by Simon Toyne
Chapter 104
For the second time that day Liv finished relating the strange circumstances of her birth and waited for the reaction. She examined the three faces opposite her staring at the cruciform scar on her side.
‘The cross will rise,’ Oscar whispered, ‘to unlock the Sacrament.’ His eyes flicked up and met hers. There was something close to wonder in them. ‘It’s you,’ he said.
Liv pulled her shirt back down, feeling suddenly exposed and shy. ‘Possibly,’ she said. ‘Only, I have no idea what the Sacrament is so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to “unlock” it.’
She sat down and turned to the page in her notebook where she’d copied the letters and re-read the message she’d found in them. When she’d written it down she thought she was on to something. But it had proved to be just another dead end. The Mala had no more idea what the Sacrament was than she did. She suddenly felt unbearably tired, like someone had opened a sluice gate and flooded her with weariness.
‘Were the letters scratched on to leather, like the phone number?’ Gabriel asked.
‘No,’ she said, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. ‘They were scratched on seeds.’ She stopped rubbing and looked up to discover everyone staring straight at her.
‘Seeds?’ Oscar repeated.
She nodded. The old man’s body seemed to contract in a moment of deep concentration, then he breathed out and reached across the desk to pull the computer keyboard towards him. ‘During my time in the Citadel,’ he said, opening a browser window, ‘I did learn some of their secrets.’ He typed something into the search box and hit return. An image started downloading on the screen. It was a patchwork of greens, greys and large areas of blue. As it sharpened it manifested itself as a satellite photo of Eastern Europe. Oscar clicked on an area of the picture. The image zoomed into a section of southern Turkey until the screen showed a dense network of streets radiating out from something large and dark at its centre.
‘This is a satellite image of Ruin,’ Oscar explained, ‘taken in the 1980s. Before then all aircraft were forbidden from flying over the city.’ The image continued to sharpen. Liv leaned in closer to the screen as the picture stopped downloading. The Citadel sat at the centre. It was oval in shape and completely black except for a large area of dark green close to the centre. ‘After NASA published this photograph they lifted the ban,’ Oscar explained. ‘Even the Citadel’s jurisdiction does not yet extend into space.’
Liv focused on the patch of green.
‘What is it,’ she asked. ‘A lake?’
‘No,’ Oscar replied, zooming the image as close as it would go.
‘It’s a garden.’
Chapter 105
Athanasius picked his way through the silent library, his hands reaching out for unseen obstacles, his eyes fixed on the thin line of lights set in the stone floor. Like all who lived in the mountain he was used to the dark, but not like this. A soft white noise seemed to dance at the edge of it, like swarms of silent bees that dispersed the moment he tried to look at them.
He stole a glance behind him, checking nervously for the glow of someone who might have ventured this deep into the library. He saw nothing – just the quivering movement at the edge of his vision and the thin thread of lights stretching away like a crack in the blackness. He turned back, his heart beating so loud in his ears he could hear nothing else, not even the muffled tread of his own feet as they stole across the stone floor. Up ahead he could see the floor lights curve away to the right then disappear. It was where the pathway turned into the final corridor that ended at the forbidden vault. He walked towards it, stepping only on the faint scratch of light in the floor like a wirewalker who knew a step either side would plunge him into the abyss. He followed the curve into the corridor. Stopped.
Ahead of him the thin lights continued to stretch out in a wavering line until, after roughly thirty feet, there was nothing. Athanasius moved forwards, counting his paces as he went, drawn to the awful darkness at the end of the light trail. He counted twenty-eight paces, reached the end of the line, then turned and walked back, twenty-eight paces to the entrance to the corridor. As he counted he recalled Father Thomas’s earnest face explaining how he could get round his own security system, but there was nothing he could do once Athanasius was inside the forbidden vault. Once he stepped over the threshold the silent alarm would sound and he would have a maximum of two minutes before the guard arrived.
Athanasius walked back and forth along the corridor, counting the paces to and from the vault, his arms stretched out by his sides as he walked, keeping his balance in the dark. When he was satisfied his escape route was clear he stood once more at the point in the floor where the lights ended and the darkness began, feeling like a man standing on a cliff’s edge, preparing to jump.
He pictured the room that lay in front of him: the stone lectern in the middle of the floor; the twelve recesses cut into the cave wall behind it, each one filled with a black box containing the jealously guarded secrets of their order. He figured it would take him a minute to put everything in the vault back the way it was and escape up the corridor. This gave him sixty seconds to find the book. He pictured the Abbot taking it down the day before – three across, two down. In his mind he ran through the actions he had to perform once inside the room. Sixty seconds wasn’t long enough – but it was all he had.
He stared ahead into the darkness, aware of the white swarms closing in from the edge of his vision. He took a deep breath. Blew it out slowly. Started counting down from sixty in his head.
And stepped forward.
The guard looked up as the high-pitched alarm sounded. He was off his chair and unlocking the desk before Athanasius had even managed to feel his way to the far wall of the forbidden vault.
Inside the guard’s cabinet was a Beretta, a couple of spare clips and a headset with a single telescopic eyepiece protruding from the front. The guard grabbed everything and smacked the first clip into place as he pushed through the door into the main entrance hall.
Father Malachi rose from his chair, his face a mask of concern as he saw the guard moving towards him with the gun in one hand and the night-vision goggles in the other.
‘Give me one minute,’ the guard said, slipping the gun into his sleeve and heading through the archway and into the main library.
Athanasius felt his way across the wall, counting the recesses as he went. Three across. Two down. His hands reached inside the cold niche. Closed around the smooth box.
He lifted it out and placed it on the floor. His fingers fumbling at the sides for the catches on each edge.
He found them.
Opened the box.
Felt the cold smooth rectangle of slate inside. His fingers fluttered over it. Traced the carved outline of the Tau, then moved on to the edge and opened the book.
No alarm sounded within the library but everyone knew what it meant when they saw the russet gown of a guard swooping down the corridors with his hand hidden in his sleeve.
Standard procedure was to make your way directly to the entrance and wait until someone gave the all-clear. Scholars looked up now, closing their books automatically and watching the guard’s halo of light dim as he surged deeper into the vast darkness of the library. Father Thomas was one of these observers. He stood by Ponti, his own circle of light disguising the fact that the blind caretaker now had one of his own, and watched in silence as the guard cleared the medieval section and entered the hall of venerated texts leading to pre-history.
‘Trouble?’ Ponti asked, sensing the tension the way a dog senses ghosts.
‘Possibly,’ Father Thomas replied. In the distance he saw the guard raise his arm and pull the night-vision goggles over his head. He took two more strides, then, as he entered the hall of the apostles, his aura of light winked out.
Chapter 106
Liv peered at the pixellated circle of green on the monitor. The resolution was too low to make out any detail but she imag
ined the outline of trees and bushes in the slight variations between the blocks of colour.
‘One of the great historical mysteries of the Citadel,’ Oscar said, his voice rumbling through the silent room, ‘was how it miraculously managed to survive years of siege with no food.
‘I spent my first year apprenticed to the gardeners: clearing weeds, planting new beds, helping to bring in the fruit harvests. One of my jobs was watering the grounds. We did this from large cisterns that collected rain and waste water from inside the mountain. Sometimes it picked up mineral deposits as it flowed through the stone channels turning it red, so it seemed you were watering the earth with blood.
‘Whatever was in it made the soil incredibly fertile. Anything grew in it, even though the garden lay in a crater and was in almost permanent shadow. Once, whilst clearing away some long grass, I found an old rake part-buried in the soil. Green shoots were beginning to spring from its wooden handle.’ He looked up and reached for the computer keyboard. ‘This garden has nourished the Citadel throughout history,’ he said, opening a browser window and typing. ‘The green cassocks of the Sancti reflect this – as does the name they used to be known by – The Edenites.’ He finished typing and hit return. The satellite photo disappeared and another page started to open. ‘Some think this name refers to the age of their order, dating back to the dawn of man. Others, however, believe it has a more literal meaning, and that the Tau is not a cross at all.’
The page stopped downloading. Liv stared at it, the image now filling the screen mingling powerfully with the implication of Oscar’s words.
It was a stylized drawing of a tree, its thin trunk rising straight up to where two branches, heavy with fruit, spread out on either side, forming the familiar shape of the ‘T’. Winding its way up the trunk was a serpent, and standing either side of it, a man and a woman. She looked across at Oscar, not quite believing what he was suggesting.
‘You said the letters were scratched on seeds,’ he said. ‘Do you know what sort of seeds?’
Liv gazed into his deep black eyes and thought of all the pictures she’d seen in her life depicting Adam and Eve standing in front of the tree of knowledge, one of them always holding the heavy fruit of temptation in their hand.
‘Apple,’ she said. ‘They were scratched on apple seeds.’
Chapter 107
The vast caves of the library glowed bright and green in the guard’s night vision, making all the details of the room visible. He upped his pace now he could see the way ahead and pulled the Beretta from his sleeve. His head scanned left to right, looking for the hotspots of light that would indicate someone’s presence. He saw none. The only thing that flared in the green was the thin guide lights, stretching ahead like a phosphorescent vapour trail, leading all the way to the forbidden vault.
It took him less than a minute to get there.
As he approached the entrance to the final corridor he slowed his pace, dropped to a crouch then stopped. He leaned back against the upright of the carved archway. Ducked his head round the edge. Glanced towards the vault itself.
The floor lights blazed in his vision, a bright green line pointing towards the end of the corridor. He peered past the glare. Searching for movement in the dark beyond.
Saw nothing.
Silently he crabbed his way round the edge of the arch and moved stealthily down the middle of the corridor directly toward the vault. His gun extended in front of him. His head perfectly still, like a cat stalking a mouse.
* * *
Athanasius saw the line of guide lights break barely six feet in front of him. He was tucked into the shelf that had been emptied earlier on Father Thomas’s orders. It was low to the ground, opposite the entrance, facing the vault.
He watched the patch of darkness slide away from him, along the filament of light, showing someone was in the corridor with him. The position of the shelf meant anyone walking down the corridor towards the vault would not see him; anyone walking back up it, however, would spot him in an instant. He needed to be gone before the guard looked round.
Slowly he eased his way out, his ears amplifying every tiny sound, his eyes never leaving the small patch of darkness as it continued to slip away from him down the brittle strip of light in the floor.
He pushed himself to his knees. Then to his feet. He took a step, reaching out into the featureless darkness towards the doorway, lifting and replacing his feet on the floor like a ballet dancer, terrified that the merest scrape of sandal on stone would alert the guard to his presence and bring sudden death.
His hands continued to reach out, groping through the formless black, feeling for the edge of the archway that would lead him away from this trapped corridor. His eyes never left the patch of darkness sliding away down the corridor.
He took a second step.
A third.
A fourth.
On the fifth his hand touched the smooth, cold stone of the wall. He nearly gasped with relief when he felt it. Then he froze. The patch of darkness had stopped moving, just short of the end of the lights. Athanasius moved his hand along the cold stone, heard his dry skin rasp across it, unnervingly loud. In his mind he pictured the guard. Standing at the end of the corridor. Gun in hand. Staring into the vault. How long, after seeing no one there, would it take him to turn round? As this question rose in his mind his hand found the edge of the wall. It curled round it, pulled him through the doorway and into the hall of venerated texts.
Every fibre of his being now screamed at him to run but he knew the hall he stood in was still twenty feet long. Any sound he made here would be heard in the corridor he had just escaped from. He had to stay silent. He put one foot in front of the other, as swiftly and stealthily as he could, in the knowledge that somewhere in the blackness behind him stood a man with a gun who could see in the dark.
The pounding of his heart sounded the pace as he moved swiftly through the black hall towards the exit, his eyes fixed to the floor lights, so pre-occupied with what lay behind that he did not notice the glow of approaching light until it was nearly upon him.
He reached the end of the hall and saw it, a faint glow on the floor and in the curve of the archway he was about to duck through. He froze the moment he saw it. Someone was coming. He watched it grow brighter.
No time to hide.
No place to hide in.
All he could do was stand there and watch as the owner of the light rounded the corner, bursting like a supernova into the chamber not ten feet from where he stood. It was Father Malachi, no doubt on his way to check the contents of the forbidden vault.
Athanasius began to raise his hands in surrender, expecting any moment for the librarian to look up, stop in shock, then shout for the guard. But nothing happened. Malachi continued to stare at the ground, his sharp face stern in thought, his aura of light seeming like a comet to Athanasius’s darkness-soaked eyes. Malachi continued down the hallway until he disappeared into the corridor Athanasius had just escaped from, never even glancing in his direction.
Athanasius stared after him for a stunned moment, his eyes readjusting to the settling darkness that had just saved his life.
Then he turned. And started to run.
Chapter 108
Liv stared at the stylized drawing of the tree. For long moments the flickering of the TV in the corner was the only movement, the low murmur of the news broadcast the only sound. It was Kathryn who eventually broke the silence.
‘We need to get those seeds,’ she said. ‘We must get them and analyse them.’
Gabriel stood up and stretched, his lithe body preparing once again for action as his mind began calculating logistics. ‘They weren’t mentioned in the case file, so the Citadel might not know about them yet. Gives us a head start at least.’ He stalked over to the window and stared across the low-stacked crates towards the warehouse door. ‘They’ll either be in the evidence lockers or most probably the labs. That’s a bit of a problem. Security is bound to be much tight
er following what happened at the morgue.’
‘I could get them,’ Liv said. ‘I could call Arkadian. Tell him I think I’ve worked out what the letters mean, but that I need to see the seeds they’re written on. Then, when I get them, I’ll drop them on the floor or distract him somehow and take one, or swap it for another.’ She looked up at Gabriel. ‘You only need one, don’t you?’
Gabriel stared at her for a moment, his face a mixture of concentration and concern. Then it softened into a smile.
‘Yes,’ Oscar answered for him. ‘We only need one. You must become our Eve and grasp the forbidden fruit. And if these seeds prove to be something extraordinary, just imagine what good we could do with them.’
Liv’s mind raced with the incredible implications of what he had just said and a worrying thought struck her. ‘But if these seeds are really from the fruit of the . . .’ she could hardly bring herself to say it ‘ . . . from the tree of knowledge,’ she managed. ‘Then surely messing with them will be . . . a really bad idea.’
Oscar continued to look at her, his widening smile refusing to die in the face of her concern. ‘Why?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Look what happened last time.’
‘You mean the fall of man? Original sin? Being cast out of the garden of Eden to live a life of perpetual pain and hardship?’
Liv nodded. ‘That kind of thing, yeah.’
Oscar’s smile turned into a dry chuckle.