The Spirit Well (Bright Empires)

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Seeing it for the first time as a shadowy, hulking mass against the yellow sky gave the place a weird, menacing cast that brought her up short. She stood in the farmers’ track and stared at the dread Black Mixen as at an apparition. Something about the shape—so unnaturally perfect with its smooth tapering sides and perfectly flat, level top surmounted by three aged oaks twisted and gnarled by time—suggested sinister rites and unspeakable practises. Despite the fine afternoon sunlight all around, the tump itself seemed steeped in perpetual shadow, brooding and ominous.

  Mina retrieved her ley lamp from a pocket and held it up, as if it were a flashlight and Black Mixen a darkness to be illuminated. There was no sign of activity from the device, so she stowed it away again and found a dry place under a tree to sit down and relieve her feet. There was no telling what she might find on the other side; it was best to rest while she could. She opened the cloth square containing her lunch and started in on the brown bread and thick slab of pale cheese the innkeeper had prepared for her. After that, she peeled the boiled egg and had a bit of the pork pie; she also had a bottle of small beer and an apple. She ate slowly, and the afternoon dwindled around her; then, much refreshed by the meal, she resumed her assault on Black Mixen Tump.

  Upon reaching the base of the hill, she saw a narrow footpath spiralling up the side of the mound and followed it to the top. The way was steep, but she soon reached the summit and paused a moment to catch her breath. The high plateau gave unobstructed views of the countryside all around, and Wilhelmina walked all the way around the perimeter but saw no one about. So much the better, she thought. If she was going to experiment with ley travel on the tump, she did not want an audience.

  She took out the ley lamp once more—still no activity, so she conducted a closer examination of her surroundings. This was quickly accomplished. Apart from the three old oaks, fascinating as they were, there was not much to see—except for a single stone she found embedded in the turf near the centre of the hill. Broad and flat as a paving stone from someone’s garden, there was nothing at all remarkable about it. As twilight was a little way off yet, she decided to sit down and wait to see if anything might happen.

  She sat, her legs drawn up, her chin resting on her knees, and closed her eyes. Tired from her long walk, she was soon asleep. Fragments of dreams, disjointed and disturbing, flitted through her subconscious. She awoke with a start to the sound of raucous laughter. Looking around, she saw that the sun had gone down and the sky above was filled with circling rooks—their cackling call the disembodied laughter of her dream. Having grown stiff sitting on the stone, she unfolded herself and stood, and instantly became aware of a warmth emanating from her pocket. She took out the ley lamp; it was not only warm to the touch, but the little blue lights were all aglow within the filigreed metallic carapace.

  On her initial survey of the tump top, Wilhelmina had detected no indication of a ley line anywhere. Not only that, but there did not seem to be room enough for a line of any length. But the blue lights were aglow, and they did not lie. So, holding the lamp in front of her, she began walking slowly, first one direction, then another, watching the lights. She quickly noticed that the little blue indicators glowed more brightly as she neared the centre of the mound and dimmed as she moved away. The strongest reading came when she stood directly on the flat stone marker.

  “This is it,” she murmured. “Now what?” How did one traverse a ley that was not a line, but a point?

  As she was considering this, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced around to see two dark shapes racing towards her across the level plain of the tump. Shielded by the trees until they were almost upon her, she had but a glimpse, but it was enough to know that they were after her.

  Whipping the ley lamp out of sight, she turned to meet her pursuers.

  “Oi!” shouted the nearest one. “Stand right there! Don’t you move a muscle, me darlin’!”

  Wilhelmina felt a sudden surge of energy flash up around her. The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood erect. She could feel the tingle on her skin and a faint crackling of static snapping around her ankles. The very air tingled.

  The men rushed closer. Dressed in long, dark cloaks and widebrimmed hats, their faces grim and determined, they closed on her with swift strides. One of them produced a pistol. “Put your hands up, girly,” he ordered.

  His companion threw out a hand, caught his arm, and spun him around. “Don’t tell her that!” he cried. “That sets it off!”

  But it was already too late. At the sight of the gun, Wilhelmina had instinctively raised her hands. Her fingers tingled with the pent power flowing around her. She raised her arms higher, the air grew misty, and she saw the disbelief register on the men’s faces. One of them let out a shout, but his words were lost in the scream of the wind suddenly swirling around her.

  The world grew hazy and her vision quavered and she was enveloped by the shimmery, glowing halo of high-energy photons—an earthbound aurora borealis. At the same time she became aware that pressure was building around her, crushing down, squeezing the air from her lungs. Instinctively she resisted, holding herself upright. Burleigh’s two thugs made a rush towards her. She gave a little hop, and the world winked out in a fizzing pop like that of a firecracker tossed into the air.

  Mina blinked, and when she opened her eyes again she was standing in the dazzling white light of a blistering sun on a wide, stone-paved path lined on either side with statues, hundreds of them, stretching for a thousand metres or more, each one with the head of a man and the body of a lion—an avenue of sphinxes. One look at the impassive granite face gazing at her from the nearest statue and Wilhelmina Klug knew beyond any doubt that she had arrived in Egypt.

  PART FOUR

  The Omega Point

  CHAPTER 21

  In Which Time Is Measured in Empires Crumbled to Dust

  Somewhere between shutting her eyes and opening them again on the new day, Cass had changed her mind and decided that instead of trying to find her way home by herself, she would to return to the Zetetic Society. They were offering help, after all, and help was what she needed right now. If they could describe for her what was happening and how it worked—well, that was well worth hanging around an extra day to find out. While she still had no intention of joining them, or getting mixed up in their mysterious machinations, whatever they were, simply getting a few answers to some questions— like: what was the best and quickest way home—would be no bad thing.

  That decided, Cassandra shared a noisy breakfast with the nuns and orphans of Saint Tekla’s and helped with clearing and washing the dishes. Then, free to follow her bliss for the day, she started off for her visit to the society. At the convent gate, one of the sisters approached with a thin cotton robe of drab green. “Pour vous, mon amie,” she said, holding out the garment.

  “For me?” wondered Cass. “But—”

  “S’il vous plaît,” insisted the nun. “C’est mieux, ma soeur.” She pointed to Cass’s clothes and held out the gown for her to put on. It came to Cass that it was the same kind of drab robe she had seen on women going into the bazaar—less than a burka, but more than a housedress— that would, in her case, be useful for keeping her modern dress covered. She understood then that the sisters, having noticed her odd garb, were trying to protect her from difficulty.

  “Merci,” said Cass, accepting the robe. She allowed the nun to help her into it. “Cella-là est bonne, ma soeur. Merci.”

  Smiling, the nun also arranged Cass’s cotton scarf into a more convincing head covering, then opened the gate for her. “Bonne journée.”

  Cass wished her a good day and, stepping through the gate and into the street beyond the walls, made her way back to the society’s black lacquered door. She knocked once, waited, then knocked again. When there was no answer, she knocked a third time and waited some more. Still too early, she thought, and deciding to try again later, she spun on her heel and started off to
explore a little more of Damascus. Deep in thought, she reached the end of the lane and rounded the corner onto the busy main street—where she collided heavily with a tall, thin man in a three-piece suit of pale cream linen topped off with a natty white panama hat.

  Cass was thrown backward into the road. The man hooked her elbow to keep her from falling.

  “Steady there.” He helped her to right herself, then moved back a step and regarded her with the disinterested concern of a stranger. “Are you quite all right, miss?”

  “Yes—fine,” she said, embarrassed. “Very sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  He glanced beyond her in the direction from which she had come. “You’ve been to the society.”

  “I have. Yes,” she said as if this explained everything. She made to edge past him and move on.

  “Rosemary said there was someone yesterday. Was that, by chance, you?” He spoke matter-of-factly, and Cass placed a soft Irish accent.

  “I suppose it was,” she allowed. “Are you one of them?”

  He chuckled. “We’re not as bad as all that, I hope.” Before Cass could draw breath to apologise, the thin man smiled and offered his hand. “Brendan Hanno at your service,” he said, his light Irish burr going down like butter. She took the offered hand and clasped it diffidently. “And you are?” he asked.

  “My name is Cassandra.”

  “Yes,” he replied pleasantly. “I expect it would be. I was on my way to the society just now. Would you like to accompany me? We can have a cup of tea and see if we can find answers to all your questions.” He gestured towards the lane. “Shall we?”

  Cass fell into step beside him. “How do you know I have questions?”

  “Everyone who comes to us has questions,” he observed mildly. “I have a few myself—such as, how do you find Damascus?”

  “It’s nice,” replied Cass lamely. “I’ve never seen any place like it. Then again, I’ve only been here a day, and I haven’t seen very much.”

  “Well, we must do something about that,” he said. “To know Syria is to love Syria.”

  They reached the society entrance, and Brendan fumbled a key out of his pocket and into the lock, opened the door, and beckoned her in, snapping on electric lights as he went. From somewhere they could hear a warbly humming. “That will be Mrs. Peelstick making tea. We live on tea, it seems. Take a seat, and I will tell her we’re here.”

  Cass sat down in one of the damask-covered overstuffed chairs and took in the room once more—the shelves of books, the old-fashioned sitting room furniture, the dusty windows barred to the street.

  A moment later Brendan poked his head back into the room to announce that they would take their refreshment in the courtyard. “This way, please. It is far more pleasant outside.”

  He led her along a high-ceilinged corridor to a door that opened onto a commodious enclosed courtyard of the distinctive black-andwhite-banded stone. The square, paved yard was open to the sky, but half shaded by a striped canvas awning. The air was cool and fresh and alive with the gentle tinkling splash of a small octagonal fountain standing in the centre of the courtyard; the bowl of the fountain was covered in a blanket of red rose petals floating on the surface of the water. A tall potted palm stood in a large terracotta pot in one corner, and in another stood a round teak table beneath a square blue umbrella.

  “It is so very pleasant this time of day,” Brendan observed, waving Cass to a seat. Presently the woman from the day before appeared with a tray full of tea things. “I think you have met Mrs. Peelstick,” announced Brendan.

  “Yes, good morning, Mrs. Peelstick,” replied Cass.

  “Please, call me Rosemary.”

  “Rosemary, then. I am sorry if yesterday I seemed somewhat . . . brittle. I am still a bit uncertain about all this.”

  “Understandable, dear,” replied the woman. “Think nothing of it.”

  “Rosemary has been with the society since its inception,” explained Brendan with a teasing smile.

  “Nonsense!” scoffed the woman lightly. “Not by a long chalk.” She bent to the teapot and began the ritual of pouring black tea into glasses containing fresh mint leaves. Passing a glass to Cass, she said, “I want you to know that you are among friends. From now on we will treat one another like the friends we hope to become.”

  “In short,” continued Brendan, completing the thought, “we will speak frankly.”

  “Please,” replied Cass, taking a sip of hot minty tea. “I welcome it.”

  The sun was warm, and the palm fronds rustled gently in the light breeze. Small white butterflies flitted here and there among the jasmine strands growing up the courtyard wall. Cass felt the anxiety and trepidation that had marked her first visit melting away. Inexplicably, everything seemed right and in order; all was as it should be—although nothing much, really, had changed at all.

  They drank their tea, and Cass listened to the Irishman talk about the courtyard and the building the society maintained and how they had come to own it. He described what it was like to live in Damascus—a place that, as he said, “In the immortal words of Mark Twain, measured time not in hours or days or even years, but in empires that arose and flourished and crumbled to dust.”

  Finally they came back around to the reason for Cassandra’s visit. “We know you are a traveller,” Mrs. Peelstick said, “a traveller for whom time and space are little impediment. Otherwise, you would not be here. That is a fact. It is also a fact that there are only two ways to become such a traveller: either you are initiated by another traveller, or you are simply born with the ability—passed on, perhaps, genetically. The former is the usual way; the latter is more rarely the case.”

  Brendan, nodding slowly, added, “One means confers no great benefit over the other, although those born with the ability to leap from one dimensional reality to another may be physically more sensitive to the active mechanisms involved.” He fixed her with a quizzical expression. “Which sort of traveller are you, Cassandra?”

  “So far as I know,” she answered thoughtfully, “no one in my family has ever experienced anything like this. I think I would have heard about it if they had. I guess I was initiated.”

  “By whom, may I ask, were you initiated?”

  “A man—a Native American. We call him Friday.”

  “You knew this fellow well, did you?”

  “Not well, no. We worked together sometimes, is all. He was a member of an archaeological dig that I was—that I am—involved with in Arizona.” She thought a moment. “But I don’t think you could call it an initiation at all,” she said. “I followed him into a canyon near the site one day and . . . it just happened.”

  Brendan sipped his tea. “That must have been something of a shock for you.”

  “It was,” Cass agreed. “It still is. I don’t even know how I ended up here.”

  “You have a gift—or have been given one,” said Rosemary. “Either way, it amounts to the same thing in the end. You are now an astral traveller.”

  “I like the term inter-dimensional explorer,” put in Brendan, “because it carries no unfortunate occult overtones. You simply cannot imagine the amount of blather and nonsense that has crept into the subject over the years.”

  “And always, it seems, by people who do not know the first thing about it,” Mrs. Peelstick said, extending a plate of tiny, round sesame-seed-and pistachio biscuits. “Try one; they are delicious.”

  “Much of that nonsense is useful, of course,” observed Brendan, his Irish lilt dancing, “for it obfuscates the subject sufficiently to protect our work.”

  “Protect it?” wondered Cass. “Why does your work need protecting?”

  “This would merely be a somewhat arcane, not to mention foolhardy, pursuit if it did not serve a far greater purpose,” Brendan told her. “It is not too much to say that the future of humankind may depend on the work of the society. We are engaged in a project of such importance to humankind that its success will ush
er in the final consummation of the universe.”

  “Gosh!” remarked Cass; to her embarrassment it sounded like sarcasm, which she had not intended.

  Brendan paused, gauging her receptiveness to hear what came next. “I suppose it does sound a little overblown,” he admitted, “but it is true nonetheless. In short, the Zetetic Society was formed to offer aid and support to our members who are engaged in a very particular project. Our aim is nothing less than achieving God’s own purpose for His creation.”

  “And what purpose would that be?” Again, Cass hoped her response was not an offense to these kind and hospitable—and probably delusional—people.

  Mrs. Peelstick fielded the question. “Why, the objective manifestation of the supreme values of goodness, beauty, and truth, grounded in the infinite love and goodness of the Creator,” she concluded, her tone suggesting that this should be obvious.

  “Human beings are not a trivial by-product of the universe,” Brendan continued. “Rather, we—you, me, everyone else—all humankind is the reason the cosmos was created in the first place.”

  “I am familiar with the anthropic principle,” Cass replied. It was a favourite hobbyhorse of her father. “The theory that the universe was designed to bring about human life—that the universe exists not only for us, but because of us.”

  “Succinctly put,” commended Brendan. “You do know your cosmology.”

  “My dad is an astrophysicist.” Cass lifted a shoulder diffidently. “I might have picked up a few things.”

  “We go further,” said Mrs. Peelstick. “We extend the principle to say that the universe was conceived and created as a place to grow and perfect independent conscious agents and fit them for eternity.”

  “Independent conscious agents,” echoed Cass softly. “Human beings, you mean.”

  “Yes, dear—human beings.”

  “Why, one might ask?” said Brendan. “What is the aim, the purpose for such an elaborate scheme?”