by Lazlo Ferran
I wondered for a moment why there was even an altar here, and why there were so many sculptures of wargs in the world. Were they worshipped as gods? I supposed that as well as a crypt, Guillaume de Grez had intended this space as a secret chapel, at the time of great persecution for the Cathars, and presumably the Brotherhood, in the 13th Century. As for so many warg statues, for now I didn’t know the answer.
What I noticed next seemed completely out of place. In the centre of the altar was a large ornate silver chalice about a foot high, and it was filled with a slick red liquid. I looked closer and smelled it. It had that sickly metallic smell of blood. The chalice was the only thing which broke the spell of frozen time that the crypt exuded. It must have been placed there by the Serpent. But for what purpose?
On the front of the altar cloth, stretching down to the floor, were depicted two processions. One had adepts and wargs, flanked by helpers, male and female. The other was a procession of snakes, flanked by what looked like male and female succubi, naked and lascivious. I looked at the central panel on the green cloth for clues. There I saw something else that surprised me. It was the Garden of Eden scene but as well as a snake, there was a wolf behind the legs of Adam, looking up adoringly to its master. There were dark blood-stains on the altar cloth and drops of blood on the floor.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I leaped to the left just as something large darted past my right shoulder and hit the green cloth. That something was shaped like the head of a Serpent, perhaps two feet long, but as if made of water. I hit the ground hard and knocked the wind out of myself. There was a loud, pained hiss from the altar. Now was my chance.
Although I was heaving for breath, I stood up, ran to my grandfather’s tomb and inserted my arm through the large crack in the top. The impact of the Serpent had dislodged completely a triangle of the lid, about six inches along each side, and sent a crack along the top of the sarcophagus, from the apex of the triangle to the other side. I felt around for anything cold and metallic but my hand touched only stone. I tried to force apart the two halves of the lid, and to my relief, the right-hand piece moved a few inches with a grating sound. I peered inside and I could see something glinting there on the side nearest me. There were also the grim remains of my poor grandfather, wrapped in cloth.
Seeing the Serpent’s shape only about two coffers away from me, with one last desperate lunge, I reached in and grabbed the sword. It was incredibly heavy but using my elbow to move the right half of the lid further away from the other, I forced a gap big enough to pull it out with the last bit of oxygen still in my lungs. I thought I would pass out but at that moment, I drew a long gasping breath, and stood defiantly facing the Serpent with the long silver Sword held vertically in my clumsy hands.
My enemy stopped a few feet in front of me. Something I had vaguely noticed earlier, filled my senses. A foul stench filled the air. I knew I had smelled it before, several times. It made me want to gag, just at the moment I was drawing my first breaths.
“You have found it now. That is good.” Through a series of hisses, I could just make out words, and then I understood that the Serpent was speaking to me. “I thought you had found it and concealed it from me. Thank you. Your work is done now. You have fulfilled your purpose little spirit. The Great One will remember you.” Its voice was truly awful to listen to. As well as a hiss, it seemed to be simulated from the voice of many others, a gravelly rasp that hurt my ears.
I cleared my throat and waved the Sword slightly, in warning. Sweat was blurring my vision and I wanted to wipe my brow, but the Sword was too heavy to hold in one hand. I wasn’t sure I could hold it up for long. “What do you mean?”
Suddenly the Serpent solidified. From the watery shape of before, it took on the solid form of a living creature and rose to its full height. It towered above me. Easily ten feet high, its scales were of many colours, shimmering iridescently, and its eyes burning pits of restless fire. In the instant I looked into its eyes, I felt extreme pain, as if my flesh were being seared. I screamed in agony. Then an instant later the pain was gone. Its mouth, when it opened, was of a deep red that seemed to drip blood, like saliva from long white fangs, onto its body and from there, onto the floor. Its tongue darted this way and that, and as I looked more closely in horror, its ends seemed to be made of smaller serpents but with faces of tortured men. Then I noticed that the scales of this monster were also the forms of men and women, curled up in agony, and occasionally one would throw up its arms in supplication. Perhaps theirs were the voices that made up the one voice it spoke with. I had to look away. Even with my eyes cast aside, the whole smelled foul.
“I have revealed myself to you, as I can, now I have fed sufficiently on the flesh of men. My body is real, for a while.”
“Why don’t you just go back to the pit of Hell, where you came from?”
“Indeed, I will in a short while. But in answer to your first question, you are a servant of the Great One too.”
“I presume you mean the Devil? Don’t be ridiculous. My whole life has been a fight against the forces of Evil.”
“Ah, Evil. What is Evil? Am I evil? I was a wolf once, like you. Of course the snake and wolf forms are just physical symbols for our deeper, spirit-selves. These are mutable, like everything else in this Universe, or without.” It seemed to laugh. It was a long drawn-out terrible sound. “I tried and failed to kill snakes, until I lost favour with God, and felt abandoned. I was recruited by snakes, as all the Order are, and finally became one myself. Who is he, who can judge who is good and bad? Nobody is completely bad. Can you redeem me?”
“No, I’m not God and no kind of saviour. You have to redeem yourself!” I rested the pommel of the sword on the edge of the sarcophagus.
Again the monster before me seemed to laugh. “In fact, you are evil. Have you not realised?”
“If I am evil then why is it the servants of the Concilium Putus Visum, servants of yours, have tried so hard to kill me?”
“We allowed them to believe we wanted you dead, to give you better cover, but in fact we have been watching over you.”
“No.” I shook my head.
“Do you remember the Cemetery in Highgate? That was where you were recruited. But you were weak and ready for it anyway. You remember the suicide attempt of that nice female teacher? Engineered by you. It was only your guilt that made you report it and save her at the last moment. Your Squadron that was wiped out over the Dutch coast? All your doing. You imagined it and it happened. You have a gift for it. That is why your grandfather never inducted you, and was so reluctant to even tell you about Ordo Lupus. I have saved the best for last though. It was you who killed Annie. Yes! You killed your own daughter.”
“No! No! That cannot be!”
“What did you feel when you looked into my eyes?”
“Pain. Extreme pain.”
“As if being burned? As if being boiled?”
I remembered the few lines that the Head Verger had recited to us. I moaned in anguish. “No! No God. It cannot be!” But I knew it was so.
“Think about it. Think hard, and when you are ready, give me the Sword,” the Serpent said. I looked up the it’s great body, to the head far above me. I looked into those terrible eyes, feeling acute pain but there was no emotion there. The Serpent turned to slink off down the aisle, creasing the red cloth into ‘S’ shapes as it crawled towards the space in front of the altar. I noticed for the first time the intricate designs on the blade of the large ornamental sword in my hands, but bitter thoughts were filing me with despair. I lay the Sword on the sarcophagus and leaned against it, panting.
A small voice still fought the realization sweeping though me. ‘No! It can’t be! Surely just another lie by this snake! Everybody knows the story of the Garden of Eden; how snakes deceive’. I fought in the darkness of my mind, in that moment. But in my heart I knew it was true. With a searing white light, the truth burned through my head. ‘I was Evil’.
I rem
embered how Miss Silver had told me off for talking in class earlier on the day she hung herself, and how much I had hated her for a moment. It was an intense and vitriolic thought, that I had quickly banished, and thought no more of. But yes, I had wished her dead, for just a fraction of a second. And why had I chosen the path that would allow me to see her hanging in the storage room? Was it luck, as I had always thought, my ‘gift’, or a wish to taste the revenge which I myself brought about? I thought about the mission over the Dutch coast. I remembered seeing the ‘box’ in the sky and knowing the AA would be centred there. But did I just know this or did I plan it? Did I in fact steer the whole Squadron into the box, giving myself just enough time to escape? Now, suddenly, from the darkest corner of my mind came a memory, a memory so bad that I instantly wanted to die. I remembered laughing to myself, knowing where the box was, from intelligent reports. I had sneaked a look at them while drinking tea with Paul, months earlier, reports nobody but Paul and I knew that I had seen. I remembered steering for the box and making sure I was right at the front of the row of bombers. I made sure they were line-astern. “No! No!” I moaned to myself. “How can this be? Annie? Did I even kill Annie?”
I must have. ‘How could I do this? I am cursed. I should die!
For a moment I wished the Serpent would kill me. Why did neither Paul nor Rose realise I was Evil? Why did M.I.6 ever recruit me? Surely they must have known something was wrong? But then again perhaps I was too clever. Perhaps they did suspect something, and wanted me under close observation.
My mind was a mass of rushing thoughts, and I felt my whole world falling away from under my feet. I felt unsteady and had to sit down. I leaned against the sarcophagus and let the Sword fall to the ground. I buried my head in my hands and moaned, “No! No!” I heard the Serpent laughing some distance away.
But in my despair came another thought. ‘No. I couldn’t have killed Annie. The Serpent was there’. I knew it was so because of that foul stench. I knew I had smelled it before, and now I remembered that it was there, that day in Nevers. The altar cloth reminded me, too, that the Serpent was lying, at least about Annie. Perhaps, even I could redeem myself. I might have caused the death of hundreds of men during war, all allies, but I still had free will. Now I knew what forces were at work inside me, I could more easily choose, and I chose to kill the Serpent.
“There is someone else who has come to meet you, another ally,” hissed the Serpent.
From behind one of the drapes which formed a backdrop to the altar stepped a young and beautiful woman wearing a simple black dress, like a shift. I recognised her at once and my mouth fell open.
“Georgina?” She walked towards me, bare-footed without uttering a sound. On her skin were contrasted unfamiliar patterns drawn in blood. Something like a cross, but with a curved stem, was at the top of both arms. A series of cursive shapes like numbers ran down her arms. Her legs were similarly decorated as was her cleavage. I had little time to take in any more. Breathless and almost in tears I mouthed the question I wanted to ask, “How?”
“How am I still alive?” she said in her familiar voice, but sounding as if far off. “Did you miss me?”
I shook my head. “You know I did!”
“I am a Sorceress. You must have seen the pictures on the altar-cloth. There have been many of us down the generations, helping the Serpents do their work on Earth. We have power over the physical world. I left my body for a while. That is all. I told you I had done many bad things but you didn’t want to believe me.” She was only six feet away.
“I tried to save you!”
“Yes you did and I am grateful. I am… fond of you.” She reached me and leaned forward to kiss me. As she opened her mouth I could see that her incisors were like those of a wolf, long and pointed. The Serpent and Georgina both laughed at me. “Now you see me as I really am. Am I still attractive?” She was achingly beautiful. I felt my will being totally and inexorably drawn from me. I knew of course the myth of succubi; that they were irresistible to men and drew their life force from them, and I could no more resist her than I could stop breathing.
“You are… You are…” I closed my eyes and gave in. But she didn’t kiss me. I opened my eyes and shouted, “No!” in anguish. She was stooping to pick up the sword. I grabbed it quickly.
“Give me the Sword,” she said.
“If I can’t persuade you, she can,” hissed the Serpent behind her.
“No!” I shouted. I couldn’t resist her body but I could resist her demand for the Sword.
“Give it to me and I will give you anything you want.” She sounded less patient now.
My whole body and spirit ached for her. It was something beyond endurance and I fell to my knees. “Please.”
Somewhere deep inside me, I resolved to kill her with the Sword when she kissed me, as I knew she must, but I laughed at myself. I knew I could never do it.
“Please what?” she said.
I shook my head slowly but she leaned towards me. Her hair seemed to writhe, and danced like smooth jet serpents, and yet when I looked closely I could see none. I seemed to see her as she was on some demon plane with one inner eye and as she was in reality with the other, all at the same time. She leaned closer and took my lips with hers. I cannot describe the feeling; it was most like being washed clean of all pain and longing but losing oneself completely. My hands let go of the Sword and it was in her hands.
She pulled away “Yes!” she shouted, triumphant. “Yes! I have it.” She walked away a few paces and climbed on the nearest intact sarcophagus. Standing, legs apart, she held the great Sword overhead, with a strength beyond that of the Georgina I knew. “Serpent. I command you. Do my bidding.”
The Serpent looked surprised, if it is possible for such monstrosity to do so, and seemed to pull back slightly. If anything its redness paled slightly and I started to see that it was afraid of her. So she had wanted it for herself! She had forgotten one thing though. While she was watching the Serpent, I was released from her spell. I quietly picked up one of the heavy shards of stone from grandfather’s sarcophagus with both hands. The Serpent was looking at her but I knew it could see what I was doing. It was watching and waiting. It seemed she had wanted the sword for herself; for the power that it held.
“I command you chalcathgna!” she repeated.
It answered her. “What do you command?”
With tears in my heart and my heart in my mouth I took the best position to knock her down and then to launch the stone at my lover’s head. I was just behind her and I would not miss. Part of me was listening to their exchange as I leaned towards the back of her knee with my shoulder. At the last moment, I glanced at the Serpent and I thought it looked tensed, as if itself it was ready to charge her.
“Go from this place and never return to Earth!” she shouted. I stopped and the Serpent hesitated for a moment. I had expected her to tell it to kill me, not to flee. An instant later the monster had started to move. Before either of us could move it hit Georgina full in the chest and she flew past my head. I ducked and rolled on the floor behind the tomb. The Serpent quickly came around the tomb and moved towards her with astonishing speed. She was sitting up when it reached her, but the Sword lay ineffectually beside Georgina. The foul beast grabbed her in its jaws and I thought it was over for her but she was muttering something and the jaws of the beast flew open, dropping her against one of the coffers on the far side of the aisle. I rushed forward and picked up the Sword. I looked up just in time to see a flash of flesh and black cloth disappearing through the jagged hole in the roof as Georgina escaped.
I stood up and held the Sword out in the palms of my hands. “You can have the Sword now!” The Serpent was watching me and then started down the aisle towards me. Even now I could not clearly tell if it had arms or legs. By the way it moved, one would think not, and yet when it reared, it often appeared for a moment, to resemble a man and the shape of arms seemed obvious. But this could be imagined. It stopped a
few feet from me, its foul stench filling the air again. I coughed.
“Give it to me!” it demanded.
With all my strength and in one movement I grasped the hilt and swung the great Sword at the neck of the beast just as it lowered its head towards me. “Here you are!” But the beast was too quick for me. It pulled back its great head and the Sword swung harmlessly below its nose. The Sword clanged uselessly on the stone coffer and crushed my hand viciously. I screamed in pain but managed to hold on to the Sword. I had to try one last time. I climbed up on the sarcophagus and started to swing the great blade again. This time, at the last moment, I changed the sweep into a thrust, aimed at the jaws of the great demon. Its jaw opened and it tried to swallow the blade, which disappeared up to the hilt in the beast’s mouth. I let go of the blade, fearing my hand would be consumed too. The Serpent reared up, turning its head towards the roof, and opening its mouth wider, to try and swallow the blade. It had become stuck, the hilt too wide to pass between the fangs of the snake. It roared in frustration.