The same woman approached Rana, and a soothing, blue light filled her mind. Her pain ebbed. She opened her eyes and stared at the bloody thing beside her as the healer continued.
“What’s that in his hands?” another said.
The sand had polished its metal to a brilliant shine. Emod had somehow dropped his bag of jewels and picked up Rana’s copper bust of Mollai. It must have fallen from her bag as she sped away. It took three men to pry it from Emod’s dead fingers.
——
When Daniel opened his eyes the air smelled of shampoo. A familiar, floral smell. Rebekah’s particular and expensive brand. He was in her apartment, staring up at the lace canopy of her bed. The air was cool and silent, but he sensed he wasn’t alone.
“Bek?”
He rose from the bed. He was naked, and there was nothing to put on. He rubbed his eyes, confused. So it had been a dream after all? No, it had felt too real.
Bright light, a summer’s sunset, shone through the curtains, turning the room a rosy pink hue. He pushed the curtains aside, and instead of rows of Brooklyn brownstones there was an unending sea of orange sand. Daniel gasped. In the crimson sky, the sun was cracked, like an egg, its molten core dripping to the horizon.
“Hello, Danny.”
He spun around. Rebekah stood in the doorway. She wore a gray Mickey Mouse t-shirt, navy jeans, a purple webbed belt, pink slippers. The same outfit she’d worn the morning after he had first stayed at her place.
“I was looking everywhere for you,” she said. The light from the cracked sun reflected in her eyes like cinders.
“This is a dream?” he said.
“Of a kind.” She stepped closer, glancing at her watch. The sun caught its silver facets, sending sparks up the walls. “It’s almost time,” she said. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Rebekah,” he said. “What’s happening? Is any of this real?”
She grabbed his shoulders. “You know I do love you, Danny.”
He wanted to hold her, to squeeze her, to forget this nightmare ever happened. But he resisted. “And I . . . I love you too, Bek.”
She smiled, rows of perfect white teeth. “You don’t know how happy that makes me. When the beast stole you from me, I thought I’d never find you again.”
“The beast? Caleb?”
She frowned. “Is that what he calls himself now?” She showed her incisors. “The cur.”
“Rebekah . . .” He trembled, but he had to ask, no matter how it hurt. “What are you?”
She took his hand, and it was fever hot. “Danny, let me show you what I am.”
She smiled, and the cinders in her eyes grew to burn up the room. A bright fire consumed him, but it did not burn, and suddenly he felt as if he was hurtling across vast distances of space and time. Air whooshed by his ears, full of hiss and static and whispers. Then the blinding light ebbed, and he found himself on a parapet attached to a hideous black tower. Infesting its crowded levels were ten thousand arches, buttresses, balconies, and minarets. Spires reached for the night sky like the claws of some huge animal, so that the overall impression was not that he stood on a parapet of some nightmarish palace, but on the side of some enormous, sleeping beast.
Rebekah was here too. She wore a flowing white gown, and gold bands wrapped her head, wrists, and waist. Their golden reflections rippled like water.
He wore clothing too, a crimson robe with floral blue and green filigree, soft and delicate against his bare skin.
“The robe suits you, Danny,” she said.
The parapet overlooked a black lake surrounded on three sides by steep and ragged cliffs. It was night, but the sky was bright with a thousand pregnant stars, red as pomegranates.
“Where are we?”
“Sheol,” she said, smiling as a hot breeze tousled her hair. “The first Shard to be settled, after the Shattering. This is the palace of Abbadon. My home, Danny. My real home. But it can be ours, the home we always spoke about making.”
“Ours? Here?”
She stepped over to the ledge and peered at the lake. The viscous waters gave no reflection, not even of the ruddy stars. “Sheol may seem bleak compared to what you’re used to, and I couldn’t agree more. Sheol is a wasteland, like all the Shards. We tried to make a home here, to build ourselves a safe place in the Cosmos, but we have few resources. Sheol has never been more than a shadow of Earth.”
She approached him. “We survive on scraps that fall to us through the Abyss. Below the city immense power vats harvest the energy that trickles down from Earth. We use it to keep our world alive. Without them, we would wither away.”
“I’ve heard,” he said, “that the Shards depend on Earth to survive.”
“Then you must know how the Shards suffer. How they cling to the small scrap of life they have been given with all of their being. But it’s still never enough. Does any of this sound familiar to you, Danny?”
He stared at her. “Familiar, how?”
“With your work at the Shulman Fund, you helped the weak, the sick, the hungry. This—” she gestured at Sheol with her hand— “is just a projection of my memories. But if you come to the real Sheol with me, those barren cliffs will bloom, the seas will thrive, and the twin suns will rise over a new, fertile world. If Ashmedai has told you that you’re a Lamed Vavnik, that you sustain worlds, then you know, by your presence alone, life would improve for millions.”
“You want me to come here, to live?”
She held out her palm and a band of gold appeared in it, just large enough to fit his head. “In Sheol, I rule alone.” She held the gold band before his eyes. It shimmered as if made of liquid. “Remember how much good we did when we worked together? All those people we fed, housed, and healed? Think of it, you and me, human and demon, helping a billion Shards rise from the ashes. We could change the Cosmos forever.”
She reached to crown him, but he stepped away.
“What is it?” She seemed hurt. “You helped hundreds on Earth, thousands. Here, in Sheol, you can help trillions.”
“No more games, Bek. I’m not going back to sleep.”
“You are asleep, now. And I’m trying to wake you up!”
“I’m not falling under your spell again.” He felt sick. All of the past few months with her, everything was a lie. “I won’t let you kill me.”
“Kill you? Why in Sheol would I want to kill you?”
“Stop, Bek! Just stop. Your lies don’t work anymore.”
“Ashmedai has truly poisoned your mind,” she said, scowling. “Did he tell you I wished to kill you? Danny, that’s just not true! Tell me where you are. I know he’s taken you to Gehinnom. Just concentrate on your location, and I will come and fetch you. I’ll show you that I’m not here to hurt you, but to give you a chance to be the person you were meant to be. Let me bring you home, to our home, to Sheol, and we will forget all this darkness ever happened.”
He felt something sharp and hot in his side. His robe by his waist was quickly turned red. “Bek,” he said, collapsing against the railing as pain overcame him. “I—”
“Danny, what is it? What’s wrong?” Then she saw the blood. “Hurry! Tell me where you are, so I can help you!”
He thought of the desert, the endless waves of sand. Where was he? Somewhere on the Tattered Sea, walking in front of a wave of sand. Rebekah smiled. Then he was traveling again, hurtling across time and space and thrust into a small room that stank of cedar and sweat. He lay on his back, and Caleb was peering down at him, his white eyes huge. Marul was mumbling a spell beside him, while a blue-white mist flowed from her hands into Daniel’s side. The pain ebbed, the mist faded, and Marul lowered her hands.
Daniel sat up, and the room spun. He wore only boxers. And to his horror, much of his body hair had fallen off. He was also much skinnier than he remembered.
The room had slatted cedar walls, a low ceiling. Dripping candles burned from corner sconces. Crimson curtains hung before a small window. “Where am I?�
� he said.
“Inside a palanquin skate,” said Caleb.
“A what?”
“A floating conveyance reserved for weddings or respected elders. You should feel special, Daniel. Elizel kicked out a crone for you.”
“What happened?”
“Some of the Bedu aren’t too keen on us traveling with them,” Caleb said. “A few were unsettled by your black cloak, it seems.”
“But I took the cloak off. I’m not a Mikulal.” His side hurt with every breath. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Wearing it was enough,” Caleb said.
“A boy stabbed me.” Daniel rubbed his wound, which was now covered with pink scar tissue. It was tender and soft.
“It was easy for the children to get close,” he said. “And to evade blame. The Bedu are unlikely to punish the child. Meanwhile the true perpetrators stay hidden.”
“Disgusting,” Marul said. “Using children like that.”
Caleb laughed. “If I recall, witch, you used your magic to seduce a small harem of lovers in Shanghai. Were they all of consensual age?”
Marul frowned. “That was a long time ago. I regret that very much.”
“Spare me your contrition,” Caleb said. “You spent time in a cave and think you’ve changed, that you’ve cast out your worst natures? You have only succeeded in denying them. You’re no different from these Bedu, who think that by casting out the Mikulalim they make themselves holy. The Mikulalim are aspects of their nature that they deny, and in so doing only strengthen their own darkness.”
“What do you mean?” Daniel said. “How are the Mikulalim aspects of the Bedu?”
“Fifteen centuries ago,” Caleb said, “there was a Bedu tribe like this one. They made a deal with Azazel, and he cursed them.”
“What kind of deal?”
“The Bedu had said, ‘Give us knowledge, so that we may know all the tongues of men in all the lands of men, and thus become a mighty nation.’ And Azazel said, ‘I will grant your request. I will teach you the first language, from which all languages spring, and you shall speak with all men as a native of their lands. And all the days of your life, which I shall extend seventy-fold, you shall hunger for the flesh of men. For as you request, so I do give. You shall truly know all the tongues of men.’”
“So he tricked them,” Daniel said, “to gain power over them.”
“A rather crude trick, if you must know. But my brother, for all his knowledge, was always rather crude.”
“Azazel is your brother?”
“We’ve grown estranged.”
“Why do you rule the Mikulalim and not him?”
“Because I won them in a bet,” Caleb said.
“What kind of bet?”
“Keep your damned voices down!” Marul said. “Bedu soldiers are just outside!”
Caleb smiled. “The Bedu see the Mikulalim as traitors,” Caleb said. “But what they really fear is, if given the same choice, they might make the same deal. The Mikulalim don’t fear famines. They can live without food or water for years.”
“Would you keep your fucking voices down?” Marul said a little too loudly, and Daniel remembered her plan to out Caleb to the Bedu. She wanted Caleb to be heard.
Daniel crawled toward the window, and the floor shifted under him, as if they were on a boat. Black, angry clouds tumbled in the sky, though the air was oddly quiet for all the motion. Was it dark so soon? He examined his wound again. It seemed as if it were weeks old and healing well. Besides a little tenderness, he would never have guessed he’d been stabbed.
“I’m still getting used to all this magic,” he said. “Thank you, Marul.”
“I’ve done better,” she said. “I’m weak.”
“You’d make one hell of a doctor.”
“Tried that. In Shanghai, I ran an underground clinic for a year. Didn’t end well.”
Clouds turned in violent gyres overhead and faintly reflected the orange torchlight from below. Marul gave Daniel a bladder and told him to drink as much as he could.
“When did this storm start? Is it night already? I don’t remember seeing any clouds.”
“A half hour ago,” Caleb said. “It’s still daytime, and that’s not a natural storm.”
“More magic?” Daniel said. And with a pang of dread he remembered Rebekah’s plans to come and fetch him. “Did Mashit do this?”
“No,” Caleb said. “She is never so subtle. This is Chialdra’s work, though I don’t yet know why.”
Daniel turned to face Caleb, so he could read his expression and sense his hidden motives. “Caleb, why does Mashit want to kill all the Lamed Vav?”
“Because she can.”
“But won’t she destroy Sheol too? What does she get from all this?”
Caleb wolf-white eyes peered deep into his hindbrain. “She’s a shortsighted fool, blinded by passions. Who can understand her convoluted logic? I never could.”
But Daniel saw that there was more than Caleb was letting on. He leaned out the window but the air was calm and quiet, despite the incessant motion above. Thousands of tents were arrayed in neat rows. Tall banners proclaimed each house, Timnah, Alvah, Jetheth, Aholibamah, Elah, Pinon, Kenaz, Teman, Mibzar, Magdiel, Iram, and dozen more. Torches lined the makeshift avenues, and curious reflections arced under the roiling sea of clouds.
“Are we under in some kind of dome?” he said.
“Yes,” Marul said. “The magicians formed a glass sphere around the camp, above and below us, to protect us from the turbulent storm.”
The palanquin skate hovered three feet above the ground, rocking gently. Nearby was a guard of ten soldiers clad in leather and bronze who eyed Daniel warily. Daniel retreated back into the palanquin.
“So we’re just waiting?” Daniel said.
“The Synedrium meets as we speak,” Caleb said. “The Lords of the Houses are deciding whether or not to toss us into the storm.”
“What are our chances?”
Caleb rested his hands on the sill, and the palanquin skate tilted with his weight. “Look at these people, wrestling with an unforgiving desert,” he said. “The sand assails them, demons vex them, the cities despise them. They know no peace. Every day is a struggle against annihilation. Only knowledge keeps them alive. But in Gehinnom, knowledge evaporates like water in the sun. What is known today is forgotten tomorrow. Our chances? Poor.”
Daniel glanced at Marul. If she planned to betray Caleb, it would be after the Synedrium made their decision.
A strong young man in a brown tunic, leather belt, and bracers approached the palanquin, joined by several tired-looking soldiers. He said, “The Synedrium requires your presence.” He frowned when he saw Daniel wore only boxers. “But you must clothe yourselves respectably first.”
Daniel lifted his blood-soaked cloak from the floor and removed the wedding boutonniere from the pocket. He held the cloak up to the soldier. “Do you happen to have another robe?” He stuck his finger through it. “My last one seems to have developed a hole.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Caleb and the others walked toward the Synedrium under the stormy sky like men to the gallows. Though it was still daytime, the storm made the desert dark as night, and only the flickering torchlight guided their way. Their escorts whispered amongst themselves. How long had it been since strangers walked with the Bedu like this?
“If they choose to cast us out,” Caleb whispered to Daniel, “if they do not respond to my request, I will need you to speak for us. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Daniel said, even though persuasion was foreign to his kind. The power of the Lamed Vav was subtle, never manipulative.
The phalanx of soldiers dividing the Synedrium from the camp stepped aside to let them through. They moved into the circle of Houses, led by their guard.
“Sit on the sand,” a soldier said, a boy, pointing with his sword. “Do not speak unless commanded to.” Then their armed escorts departed the circle. What happened here wasn’t meant
for soldiers’ crude ears.
Sixty somber- and dour-faced Bedu surrounded them. Weary-eyed, middle-aged men who tugged at gnarled beards. Buxom, stocky women whose embittered eyes accused without trial. The men kept their emotions behind stony facades, but the women spat and scowled. The Synedrium were a bitter bunch.
Everyone stood but for Lord Elizel, upright on his wooden throne. Its finials had been carved into heads of a lion, a goat, a camel, and an ox. They writhed in the firelight. Behind Elizel a wide banner proclaimed, “Chieftain Elizel, Sovereign Lord of the Quog Bedu by the Blessing of the Goddess.” The black-bearded Otto stood to his left, glowering at Caleb. To Elizel’s right, the camel-eyed Uriel watched stolidly.
Caleb stilled himself with deep breathing. As the twin suns of Sheol rise above the black cliffs of Abbadon, he thought, so I must rise now. To win their hearts, he had to make his cause theirs.
The storm spun above them, but all eyes were on him. Lord Elizel said, “Beloved Caleb.” His words silenced the murmurs and whispers in the crowd. “I’ve explained to the Body what you’ve told me, that you need the Bedu’s help to travel to the Kuurku, where you seek to prevent the destruction of the Pillars.”
“You are correct, Elizel,” Caleb said. “Your help would be—”
“Hold your tongue!” Otto spat. “Speak only when commanded to!”
Caleb bowed in apology. He had to win these people to his side, even if it meant pretending to respect their stupid formalities.
“The Synedrium wants to know who you are,” Elizel said. The circle tapped their staffs, while nodding and murmuring their assent like a tribe of bleating goats.
Marul glared at Caleb, hatred in her eyes.
“Witch,” Caleb whispered. “If you want to live, better hold your tongue. I know of your plan to out me.”
She shuddered. “And . . . what plan is this?”
“You are as transparent as glass,” he said. “If you tell them what I am, I will tell them what you did. Which is worse in their eyes? A demon? Or the betrayer of the Cosmos?”
“Halt your whispering!” Otto shouted.
Caleb bowed again. “Lord, Elizel, my name is Caleb.”
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