Four Dominions

by Eric Van Lustbader

  “My solicitor has been given specific instructions to release it upon my death, yes.”

  Obarton snorted. “Your ‘solicitor.’ Ever the proper English gentleman.” He pursed his lips as if he was deep in thought. “So we must be most careful with you, Hugh. Your life is as precious to me as it is to you.”

  “It damn well better be!”

  “Well said, my boy. But, you see, I cannot afford to have you lording it over me. Rum business, and all that, eh what?” He shook with amusement at his own mock-British accent. “So we must take possession of that life to ensure nothing untoward happens to you.”

  “You’re, what, abducting me?”

  “Enisling you, as the French did to their Napoléon.”

  “Putting me in solitary, you mean.”

  “Well, I’ll admit that’s part of your future.”

  “And the other part?”

  He handed Highstreet his phone. “I want you to call your solicitor.”

  “What? In the middle of the night?”

  “He’ll hear about the fire soon enough and then he’ll start wondering, won’t he?” Obarton pursed his lips. “We can’t have that, old boy.”

  “No.” Highstreet said flatly. “I won’t do it.”

  As if this were some kind of signal, the driver pulled over to the curb. Slamming the vehicle into Park, he got out, came around, opened the door on Highstreet’s side, and hauled him out. The punch buried itself in Highstreet’s solar plexus, doubling him over. The driver then proceeded to administer a long, professional, and, as far as Highstreet was concerned, disastrous beating.

  When, after Highstreet had sunk well and good into his solitary pit of agony, the driver threw him back into the backseat he handed Highstreet’s mobile to Obarton. Slamming the door, he returned to his position behind the wheel, threw the car into gear, and headed down the deserted street.

  Obarton opened the mobile, checked incoming calls and texts. “My, my, your boss is awfully anxious to make contact with you.” He put the mobile away. “Well, your phone will give us her location soon enough, and that will be the end of Lilith Swan.”

  Highstreet lay in a crumpled ball, unable to speak or even think coherently. Blood leaked from his ears, his eyes, the corners of his mouth, and too many other places to enumerate. He felt utterly spent, as if he were an airplane that, having run dry, was now plummeting to earth at unthinkable speed.

  Obarton pushed the phone into Highstreet’s hand. “Call your solicitor. Your flat has burned down. Complete accident. You’re taking an extended leave of absence. Heading for Ibiza or some such port of call. Now. Do as you’re told.”

  Highstreet complied, managing to sound coherent. That his voice was unmistakably shaky his solicitor no doubt took as a reaction to the fire.

  When he was done, Obarton took the phone from him, but not before wiping off the blood. “That’s the boy. Your life belongs to me, Hugh. Now that you know that,” he said, keeping his person well away from the leakage of blood, “you know it all.”

  *

  KEEPING THE beam of light playing on the Sphinx, Bravo led Ayla to the foot of the massive sculpture. It rose up sharply, blotting out even the gloom high above them.

  “As I said, the Nihilus claimed there were Four Sphinxes, each with a secret hidden in its mouth. This is the second one I’ve seen. The first was below our Reliquary in Alexandria, Egypt. That’s where I found the Nihilus manuscript.” He lifted the crucifix. “This—the bronze rood—came from the Sphinx in a chamber below a church in Lalibela, Ethiopia. It’s the one Conrad found.”

  “Making three,” Ayla said. “And the fourth?”

  “That’s where it gets tricky. The location of the fourth Sphinx—Thanos, the leader and the most powerful—was expunged from the Book, along with the description of whatever had been secreted in his mouth.”

  “Thanos. Interesting. An analog of Thanatos, the Greek word for death.” She considered a moment. “You’ve said the Phoenician sorcerers conjured the Sphinxes. Did they also hide the four objects?”

  “I don’t know,” Bravo said. “But I mean to find out.”

  With that, he vaulted up onto the plinth. From there, he scrambled up onto the Sphinx’s shoulder, reached around, and inserted his hand into the snarling mouth.

  “Aha!” Bravo removed his hand, held up a golden apple, no larger than a lady apple, but glowing brightly as from an inner fire.

  “What is it?” Ayla asked as he clambered down.

  “According to the Nihilus, the golden apples of the sun were created by King Solomon’s cadre of alchemists before they were joined by the sixty-six Phoenician sorcerers.”

  “So they’re part of Solomon’s legendary gold?”

  Bravo shook his head. “Not at all. Again, according to the Nihilus, that gold was conjured by the Phoenician sorcerers after Solomon died. It was never found, though, as you know, over the centuries numberless adventurers have sought it.”

  Bravo held the bronze rood in one hand, the golden apple in the other.

  “What have they to do with one another?”

  He shrugged. “All I know right now is that the Nihilus clearly stated the four had a strong affinity to one another, that together their power increased exponentially. Perhaps we can’t know more until all four artifacts have been plucked from the Sphinxes’ mouths.”

  “Then we’ll never know,” Ayla pointed out. “Unless we can discover where the fourth Sphinx is located.” She shook her head. “Conrad never found it, did he?”

  “He tried,” Bravo answered her. “But, no. No one’s found Thanos’s location.”

  “I bet Phaedos can help.” Ayla laughed. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  Bravo looked up into the enigmatic face of the Sphinx. “If only I could.” And joining in her brief levity: “Maybe if you kissed him on the lips he’d open up.”

  “Huh,” Ayla said. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Following in Bravo’s footsteps, she pulled herself onto the plinth, then mounted the Sphinx’s massive shoulder and, hanging on with one arm, swung to her left, pressed her lips against the cold veined basalt of Phaedos’s lower lip. Then she swung back, hanging on to his shoulder.

  “Anything?”

  Bravo shook his head. “Not a thing.” He gestured. “Come on down from there.”

  When she had done so, she saw him frowning over the two artifacts.

  “What’s up?”

  “Look at this,” he said.

  Holding the bronze rood in one open palm and the golden apple in the other, he brought his hands together. As they closed, the golden apple began to tremble, then to shudder, rocking back and forth alarmingly. The instant the edges of his hands touched, the apple flew off his palm in the opposite direction, as if to get as far away from the crucifix as possible.

  Ayla retrieved the apple, brought it back to Bravo. “What happened?”

  Bravo grasped the rood firmly, keeping it upright. “Hold the apple tightly. Right, now draw it closer.”

  “The closer I get the harder it is to move forward. The two artifacts are repelling each other.”

  “Odd,” Bravo said, clearly perplexed.

  “This could be the wrong apple.”

  Bravo nodded. “I don’t think so.” He looked around. “In any event, we have what we came for. Time to go.”

  They retraced their steps to the riverbank and the waiting boat.

  “The current is too strong for us to row back,” Ayla pointed out as she climbed aboard.

  “We’re not going back.” Bravo cast off the line from the cleat. “We’re going forward. Only forward now.”

  He pushed off, jumped into the boat, and, seating himself, took up the oars. He needn’t have bothered. The river’s current was stronger now, shoving them as if with a giant hand through the last mile, or ten miles, it was never clear which, out of the Hollow Lands, out into the twilit Mediterranean.

  But before that happened, when they were still only yards a
way from where they had moored, the Sphinx opened its sloe eyes, fixing its implacable gaze on the back of Ayla’s retreating head.

  29

  Istanbul, Turkey: Present Day

  “I WANT TO SPEAK WITH EMMA.” LILITH HAD BEEN STUDYING her mobile’s screen for some minutes with a deepening frown.

  Beleth, grumbling, acquiesced. “Times like this,” it said, in Emma’s deepest register, “I wish I were a Scryer like Phenex. I’m running in unfamiliar territory.”

  Lilith smiled at him, put her hand over Emma’s. “Poor thing. But not to worry. Emma and I will take good care of you.”

  Beleth, looking out of Emma’s black eyes, said in a shocked voice, “How many times do I have to ask what is happening to me?”

  “You’re exploding yet another myth exported by the Church,” Lilith said without hesitation. “The Holy See preaches that evil is monolithic, that it cannot learn. But here you are learning the difference between evil and good.”

  Beleth grumped, but Lilith sensed that it was in some way pleased—if, indeed, a member of the Fallen Legion could be pleased.

  The three of them—the two women, to any onlooker—were standing on the Bosphorus Bridge, precisely at the center of the span, midway between the continents of Europe and Asia. It seemed the correct place for them to be. The idea for the bridge was first formed in the mind of Darius I the Great of Persia in 513 BC. He ordered a pontoon bridge hurriedly constructed on this very spot in order for his armies to run down the fleeing Scythians and, afterward, positioned his warriors in strategic areas of the Balkans to defeat the threatening Macedonian army. The bridge symbolized both integration and victory.

  “Tell me, Beleth,” Lilith continued, “is it true that part of God’s punishment was that Lucifer would never again have a solid piece of ground onto which to set his feet?”

  Though there was a pedestrian path on the bridge, it had been closed for some time due to fears of both suicides and terrorist attacks. However, no one had stopped the women, and the policeman near them seemed to look through them as if they were not there at all. Lilith did not query this anomaly, figuring their seeming invisibility was due to some petty conjuring by Beleth.

  It was a blustery day, clouds of fantastic shapes chasing one another across a lapis lazuli sky. Below them, the traffic along the Strait was thick with ferries, tourist boats, and barges hauling all manner of dry goods and foodstuffs.

  “Makes a damn good story, doesn’t it?” the Power said bitterly. “You know why there are so many stories about Lucifer? Because so little is known about him. He is the Sum of All Shadows, more dreadful than your insect minds can conceive.”

  “Listen, you,” Lilith said. “These two insects are protecting you from being annihilated by Leviathan and any others of your ilk who find your recent actions, not to mention your opinions, anathema to the Fallen insurrection.” She put her face close to Emma’s. “If we really are insects then what does that make you?”

  Silence from Beleth, while at their backs jam-packed traffic whizzed by in either direction, neither drivers nor passengers paying them any mind.

  “Go on then,” Beleth said at length. “Talk your heads off, for all I care.”

  Lilith smiled sweetly. “Thank you, my pet.”

  Emma’s corpus jerked, but the Power remained silent, presumably sulking in its tent like Achilles.

  “Emma?”

  “I’m here,” Emma said in her normal voice. Her eyes had cleared, lightening as if with sunlight shining from within.

  “I think I have a problem.”

  That makes two of us, Emma thought. Hour by hour she could feel the words of Lucifer crawling across her skin like an army of fire ants. The sting of each word, the terror they elicited as they formed sentences, paragraphs, seemed unstoppable. The invaders were at the gates, and though she was manning the battlements as best she could, the enemy had brought all the requisite siege engines to make a mockery of her attempts at survival. Once again, despair entered her thoughts, but she recognized it as just another one of the enemy’s siege engines, and she dismissed it with a Shawian gesture typical of her storied line.

  Lilith lifted her mobile, shaking it as if she were angry with it. “I’ve been trying to contact my colleague—”

  A stab of jealousy momentarily shook Emma free of her desperate inner battle. “Boyfriend?”

  “Ha, no. Not by a long shot. My relationship with Hugh Highstreet is complicated, but suffice to say he runs IT for the Knights—well, for me, really.”

  “You make it sound as if you’re separate from the Knights.” She longed to tell Lilith about her fight, to gain from her strength, but she dare not utter a word of it. And what of Beleth? He must know that the words of Lucifer were inside her, but if he was aware that she was fighting them he had given her no indication of it. Both he and Leviathan believed that it was making her—and therefore Beleth itself—more powerful. There had always been a part of her that she was able to keep from Beleth. Now she was using that piece to keep her counter-insurgency against Lucifer’s spiraling words from him. Deceit was a trait learned through experience; nevertheless, she felt certain that her grandfather—blood of her blood—played a part in her fast-growing expertise. Until she was sure of his loyalties, she could not afford to allow Beleth to become aware of how fiercely she was fighting against being taken over.

  Lilith could see how interested Emma was. “The traditional Knights certainly. I pulled a coup inside the Circle Council. I was fed up with how the Knights mistreated women. So I took over.”

  “How in the world did you do that?”

  “I killed three of the Circle Council during session.”

  “No, really. How did you do it?”

  “I just told you.”

  Emma stared at her. “You’re not kidding.”

  “Hardly.”

  Emma turned away, watched a seagull gliding past, riding the thermals. “I wish I could do that.”

  “That’s very human, I think—the wish to fly.”

  Emma turned back. “Do you ever wish you could fly away?”

  “All the time.” Lilith, correctly intuiting that Emma’s comment had a dual meaning, said, “They gave me no other choice.”

  “There’s always another choice. That’s Bravo’s philosophy.”

  Lilith gave her a direct look. “Is it yours, as well?”

  Emma nodded.

  “You’ve never been a part of the Knights of St. Clement.” Her voice was filled with disgust for the Order.

  “Why are you?”

  “My father was a Knight. I worshiped him, until I found out how corrupt the Order was. I went to him, asked him how he could be a part of such a thing, and he told me that he was trying to work toward change, but that it was a slow process of evolution, not revolution.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “Six weeks later he was dead. A heart attack, they said; murdered, I suspected, and a month later I had my proof. So, yes, he was telling the truth. My father never lied to me, even if the truth was unpleasant. So I evoked my right of succession. I was of age, but my gender... Anyway, there were enough forward-thinking men on the Circle Council powerful enough to vote me in.

  “I saw what my father had seen, and I followed in his footsteps... except for one thing. He was wrong about evolution. Within six months I had determined that no matter how many forward-thinking Knights there were, the basic culture of corruption would not change. In fact, it was getting worse as their businesses flourished and more and more money lined their pockets.”

  Lilith shook her head. “No, evolution wasn’t going to cut it. Revolution was the only way to go. And I was right.”

  “So the Gnostic Observatines are opposing a reformed Knights.”

  Lilith made a face. “Up to a point. Emma, listen to me. Your greatest enemy is a senior Circle Council member named Frederick Obarton.” There were many paths to the truth; it was all a matter of presentation. “He’s the one
who opposed women’s inclusion most vociferously. I needed to get the upper hand over him if I was to get anywhere. Only one thing captures Obarton’s attention: the spillage of blood.”

  Lilith studied Emma’s face. “Are you listening to me?”

  Emma was watching the water traffic far below them. She had not looked at Lilith since Lilith’s confession. “Go on.”

  “Hugh Highstreet is a brilliant man. He’s also my only ally, the only one in the Knights I can trust.”

  “Then it seems as if your grip on the leadership is tenuous at best.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I thought I had Obarton in my pocket, but now it’s been some time and I can’t raise Hugh. He’s not answering his mobile; he hasn’t returned my voice mails or texts. It’s as if he’s been completely erased. I—”

  Her phone had sprung to life: a text from Hugh’s mobile. An enormous wave of relief swept through her, until she read the text itself:

  Hello, Lil. I have him. Your Hughie. The threat he presented has been neutralized. He’s in bad shape, but not as bad a shape as you’ll be in when I get ahold of you. Cheers.

  “Oh, God!” She cocked her arm to throw her mobile over the side of the bridge.

  “What are you doing?” Emma said, stopping her.

  “Obarton has Hugh. Tortured him, I have no doubt. He texted me using Hugh’s phone, so he can track me through the GPS chip. We have to get out of here as soon as possible.”

  Lilith looked around as if afraid Obarton himself was looking over her shoulder. “He was the one who sent me after you. He wanted me to keep checking in with him, but the moment I saw you I stopped. That’s why he’s gone after Hugh.” She rubbed her forehead. “I thought I had protected Hugh before I left. But somehow, that snake has gotten the best of Hugh and me. He’s coming after me, and then he’ll be coming after you and Bravo and the rest of the Gnostic Observatines.” She put her hand over Emma’s. “He’s tried to make me believe that what he fears most is the Fallen, but I’m not fooled. It’s your brother he wants dead and gone. The Shaws have been the bane of so many of the Nauarchus. None of them have been able to best them; they’ve all died trying. Obarton believes the only way to cement his position, to become a historic leader of the Circle Council, is to bring in Bravo’s head freeze-dried in a box.”