Above them, the speedboat’s running lights stabbed down through the water. Diadems, glimmering like stars, floated below them. An octopus, curious but shy, stared up at them before whooshing away in a cloud of ink.
Ayla, kicking hard, her legs working in apposition, drove them upward. They broke the surface, Bravo gasping for air and for the surcease of pain. She maneuvered them over to the rowboat, where she could lift him far enough out of the water to see the swollen flesh on his cheek. The bruise was just starting to darken, like a port wine stain.
“My God, we have to get you into the boat and lying down.”
“No,” Bravo said.
“No? What no? We’re treading water here and freezing.”
“If we waste time getting me into the boat we could lose them.”
“Them? The people who grabbed you and beat you up?” Her eyes sparked in the starlight. “I don’t give a fig about them.”
“Well, you’d better,” Bravo told her. “Ismail has the rood.”
“So what? It’s not the real, one. This one’s made of bronze.”
“The bronze is camouflage, just a covering,” Bravo said. “Underneath, it’s made of solid gold.”
“I don’t care—”
“Ayla, we need the rood. Along with the apple it’s part of the Unholy Trinity.”
“But you saw for yourself they repelled each other.”
“Yes, and you wondered if perhaps we had the wrong apple. But it was because of the bronze covering on the rood.” He winced.
“Bravo, I can’t help you while you’re still in the water. At least, on board I can make you warm. Here, you have no chance.”
He seemed to lose focus then, his gaze drifting far away toward something she could not see.
“What? What is it?”
But he didn’t answer. It was unclear whether he even heard her, for in his mind rose the apple tree under which he and Conrad had spoken, not only as grandfather and grandson, he realized now, but as progenitor and heir. He could hear the leaves rustling in the wind, the thrush calling from one of the topmost branches. Warm sunlight spilled in golden droplets through the labyrinth of leaves. The fruit, red and ripe, swayed, gave off its intoxicating perfume. And as he watched, Conrad rose from his wheelchair and, no longer disabled, plucked an apple from a branch overhead. He held it in the palm of his hand, a prize as well as an offering, but Bravo did not take it. Then Bravo knew that it wasn’t yet time.
Now I will tell you a secret, Conrad said from across all those years and yet as close as if he had flown through the glittering night to land on Bravo’s shoulder. I did not fall—at least in the manner I told everyone. His laugh was as soft as velvet. Me fall off a ladder? Please! He shook his head. No. I lost the use of my lower limbs in my final encounter with Verrine.
And the here-and-now Bravo thought, Verrine. I have encountered that name in the Nihilus Inusitatus.
Yes, you have, Conrad said in his mind. Verrine is the Commander of the Four Thrones. Be very careful when you meet this terrible Fallen Angel. Do you understand me?
As an answer, Bravo reached out for the apple sitting in the palm of Conrad’s hand. It seemed to be waiting for him, and him alone.
Now you are ready.
As he picked it up it turned from red to gold.
“Bravo?”
Ayla’s voice broke through his vision. Was it a vision, or... ?
“On the contrary,” he said with a peculiar clarity she had never heard in him before, “right here, right now, is my only chance.” He held out his free hand. “Give me the golden apple.”
A frown pulled her eyebrows together as she dug it out of its hiding place against her skin and placed it on his palm. “What are you going to do with it?”
Closing his fingers around the orb, Bravo placed it against his bruised abdomen. A lightning flash, electric blue. A certain pain came to him, as if from a very great distance. A pain altogether different from any he had ever experienced before.
“What is it?” Ayla said, clearly alarmed.
“Nothing. I didn’t know what to expect.” Steeling himself, he pushed the apple harder against his flesh.
“My God,” she said again, staring. “I feel like I’m in a dream.”
“Perhaps you are,” Bravo replied. “Perhaps we all are. Or maybe you’re just feeling the chill. You’ve been in the water a long time.”
Then he gave a little cry and doubled over.
“Bravo!” Ayla clutched at him, pulling his head out of the water. “What’s happening? It’s the apple.”
“Yes,” he managed to get out. Water cascaded over his face as she pulled him up. “The apple.”
“What is it doing to you?”
“It’s... I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“It’s opening a doorway.” Bravo shuddered, and Ayla wrapped him as tightly as she could with her free arm. “I know where we have to go.”
“We have to get out of the water. We’ve got to get you lying down. I’ll row you to shore. I’ll get a doctor.”
“The pain is receding. My strength is returning. I don’t need a doctor.” As if to contradict his words, he convulsed, and Ayla cried out, holding him even closer. His heart seemed to beat as fast as a bird’s. “The Four Thrones.” His voice was thick, strange, as if emanating from a part of him that had been inaccessible to him up until now.
“What are the Four Thrones?”
“Not what, who.” Bravo shuddered again. “Murmur, Raum, Phenex, Verrine. The leaders of the Fallen.”
“Not Lucifer?”
“They are Lucifer’s outriders, his generals. You know how some humans chain and starve attack dogs? This is what Lucifer has done to the Four. They are the epitome of evil, trained and bound to Lucifer. They are ravenous in their thirst for power. It is impossible to convey in language how dangerous they are.”
“The golden apple of the sun has shown you all that?”
“That and more,” he said.
His voice held a timbre that frightened her. “Bravo, where have you gone?”
“To the threshold of the doorway. But not through it. Not yet, anyway.” His eyes, which had been slipping away, caught the moonlight, stars reflected in them. “Ayla, if we don’t stop them, the Four Thrones will come through from the Hollow Lands to our world. They will wreak havoc and destruction. They will pave the way for the Second Coming, as Yeats predicted. ‘The darkness drops again but now I know / That twenty centuries of stony sleep / Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, / And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’
“It’s Lucifer, Ayla. Lucifer is on our doorstep.”
“We’re only two people, Bravo. What can we do?”
“We’re Shaws,” he said. “The battle for mankind’s soul is what we were destined for.”
Now it was her turn to shudder. “Where must we go?”
“First, we need to retrieve the rood.”
“And how on earth are we going to do that?”
“Swim, Ayla,” he said, pushing away from the rowboat. “Swim.”
*
THE SPEEDBOAT was tied up to the stern of the Syrian mother ship, a hundred-foot vessel gotten up as a tramp steamer in order to fool the police and navy boats of various nations patrolling the Mediterranean. Lights streamed off the steamer; the pumps worked overtime clearing the bilges of seawater. Maybe the Syrians’ ship was as old as it looked. At the moment, the speedboat was deserted, its cockpit and running lights off. The mother ship was weighing anchor, the rusty chain protesting vigorously as it was winched off the seabed.
“This way,” Bravo said as they rounded the promontory that had hidden the ship from their view.
His strokes were long and powerful, and Ayla with all her expertise had no little difficulty in keeping pace. They hauled themselves over the rail of the speedboat moments before the anchor, bearded with brown kelp, rose in a thund
ering cascade from the sea. Presently, it was secured, and the steamer, engines rumbling, got under way.
“Thank you,” Bravo whispered as he lay back against a bench.
Ayla was still in a state of comparative shock. He drew her to him. They huddled beneath the rail, backs against the curving hull, sharing what warmth remained in them. It wasn’t enough. They kept shivering.
“We need to get out of these wet clothes,” he said pragmatically. “The wind will dry our bare skin.”
Without another word being spoken they both peeled off their sopping clothes, laid them out on the deck before returning to their spot. They spoke in low tones even though their voices even at normal volume would have been drowned out by the diesel engines.
Ayla rested her head against his shoulder, slowly relaxing her mind, which had been spinning insanely like an out-of-control top ever since he had pushed her overboard to keep her safe. “Bravo, tell me, have you ever been in love?”
“Once. At least I think I was. Now I can no longer remember her.”
“I was never. Not even close.” She shifted farther into him as the warmth started to build. “There was someone in London. A smart guy. It didn’t take long for him to disappoint me, though. Is it the same with all of you?”
“I’m the last person to ask about things like that.”
“No. You’re far too busy saving mankind to think about such mundane things.”
She sounded hurt, angry even, and this bewildered him. “I’m a Shaw. There’s a burden—”
“Yes, yes. I’m fed up with hearing about the Shaw legacy,” she snapped.
“If you don’t feel it, Ayla, then it doesn’t exist for you.”
“That’s not what I want to hear.” Her face screwed up and she put her hands over it. “Don’t you understand?”
He put his arm around her. He could not understand what was happening. But then his mind—his self—had been pulled away from her. “Tell me,” he said softly.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t think I was cut out for this—for being a hero. My mother dragged me into this. Because of you.”
“Because she had to.”
“Have it your way,” she said shortly. “In either case, I had made a life for myself in London. I was happy.”
“No you weren’t. You were made a scapegoat and fired from your position. And then there was the guy who disappointed you.” He put his knuckle under her chin, lifted her head up. “He wasn’t smart enough to make you happy.”
She gave him a weary smile, like a lightbulb about to go out. “Well, you’re right about that. But the last thing I wanted was to come back to Istanbul and get involved in my mother’s...”
“Your mother’s what?”
“My mother’s other life,” she said. “The one my father knew nothing about.”
“She was protecting him.”
“She was lying to him, withholding an entire part of herself.”
“Did you tell your father about your other life?”
“I didn’t want any part of it.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
She turned her head away, said nothing for the longest time. The grinding of the ship’s engines was all there was in the pallid moonlight.
“I loved my father. I wasn’t of his blood, but I could not have loved him more if I had been.”
“And he you. Omar Tusik was a great friend and a remarkable man.”
“I miss him.”
“More than your mother?”
“In a different way. You know, fathers...”
But Bravo didn’t know. His own father had remained a mystery up until his untimely death. He was practical, highly intelligent, and cold as ice. Had he even loved his own son? Maybe. But he also begrudged him having Conrad’s specialness, which by a fluke of genetics had passed him by.
“I’ll understand—certainly I will—if you want out. Just because Conrad was your father...” His voice dropped off. He stared at the white water churning in the ship’s wide wake. “Look, go home. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you did make a home for yourself in London. So go back there. It’s all right.”
But there was something in his voice, some metallic edge. He was not capable of talking down to women, but he could cut them down to size as well as men. Ayla felt this happening to her now, felt the metaphoric ground slipping away under her feet. Leaving her where, exactly? Was that what she really wanted, to go back to London, resume looking for a job, even though she knew she had been blackballed from every law firm in Britain? What was waiting there for her? Contentment? Peace? Not hardly. And then she heard him say:
“The war is hidden now, but it’s just around the corner. The enemy’s advance guard is already here. Do you want to wait until the fire comes, until people are dying in the streets? It takes a certain kind of courage to stand up now, the kind that’s not so very different from faith. I, as a Shaw, took a vow, just as Conrad did, just as my father did. It’s as binding as the vows of priesthood, of taking the veil, pledging yourself to God.
“There is a choice to be made here, Ayla. It’s yours and yours alone to make. But either way, I beg you not to take it lightly.”
There were shouts from on deck, high above and in front of them, but no one was looking in their direction. It was a call to prayer. Everyone on board was on their prayer rugs, facing Mecca. It was a different world up there, one they could never really know.
She touched the apple tentatively, as if it might burn her fingertips. “Does this mean that you’ve become immortal?”
“I hope not. Who wants to be immortal? Fra Leoni constantly struggled with the changes he saw around him. It’s a hard lot not being a part of an age. Like being an orphan.”
“No direction home.”
“Exactly.” His watery smile was almost wistful. “We used to have a routine, he and I: when he got too depressed, I’d call him Fra Diavolo. It always made him laugh.”
“He was your mentor. You must miss him terribly.”
“Coming upon his decapitated head was a dreadful moment. Our enemies—”
“Yes. Our enemies knew how to deal with him.”
He heard the emphasis, knew what it meant, looked straight into her eyes. “Which is why we must be careful when we approach Emma. The Fallen inside her will know how to deal with us, as well.”
“How d’you know we’ll be able to find her?”
“I think,” Bravo said, his expression grim again, “that she’ll be able to find us.”
39
Red Sea, off the Coast of Eritrea / Cairo, Egypt: 1919
AFTERWARD, WHEN TANIS DID NOT IMMEDIATELY RETURN TO her post, Yeats, seeing the look she gave his friend, stepped away toward the aft rail, watched the last of Diantha dissolve in the dancing sparks of sunlight glittering on the water. He missed Ireland, missed his bride-to-be, but he would never have traded this adventure for anything in the world. In a moment, he drew out his pad, began again to write with the same fervor that had come to him in the presence of the underground Sphinx in Lalibela.
“I am so sorry,” Tanis said. She stood close to Conrad, and yet very much apart from him. It was a curious thing that Conrad, even in his state of grief, did not fail to mark. “I wish I’d known her.”
“Thank you,” he murmured. It was so hard. Throwing her ashes overboard, as was required, was the most difficult thing he had ever had to do.
“She must have been a remarkable woman.”
“She was... most remarkable.”
But this was all small talk, condolence talk. Useless or necessary? It was difficult to tell. In the end, it meant very little. Unlike what Tanis said next:
“ ‘I am carried away, the time of my nonexistence has come, my spirit has disappeared, like the day, from whence I am silent, since which I became mute.’ ”
Conrad turned to her. “That is a quote from a royal Phoenician tomb.”
“In Arvad.”
He start
ed. She had used the original Phoenician name for the small island off Syria that was now known as Arwad. “Yes. Have you been there, Tanis?”
“Alas no. But my family is originally from Arvad.”
“You’re Phoenician?”
She smiled. “My family name is Ahirom. We knew the Safitas very well.”
*
EVENTUALLY, TANIS returned to her post. The sun was slipping through the traceries of western clouds. Gulls were calling, ibises were stalking the reeds on the western bank. The boat, sails huffing and puffing intermittently in the heavy air, kept plowing northward toward Cairo.
Yeats said to Conrad, “You’ll marry that one, mark my words.”
Conrad laughed softly. “I’m not the marrying kind.” Nevertheless, his gaze alit for just a moment on their captain, and he thought, Perhaps he’s right. A fellow Phoenician. My mother would like that.
“The artifact frightens me.” Yeats’s voice was soft but urgent. “Look what it did to Diantha.” He moved them farther from the crew. “Perhaps we should throw it overboard. Let the tide of the Red Sea take it, and be done with its dreadful power.”
Conrad, standing at the railing, hands clasped, the last remnants of his mother’s ashes powdering his fingers, considered this for a long time. Presently, he took the artifact out. His hands moved over the piece in ways Yeats could neither follow nor understand, but which resulted in the rood and the apple separating.
He looked up at his friend. “We will travel to Cairo. There I will have a metalsmith of my acquaintance coat the rood in bronze. That metal has unusual properties in the world of my mother and Gideon. So long as it is intact, it will keep the rood’s power at bay. That way we may conserve it without fear.”
“And the apple?”
“Must be hidden, and hidden well away from the rood.”
The worried look did not leave Yeats’s face. Sunlight flashed across the lenses of his spectacles, briefly concealed his eyes. “And in the future should the bronze crack or be pried open?”
“Has your Farsight told you something I should know?”
The great poet removed his spectacles, pressed his thumbs into his eyes. “I have seen murder, my friend.” His myopic gaze fixed on Conrad. “The death of your grandson, killed before his time.”
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