The Flight to Lucifer
Page 16
But his own voice trailed off, as the driven-down memories rose up again. He had departed from the Therapeutae just past midnight, as the day turned into his fiftieth with them. Achamoth, or his own weakness at confronting her, had thrust him out of the tower and into the bewilderment of the Kenoma.
Valentinus swayed with nausea and self-contempt, until he fell across the threshold. He was aware of a woman’s laughter and dragged himself up to stand unsteadily just within the tower, looking up at the night sky. After a few moments, he understood that the stars were laughing at him.
Perscors Archon
As again he came up to the northwest tower, Perscors stopped in surprise at seeing Olam limp past him. The Aeon’s yellow face scowled in pain as he stumbled into the grove, looking straight ahead and failing to see Perscors.
“It has been too much for old Olam!” declared Perscors. “Here, in my world, usurped by the Archons, the Knowers have no fire of their own to battle the storms of Saklas! But what fresh goblin is this?”
Perscors moved from laughter to amused contempt as another being, unknown to him, advanced from the grove and stood, armed but irresolute, in front of the tower’s entrance. Less than six feet tall, and slight in frame, he would have represented no menace, except that he was in full armor, with shield and sword, whereas Perscors was naked and unarmed, except for the blue circle of light stretching seven feet about him.
“Speak, hobgoblin! Better that I learn something about you before I hurl you into the grove!”
There was a strong contrast between the blazing armor of the being that Perscors taunted and the paleness of the face, at once sullen and baffled, far more amazed by Perscors than Perscors could be by anyone. The armor was afire with carnelian, topaz, emerald, diamond, beryl, onyx, jasper, sapphire, and carbuncle, all set in purest gold. A second glance made plain to Perscors that the armor was outsized for his antagonist, and that the emerald-studded shield and sword were also too large and were brandished very awkwardly.
“Speak out, and say something for yourself!” Perscors roared again. “And whose stolen finery are you wearing?”
The realization came to Perscors, without reservation, that this was his own armor and his own sword. In fury, he charged at his silent enemy, evading the sword that flashed by him and knocking the shield away. Perscors’s impetus was so great that he landed on the ground, stretched atop an unconscious foe.
“Short work!” he growled, and rose to his knees, rapidly stripping the armor off. Only after he had assumed the armor himself, and held both shield and sword, did he deign to glance again at his victim, who lay now gasping in the moonlight. A strange glitter rose from the naked and trembling body, whose bruises were palpable.
“Wretched thief, come forth with a few words or I’ll hack you up a bit with this sword that you usurped!”
Faltering at first, but then in a steady monotone, another story of the origins emerged:
“I am Helel, the Cosmocrator. It was my right to defend my tower against you, here in the utmost North. My star defies sunrise, at the end of each night. Here, beyond the north wind, my word would be law, were it not for Saklas, whose storms rule me also. But this is my world, upon which you are the wanderer and the alien. On this world, the cherub’s armor always has been mine. Whose it has been elsewhere, I cannot say. I am Helel Archon, also called Lucifer, son of the dawn and lord of the Tower of Assembly. But who can stand against an otherworldly demon? Let your quarrel now be against Saklas and Achamoth, and may they have the strength to destroy you! But I am overthrown, and out of the battle, made weak by my own knowing …”
Perscors tried to puzzle it out, but though his anger waned, he understood only a little.
“The armor, anyway, precisely fits me and not you! A puny world this is indeed, with you as its guardian! But what do you know that Saklas can’t know? Are you not his creature?”
The effort of speech had exhausted the badly bruised Helel, who whispered forth the rest of his story: “The Demiurge Saklas is a creature of his mother Achamoth, but from the psychical substance and not from the spirit. I am the Demiurge’s creature, but from the spiritual substance, from the grief and perplexity of the mother, and so of the pneuma. I knozu the Abyss, but Saklas cannot know. You are stronger than the Aeon who inflicted you upon us …”
“You leave me no wiser,” Perscors grunted. “But it doesn’t matter anyway. Poor little devil that you are, crawl into the cypresses and lick your wounds there.”
In contempt and some wonderment, Perscors turned away from the fallen Helel and back toward the tower. Proper foes were what he needed, he thought, and a truer combat might resolve some puzzlements. Shield and sword at the ready, brave in his own armor, he entered the tower.
Achamoth stood before him, just past the threshold. Scorn marked her countenance as she surveyed him.
“Perscors Archon, prepared to do slaughter! Welcome then! But what if there is no ogre here but you to slay? What if we have no violence suitable for you? You, who were too early for us, may find that we are too late in the story to have any resistance left against you. Welcome again! Be my guest yet once more ere this night is over.”
Foolish and forlorn, he waited upon the threshold. In the face of Achamoth, he was a child again, unarmed for the subtle combat, overarmed for the battle he could not find.
Bewilderment
Perscors sat on the bare floor of the tower. The shield and sword were by his side. He looked down at the gold and precious stones of his armor. Had he recovered his identity so uselessly? Yet the perfect fit of the armor remained an obscure comfort to him. Perhaps, he reflected, it was a sign that his coming fate would fit him also. ’
Opposite him, Achamoth sat as though she were daydreaming. Her expression was blank, and she looked through him.
He had to pause, he decided. If above he were to find only the fire and then an emptiness, then this tower did not hold his fate. If he showed patience enough, Achamoth might lead him to Saklas or otherwise instruct him for the final combat.
It was a relief, he realized now, that there would be only words between them. No lovemaking and no violence; the impulses that had driven him toward her had left him. Their fates were separate. Darkly he understood something of what she had meant in saying that he was both too early and too late for her story.
He studied her face, and thought of Valentinus. If his friend, now forever lost to him, suffered from the absence of memory, then Achamoth’s case was just the opposite. The presence of memory was for her a continuous torment.
It came to him also that he would not understand her story, however much of it she chose to tell him. It was a story that Valentinus would understand, he mused.
A heaviness came upon him and he fell asleep as he waited.
In dream he threaded his way through a labyrinth, following a scarlet cord that Achamoth had let down. He went through what seemed a sea beast’s mouth, cut in the rock, and emerged into an open, circular, dark space. Around him, ranged on seats, were men in armor like his own watching him silently. Back, beyond the seated questers, a great fire burned on every side.
He came awake, and seized his sword and shield. But Achamoth sat as she had before, except that now she looked at him with curiosity.
“Have I dreamed what is to come, or part of it?”
She did not answer. Was it that he now confused her?
“It is only an hour until dawn,” Perscors said, and an appeal had come into his tone.
“I understand,” Achamoth said, adding: “It will be your last morning upon Lucifer.”
“Let me conclude by noon, then. Where is Saklas and how am I to get to him?”
“It matters little. He will not fight you, anyway. However you seek him, he will evade you. Try to understand that you are a terror to him.”
“Why was I brought here?” Perscors burst out.
Bewilderment mastered Perscors, until he could formulate a last question, painfully: “Why cannot Saklas try to destroy Valentinus?”
“Because your strange friend has been with the dead for eighteen hundred mortal years. Even the Archons cannot slay the dead.”
“What remains for me?” Perscors whispered, but the question was directed only to himself.
“I only know what remains for me,” she said drily. “I will go to the other tower and tell Valentinus what he needs to be told.”
Perscors shook his head bitterly. He no longer desired any understanding, but he would not acknowledge defeat.
“Go where you will. Valentinus will be equal to you, whether he was before or not. But I am here to some purpose still and I shall discover it before I die.”
Achamoth rose and went out of the tower, without looking at Perscors again.
Holding his sword and shield, bent over against the stone floor, he listened hard for the voice that he felt must come.
While he waited, the light began to edge into the tower. He rose and stood in the tower’s entrance. Then he went out and turned east along the lake’s northern shore, marching defiantly into the sunrise.
Last Morning on Lucifer
Perscors had not gone far when the first voice spoke to him, just to his left. He could not tell whether it and the later voices were male or female.
“Why live any longer, alien? Die in your grief, because you cannot get hold of the light. Die the death of air!”
“It is not my light,” Perscors answered. “Let Achamoth grieve. I go against every false light.”
He was nearly halfway along the northern shore when another voice spoke, this time out of the lake: “Lie down and die near the water, alien! Die in the affection of fear!”
“What should I fear?” Perscors cried. “Let Achamoth fear, lest life like the light would leave her! I am beyond the fear of those that hope, the fear of water!”
As he swung along the shore, he stopped, in a moment of surprise. Ahead of him was a low hill, and on it a second tower.
Before he could resume his march, the third voice whispered to him from the ground he stood upon: “Die the death of earth, Perscors. You are a living death of bewilderment. Lie down and die!”
“I have been bewildered always, long before I came to Lucifer! What I could endure in my own world I can endure here!”
Between Perscors and the tower was a single row of cypresses. As he marched under them, a fourth voice called out from the trees: “Die the death of fire, wanderer! All that you are is the fire of your own ignorance! Lie down beneath the trees and die!”
The row of cypresses burst into flame, and the nearest came crashing down upon Perscors. He fended it off with his shield, and marched past the fire beyond, crying out: “My fire, my ignorance, my dark affection, and so my will only, when I choose to die!”
He stood before a dark tower, with its entrance open. After a moment, he shook his head and turned away.
A fifth voice, a voice that was great within him, spoke out, and yet it was not quite his own voice: “Die only the death of the turning back, the soul’s own death.”
He agreed, but where was the death to be found? Not at either tower, the one empty except for the fire of his own ignorance, nor this one, which was for Achamoth and Valentinus to confront. His fate was elsewhere. He turned into the dawn darkness of the grove and plunged into the shadows.
Some moments later he reached the beginning of his end. The grove receded, and he came to a cleared circle, surrounded by rocks. So many cave entrances beckoned! Was he to search them one by one?
He looked down. The frayed end of a scarlet cord was at his feet. His gaze followed the cord’s windings until it vanished into the mouth of what seemed barely a cave.
“More an opening in the stony ground,” he said and went up to it.
“Whether this is a trap or not, Saklas, is of little concern to me! With gratitude for the gift, Achamoth!”
Shouting her name, he went down into the world below.
The Labyrinth
The cave mouth led unaccountably to some rough steps cut in the rock. They descended in a slow turning, and the passageway remained just high enough for Perscors to move through it without stooping. The light from above soon gave out, but as he moved deeper inward and downward, he noticed that a cold reddish glow seemed to illuminate the steps ahead of him. He followed the scarlet cord into a chamber. This wide, twelve-sided space, with twelve corridors opening off it, revealed to him where the light came from. His own armor was glowing, but without heat; the gold and jewels combined to release an intense light.
He went up to one of the corridor openings, and then another and yet another. They all led down into darkness; choosing one, he proceeded down it for a short while until he reached another chamber, one of twelve, like the earlier one but, since uncrossed by the trail of the red cord, clearly as different from the first as it seemed identical to it. Perscors retraced his steps, reentered the first hall, and tried another of the exits, sensing that the result would be the same. It was, as it was with all the others. Finally he spun himself around, entered a corridor at random, and proceeded hastily and without rational choice from chamber to chamber.
“A labyrinth beyond all others,” he angrily brooded aloud, hopelessly lost after an hour’s wanderings. This was not a maze of branching alternatives but one in which every choice blossomed in a spray of new uncertainties. The red cord, which Perscors now knew was Achamoth’s sign, had soon played itself out, and he was left only with his confusion: he now no longer knew whether he was reentering places he had been before.
“Let it be a snare or trap; I am still ready.” But his defiance was lost in animal sounds coming from the next chamber. Perscors rushed ahead to combat with them. As he entered it, he found himself confronted by what he took at first to be four beasts: lion, bull, serpent, and dog. The flickering light given off by his armor revealed them to be men or demons wearing animal masks and squatting horridly. Glad to see them armed with javelins and daggers, rather than more dangerous and invincible weapons, he closed on them, but they fled into four separate corridors; it was impossible to pursue them.
“No one on Lucifer will meet me face to face!” he exclaimed, but then fell silent with the thought that perhaps he had underestimated Saklas, even as Olam had been deceived. The cowardly masked demons were bait, and surely Saklas was fishing for him here in this maze. He remembered a text, and spoke it into the darkness.
“I will spread my net over him and he shall be taken in my snare … for the treason he has committed against me.”
What they had taught him to be the words of Yahweh, he saw now to be the words of Saklas. If he was in this labyrinth to be netted, then he needed wariness more than his rage for war.
He continued forward, but more cautiously, feeling his way. Without knowing why, he sank suddenly to his knees. The armor light showed nothing untoward ahead, but he reached forward and probed the ground with his sword. The packed clay parted swiftly. Scraping the clay aside, he uncovered what gradually was revealed as a shallow pit lined with spikes arranged in concentric circles, but barely visible even in the light he bore.
Had Achamoth known of this pitfall? He shrugged. This was no way through to Saklas. Any one pit could be evaded, but the traps would be endless. He called aloud: “I have little time left.”
The chill words echoed in the labyrinth: “little time left.” Perscors rose and pondered his course. His dreams, so far, had not been fit guidance. At best these windings would bring him to Siniavis again, where his shadow self had been defiled and murdered. He could make a great slaughter of the demons there, yet the Demiur
ge would create them again, under the guidance of Achamoth. If the quest on Lucifer was to end, it must at least conclude in the maiming of the Demiurge. No, the conquest of this labyrinth could itself be a far worse trap than any of those it contained.
He turned resolutely from the place of the pit, catching his spear inadvertently against the side of the cement corridor. It clanged loudly, but the sound died away in the rush of echoing, apparently from the chamber ahead. Perscors followed quickly into it: the echo of the clanging was barely audible, except that, remarkably, it sounded loud and clear in one of the twelve openings. Perscors followed this corridor into another chamber, where he found, again, that the sound of the echo chose only one exit. And so it was by clanging his sword against his shield that he was able to move his way out of the maze, his ear guiding him through confusions that almost maddened the eye.
Perscors finally emerged from the cave into the circle of stones. But his weary wanderings had taken many hours. Looking up, he saw that the sun of Saklas was almost directly overhead. Where was he to discover his adversary?
He turned and brooded on the rocks. No images came to him: their shapes were as adamant even to fancy as they were to touch. The squalor of defeat mounted in Perscors. He lay face down upon a large rock. The will to rise again ebbed from him, and yet he gripped both shield and sword tightly.
Somewhere a faintly rushing noise sounded behind him. Was it water or the movement of fire? He did not care enough to raise his head.
Gradually the sense grew in him that he was being watched. He resisted the feeling, wishing only to be one with the stone upon which he rested.
Somewhere, farther behind him, a horn sounded. A trumpet’s call replaced it, in alternation with the cry of yet another trumpet.
Lying upon his face, Perscors listened to the faint exchange between the two trumpets.