate the thought of speaking before a stadium full of people for five straight nights. And then there were all of the other elements involved in the process—the media interviews, church appearances, and, worst of all, the inevitable prayer breakfasts.
“Of course, I’ll be happy to do it,” he was shocked to hear himself say. “But there is one condition.”
“That’s wonderful,” Daniels said enthusiastically. “What’s the condition? I’m sure we’ll be more than happy to meet it.”
“Before I agree to come, I will require four hundred people from each of your churches to commit to praying for this crusade, every day, for a month.”
Again, there was silence.
“Four hundred… but that’s ten thousand people!” his caller exclaimed. “You can’t be serious?”
“Oh, but I am, Mr. Daniels,” John David assured him. “I would no more embark on a crusade of this magnitude without prayer than I would go into battle without an army behind me. Don’t be alarmed, young man. I know how long it takes to put this kind of event together, and I imagine that July or August will be the earliest you could possibly hope to stage it. You have the time to gather your volunteers, I’m certain of it.”
“Well, all right,” Bill Daniels said reluctantly, clearly feeling somewhat put out. “I guess I’ll, ah, we’ll just have to see what we can do, then. I’ll get back in touch with you if we think we’re able to meet your condition.”
“God bless you,” John David told him, and he smiled as he returned the receiver to its cradle without waiting for a response.
He had no doubts that young Daniels was a well-meaning man, but like most energetic young men, he was impatient. It was a disease of which he himself had finally been cured not all that long ago. John David leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, wondering if he would ever hear from the young pastor again. He was surprised to find that he hoped so. Empires vanished into history, books crumbled into dust and a man’s short life was the most ephemeral thing of all. But to help a lost sheep find its shepherd, now that was a legacy that lasted.
To his delight, the image of a lost sheep wandering through strange meadows sparked a promising train of thought, and the elderly evangelist reached for a pencil. But not being gifted with the eyes of Elisha, he had no way of knowing that behind him, two grim-looking angels with great scarlet wings had entered the room in silence, their swords unsheathed.
John David Collins was not the only one with reservations about Minnesota. It was late in the day and Robin had traveled far, so he regarded the two oversized Fallen approaching him with resigned equanimity. Lord Tiercel’s demesne was not a large one, but it was overly stocked with demonic bureaucracy and it had taken three days for him to wrangle permission to cross it with his combination of forgeries and staggeringly outdated credentials from Albion. Miss Arendt had written more shrewdly than she could possibly have imagined, he thought, sighing, when she contemplated the banality of evil.
“What’s your business here?” said one ugly brute, who was approximately twice as tall and three times as wide as Robin. His yellowed tusks gleamed gold in the light of the setting sun.
“I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I was just a sight-seer, mate?”
“Nothing here to see. Unless you’re a Divine spy.”
“Why would they need a spy when they have millions of Guardians scattered about the place?”
The tusked brute paused and looked uncertain. Clearly the thought had never occurred to him before. Ah well, there was a first time for everything. Robin took pity on him.
“I’m not a spy. I’m a retired jester from the Court of Albion, and I heard that the lord of this principality might be in need of one.”
The two brutes looked at each other and grunted with amusement. They turned back to him and regarded him with what could only be interpreted, incredibly as it seemed to Robin, with condescension.
“So, whatt’ya got?” the wider one said.
“Sorry?”
“Show us what you got,” explained the other.
Robin shrugged and caused five small balls of fire to appear in front of him. He began juggling them, first in a normal shower, then in a circular fall. The two brutes looked at each other and snorted, one of them stifling a
yawn. Robin only grinned contemptuously, and reached into their minds to extract a few useful items; neither was any better shielded than a mortal.
As he continued to juggle, he made a few surreptitious changes to the fireballs. Two began to take on the appearance of the two guards, the other two were transformed into reasonable facsimiles of twin temptresses whose images he plucked from the first guard’s mind, and happened to hold more than a little appeal to him. As for the last fireball, he transformed it into the shape of a lovely little Divine angel whose image he’d stolen from the other guard. Tsk tsk. The treacherous hound!
The circular shower rose and fell, as before, but now the two little guard-surrogates sprouted wings and began frantically beating them, desperate to close the gap that separated them from the objects of their desire. Slowly, slowly, they gained on their lovely prey, until finally they managed to get their grasping claws on the squealing temptresses, while the left-out Divine looked on and shook her finger with disapproval.
Robin glanced at his audience and shook his head. The two were enrapt, so much so that the bigger guard was practically drooling. They were entirely at his mercy, but he had no quarrel with them and there was no point in doing them any harm. He hurled each entwined pair high into the air, followed by the little angel, and as the first pair reached the very peak of their arc, all three exploded into a fiery red-white-and-blue column.
The guards gaped at him, looking almost bereft as he took a theatrical bow.
“But… but you didn’t finish,” one finally said.
“Oh, I rather think I did. Now, are you satisfied as to my bona fides?”
“Satisfied to the who?”
“Are you content that I am what I say I am,” said Robin. “Which is to say, a jongleur extraordinaire, one well worthy of a prince’s court.”
“Er, ah…” the guard looked at the other one, who shrugged. “Yeah, sure, okay. But, you know, you might want to find yourself a different court than Bloodwinter’s.”
Robin raised his eyebrows. “Why do you say that?”
“He don’t really go for that sort of thing,” the guard said.
“Ain’t got much of a sense of humor, such as demonlords go,” the other added.
“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you.” Of course, Robin had no intention whatsoever of trying to find a place in whatever passed for a dreary Midwestern court here in the middle of the great American nowhere. But it was interesting to know that even the local prince’s lowliest servitors regarded him as a cold fish. Information wasn’t always useful, but you never knew when what you thought to be nothing but dross turned out to be pure gold.
He waved cheerily to them and whistled as he continued on his long, counterproductive path. Every step took him further away from his goal, and yet each one was necessary, if he hoped to see his mission completed. It was maddening! Rumors, all he had were rumors, that and the sure knowledge that he dared not turn back until the die was ready to be cast. He was free, of that there was no doubt, for not even the long arm of the Mad One’s stretched easily across oceans, but there were those attempting to track him down, even as he himself sought to find the kernel of truth that lay beneath the whispers, spurious inventions and lies.
A disgraced seraph in New York City. A lowly tempter wearing a cloak of gold in St. Louis. One of the mighty Sarim, stripped and shorn of power, enslaved by a cruel northern prince in Canada. Months had passed since he freed Albion’s true king, but he was no closer to completing the next step in his plan to see Oberon restored. Methodically, he stalked each rumor, hunted it mercilessly to its source only to learn that the disgraced seraph was a domination with an exaggerated self-image combined with a reprehensible sense of history, the golden cloak turned out to be a Halloween jape, and if Prince Michael or any other member of the Sarim—present, former or Shadow—should ever set foot in Toronto anytime in the future, it would be the first time as far as Robin could tell.
He frowned. As fruitless as his search had been, and as much as he longed to turn back, the memory of the night before his escape from the clutches of the Mad One precluded him from seriously considering doing so. His present freedom was no accident. He would have liked to take credit for what could reasonably be portrayed as an escape, but he knew better.
After Lahalissa’s noble sacrifice and the brutal mental assault that rendered him insensible, he had woken in darkness. An all-too-brief exploration with his hands informed him that he was in a cell of sorts with only a single place of egress, while an even shorter investigation forced him to conclude that whoever had laid the spellshield around his cell knew exactly what they were doing. It was impenetrable, at least five times stronger than the one that had previously repulsed him at Oxford. But unlike on that occasion, there was little hope that the shield would be permitted to decay and fade away, not while he was still held prisoner here. Imprisoned and at wholly the mercy of a ruthless devil king who had no intention of allowing his enemies to roam freely in his realm.
It was hard, not to give in to sniveling self-pity and gloom, but he did his best. And yet, as he sat in the darkness and the sands of time seemed to slow with every depressing thought of his failure, the temptation to submit grew. What did he owe Oberon, to hold his silence now? He could not divulge the Faery King’s whereabouts, but surely the information he held locked away in his mind would be enough to purchase his freedom. And was not the Mad One his rightful liege? Was not possession nine-tenths of the law? And what did he, one of the most worthless angels ever to be numbered among the countless legions of the Fallen, care for the good, the right and the true anyhow?
GET OUT OF MY MIND!
His silent scream caught the intruders off-guard. He could sense their momentary disconcert, then dismay at being caught out. He laughed, genuinely amused. Did the Mad One truly think a few Doubters whispering at his mind would cause him to despair and reveal all? With an audible snort of contempt, he slammed a stronger thought screen into place. He had faced far greater doubts without any outside help over the last eight centuries, thank you very much; all the same, it was best not to take unnecessary risks.
He was passing the time by watching a duel between two battling automatons he had created from the dust and dirt of the cell when there was a scratching at his door. It was quiet, barely audible, in fact, which led him to conclude that whoever was out there was not supposed to be there. Abandoning his tiny gladiators to crumble into their component materials, he kneeled at the door and placed his ear against it, then scratched three times himself.
“Robin, is that you?”
“Titania?”
“Shhh, not so loud!”
“What are you doing here? Can you get me out of here? Can you break the shield?”
“No! Now, be quiet and listen to me. Tomorrow, they’re going to let you escape. But don’t be fooled! They’ll be watching you.”
Don’t be fooled? You either escaped or you didn’t. What was she going on about?
“What?”
“I won’t say his name, but the one who was trying to break your mind knows now that he can’t, so he’s counting on you to lead him to Oberon. After he visits you tomorrow evening, they’ll lock the door but conveniently forget to restore the shield. They know you’ll walk shadow and fly out, and they think you’ll run right to Oberon.”
Hmmm. That did make sense, except Robin wasn’t sure how far he could trust Titania. While she had told him where Oberon was bound, she had not spoken up for either Gloriana or Lahalissa. Or him, for that matter. Not that he was surprised about the latter. His queen had never forgiven him for that amusing little affair of old, not so much due to the embarrassing ensorcellment, but for his later cruelty in playing the muse for a certain Elizabethan gentleman. Immortal queen, she was now cursed with an unwanted immortality of an altogether different sort. Did the old grudge now outweigh her fickle loyalties? That was the question.
“Why should I believe you? You didn’t exactly play the great
defender in there.”
“What would that have accomplished? Look, you don’t have to believe me. You’ll see what happens soon enough.” She sounded exasperated. “Just promise me that if they leave the shield down, you won’t go running to him, not right away.”
“I couldn’t anyway… I don’t know where he is. Truly.”
There was a momentary silence. “Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s good, I suppose. Under the circumstances.”
“Yes, rather.” A thought occurred to him. “But, aren’t we just back where we started then, if neither one of us can aid him? Diavelina won’t wait forever before making her move, and we’ve got to unseat the usurper before then if he’s to have any chance of holding Albion’s crown against her.”
Albion’s crown. And her sceptre. But not that cursed throne. That would certainly have to go. Robin shivered. He didn’t know if there was any way to free the doomed spirits trapped in that abominable prison, but he hoped there was. Especially since, Titania’s prediction notwithstanding, there was still a reasonable chance he was going to end up in there himself.
“We are, and we aren’t. Listen to me. I don’t know if you figured it out or not, but Maomoondagh is not truly an angel. He—”
“I knew it!”
“Shhh! Listen to me. He is, but he’s something more as well. Something older. I don’t think he’s mad, it’s as if there’s more than one mind in there!”