Robert started at the east end and worked towards Horace, who started from the west. Robert got to it first. It was a plastic bag wrapped in electrician’s tape, with a box of some kind inside.
‘Let’s open it downstairs,’ Robert said. ‘We can’t be caught up here.’
Horace nodded and put the bag in his pocket. He looked up at the radio aerials, then turned slowly around once on his heel, taking in the memories.
‘When did your wife pass on, Horace?’
‘The same year this was closed.’
Robert left him alone for a few moments, ushering Jay and Terri back to the staircase that led to the lower deck. They went down.
Then they heard a cry of pain and alarm from above.
‘Stay here,’ Robert told Jay. ‘Don’t move.’
Terri and Robert rushed back up the stairs and ran towards the eastern end of the deck. Against the backdrop of the Chrysler Building’s shining spire and the bulk of the MetLife tower, Robert saw a figure in black crouching over the unconscious form of Horace, going through the old man’s jacket pockets. A masked face looked up as Robert shouted ‘No!’ at the top of his lungs.
It looked like the same figure who had attacked him on the subway, eyes flaring with poisonous yellow light.
Seeing the lengths of scaffolding by the old elevator door, Robert grabbed a four-foot metal tube as the black-clad figure rose and advanced towards him. The man held the seventh key and the Malice Box in his gloved hands. As they stared at each other, he put them into a zippered pocket on his trousers.
‘Terri! Help Horace,’ Robert shouted. Then he charged towards Horace’s attacker, swinging the steel pipe through the air in a violent arc aimed directly at the masked head. The figure ducked and rolled under Robert’s swing as Terri ran past them both to the supine form of Horace. Landing by the pile of scaffolding, the figure picked up a steel pipe and stood up brandishing it like a sword.
They stared at each other, each anticipating a killing strike at any moment, treading nervously to firm their footing, gripping and regripping their weapons in the humid air. Keeping his eyes on his opponent, Robert shouted: ‘Is he alive?’
‘Yes, but he’s not coming round,’ Terri answered.
Robert sank his mind deep down into his core, reaching for the powers of earth and water, fire and air, ether and mind. He willed the raw strength of his fight in the subway to return to his limbs. He breathed deeply in and out, summoning his new-found gifts, seeking the higher harmonics that would let him into his opponent’s mind.
Nothing happened.
Moving like a striking snake, the black-clad figure darted forward and brought his steel pipe down in a vertical stroke at Robert’s head. Robert twisted to one side and deflected the weapon with a glancing blow. He drove an elbow into the man’s belly and spun to one side, then wheeled around in a half-circle, sweeping horizontally with the pipe at hip level as though trying to slice his attacker in half.
The black-clad figure jumped back and kicked at Robert’s lower back as the blow swept by, knocking him off balance. Then he leaped forward again and aimed a roundhouse strike at Robert’s head. Robert raised the pipe and met the attack with a blow of equal force in the opposite direction. Metal slammed into metal with an explosive, high-pitched ring, the jarring impact almost shattering his arms. Both men, momentarily stunned by the force of the blows, let their weapons drop to the ground, their very bones vibrating. The attacker recovered quickly, and with a snarl of anger threw himself at Robert, who blocked a punch with his forearm and punched right back at his face. Robert’s blow made no impact. Gloved hands closed around his throat. Calling deep within himself, Robert again found no strength. All he had was his own bloody-minded determination not to lose. It would have to be enough.
‘Come hell or high water, you will not prevail,’ he hissed. He clamped his hands over those of his attacker and tried to prise them free. He could see Terri still bowed over Horace, working on him urgently.
Robert stared into the masked face and saw death coming for him again, the yellow sickly light of his attacker’s eyes flaring with red-and-blue filaments and shifting slowly into a magnetic, dead black core.
Then he heard Terri’s voice. ‘Let him go!’
The grip loosened slightly on Robert’s throat.
‘Try me,’ she shouted. ‘I don’t die that easily. Come and get me, you bastard!’
The black-clad figure threw Robert aside, and he slipped down on one knee, gasping. Instantly a boot kicked him in the ribs, knocking all the air out of his lungs. He rolled away, his lungs in spasm, straining to breathe.
Terri bent down and picked up Robert’s weapon, flailing with it at the face of the attacker. Robert saw the steel pipe ignite, twin snakes of blue flame flaring along its length as Terri drove the tip towards the groin of the man in black. She narrowly missed as he jumped backwards in the direction of the railings.
Terri advanced on him, lightning coursing up and down her weapon as she slashed the air with it, aiming for his belly and chest. The assailant turned and jumped up on to one of the stone mountings that held the railings in place. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Malice Box, the core of the Ma’rifat’.
‘This decides what happens, nothing else,’ the figure shouted, brandishing it. Robert recognized nothing of Adam’s voice in the guttural, anguished words.
Robert saw his chance. He ran forward past Terri and took a flying leap at the black figure, smashing into bone with juddering force and carrying him backwards into the air. Robert twisted, trying to land on his feet and half succeeding as he slammed into the tile of the lower observation deck, fifteen feet below. He felt his ankle crack, then he rolled to a halt against the Gothic railings of the lower level.
The black figure fell several feet from him, landing hard on his back. Something flew from his grip and shot through the railings.
Robert felt no pain, and then as he tried to rise, a snake of fierce, nauseating fire tore through him. A shrieking whistle filled his ears. He retched violently.
‘Robert!’ Terri was shouting to him from the floor above. He could barely hear through the pain. ‘The major key! You must get the Malice Box!’
She was pointing frantically. Beyond the black figure struggling to his feet, Robert saw the glinting red-gold drum resting on a metal ledge on the other side of the railings, inches from the edge.
He couldn’t do it. He was in too muchpain. He was too frightened. He’d reached his limit.
‘Robert!’
Now Terri appeared in the 69th-floor doorway, the scaffolding pipe still in her hands, Jay behind her. The black figure made to attack her.
Robert forced himself to his feet and launched himself again at the figure, knocking him spinning. Robert landed inches from the Malice Box on the other side of the railing. New pain shot along his leg to the top of his skull. Burning, sickening pain.
Jay and Terri advanced on the figure in black. Terri pressed her weapon against his forehead, snakes of crackling blue fire flaring again along its length. She held him immobile. On her instructions, Jay reached into the figure’s pocket, extracting the seventh key and handing it to her.
To his joy, Robert saw Horace appear in the doorway, looking pale but determined. He immediately shouted to Robert: ‘Get the core!’
Robert reached through the railings. He couldn’t reach it.
He pulled himself up and reached over. Still couldn’t reach it.
It was a drop of more than 800 feet.
He pulled off the leather belt of his trousers, climbed over the railings and formed a loop around one of the Gothic arch metal fittings on the other side, twisting the belt in a figure eight around his wrist.
Drenched in sweat, he reached for the Malice Box at the edge of the metal ledge. Still he couldn’t get it. He lay along the ledge, pushing forward with his legs; then, with his fingertips, he touched it and dragged it towards him with his nails. He grabbed it and squeezed it in
his left fist.
Then his foot slipped, and he fell.
Muscles tore in his arm and side as the belt took his full weight. He screwed his eyes shut and screamed till his voice gave out.
Sheer terror filled his soul.
He searched in the deepest part of himself for a glimmer of the powers of the Path. Nothing. Failure.
He felt a hand grab his wrist. Then two hands. He felt himself pulled up. His left hand was locked in paralysis around the key. Hands reached under his armpits, heaved him skywards, up over the railings.
He collapsed on the observation deck, Jay and Horace looking down at him. Then Terri shrieked as the figure in black suddenly twisted and kicked her staff aside, launching himself towards Robert and scrambling for the core.
Jay tried to tackle him and took a kick in the stomach, folding to the ground. Then the attacker wheeled around behind Jay, grasping him by the throat with both hands.
For a moment the dark figure stared at them, standing completely still. Then, with cold deliberation, he broke Jay’s neck with a dry crack. Jay’s body gave a violent spasm and fell to the ground.
‘I am not Adam,’ the figure in black shouted hoarsely. ‘Adam is dead. This is what awaits you all if you stand against Iwnw.’
He turned and ran for the doorway, vanishing into the interior of the building.
‘Let him go,’ Horace shouted as Terri made to chase him. ‘Come here.’
Terri turned reluctantly and knelt by Jay, looking imploringly at Horace.
‘I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do for him either. They will pay for this. Now help me with Robert.’
She nodded in silence.
Terri and Horace ran their hands over Robert, feeling his arms and legs. It was as though they were setting his bones. He felt a glow of warm heat over his whole body, rising to white-hot intensity in his ankle, his right arm, his ribs.
‘We must get away from this place as soon as Robert can walk,’ Horace said.
Robert felt fractured bones knitting together in his ankle, searing light flowing through his body. He gasped in pain.
Then Horace was still for a moment, reaching out into their environs with his mind, gauging the whereabouts of their attacker, and of the building’s security guards.
‘I see a route for us if we move quickly,’ he said. ‘Robert, that will have to do.’
Their descent took fifteen nerve-racking minutes, moving from stairwell to empty elevator and back again as both Horace and Terri scouted a course for them. They emerged on to the street just as alarms began to sound inside the building.
Horace immediately broke left, towards the north, taking them across 50th street. To their left, the red neon signs outside Radio City Music Hall broadcast in bold vertical letters the name the whole centre might once have had: RADIO CITY.
Horace took them into the west entrance of the International Building and straight through to the lobby on the other side.
Robert was stunned. It was aglow with golden light, the whole room sheathed in metal panels and suspended leaves, lit from below, of gently moving gilded steel.
Horace spoke to them both in soft but urgent tones. ‘I am very sorry for your friend’s death, Terri. This is a war, and he was an innocent victim.’
‘He didn’t ask to take part,’ Terri said. ‘Who attacked us? The terrifying thing is that if it was Adam, I couldn’t feel him at all. If it was him, he wasn’t there; he was completely corrupted.’
‘I don’t believe that was Adam,’ Horace said. ‘I believe Adam is still fighting. I think that was another of the Iwnw, one of the three we met at Grand Central. He failed, though. We still have the core and the seventh key. The only way to make Jay’s death meaningful is if we halt the detonation of the Ma’rifat’.’
‘But I failed the trial,’ Robert said.
‘Did you?’
‘I tried to call on the powers of the Path. I couldn’t get anything.’
‘The trial is not yet over. It is a necessary part of the Trial by Spirit to know despair, to be abandoned by every power one has. It helps us make our peace with death. Let us see whether you have lost your higher senses. Stand in front of one of the columns and look up,’ Horace said. ‘Observe what it becomes.’
He did as Horace suggested. As he looked up and stepped slightly to one side and the other, the shadows thrown on to the ceiling formed angular shapes, and then suddenly made a perfect triangle atop the column. It became an obelisk. At that moment Robert saw a huge surge of energy, in red-and-yellow light, burst from the column and flare around the pyramidion at its summit. He jumped back from the column as though he’d been kicked, covering his eyes.
‘Shit!’
‘You are still awakening,’ Horace said. ‘Too fast, for most people. You will experience a period of great discordance and doubt. Now we must go on.’
Robert’s head was bursting with pain. ‘Fuck! You might have warned me!’
Terri took his arm and led him out after Horace. They came out behind Lee Lawrie’s giant Atlas iron sculpture, facing St Patrick’s Cathedral, and headed north.
On the corner of 51st Street, looking east, Robert caught a glimpse through his tearing eyes of the glorious spiked summit of 570 Lexington, the GBN offices.
Then Horace was hounding them to go faster. Terri and Horace eachtook one of Robert’s arms as they walked.
‘The pyramidion sat atop the obelisks and the pyramids,’ Horace said. ‘It is a small pyramid in its own right, and may often have been sheathed in gold. The word for it was ben-benet, derived from the sacred ben-ben stone, which represented the first island of creation, the first fragment of land to pierce the primeval waters.’
‘It must have looked like the tips of those skyscrapers poking through the clouds,’ Terri said.
‘Yes,’ said Horace reflectively. ‘Yes, it must have. And shortly we shall see another representation of it, one that is at the very heart of this quest. And you will understand more.’
They passed St Thomas’s on the left, Horace’s backup location if Robert had missed him at Grand Central.
Then they were passing the black and gold of Trump Tower, the Art Deco masterpieces housing Tiffany’s and Bergdorf Goodman on the east side of Fifth Avenue, and they were into Central Park.
PART THREE
The Body of Light
New York, September I, 2004
‘This way,’ Horace said, leading them past horse-pulled carriages and stalls selling photographs of New York scenes, in the general direction of the Wollman Rink.
‘Horace,’ Terri shouted. ‘We don’t even have a waypoint yet.’
‘There are no more waypoints,’ he replied. ‘There are seven keys. We must work now with what we have. We need all the keys to stop the detonation. They need all the keys to make it explode in the fully hellish way they desire.’
Horace led them to a drinking fountain, past the rink, at the foot of a flight of stone steps.
Terri asked, ‘Can we stop for a second and look at what was in the last cache?’
Horace halted and dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Yes, my dear. Of course. Up here.’
They climbed the stairs. At the top was an octagonal, single-storey building, surrounded on all sides by benches and chess tables. ‘The Chess and Checkers House,’ Horace said. ‘It was here that the trials were planned. Barely nine days ago.’ He took out a penknife and cut the plastic wrapping free from the package they’d found in the cache to reveal a black jewellery case. Inside was a pendant bearing a seven-pointed star in inlaid silver.
Terri put down the steel staff she had brought with her from the fight at Rockefeller Center and held her fingertips to it.
‘As I suspected,’ Horace said. ‘Gnostic star. It stands for mystical insight. The other geometric shapes also reflected aspects of the trials. One, the circle, signifies beginning. Two, the vesica piscis, signifies the womb, and cell division. Three, the triangle, is stability, the ability to
stand alone. Four, the cube, the building block of the greater man through compassion. Five, the pentagram, creativity and regeneration, because it can replicate itself endlessly. Six, the Star of David, the union of two triangles representing heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical.’
Robert’s head was splitting, the light burning his eyes. Terri helped him move into the shade. ‘This really hurts,’ he whispered to her.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s what it takes. We’re going to get this done.’
Robert sat at a chess table and closed his eyes, losing himself in sensations he had never had before.
Since the jolt of energy from the column in the International Building, his vision had become flooded with light, as though he were staring at the sun with his head bound, unable to look away. Patterns and forms – the squares of the chess tables, the façades of the Deco buildings they had passed on Fifth Avenue, the octagonal form of the Chess and Checkers House – were hitting his consciousness like knife blades. Even the forms of trees and leaves felt like tattoos on his flesh. Waves of intense sensation were washing over him, emotions and physical stimuli as well as shapes and geometric forms. He could feel Terri’s anger and helplessness at Jay’s death, her burning, single-minded focus on survival, Horace’s implacable will to defeat the Iwnw. Robert was drifting in and out of a state of hypersensitivity so acute as to be unbearable. There was no peace, no calm. At the fringes of his consciousness he could hear the language of the birds, but it was a cacophony of screeches, without insight, without love.
‘Horace, Robert is hurting very badly,’ Terri said.
‘The building up is also the tearing down,’ said Horace, without sympathy. ‘I suggest we wait here. We will hear from Adam.’
In the myth, Osiris was sliced to pieces by Seth. Robert understood what it meant now. But then came the birth of Horus, the son, the bearer of light, to do battle. Despite the pain, he still trusted the Path. He was both Osiris and Horus. The new being would come from within the butchered old one. He had already felt it awaken. But he had still not recovered from the shock of hanging from the top of Rockefeller Center, stripped of all his powers, exposed and naked to his very core.
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