Veil of the Goddess

by Rob Preece

  From what Zack and Father Galen had told her, Constantinople had been a Christian city almost from the beginning. Maybe so, but Hera had absorbed considerable power to so dominate this spot where thousands of Greco-Romans had wagered on chariot races, plotted the defense of Europe against Pagans, Zoroastrians, Arians, and Moslems.

  The lifelike statue was so overwhelming that Ivy had to remind herself of her mission. There was no hiding place for a veil here. Their first, best guess had been wrong. If they missed on their second guess as well, they would be in trouble. The Foundation wasn't likely to let them pull the parade stunt twice.

  She pushed the lever to descend but was still within the nimbus of Hera's statue when the first bullet whizzed by.

  She flashed back to the months she'd spent in Iraq, constantly under fire, never certain whether the next civilian would be begging for food or wired with explosives.

  But these weren't Iraqi insurgents shooting at her. They were fellow Americans. And if the firing was the result of a Foundation decision, rather than an overwrought Foundation agent reacting to his frustration, they were in more danger than she'd imagined. Their plan had counted on the Foundation wanting to capture her so they could discover the location of the Cross. Shooting to kill was a whole ‘nother problem.

  She shifted her Cross section so it would lead her—the last thing she needed was to be stripped out of the cherrypicker as it hit the wall of the statue's nimbus. As before, the Cross opened a portal in the ancient holy site and she was free.

  Free to be shot at.

  She could barely make out the sound of firing over the noise of the crowd. Fortunately, there didn't seem to be any Foundation snipers. At the ranges they were shooting, and with the jostling, handguns would be inaccurate.

  She jerked the control levers on the cherrypicker, trying to make herself a more difficult target and shouted down to Cejno to start driving.

  "The truck won't go into gear when the cherrypicker is in the upward."

  Great. She needed to ride it all the way down.

  The imam's bullyboys concentrated on the gunmen, knocking them down, blocking their clear shots. Ivy looked down and saw she had only a few more yards to the relative safety of the truck.

  She was going to make it. It would take a miracle for one of the gunmen to actually hit her at that range, with all of the action going on around them.

  That's what she assured herself a couple of seconds before excruciating pain exploded through her leg.

  She looked down, then wished she hadn't. Blood spurted from her calf and bone chips littered the front of the cherrypicker where a nearly spent bullet had flattened against the steel.

  "Oh, shit."

  "Come on, Ivy. Finish coming down. We can help you."

  Zack's voice barely penetrated her thoughts. Despite the strength lent her by the Cross, pain cut through rational thought like a chainsaw.

  Still, she was a soldier and her officer had given her an order. She jerked the down lever once again before slumping into unconsciousness.

  * * * *

  Ivy's blood fountained from her leg and the Cross section she carried wobbled from her grip, then tumbled toward him.

  Zack caught it, shoved it through the truck's skylight, then reached for Ivy.

  She slumped against him and he lifted her out of the cherrypicker's basket and down into the truck.

  Her lower leg was shattered and blood sprayed from severed arteries like a garden hose gone berserk.

  "Just like back in Iraq,” he muttered to himself.

  He pressed a spare shirt against the wound. Ivy might lose the leg, but that wouldn't kill her. Loss of blood or shock would kill her and that's what he needed to prevent.

  "Drive,” he commanded Cejno. “The cherrypicker is in place."

  "Shall I go to the second location?” Cejno called from the cab.

  "Forget that. Ivy needs a hospital."

  "Hospital very dangerous. They ask many questions about gunshot wound."

  Zack didn't doubt that. He also didn't care. What was important was saving Ivy's life.

  "Got to find the veil,” Ivy gasped.

  "Screw the veil,” he said. “It's an old piece of cloth. You're what's important."

  "Romantic but stupid. Better to die now than be tortured to death by the Foundation."

  They didn't know the Foundation would torture them. On the other hand, they did know that the Foundation would kill without scruples, and that the Turkish government would turn them over to the Foundation if they caught them. The Turkish government had to be aware of what was going on here in Istanbul. There was no other way they would have permitted these mobs of Shore Patrol sailors to wander the streets of their nation's largest city.

  "Try the Cross,” Cejno suggested. He grinded the truck's gears as he revved the engine, inching his way through the parade crowd.

  Zack didn't think the Cross was going to do the job here. Ivy had been carrying her section of Cross when she'd been struck and the bullet had still ripped a big hole out of her leg. Still, he had the worst of the blood flow controlled. Prayer and a liberal application of the Cross seemed as good an idea as any.

  He tied his shirt around her wound, then shifted Ivy so her leg rested propped on the two sections of Cross.

  She sighed, then fell back into unconsciousness.

  "Well, that didn't work."

  "I drive to the second checkpoint,” Cejno announced. “Should be able to arrive just as parade hits for maximum safety."

  "The Foundation will know we're coming. They'll have been warned about this truck and they'll be shooting to kill."

  "I shall pray they fail."

  "Even if they don't kill us, so what? I can't see the magical blue barriers or whatever they are. The Cross doesn't respond to me. I'm just here for the ride. And Ivy isn't in any shape to go opening portals."

  "It shall be as Allah wills it."

  That might be true, but Zack didn't find a lot of assurance in that. While he believed that God cared about him, he didn't think God was going to protect him from his own stupidity.

  Cejno didn't seem to be listening, though, so Zack went back to taking care of Ivy.

  She was frightfully pale and had lost nearly as much blood as she'd lost when Smith had slit her throat, but she was still breathing. As hot as it was in the truck, Zack didn't have to worry about exposure.

  "Just hang in there,” he whispered to her. “Somehow we're going to make this right. Maybe the Patriarch can smuggle you to a doctor we can trust."

  Ivy's blue eyes opened briefly and she stared at him without positive recognition, then closed her eyes again.

  Well, that was effective.

  The truck made flapping sounds as it ran over the last of the traffic cones Cejno had set out to make it look like he was on official business, and Cejno honked his horn as he weaved through traffic.

  A couple of stars in the windshield showed that the Foundation guys had found their range. Fortunately, they were high and Cejno was short.

  The hashish smuggler was on his cell as soon as they'd pulled out of the worst of the crowd. Clicking it off, he leaned back toward Zack, taking his eyes off the road despite the notorious drivers of Istanbul. “Father Galen says all is taken care of."

  "He got a doctor lined up?"

  Cejno wrinkled his forehead, then glanced back at the road barely in time to avoid smashing into an oversized tourist bus. “He said things is taken care of, that's all. Now I must pay my attentions to the driving."

  Cejno looped around the city for a few minutes, running a red light to shake off a motorcycle that had followed them from the Hippodrome before finally pulling the Telekom truck into a treed lot a few hundred meters from where Zack had marked the next blue zone.

  They'd planned out the parking spot and were largely hidden from where the Foundation goons were waiting. But someone on the other side was watching. The minute Cejno pulled in, a couple of black-suited Foundation Agents
headed toward them, one talking on his cell and the other with his hands conveniently tucked into his jacket.

  Zack recognized that look from his gang days. The agent could shoot through his jackets without having to reveal their weapons, meaning Zack would have exactly no time to get a jump on them.

  "I think we have about thirty seconds before we're in range,” Zack whispered.

  "Open the back hatch. It is time to bail."

  "I'm not leaving Ivy.” If he had any brains at all, Zack would take Ivy and abandon the Cross. If they let the Foundation have their treasure, Zack felt certain the Foundation agents would forget about he and Ivy. It wouldn't be worth their while to pursue vindictive revenge against the woman once they had what they were looking for.

  Ivy didn't open her eyes, but she shook her head.

  "We need the Cross. We can't let them have it."

  She was right, although her mind-reading trick was more than a little disturbing. They'd seen too much of what the Foundation would do, how it behaved, to think they could be trusted with something that could open the doorway to power like that which had transformed a sheep into a man-eating monster.

  "I'll take care of it,” he promised as he gathered her into his arms.

  "Father Galen has a treat for the Foundation men,” Cejno promised. “It cost me plenty. Watch."

  As the Foundation agents stepped closer, a thick cloud of smoke emerged from manholes and sidewalk grates around them. The Foundation men froze. More started running their way and one pulled a mask over his face but most seemed unprepared for chemical warfare.

  Zack sniffed the air. “What is that?"

  "Concentrated hashish smoke. We thought it might mellow them."

  The Foundation hitmen might worry about losing their jobs for testing positive to cannabis, but Zack thought it would take more than a few quick tokes of smoke to mellow that crew out.

  "It will also obscure their vision,” Cejno added. “Go."

  Zack gathered Ivy and the two cross sections and lugged them from the truck.

  "Put her here.” Father Galen was beaming at him. A group of eight pilgrims carried a shoulder-born float, draped with crosses. Other pilgrims were quickly arriving, filling the gap between their truck and the Foundation agents.

  "What is that?"

  "It's a palanquin. We use it to carry relics in procession. Surely the Cross and the saint are relics.

  "Saint?"

  "Saint Ivy. We've learned from our Moslem brothers that Ivy was killed and brought back to life by the strength of the Lord. Like Lazarus. If that doesn't make her a saint, what could?"

  Father Galen's smile faded when he got a good look at all of the blood on Ivy's leg.

  "Is she dead?"

  "Not yet."

  "Then load her up. We've got to get out of here."

  The pilgrims filled the area between the truck and the hitmen, but Zack didn't think they'd hold up the determined agents for long. From the way the crowd moved, it looked as if the Agents were using force to shove their way through. A bunch of pilgrims, however inspired by their religion, wasn't going to do much more than slow the trained killers.

  Turkish policemen, unseen before then, had started to appear as well and they joined in shoving pilgrims away, out of the Agent's path, clearing a firing zone for the Foundation killers.

  For just a moment, though, the smoke, truck, palanquin and other relics obscured the Agent's view. Zack took advantage of that moment to lift Ivy into the palanquin, then put the Cross sections in on either side of her.

  "We shall take Ivy to safety. You and Cejno should escape now."

  Which meant they were abandoning the quest for the veil. There would be a lot of disappointed pilgrims, but Zack wasn't one of them. Saving Ivy and keeping the Cross out of the Foundation's hands were what mattered to him.

  * * * *

  Ivy hurt.

  Her leg throbbed and her body felt as if she'd been at the receiving end of a severe beating.

  It wasn't hot enough to be hell and she didn't feel good enough to be heaven. She must still be alive.

  "Time to wake up,” Father Galen said.

  "What happened?"

  "The Foundation agents shot you. But we're at the grotto. We need you to open the hidden way to the veil."

  Something about that seemed wrong. “Didn't you tell Zack you had given up on the veil?"

  "If he chose to understand my words that way, I am not responsible."

  Yeah, right.

  Still, she had come to Istanbul to get the veil. Unless the Foundation managed to finish killing her, she was going to keep on trying.

  "Okay. Let's go."

  Her leg had stopped bleeding, but it still didn't seem capable of bearing her weight. She leaned on Father Galen as she lugged her Cross section toward the deep blue glow of the grotto.

  "There was a church here once.” Father Galen sounded like he'd seen it, although there were massive trees growing there—trees that had to be generations older than the priest. “Like so many others, the Turks destroyed it."

  "I thought the Ottomans allowed their subject people to keep their religions.” Ivy had a vague memory of covering that in high school Western Civ. If only Zack were here, he could tell her. He seemed to know all that stuff.

  "Tolerance wasn't a highly developed concept back then. You have to remember that the Spanish forcibly converted or expelled their Jews about this same time. By the standards of their time, the Turks were models of moderation. But that says more about the standards of the time than about the Turks. Uh, are we there yet?"

  "Just about."

  The blue glow held the distinct form of an early medieval church. It lacked the flying buttresses and airy height of the great Gothic Cathedrals of France and Germany, but it projected a solidity and faith that remained even after the church's physical destruction.

  At the nave of the invisible church, a spring bubbled from the ground, creating a thin trickle of water that flowed downhill, toward the nearby sea.

  For a city so frequently under siege, a fresh-flowing spring would have been a treasure indeed. Around the spring, the faint tracings of an earlier temple glistened the same blue shade as the church. Other ghostly walls showed still more generations of worship. Despite the time they'd spent in this part of the world, Ivy still had problems really grasping how long humans had inhabited these hills and grottos, how many centuries of worshipers had consecrated generations of holy buildings. Compared to Byzantium, Philadelphia was a flash in the pan.

  One church had been built on the ruins of another, which in turn had been constructed on even more ancient foundations. All shined with the blue glow Ivy equated with the faith in the Queen of Heaven, although the Queen might have been worshipped under different names.

  Ivy touched a hand to the blue glow of the outer church and felt a tingle as her fingers passed through the glow. But they didn't really enter the church. Instead, they remained in normal space.

  No change there. She still needed the key, the Cross, to open the gates between the normal world and that strange world where the past lingered on, and where magic and power lay waiting to be tapped.

  "I'm going to have to lean on you,” she told Galen.

  "Good. But move quickly. We threw the Foundation agents off track with the switch, and many of them followed Zack and Cejno, but some are starting to return. And they've called in reinforcements from the police and from their other agents around the city."

  She nodded, then used him for support as she pressed the Cross piece to the closed doorway of the immaterial church.

  It penetrated easily, even more easily than it had done when she'd entered the area holy to Hera. Either the Cross was somehow learning, gaining power, or maybe she'd changed. Each time she crossed between the dimensions, the barriers seemed weaker.

  With the Cross halfway between the physical world and the spiritual world, she let go of the Priest and, hand on the Cross, stepped across.

&n
bsp; "Ivy, I can't see you."

  Father Galen's voice was excited.

  She couldn't blame him. While the discovery of the True Cross was a wonder, seeing a woman step through an invisible wall and vanish was the kind of thing that could reinforce faith in even the strongest doubter. She suspected Father Galen could break free of hashish now that he had been given a true vision.

  Without the priest to lean on, Ivy's right leg couldn't support her. She half-hopped and half limped toward the inner temple.

  She left the Cross behind her, guarding the portal between mundane and holy, so she reached out her hand and touched the inner temple's door.

  It felt as solid as fresh-cut wood and barely resisted when she pushed it open.

  Even though it was bright day outside, the thousands of burning oil lamps around it seemed to outshine the mundane light of the sun. In the very middle, surrounded by the glow of magic and oil lamps, stood a low altar of polished stone.

  Unlike the altar to the hawk-headed god they'd found in Kurdistan, no sacrificial knife or thick-crusted blood lay here. Surrounded by flowers, a gossamer strip of silky fabric draped over the four-horned altar.

  The old story of Mary returning the veil to her own place had more truth than anyone had guessed.

  Reaching out and physically touching the holy object somehow seemed even more profane than carrying the Cross. Ivy glanced at her hands to make sure they were clean, that she hadn't carried in the filth of the mundane world to pollute this holy object, then reached out to the altar and picked up the veil.

  It was longer and wider than she would have guessed from its thin shape. The material seemed to be silk, or perhaps a linen so fine it could pass for silk. Bright eight-sided stars of silver and gold ran down each side, making the deep sapphire blue of the fabric even more jewel-like.

  Its touch sent shivers through her body. For just a moment, she saw through Mary's eyes as Roman soldiers brought Jesus's body from the Cross. Even older visions, of ancient cities and blue-clad priestesses mingled in, hinting that Mary was a part of an ancient tradition.