The Erlking snorted as he crossed his arms. “Alas, I cannot tell you any more, my people are preparing for war and while many of them shall die, this is for a glorious cause. We will make whatever sacrifice is needed for the return of my daughter.”
“Wait a minute,” Gyle said. “There are so many suspects in your daughter’s disappearance that I don’t think it’s wise for you to make war on another race without full proof. Have you talked to these dark elves about this?”
“Well, no,” the Erlking said. “But the black ore found in her chambers is proof enough. There shall be no negotiations until she is returned to us!”
Ilya scratched the top of his head. “Are you sure that perhaps the black stone was planted there by someone who was making it look like it was the dark elves that did it?”
The Erlking growled in frustration. “No, it cannot be! The only ones who could know about her are the dark elves or one of the fey! You mortals are confusing us!”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” the raven said.
Ilya nodded. “King of the faeries, if my friends and I go to the kingdom of the elves and try to find your daughter and bring her back to you, will you promise to tell us everything you know about this group of wizards from my world?”
The Erlking nodded. “That is a fair bargain. Very well, we shall refrain from attacking the dark elves until your return. Find out if they are indeed holding my daughter captive. If you bring her back safely, I shall reward you with knowledge and aid you in whatever else we can manage.”
“It’s a deal then,” Ilya said.
As the three of them moved along the paths of the forest, a few winged faeries flew by and offered words of encouragement before flying off into another part of the woods. After their agreement, the Erlking had offered to feast with them but they politely refused and excused themselves.
The raven had mostly been silent but it shifted uneasily on Gyle’s shoulder. “Ilya, you made a bargain with these faeries. They will not take kindly to you if you break this contract.”
“Do not worry, little bird,” Ilya said confidently. “I am thinking of a plan to find out where this fairy princess is.”
“You seem pretty sure of yourself,” Gyle said. “Almost as if you know what the answer to this mystery is.”
Ilya shrugged as he kept on walking. “I have a few suspicions.”
“Is that why you asked to see the princesses bed chamber and had a look around?” Gyle asked.
“Yes,” Ilya said. “That is also why I asked to question the personal servants of the princess.”
Gyle shook his head in disbelief. “And where did you get all these ideas from?”
“From watching TV, of course,” Ilya said. “When the cops look at a crime scene, they always ask questions about what happened, and then look for clues. We may be in another world but it is no different.”
“Pity those faeries don’t watch TV then,” Gyle said.
20. The Schemers
Ashkelon
David Zim used his fingers to partially open the Venetian blinds to look out into the street below. As expected, the roads were deserted and only two cars were parked on the side of the street. If anyone was observing them, the surveillance teams must be from nearby apartments, but other than a couple of kids on their bicycles, the entire block seemed to be asleep on a lazy afternoon.
“Coffee is finally here,” Dov Bar-Lev said as he carefully placed a tray on the low table in his apartment’s living room. A former rabbi, Bar-Lev was now in his mid-sixties but he always wore his yarmulke the moment he got up from bed, even indoors. He was typical of the people who were now in the cities all across Israel, men and women deemed too old to be called up for reserve duty. All that remained of civilians in the safe zones were now just the elderly, the unwanted, or the children.
David turned around, walked back to where the living room was and sat down on the sofa facing the other three men. Bar-Lev wrapped his stubby hands around the ceramic coffee pot and poured a steaming cup for each of them.
“Thank you,” Amel Kasem said as he accepted a cup of coffee from the former rabbi. Kasem was a Druze who was now in his early thirties, very close to David’s age. His family had been staunch supporters of Israel for several generations now. Although occasionally mistaken for Muslims, the Druze followed their own teachings which included elements from Gnosticism, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism to create a distinct and secretive theology that believed in successive reincarnations until the soul was united with a cosmic mind.
Of the four of them, Aviv Lerner was the youngest. He was in his late twenties and a Haredi Jew. His family was staunchly anti-Zionist and he had refused to serve in the IDF, which was mandatory for every adult citizen of the country. While David and Kasem were clean shaven, Lerner’s brown beard and sideburns was kept as long as possible, in keeping with his Haredi traditions. The young man was also wearing a black suit and white dress shirt, unlike the others in the room who wore just casual clothing due to the oppressive heat of the day. He had placed his black fedora beside him and like Bar-Lev, wore his skullcap indoors. Lerner silently accepted his cup of coffee with a nod of thanks.
“I’m sorry I don’t have any cakes to offer you,” Bar-Lev said as he poured himself a cup. “But all the nearby stores have been closed and that meant I had to wait for the next bus to go to the outskirts of town. If only this meeting wasn’t scheduled at the last minute, I could have bought something to go with the coffee.”
Kasem smiled. “It’s alright, I’m still pretty full from lunch myself. This coffee is perfect to stop me from falling asleep.”
David looked at Bar-Lev. “I think we might as well get started. My wife will be looking for me very soon and I have to get back to Beersheba.”
Bar-Lev said nothing as he merely nodded.
“Alright then,” David said. “We’ve already made some short introductions to each other so I will just get right to the point. We are all meeting here to state our concerns about what is happening to our country and to discuss ideas on what we can do about it.”
“There’s no need to be diplomatic, David,” Bar-Lev said as he scratched his salt and pepper beard. “We all know what’s going on so we might as well be blunt about it. Don’t hold back.”
“We all know,” Lerner said. “But what can we do about it? There’s only four of us.”
“I have been to the front lines and the IDF general staff knows about me so if I tell them I’m fit for duty, they will not hesitate to bring me back in. I think I can get close to Rabbi Ba’al and end this once and for all,” David said softly.
Bar-Lev adjusted his glasses and stared at David. “So you want to kill him? Then what will happen? Do you think all of this will suddenly end?”
Kasem put down his half empty coffee cup on the table. “It sounds drastic but what we’ve been doing … it’s a war crime. I was there when we went into the Palestinian towns in the West Bank because I was a lieutenant in the Sword Battalion. When I protested to my superiors, they threatened to put me in a military jail. The only reason I was thrown out was that I had been a decorated officer and several commanders vouched for me. I hate to say this, but we’re turning into the Nazis.”
Bar-Lev clasped his fingers together and leaned back on his chair. “We’re not getting a lot of news here in the cities as you well know because everybody is out in the front lines. Tell us what happened?”
Kasem’s eyes were looking down on the floor. He took a deep breath before he started talking. “We were ordered to round up the Palestinians and bring them to the central processing camp near Jerusalem. All the men, women, even the children. Many of them were scared because we had tanks, gunships, and artillery, so many of them didn’t resist. We even had loudspeakers telling them we were moving them to safer areas. That was obviously a lie. Of course, many of the younger men and their police forces did try to resist so we took them down hard. Some of them tried to hide among the civilia
ns while shooting at us so we didn’t hesitate. Our superiors made sure none of us had any mobile phones or cameras to record anything. I saw two Palestinian men armed with rifles run into a house with a family still inside of it. We just poured all our firepower into that whole building until there was nothing left but a pile of stone and concrete. In the end, they knew they couldn’t resist but some did anyway. It took us three days to take all the people from that town ,and it’s been like that throughout the rest of the West Bank. Gaza has been quiet but I know we will go in there and empty it soon. That damned rabbi needs more souls.”
“I’ve heard that the people in Gaza know what’s happened in the West Bank, and they will fight with everything they have,” David said. “Last thing I heard was that the IDF wanted to nuke the whole place rather than take any more casualties trying to capture the people there. The Gaza front is quiet right now but that could change within hours if the IDF starts placing more troops close by.”
“And you’re sure that Rabbi Ba’al is behind all of this?” Bar-Lev said.
“I’m certain of it,” David said. “You all know my uncle. He’s a member of the Knesset and from he told me Elijah Ba’al is practically running the country now. Whatever he wants he gets. The IDF and the Prime Minister have become his lapdogs.”
Lerner kept shaking his head from side to side, his long sideburns were flapping like furry ears. “This is not the way of the Jews. We are a righteous people and what that meant was that God entrusted us to be a shining beacon of light, an example for all mankind to follow. We are supposed to love our neighbor as much as we are to love ourselves. What you’ve told me is horrific beyond imagining. We have abandoned the teachings of God. Justice, truth, and peace are nonexistent now.”
“About two weeks ago one of Rabbi Ba’al’s political allies gave a speech on live TV,” Bar-Lev said. “Yakov Porat, a senior member of the Defense Committee. He said that the Palestinians were nothing more than a tribe of Canaanites and that according to the Tanakh, God had commanded the Israelis to exterminate them without mercy. I cannot support any of these views.”
“We’re all of the same side here,” David said. “The question is what do we do about it?”
Lerner also looked down on the floor and raised a finger. “I support your plan to assassinate Elijah Ba’al. Please do not even call him a rabbi for he is a heretic, and his name shouldn’t even be mentioned any longer.”
“I’ll try to help in whatever way I can,” Kasem said. “But even now, I think the IDF command is starting to distrust the Druze and the other minorities in the military, they are purposely placing us in the front lines, as far away from the Palestinian areas as possible. The Sword Battalion took a lot of casualties in the battle of Amman. The only reason why I’m here right now is that they threw me out of the unit before that battle started, and I was sent back here to await a new assignment, if that ever comes. I’m afraid that once they run out of Muslims, they may go after my people next.”
“That heretic, he has begun to recruit his own followers,” Lerner said. “Already, ten students of my kolel in Jerusalem have quit their studies when they were offered an apprenticeship to train under him. He is poisoning the entire Jewish religious community in this country. Pretty soon he will have a large following of blasphemers to serve him. If we don’t do something, he will be unstoppable soon.”
“He seems pretty unstoppable now,” Bar-Lev said. “Even if David is able to succeed, how can we be assured that the government will not continue his work?”
“Ba’al has some sort of magical book. The Sefer Yetzirah. Yes, I know it’s supposed to be a very common book, but he told me personally that he has the original copy, with spells and incantations for creating demonic creatures. Once he’s dead, I need to find and destroy that book.” David said.
Lerner was shocked. “He has the original Sefer Yetzirah? T-that’s astounding! Surely we must preserve that book in order to research the knowledge it contains. It can open up a brand new horizon on the subject of Jewish mysticism.”
Bar-Lev shook his head. “Look at what he has wrought by using that damned book. I’m with David, we need to destroy it.”
Kasem shrugged. “I don’t care either way. As long as we put a stop to this madness.”
“But that begs the question,” Bar-Lev said. “Assuming we succeed. What then? Do we condemn the state of Israel as slaves of the new Babylon? I don’t like what’s being done, but I can see why the government and the military went along with him.”
“I would suggest that you do not destroy the book right away,” Lerner said. “Perhaps we may be able to find a solution against those demons without having to sacrifice people to create golems in that book.”
David sighed as he rubbed his hands over his face. “Look, I don’t even know if I could pull this off. In the end this could end up as a one-way trip for me. We need to find out more information and we need to recruit others that can help us.”
“A lot of people in my community are starting to get concerned, so I ‘m sure I could recruit some of my friends and colleagues,” Kasem said. “But then again, there are places where we are not allowed to go to.”
“The one thing that can get us through IDF checkpoints is mission orders,” David said. “If we can find someone who can forge them so that we can pass through sensitive areas to get to the processing camp, then we might have a chance.”
“I can talk to the head of my kolel. I know that he has been in contact with that heretic and if I could find out and get some sort of authorization to get into that camp then I will get it for you,” Lerner said. “But I have to be careful as to who I ask because if any of them are loyal to that magician, then the game will be up.”
“He has to have the book somewhere close by him because he uses it all the time,” David said. “If we can pinpoint where he lives in the camp, then we can approximate where the book would be.”
Kasem rubbed his elbows after crossing them. “What if that book is secured? What if it’s in a safe?”
“I don’t think he would secure it that much,” David said. “He needs to have that book handy so it must be readily accessible to him.”
Bar-Lev emptied his cup of coffee. “Do you know what the book looks like?”
David shook his head. “Well no, but—”
Bar-Lev put his hands halfway up in the air. “Then how will you know if you got it or not? Will you search through his pile of books after you’ve killed him?”
“Maybe killing him is too risky,” Lerner said. “Why not just steal the book instead?”
“He has to die,” David said. “If we just take the book from him, he will have plenty of resources to recover it. The whole program centers on him. Ba’al is the head of the snake and our only chance to take back the country is to eliminate him.”
Lerner glanced over at Bar-Lev. “We will be branded as criminals after this. They may very well arrest us all or even shoot us.”
“There is a special law called the Law of the Pursuer, the din rodef,” Bar-Lev said. “If one is pursuing to murder another then a bystander is allowed to kill that man. Elijah Ba’al is a rodef, in my view, and it’s perfectly legal to kill him.”
Lerner frowned. “That is the same defense that the assassin of one of our previous prime ministers used. The courts didn’t believe him.”
“That man assassinated a prime minister though,” David said. “Ba’al isn’t a head of state.”
“But he has been recently appointed as one of the Chief Rabbinates. He is now the supreme rabbinic and spiritual authority for the entire country. That would make things very complicated,” Lerner said.
Kasem looked at David. “Assuming you are even able to pull off the kill, how do you plan on getting away?”
“I haven’t even gotten to that part yet,” David said. “This is all just preliminary planning for now.”
“Well, whatever it is we’re going to do, we will need to decide soon,” Bar-Lev said.
“The Palestinians and the other Muslim refugees are up against the clock.”
The drive from Ashkelon to Beersheba took close to an hour. David rode in Kasem’s car. Both men were mostly silent with barely any small talk. The warm air that passed through the open windows whipped through David’s hair as Kasem drove them into the outskirts of Beersheba before turning into a residential street, just a few blocks away from the apartment.
David pointed to a sidewalk ahead of them while they waited for the traffic light to change. “You better let me out over there, if a car drops me off near the house, Tzipi might get suspicious.”
Kasem drove the car over to the sidewalk before stopping. “You realize that this is a suicide mission if you go through with it. Ba’al is surrounded by IDF troops. There’s no way you will get away with it,” he said softly.
David turned his head and looked at him while putting his hand on the door handle. “If I fail, can you see that my wife and the child get to safety?”
Kasem looked out at the front of the car. “I will try my best. But where can I take them? There’s nowhere on Earth that’s safe anymore.”
“Whatever you do, just get them out of Israel. If I’m dead and Rabbi Ba’al is still alive, there is no doubt he will try to exact revenge on them. They won’t be safe here.”
“What about your uncle in the Knesset?”
“They may go after him as well for keeping me out of military jail. We can’t depend on him.”
“If this plan goes through, they will come after all of us,” Kasem said wistfully. “My family will be in danger as well.”
“So we do nothing then? Is that it?”
“I don’t know what the answer to that is. Only you know it. But if it comes down to it, I think the best chance is to bring our families to Gaza and try to link up with the Palestinians and get away by sea.”
“What about through Egypt?”
Canticum Tenebris (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 2) Page 26