by Unknown
Raziel, the figure in the crystal room, back to me, was the Messenger given dominion over Mysteries, over Secrets. Only Raziel, of all the Host in the Crystal City, was privy to the secret plans of the Name, only Raziel the Almighty's one true confidant. Raziel knew what the Name had in store for each of its subjects, great and small, and it was at times almost too great a burden to carry.
I wondered what this messenger looked like, who I now knew as closely as myself. I blinked, and my point of view shifted again. Looking at Raziel before me, I saw the most perfect creature I had ever seen. Flawless and pristine, the face I saw was the untouched ideal for every sculptor and every painter who had ever tried to capture beauty, and I knew now that they all had failed. This was a vision of utter untouched perfection, and I ached to see it.
I knew, though, that had I looked upon the face of Uriel, or Raphael, or Sidquel, or Hasdiel or any other of the countless legions of messengers in the Crystal City, I would have been looking at the same face. The faces of messengers were mirrors, I suddenly knew, that reflected the light of the Name. One was the same as another, so long as they all stood in the Presence. Only by turning from the Name would they lose their pristine beauty.
But wasn't Raziel turned from the Name now? Face turned towards the floor?
No, I realized. The Name was not in one place in the Crystal City, sitting on a throne in some tower or other. The city was the Name, and all who dwelt in it bathed in its presence, breathed it in with every breath. You could not look anywhere in the Crystal City and look anywhere but on the face of the Name.
But Raziel was trying to look away, or thinking of doing so. The latest of the Mysteries to be revealed, the latest plans the Name had made, troubled Raziel.
The Name had turned its attention to the World.
The World, with beginning and end, was completely unlike the eternal perfection of the Crystal City. In the World, creatures were born, grew and died, without ever knowing firsthand the radiant splendor of the Presence. They had only hints and glimpses, if they were lucky, of the glory of the Name. Impossible to conceive for a messenger like Raziel, who had never once felt the absence of the Name's love. Worse yet, though, it was the Name's intention the inhabitants of the World would be forced to choose whether to accept the love of the Name or not. They would be able to turn forever away from the Presence and never feel it again.
What would the alternative be? What would someone choose over the warming radiance and the eternal grace of the Name?
That was the Mystery revealed to Raziel, the Secret that burned deep in the messenger's thoughts.
There was to be a revolt, a war in the Crystal City.
The Name had already decided.
Blink.
Blink again, and Raziel was leaving the spire, floating up over the city. I followed.
Though it had no wings, Raziel flew over the whole of the Crystal City, and I followed. Passing the messengers in their places, passing messengers flying on their way, I knew as Raziel knew which were destined by the Name to turn against It in the coming revolt, which where destined to lose their way and fall. Azazel, Sariel, Barakel, and all the others.
Finally, Raziel came to the tower of Sammael, the Messenger of Death. Sammael, who loved the Name as much as any messenger in the hosts, and was more loved by the Name than most. Sammael, who would lead the revolt and take the role of Adversary in the World. Sammael, who would become the tempter.
"Welcome, O Messenger of the Mysteries," said Sammael, as Raziel alighted on the tower.
"Greetings, Beloved Messenger of Death," replied Raziel, head inclined in respect.
"What brings the great keeper of the secrets to my humble tower?"
"It is of a secret I would speak to you," answered Raziel, "though my heart trembles at the thought."
Sammael, I could see, was taken aback by this. The two messengers looked enough alike to be twins, but there seemed something more open and loving in the face of Sammael. Raziel's face showed only worry, and the strain of secrets he couldn't bear to keep.
"Why?" Sammael was confused. "My dominion is over life and its end. I've nothing to do with secrets."
"This secret, though, has something to do with you."
Blink.
Blink again, and I knew that Raziel had told Sammael of the secret, that the divine plan had been revealed, and the role of the Messenger of Death in the coming war made known.
I looked at Sammael and saw a great change.
"I would not revolt!" cried the Messenger of Death. "What have I done to displease our Lord, that It would choose me for such a role? To spend an eternity turned from the Presence, tempting these pathetic creatures away from Its grace?"
"It is the Name's plan," answered the Messenger of Mysteries, "and it is ineffable."
Sammael paced the crystal floor of the tower room, hands clenched.
"I won't do it," Sammael announced firmly, head shaking from side to side. "I won't revolt. I will refuse to take part, and stay here in the Presence, never to turn away."
Raziel nodded. It was as hoped. Without Sammael to lead the revolt, there would be no war in heaven, and the creatures of the World would exist without temptation, each able to follow their own path unhindered. Without the interference of the legion of the fallen, as Raziel had seen in the divine plan, the creatures of the World would have true freedom of choice and would be able to come to the grace of the Name unencumbered by the treacheries of the Adversary. The divine plan would be disrupted, but in the end the divine purpose would be served, generations of the World's creatures choosing to worship the Name of their own free will.
The expression on Sammael's face soured as Raziel and I watched, and the Messenger of Death continued.
"But will It not punish me," Sammael went on, "for refusing my place in the divine plan? Will It not then cast me down, merely for choosing to worship It instead of rebelling against It? And am I not now rebelling, in my own way, for rejecting Its will?"
The Messenger of Death, one hand striking the other, prowled the room, reminding me of a caged panther testing the borders of his prison.
"This is not fair!" shouted Sammael. "To have spent an eternity in loyal service and be cast aside for the sake of some lunatic scheme."
"Have a care," Raziel replied. "It is still our Lord, and we dwell in Its mercy."
"Its mercy can go hang," Sammael answered. "It is lunatic, which you must see to have revealed these plans to me. You must agree, O Messenger of Mysteries, to have broken your covenant with the Name!"
Raziel fell back a step, expression confused.
"But…" the Messenger of Mysteries began, "I had no wish to offend our Lord. I had only wished better to serve It. There was a flaw in Its divine plan, it seemed to me, which I could resolve to Its better uses."
"A flaw?" sneered Sammael. "Then you admit that the Name is capable of error, to have produced something imperfect. Perhaps it has always been imperfect and flawed itself, only we have been blinded too much by Its power and our overmuch devotion to see it for ourselves. Perhaps It has bred that blindness into us! What proof have we that the Name created the World in the first place? The Name created the Crystal City and those who dwell within it, and we are Its creatures, but who is to say that It did not simply come upon the World already hanging like a jewel in the void? We messengers were created to turn our faces always towards the Name, and all that we know about what lies without the Crystal City is what It wills that we know."
"Sammael, please…" Raziel tried to interrupt.
"The Name is the Almighty Lord of the Crystal City," Sammael continued, undeterred, but perhaps the time has come for a new Almighty. Perhaps the time has come for a change."
Raziel opened its mouth to speak, but the Messenger of Death did not notice.
"I will speak to the others of this," Sammael answered. "There are some who will see what we have seen, and join with me to correct these errors. We shall finds the flaws and imperfections a
ll, and root them out."
Sammael extended a hand towards Raziel.
"Will you join me?" the Messenger of Death answered.
"No!" shouted Raziel, confused. "I cannot. You cannot. This is not right. This is what I sought to avoid…"
Sammael cut Raziel off, angrily.
"Fine," Sammael barked, "it is always your choice. But remember this, O Messenger of Mysteries. Any who do not stand with me in my purpose stand against me. Sibling or not, I will not abide any who stand against me."
Sammael turned from Raziel and sped from the tower, off to seek others to join in the revolt.
Blink.
I blinked again, and Raziel was back in the crystal spire with the burning walls, eyes turned again to the floor.
I knew in that instant that Raziel had discovered the role the Messenger of Mysteries was to play in the coming revolt, the one divine secret previously unrevealed. It was Raziel who was to incite the Messenger of Death to rebel, Raziel who was to set in motion the first volley in the war that would rage through the Crystal City. In going to Sammael, and trying to prevent the war from beginning, Raziel had only been playing the role set down in the divine plan, working the Name's will. The war would come, and soon, and in some small way it would be Raziel's fault.
"No more," Raziel said, eyes turning towards the roil of color overhead. "This is unfair, even if it is the Name's own will. I will have no part in it."
"Nor should you," I heard a voice from the other side of the crystal room call.
Raziel turned, and my point of view followed along behind.
On the far side of the room, standing against the burning wall, was another messenger. At first I thought it was Sammael, come again to tempt Raziel to the revolt, but then I realized that this was another, kinder messenger. This was Thelesis, who had dominion over Free Will.
"What would you of me, O Messenger of Free Will?" asked Raziel, crossing the room to where the other stood.
"You have made a decision, and it is my purview to oversee it," answered Thelesis.
"Am I to be punished?" asked Raziel. "Are you to report my misdeed to the hosts, and witness to the Almighty of my transgression? For choosing a course counter to the will of our Lord?"
"Hardly, Beloved Messenger of Mysteries," answered Thelesis. "I have come to join you." A slight smile played on the messenger's face, the most beautiful and perfect expression I had ever seen.
Looking on the two together, I understood why Thelesis had come, and what need Raziel would have for the Messenger of Free Will. If any who dwelt in the Crystal City would agree with Raziel's view of the divine plan, I realized, it would be Thelesis. Free will, in Raziel's view, would become in the World a lie, a sham, a pretense for the celestial chess game that would play itself out between the armies of the Name and the armies of the Adversary. The two powers would vie for the attention and loyalties of the creatures of the World, and in doing so would deny them the true freedom to choose their fate. Coerced one way or another, through plans they would never glimpse or guess at, the creatures of the World would be little more than pawns in the game of forces beyond their reach. In Raziel's eyes, the risk that they would never know the love of the Almighty was too great. The rules of the game would have to be changed. And for that, Raziel would need the help of just one other messenger. Raziel would need the help of Free Will.
Raziel smiled in return and took Thelesis's hand in a firm grip.
"Then let us leave," said Raziel, stepping forward. "Let us leave the hosts and the city and the coming war behind and find our way somewhere beyond the schemes of the Name."
"Let us leave," agreed Thelesis.
The messengers drew closer together, rising slightly in the air. They turned slightly, hand in hand, and vanished from sight without a sound.
Blink.
Blink again, and the messengers were floating in a formless void, hands still clasped together.
The void was Kaos.
Kaos, the primordial absence of life, of heat, of light, against which the city of crystal hung like a diamond against black velvet. It was empty and vast, and it was the new home of Raziel and Thelesis.
The two messengers, hanging motionless in the void, waited for the war to begin. From their vantage point they could look upon the home of the messengers, where even now I could see flashes of light spearing out into the darkness. The revolt had begun, Sammael leading the revolutionary faction in its charge. The Name's forces, led by the Messenger of the Name, Michael, would be repelling the attack, taking heavy casualties, but in the end driving Sammael and the others from the Crystal City.
From far across the void, Raziel and Thelesis saw their sibling messengers falling, pouring like a cascade of burning stars from the city of crystal out into the darkness. Forever they seemed to fall, through the timeless void, until they reached at last the place appointed for them, the dark mirror of the Crystal City: the Grave.
The Two, Raziel and Thelesis, watched all of this without comment, neither wanting to be the first to speak. In silence they watched the revolt, the progress of the war, the losers' fall and their inevitable end. Not until it was done, and the city of crystal returned to normal, the dark valleys of the Grave finding their final shape, did Raziel speak.
"The war is through," the Messenger of Secrets said. "Now the game has begun."
The two messengers turned their faces away from the Name, and for the first time cast their gazes upon the World, hovering in the Void.
From their vantage point, the whole of the World could be seen at once, both physically and temporally – the full reach of the universe, galaxies without number and distances stretching out so far they bent back upon themselves. And not just Space, but Time, a function of the World which Raziel and Thelesis had never before experienced, was also laid out for them. The two messengers could see all of the ever-branching paths, from the whitehot beginnings with the first cries of the World's birth to the final frigid echoes of its death rattle.
Taken as a whole, it looked like nothing so much as a brilliant glass globe in which swirled figures of light and shadow that danced faster than the eye could imagine. The patterns changed as I watched, again and again, but one theme was constant throughout. The images spiraled, always spiraling, like planets in their orbits, turning in their course as worlds were born and died, as whole epochs of civilization waxed and waned.
Seeing this, and all that would happen, Raziel knew it had done right. In the Crystal City, the messengers, their faces turned always to their creator, even when away doing Its work, were denied Its vision, and so to them the plan remained ineffable. To the Messengers of Mysteries and of Free Will, though, it was all very plain; they saw the scheme, and what they had to do.
Better to understand the World, and to be accustomed to the pitch and yaw of Space and Time, to Gravity and the other Laws, the Two created for themselves another world, set off in the void, as identical to the real world as they could make it. It was the same as the World, in more ways that not, but it was empty of life; of the trackless, almost infinite expanses of their boundless reality; only that part in which Raziel or Thelesis moved knew life.
And I watched as they introduced into their notional realm, this Otherworld, the same Laws that govern the World, or rather that the World itself lays down. There, in their Otherworld, feeling gravity's pull and the seconds swirling past, the Two waited and watched the World.
Denied the panoramic view of the far void, they saw history now as it happened. The Earth cooled, its waters collected into seas and oceans, the hot belly belching up mountains. They watched the first life emerge, tentatively, testing the World as a child tests the water in a spring lake with a toe. They watched life develop and grow, taking on the many guises they had glimpsed from the void.
They were, of course, still much as the messengers in the Crystal City, since even the ravages of time and space can do little to the Children of the Name. They were without distinguishing features and wi
thout sex, each looking enough like the other that they could have been a mirror's image. As life progressed, they watched.
Wanting to grow closer to life, to gain understanding through imitation, they mimicked the habits of the living creatures. Swimming in nutrient soups in their world's oceans, drawing in sustenance through their extremities; gliding along by waving the cilia they grew, groping for light and warmth.
As life developed, their interest grew, and so more closely did they imitate. Using teeth to chew and hands to grasp and feet for walking rather than just perching. When the pongoids first appeared, the hairy apes so close in appearance to the messengers themselves and yet still rougher, harsher, they decided to take a final step. Seeing how life continued, and recreated itself, they chose sex for themselves. After that thought, there stood on that empty world not two identical messengers, but a man and a woman, as similar as brother and sister.
Raziel turned to Thelesis and took her hand in his. He led her through the forests of their Otherworld, to the valley they had chosen to be their home.
They discovered passion then, the hot, involved intimacy that two sexed creatures can know, and they learned something else. Love.
In the Crystal City the messengers love each other as a matter of course, but only through their love for the Name, seeing in each other an aspect and reflection of their creator. But the two messengers on their little world learned a different love, less perfect, more mutable, the love for another in and of themselves. In that moment, if not before, they became truly flawed, no longer perfect, as much living creatures as immortal celestials. In time their love bore fruit and, with the tender aid of Raziel, Thelesis brought forth the first of their children. A daughter, whom they named Anael, after their love.
The hairy apes of the World grew, becoming more like the messengers with each passing generation, until at last the Name took one among them and placed him in a secret place. In that garden paradise, the Name taught him to speak and to reason, named him man, and put the garden into his care.
In time, the man Adam grew lonely. A wife was given to him, and together the man and the woman lived in harmony in the garden.