by S. L. Duncan
“What privacy? You can’t take away what we never had,” Gabe said. Micah shuffled in her uncomfortable plastic chair. They were in a small detention room outside a courtroom-like area, where they’d just been questioned by some members of the Holy See and several of the in-charge types from the Swiss Guard. An unfortunate rule infraction, they had said with a nervous smile.
Gabe wondered if there was some thick, leather-bound book of commandments hidden in a security office somewhere. Thou shalt not set thy curtains on fire with magic, he thought, stifling a chuckle.
The complaints against them had been long, especially for what a brief time Micah and Gabe had been at the Vatican, and though they’d been read by his father like a grocery list, Gabe knew this time he had crossed a line. The window was visible from the square. People would have seen it, reported it in the news. Boredom, apparently, was not a defense for their crimes.
As they got up to leave the room, his father motioned for them to join him. The two guards moved to flank the teenagers, but Gabe’s father held up a hand, and they stood down.
“Told you,” Micah whispered. “Done for.”
Gabe’s father led them down a hall adorned with paintings, murals, and an occasional sculpture. Even the areas only used for those who worked behind the scenes at the Vatican were littered with more priceless art than the entire collections owned by some of the museums Gabe had visited in the endless string of cities he had lived in during his childhood.
A childhood that was a lie, Gabe thought and looked at a painting of a man preaching by a river. Just like everything else.
“Lucky for you both, you’ve been remanded to my custody,” his father said. “I persuaded them that this was a parental matter, as you are still teenagers, after all, and thus I was in the best position to resolve this behavior since, unlike most of the population inside this city, I’ve actually raised a child.”
His father’s British accent was decidedly less appealing than Micah’s. Or maybe Gabe just never liked what he was saying. Either way, it seemed to always cause exasperated sighs and eye rolling.
“I know you’re struggling, Son. What you’ve experienced and seen . . . I can’t imagine. But lashing out, getting into trouble to distract yourself from your anxieties, only makes them fester.” He motioned for them to follow again.
“So, we’re in your custody?” asked Micah. “And exactly what does that mean?”
“It means you are either in the presence of your assigned guards, or you are in my or Afarôt’s presence. It means you’re officially in the way.” He stopped and turned to Gabe and Micah. “You’re too old to behave like spoiled children, destroying property. Setting the Apostolic Palace on fire?”
“It was just the curtains,” Gabe muttered, unable to hide a chuckle.
“Damn it, Gabriel.” His father put his hands on his hips and turned to look out the hall window to a courtyard filled with sculptures of cherubim. “Today was a bad day for this. I don’t have time to entertain this sort of bollocks. I expect more from you. Especially after Ethiopia.”
“Sorry,” Gabe said. He heard the phantom echo of a woman’s scream down the hall, her voice shrill in his mind. He twisted the ring on his finger, hoping it might tune her out.
“Quite sorry, Mr. Adam,” Micah said.
Gabe’s father studied them both, and then his face brightened a bit. A snorting laugh escaped. “Mr. Adam? Bloody hell, Micah.” He motioned for them to follow him down the hall, and his pace quickened. “You’ll need to work on the sincerity of your diplomacy.”
“What do I know about bleedin’ politics?” she asked.
“It’s time you learn,” Joseph said. “If what happened in Axum is just the opening skirmish to something greater, as Afarôt and I have been arguing for the past several weeks, then you will be called upon to unite nations and armies for what is to come.” A smile grew, draining the seriousness from his expression. “And if you could lend a hand here, that would be all right as well. You would expect, for such a rigorously defined religion, those who practice it would be more like-minded. But some here view your very existence as a threat to their traditions. Their way of life. Resistance to my requests has hardened as of late. They want to believe Axum represented the greatest of our trials and the worst is behind us. Sweep everything under the rug, put it all behind them. There is comfort and security in the order of things. And they are fighting to stay relevant in this world that’s changed so suddenly.”
They passed the stairwell that would have taken them back to their rooms in the residence. “Where are we going, and why the hurry?” Gabe asked, following his father through doors that led outside. The Italian sun was hot against his face and the unfiltered smells of the city air jolted his senses. He’d been indoors for too long, paling in the fluorescent lights.
His father’s smile finally brimmed over as his exuberance escaped as a laugh. He began using his hands to express every word. “Before your little incident, I’d just been summoned. Apparently, they found it.”
“The Apocalypse of Solomon? That’s like the best news ever, right?” Gabe felt a sense of relief wash over him, the promise of escape from this state of limbo.
“That’ll explain everything, right?” Micah asked.
“We don’t know. It’s a miracle they even located the document at all after having it hidden away for sixteen hundred years. You must remember, the existence of the work was not known until the Essenes revealed themselves as having survived Rome’s homogenization of religion. And even then, nothing was taken seriously until you two were born.
“Apparently at some point during the library’s history, the book’s age called for special preservation. It was found along with other heretical texts of its time. My understanding, though, is that it has suffered some exposure. So there’s no telling what shape the document is in. Hopefully, it’ll be enough to convince the Holy See there is cause to be prepared, should the enemy breach the Earth realm once again.”
“You still don’t think Axum ended the enemy’s plan?” Micah asked.
“No, my dear.” Joseph held open a door to another building. The words Archivum Secretum Aposolicum Vaticanum surrounded the papal seal on a plaque on the wall. “I believe it is just beginning.”
Inside, the building resembled a place more suitable for appreciating a masterpiece than reading a book. In fact, Gabe didn’t see any books at all. The gallery was enormous, though. The elongated room seemed to stretch half the length of a soccer field. A blanket of elaborate crosses of all different shapes adorned the golden glow of the lit ceiling. The dome arched into pillars painted with what looked like saints or priests, equally spaced apart across the black-and-white-checkered floor.
An older man, somewhere in his fifties, stood inside, waiting on their arrival. His brown hair looked wet and was slicked down to cover his forehead, the stiff ends just touching the frame of his thin, metal glasses like little claws. His sweater and jacket looked tight at the upper arms, suggesting the outline of an athletic build.
“Librarian,” Gabe whispered to Micah.
“Archivist, actually. It is a great honor, Highness,” the man said in a French accent.
Micah elbowed Gabe in the shoulder and smiled as the man awkwardly bowed.
“I am called Sergeant Rafa Alois. Maintenant, if you’ll follow me, s’il vous plaît?” His scuffed dress shoes echoed with every step on the marble floor.
“Sergeant Alois is being modest,” Gabe’s father said as they walked down the corridor. “He is more than just an archivist. He is a former member of the Swiss Guard and trained in the occult and ancient legend. His once-fringe ideas have rapidly become quite popular among the more concerned members of the Holy See, and thus, he has become our expert on the strange and unusual. Our demonologist. Through his knowledge of exorcism and forgotten ritual, contact was established—in secret—with Enoch not long after you two were born.”
The two men exchanged a worried glance. Gab
e had not heard Enoch’s name mentioned in quite a while. He rubbed the mark on the back of his neck, feeling a tingle there.
The ring must have caught the light streaming through the enormous windows, because Alois’s gaze snapped to Gabe’s finger, and he stopped in the middle of the spacious hallway. “Might I see it? I’ve read so much about that little treasure.”
Gabe held out his hand, palm open, and the Frenchman’s breath seemed to catch in his chest.
“Do you ever remove it from your person?”
Gabe shook his head as the man inched his face closer, his glasses sliding down to the end of his nose. He seemed to keep his distance from the ring, as if it deserved some level of respect.
“Beautiful,” Alois whispered.
“I don’t see any books,” Micah said, interrupting. “I thought this was a library.”
Alois looked over his shoulder. “We’ve got books. Many, many, many books. Some to read, some to not read, yes? Eighty-five kilometers of shelves. This is just the entrance. But we’re not here for a library card, no? We go where not so many can. Come. This way,” he said, motioning them forward as if there were any other way to go down the hallway.
“We’re going to the Arsenal,” Gabe’s father said.
“Carlyle told me of that place,” Micah said. She glanced at Gabe, a smug look of satisfaction on her face for knowing something he didn’t. “It’s like the weapon section of the library. But secret-like.”
“I sort of put that together,” Gabe said.
Sergeant Alois grinned and nodded.
“It is a rumor to most,” Gabe’s father continued. “And a place where the most secret of items, books, weapons, and documents are kept. You should feel quite privileged for the opportunity to visit.”
“Yes, yes, it is all these things,” Sergeant Alois said, waving his arms around. “But you make it sound like a storage unit for the yard or the house. No, no, no. It is mystery. It is history. And it is future. All together, yes?” He grabbed the lapel of his jacket. “And recently, I have been placed in charge.” He looked to the Gethsemane Sword on Micah’s back and the ring on Gabe’s finger. “Though you are wearing much more exotic treasures than we will see, I think.”
“So you, like, research old stuff or something?” Gabe asked, trying to draw the Frenchman’s attention away from his ring.
“Oui. However, not in the Arsenal. My old private office—a closet, really—where I did my research before being taken seriously. Far below among the forgotten books of the history of time. This, mes amis. This is much more interesting to you, I think. But for later, no?”
“I’ve heard stories about books kept there,” Micah said, her voice taking on an edge. “Carlyle used to go on about it. He said the Vatican wouldn’t let him in. That they were too busy hiding their dirty laundry to do anything about the future.”
“This, unfortunately, was before my time. And a great injustice to deny the guardian of Your Highness,” Sergeant Alois said, shaking his head in disgust. “Politicians of the Vatican, they are like most politicians everywhere. Selfish. And fearful of losing what power they have been given. They are unable to see the grand picture, yes? Most here are less frightened by the return of archangels than by what that may mean to their positions, their stature, for which they have fought their lives to attain.”
His face darkened as if reliving a terrible memory, but the moment quickly passed, and his eyes once again shined with cheer. “Really, though, the Arsenal is where we keep the history of the modern world. Truth, mes amis. Truth is the greatest weapon. And something that cannot be imprisoned, no matter how thick the walls of the cell.”
He led them through several doors and past a checkpoint at the beginning of a smaller hallway, lined with windows that seemed to connect to an adjacent building. At the end of the corridor, his ID was scanned, and at an elevator that looked out of place among the fresco paintings and columns that so far had surrounded them, several guards joined them.
“And the foundation of this great weapon, truth? Science. What I do is similar to archeology.” He took his glasses off and wiped them on his shirt. “But, how you say? Molecular archeology.”
As the elevator descended, he looked over Gabe and Micah. “So what is this feeling like? This power of the ring?”
“I don’t know. Like I have no control, I guess. And at the same time like I can control the whole world,” Gabe said.
“They said I was crazy. They said it did not exist,” Alois said. “Mais, voilà. Right on your finger. If only they’d listened to me sooner. If only they had heeded my warnings.”
“You asked if I ever take off the ring.” At first, Alois’s question had concerned him, but he’d looked at the ring as a doctor might an incurable disease: there was respect but not longing. “Why?”
Sergeant Alois hesitated and looked to Gabe’s father before turning back to Gabe. “Pardon moi. I was being rude. It is nothing of importance.” Gabe spun the ring on his finger and looked at his palm, at the jewel set within the band. Its pentalpha engraving somehow looked darker than usual. He looked back to Alois, and the man’s face flinched awkwardly as he tried not to look at the ring. Gabe recognized the look. Alois was lying.
CHAPTER FIVE
Atop the push trolley or mobile science cart—or whatever it was called—was a glass case, vacuum sealed. Gabe thought it looked expensive, state-of-the-art. As though it was some sort of display case made for a futuristic museum.
Digital readings of temperature and humidity blinked on a touch panel.
Joseph moved the guards aside and stared at the contents kept secure inside the case’s carefully regulated atmosphere. Mangled leaves of papyrus lay atop each other, forming a loosely bound manuscript, probably no more than fifty pages. They looked dry and in bad shape. The bottom of the case was covered in debris and dust, no doubt from the book, which had suffered a degree of decomposition.
“So, this is the rush job?” asked a man whose outfit bore all the professional seriousness of someone who’d just stepped out of a senior-level university classroom. He wore trainers and a T-shirt bearing a Brigham Young University insignia under a white coat.
Gabe instantly liked him, imagining the rabble of robed men arguing over graphic tees.
“This is our resident scientist, Dr. Nathan,” Alois said. “Pardon his appearance. To have the best in the field, we must often allow for . . . eccentricities. Do not be shocked to find not an ounce of respect for the subject matter. If you’ll excuse me, Highnesses, I must see to our outstanding issue. Dr. Nathan will take it from here.”
Joseph nodded as the sergeant left them.
“What issue?” Gabe whispered to his father.
Joseph merely shook his head, indicating now wasn’t the time to ask.
Gabe didn’t know exactly what to expect out of the Arsenal, but a laboratory was not it.
“Dude. Did he just call you Highnesses?” Dr. Nathan asked. “What, are you royalty or something?”
Micah looked at Gabe and shrugged.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had a priority or emergency order for treatment. You got the secret formula that turns lead into gold or something?”
“Nothing like that. Just some historical context,” Joseph said, following Dr. Nathan into an expansive room that resembled an emergency ward in a hospital with a large, cylindrical machine fixed to the floor and reaching to the ceiling.
“Book report due, is it?” Dr. Nathan asked Gabe and Micah, searching for a laugh. He seemed to give up, met by Micah’s unimpressed blank stare. “All righty, then. Say good-bye to it and we’ll get started.”
“Wait,” Gabe’s father said, pulling the man’s jacket. “What do you mean, say good-bye to it?”
Dr. Nathan smiled and maneuvered the cart into a docking bay of the machine. “Well, Mr. Adam, I’m about to light it up. You know, destroy it.”
“Excuse me?” Gabe’s father said, moving to stand between Dr. Nathan and the cart.
“You can’t destroy it. It is the only one in existence. If we cannot learn what’s inside this document, we are all in quite a lot of trouble.”
Dr. Nathan’s jovial demeanor evaporated. “What do you mean, trouble? Is it to do with the zealot protests in the city?”
The young doctor stared at Gabe’s father, imploring him to speak, but was only met by an intense stare Gabe knew all to well.
What could be said that wouldn’t sound crazy? he wondered. What answers could his father possibly offer this man?
“Look. This machine will destroy this document. But that is the only way to find out what’s inside its pages,” Dr. Nathan offered.
“Can we not just open the case and read it?” Joseph looked at Gabe and Micah. “What if there’s something more to the document itself—some kind of magical property we don’t know about?”
Dr. Nathan chuckled. “Magic? Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such thing as—”
Micah cleared her throat and raised her hand, cupping a spinning blue energy orb in her palm. “You were saying?”
The young doctor jumped back, knocking over a stack of books on a desk behind him, his hand covering his mouth. “My God,” he stammered, adjusting his glasses. “I’d heard the rumors, but . . .”
“It doesn’t look magical,” Gabe said, ignoring the reaction that was so common. He leaned in closer to look at the crumbled pages. They looked brittle and dry.
“Carlyle never thought it was,” Micah said. “He only cared about what was inside.”
“You have to understand,” Dr. Nathan said, still trying to catch his breath. “To a great extent, this document is already destroyed. Now it is on a sort of life support. You ever seen those space movies where the rich dead guy has his body frozen in suspended animation? It’s like that. Except way worse. If you open that case to the environment, the pages will disintegrate. In, like, minutes. The oxidation would be almost instantaneous.”