In Bonds of the Earth (Book of the Watchers 2)

by Janine Ashbless

  “The white bull represents good, the black bull represents evil,” he told us.

  I recalled my vision of Azazel and Raphael’s ferocious battle and I shivered.

  There was a carved relief of Saint George slaying a dragon on the western facade. I wondered whether the legend was based on an angel bringing down one of the Watchers, or some later conflict on a more human scale. Saint George seemed to be everywhere in Ethiopia, even on the beer labels in the restaurant.

  Fellow dragon-slayer Saint Michael had his own small church, accessed from a steep trench so riddled with graves it looked like Swiss cheese. Bet Mikael guarded the way to a second interior church, Bet Golgotha, which we were not allowed into. All we could see from the connecting doorway were a couple of larger-than-life-sized bas-reliefs of robed and haloed men carved into arched niches in the walls. The gray faces of these saints and patriarchs—if that’s what they were—were forbidding, and the crumbling of the old stone had granted them an unfortunate corpselike cast.

  A priest sitting on a bench looked up at us mildly and made a pushing-back gesture with his palm.

  “No women are allowed in,” Eskinder explained. “That is the most holy church of all. King Lalibela is buried under the Selassie chapel there, that is what they say.”

  Roshana and I exchanged another significant glance. Eskinder tried to make up for our frustration. “Look at this,” he said, pointing at carvings high on the corners of the pillars in Bet Mikael where we stood. “These are only found here and one other place. They are angel eyes.”

  They didn’t look much like eyes to me, unless angels had vertical spindle-shaped pupils, but I wasn’t going to argue. I wondered if Michael was watching us through his stone eyes, and I retreated from Bet Mikael with some abruptness, retrieving my carefully lined-up shoes.

  I was even more unnerved around the corner, near the great hollowed-out block of Adam’s Tomb, to see a blue sign pointing into a cave labelled Bet Uraiel.

  “Shall we go in there?” Roshana asked.

  “No.” I shook my head as the word came out with more vehemence than I’d intended.

  “It is only a recent church,” said Eskinder with a dismissive gesture. “It opened in 1998. Before that, a store room. Come this way.”

  Uriel suddenly decided he needed a foothold here, did he? I asked myself, wondering if this was what paranoia felt like.

  We left that northwestern cluster of churches, the second Jerusalem, though Adam’s Tomb and down the broad trench beyond. Some traditional domestic houses, like two-story turrets, stood watch over our retreat. A clutch of small children intercepted us and followed, shouting, “You! You! You!” until our shoe guy drove them off with the threat of a raised hand. I felt relieved and guilty in equal measure.

  Bet Giyorgis, the House of George, stood by itself across the road and down the hillside, like a sentinel guarding royalty. It was the most famous of the Lalibela churches, of course, because it was the easiest to take an impressive photo of. A huge square pit sunk into the bare rock framed a cruciform block of a church four stories high. Bright chartreuse and gray-green lichens splotched the pink stone. We stared down at it from above, letting its monolithic sophistication and the sense of implacable faith sink in. I tried to imagine how long it would have taken, hacking down into the rock with hand-tools, to create such a thing. Any mistake would have been permanent, since no stone could be replaced.

  The slope of the surrounding rock and the relatively narrow gap tempted me, much against my common sense, to contemplate the possibility of a leap to the flat cross-carved roof. I wondered if anyone had ever made that insane attempt. This place, I thought, could send you out of your mind. I blinked my dry eyes.

  We descended into the pit via a trench that wound around the outside. “Look at this,” said Eskinder. “These are the footprints of Saint George’s horse.” The imprints ran vertically up the face of the rock.

  “Wow,” I said dutifully.

  “Do you believe stories like that?” Roshana asked, with more courage and less tact than I could muster. “You have a college degree, you said. You’re an educated man.”

  Eskinder looked calmly at her. “Only a very uneducated man would put limits on the power of God.”

  Then we passed under a thick arch of rock and into the sunken church enclosure. Eskinder took us on a circuit of the exterior first. A pair of leathery mummified feet poked out from one niche.

  “Look at this. Many pilgrims came here to die on holy ground in old times, from Egypt, Syria, Jerusalem.” he said. “Most of the bodies from here have been moved now, but if you go to Yemrehanna Kristos Monastery just outside the city, there are eleven thousand skeletons in the cave.”

  I couldn’t imagine what eleven thousand bodies looked like stacked up.

  We shed our shoes once more on the carved steps of the church, and climbed into the interior. For a moment I held my breath, wondering if this was the place we sought. The gallery book had been borrowed from this church after all. Perhaps Penemuel was below our feet right now.

  Are you here? My heart thumped against my breastbone.

  But the church kept its secrets. Once more the interior turned out to be smaller than it looked from the outside, the pillarless space carved with precision and restraint. The carpet under our toes was a coarse red industrial weave. The glossy curtains strung from a sagging pole shielded the Holy of Holies from profane eyes, but there were portraits of Saint George propped up against the walls, and two huge wooden treasury coffers that were supposedly eight hundred years old, now spattered with wax drippings. I wondered what other books were kept hidden in there.

  The priest, wearing ornate vestments and sun-shades, obliged us for a photo opportunity and brought out a tall cross in brass filigree for us. We took our pictures and looked around, and I was the first to head back to the porch. The shock waiting there nearly floored me.

  Directly opposite the door, Egan was walking out of the gap in the cliff. I leapt back into the shadows, my heart suddenly hammering.

  I’d recognized him instantly. He wore a collarless Nehru-style shirt over canvas pants, and sunglasses pushed onto the top of his head. Unlike every other tourist that walked into the pit, he did not stare up in awe at the church; he instead glanced left and right, searching the crowds. It was the only thing that’d stopped him spotting me straight away.

  “We can’t go out!” I hissed to Roshana, grabbing her arm.

  “Why?”

  “Egan’s outside!” I tried to keep my voice down, but I could feel my blood racing. “He can’t see us! We’re finished if he does!”

  “Egan?” She frowned. “Oh—your friend from the gallery?”

  “He’s not my friend.” I met her arch, expectant glare and dropped my voice to an even lower mutter. “I can’t explain here! But he can’t see us. Can you do anything?”

  She turned to Eskinder, plucked a rolled note out of the tiny handbag slung across her torso, and pointed it at him. “There’s a man outside who was very creepy to my friend in the bar last night. We don’t want him to see us. American, yellow hair…what’s he wearing, Milja?”

  “Blue Indian shirt. Sunglasses on the top of his head.”

  “Can you go out first and distract him? Take him to see the mummy or something, so we can get past without him seeing.”

  Eskinder looked pained. “Tip the man who looks after your shoes,” he said, waving the money away. But he went out.

  Roshana went a minute later, peeking cautiously around the door frame. “Okay, we’re good.”

  I pulled my floppy sunhat down over my head, trotted down the steps, scooped up my shoes from the ranks and scurried in my stockinged feet for the safety of the tunnel mouth, dodging the knots of visitors. Roshana sashayed after me with rather more dignity. We waited in the trench for Eskinder and our shoe guy to catch us up. I was feeling dizzy with anxiety.

  Had I imagined Egan’s presence, imprinting his face onto some innocent stra
nger? It had only been a glimpse, after all. But no—I felt sure.

  “Are you all right, honey?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t take this all in. I need a rest. And something to eat.”

  She pulled out her phone. “I’ll call our car.” And when Eskinder did reappear, she smiled at him with patrician confidence. “We will tour the rest of the churches tomorrow, I think. We are too tired now, and Miss Jones is very jetlagged. We need to go back to our hotel now.”

  He nodded, thoughtfully. “You should not hurry. Lalibela is best taken slowly, slowly.”

  “Can you meet us tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Of course. Will hour eight be suitable?” He smiled at my look of confusion, enjoying his gentle tease. “That is two o’clock p.m. We count time from dawn.”

  It would be six in the morning according to my Chicago body-clock, but I nodded. “Thank you.”

  Paying everyone off, we retreated back to our hotel out of town. Roshana and I did not speak in the car. We weren’t sure we could trust even our driver. But as soon as we were standing on the hotel forecourt, with metallic blue starlings flitting about the modern glass architecture around us, she said, “I think you need to tell me about the lovely Egan.”

  I swallowed hard. “He works for the Vatican.”

  “Seriously?”

  “He keeps a watch on me…but I’ve no idea how he knew we’d be here. He couldn’t have checked the flights this time.” I twisted my guidebook in my hands. “If he sees us, he’ll tell the priests here. No question. He’ll try to stop us.”

  Roshana looked surprised. “So he knows about you and Daddy?”

  “Uhuh.”

  “And does Azazel know about him?”

  “Yes.” Sort of. Yes, after the last time they met, in the monastery. Egan made it pretty clear then that they were on opposing teams. “Yeah. He does.”

  “Then why doesn’t he take the cute Catholic out permanently?”

  I was shocked. “Well, he’s… Egan’s not a threat! He saved my life back in Montenegro, several times.” I pulled a face. “I owe him, big time. He’s just…not on our side.”

  “He’s a threat now, clearly.”

  “He wouldn’t do anything to hurt us.” Not me, anyway. Just Azazel. He’ll do everything he can to stop Azazel.

  “You hope. And he might have a soft spot for you, but there are a hundred priests down there who don’t give a stuff about some slutty American witch. Don’t forget that.”

  I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks. “We just have to stay out of his sight.”

  “Fine.” She shrugged, turning to the hotel doors. “But it’s a complication we don’t need.”

  We ate dinner on the hotel patio, watching vervet monkeys play on the rocks nearby while thunder rumbled across the hilltops. Thankfully we were clear of the flies up here. Afterwards I went for a lie-down. My head was spinning, not from the change of dateline but from anxiety. I didn’t want to let Azazel down. I didn’t want to precipitate a fight with Egan. Or with a hundred priests. Or even one archangel.

  I dozed off and dreamed. It was a weird, shallow dream, in which I was still aware of my body lying on the hotel coverlet but I felt like I was somewhere else, somewhere dark and subterranean. Voices muttered in the shadows around me: Salutations to thee, Raphael, gracious and good, rejoicer of hearts. Salutations to thee, Gabriel, messenger of the King of Heaven. Stand before us against the powers of evil. Save us from the darkness.

  Milja? A woman’s voice whispered through the hubbub.

  Penemuel? Is that you?

  Daughter of Earth… How long? How long before you come?

  Soon, I promised.

  I suffer.

  We have seen. Another voice; a familiar and horribly ominous phrase. Egan?

  I forced myself awake, into a more mundane darkness, and found that according to my phone it was past midnight. My mouth was sticky and dry, but the complimentary Abyssinia bottle by my bedside was empty. Not trusting the tap water in my sink, my head still wadded with tatters of sleep, I let myself out into the corridor and padded along to the lobby to seek out another bottle. Rain hissed on the leaves in the hotel grounds.

  The corridor opened out into an interior balcony over the bar. I looked down to see that Roshana was down there, holding court. A dozen tourists, mostly men, lounged around in easy chairs. Staff leaned against pillars, watching. She sat on a high stool, her legs crossed under what I’d call an insensitively short skirt, and was recounting a story about someone she’d met at a winter party, a Hollywood star, who’d taken her out for a après-ski spin on his snowmobile and then got stuck in a drift and they’d had to beg shelter in a redneck mining settlement. It was a funny story, and they all seemed to hang on her words.

  She didn’t look tired in the least.

  I’d met people like her ever since coming to America. Clever, charming people who fed on adulation and attention. People who thought the world revolved around them—and whose opinion the world seemed quite happy to go along with. I’d had a roomie at college like that. She’d had half the male students in the year queuing up outside her door for the smallest crumbs of indulgence.

  Is this what angelic bloodlines look like? Is this what the Watchers gave us?

  I snagged a bottle from a cooler unit in the corner of the deserted lobby and skulked back to my room.

  Roshana took me into her room the next morning and gave me a rather lovely peach silk dress to wear over my own capri pants. It made an acceptably demure top over my longer torso, though it hung more loosely than on her lush curves.

  “We don’t want anyone recognizing you by your clothes,” she said. Then she sat me down in front of a mirror, unbound my long hair and, with an expression of dire concentration, ran her fingers through it. Her touch wilted my locks from brunette to blonde.

  I gasped.

  “Stop wriggling,” she admonished, pulling her fingers through each tress until they faded, sere as autumn birch leaves. I fixed on my reflection, fascinated and appalled. My brows are black and my eyes dark; they stared out at me now from a frame of wavy gold. There was just too much contrast, like sin revealed in the midst of innocence.

  Hair grows out, I told myself. It’s no big thing.

  But when she laid her cool fingers across my cheeks I knocked her hands away and jumped up with a cry. “Don’t you dare!”

  “Stop being childish,” she laughed. “You want Egan to spot you? What if he’s been handing your picture around to the priests?”

  “I don’t care,” I snarled. “You’re not messing with my face.”

  “Tchah.” She wiped her hands dismissively on the air.

  “For God’s sake,” I said, retreating across the hand-woven rug to what felt like a slightly safer distance. “If you’ve got these…powers…” I ran out of words momentarily, then started again. “You’ve got goddamn magic. What can you do to get Pen out?”

  “Nothing.” She sat down on the edge of her bed, folding her miraculous hands demurely in her lap. “I can’t do a thing on church ground. Not without letting everyone know where I am and what. Which will really kick over the wasps’ nest, won’t it?” She glanced down at her hands. “I can feel it the second I walk on consecrated ground, you know. I can feel it prickling all over my skin. It feels like eyes watching me. Ugh.”

  I sniffed, trying to regain my composure.

  “You have no idea what I’m risking, helping you here,” she said in a low voice.

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “I have made an art form of not being noticed, all my life. Yesterday was the first time in five thousand years I’ve dared set foot on holy ground. I’ve steered clear since the day I was born.”

  “Don’t exaggerate. Even Judaism isn’t that old.”

  She smiled, eyes narrowed and her crimson lips taut. “Angels are older than Abraham.”

  “I know that!”

  “D’you think monotheism has the monopoly on truth? That th
is is all about Yahweh?” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me, after all this, that you still believe?”

  I was confused. “Isn’t this all proof? How much more do you want?”

  “What’s it proof of? An all-loving, all-knowing, infinitely wise Father who watches everything you do? Or maybe something a bit more impersonal?”

  I bit my lip. “I don’t know. God is a Mystery, ultimately unknowable.” That was my Orthodoxy coming out.

  “But you still believe in Someone, don’t you?” She laughed.

  “Azazel believes in Someone.”

  “You think so? You really need to learn the difference between ‘I want it to be true’, and ‘It is true’. One does not follow from the other. Of course you want a universe that knows you and cares for you. Of course you want to be of infinite importance in the scheme of things. Of course you want to be loved without reservation, and to live for all eternity. And that’s because you haven’t grown up yet, honey. But the truth is that there is no Sky Daddy coming to save you, or to punish him. There is just a bunch of bastards with rules and big ideas—and some of those bastards have wings, and some just have sticks ‘n’ guns.”

  “Then tell me—Who is Azazel rebelling against?”

  “Let me spell it out for you, honey. There are only two games in town. There’s Divine Order, which by its nature creates, and Chaos, which must tear apart. It doesn’t matter if you call that Order Jehovah or Ahura Mazda or Zeus or Marduk. All the stories and the dogma, the morality and Commandments, the God-so-loved-the-world shit…that’s just fancy paintwork. You obey or you rebel.”