I was sure as I could be that that wasn’t how Azazel saw things, so I didn’t intend to argue further. “Which side are you on, in the end?”
“Me? Screw the game, I’m on my side. I was spawned by chaos—and I’ve had to spend my life working on the side of order so that none of the bastards notice. I’ve stood in the shadows pulling strings for kings and empires and artisans. I’ve built up nations and sucked the cocks of tyrants. I have done everything I can to hide my heritage.”
“Until now.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you helping him now if it’s such a big risk?” I snapped, unable to hold down my irritation.
Her eyes widened. “What’s your problem, Milja?”
“I don’t have a problem!”
“Then why are you shouting?”
I clamped my mouth shut.
She moistened her lips. “He’s my father. He’s part of me. Not some fancy idealist Heavenly Father, but down here in my blood and my bones. Shouldn’t a daughter naturally long to be with her father and to do as he wishes? I mean, I know you didn’t, obviously…”
I felt the color drain from my cheeks. “Shut the hell up. You’ve no right to judge me.”
“Sorry, did I strike a nerve?” Her eyes were narrowed. “At least you had a father as a child. And your mother and brothers weren’t butchered. Do you know what happened to me when I arrived in Uruk and there was no one there to take care of me? Do you want to guess what happens to little girls with no family?”
Shut up, I wanted to tell her again. But I knew she was right. She’d suffered through things I couldn’t bear to imagine. I shook my head, helpless and angry. “Let me know when you’re ready to head out,” I told her, making for the door.
“He loves you,” she said, pausing me in my tracks.
Yeah.
“But he’s loved so many women. It’s not a blood-tie, Milja. Love cannot last. Only blood is forever.”
9
EMPTY, SWEPT AND GARNISHED
We began our tour of the southeastern cluster of churches with Bet Abba Libanos, the church that had been built overnight by angels. Father Libanos was one of the Syrian saints who had brought Christianity to Ethiopia, and a picture inside showed him striking water from the ground with the tip of his spear. His church was a huge block situated inside a carpeted cave, still attached to the overhang above and the bedrock below. There were more of those purported ‘angel eyes’ carved inside, and I wondered why here and not in all the churches.
I was so annoyed with Roshana, and so wound up by the fear of seeing Egan, that I could hardly think straight.
The terrain on this side of the Jordan was even more labyrinthine, with many spiraling semi-natural passages and tunnels, some blocked by rough, antique doors. A tall slit-like tunnel led us to a ravine and through that to Bet Amanuel, supposedly the chapel of the royal family itself. Certainly it was the best-carved of all the churches inside and out, with a gallery floor over our heads that we couldn’t access, though Eskinder sounded dismissive when he told us that the occupying Italians had restored it in the 1930s.
I found myself looking carefully over all the interior paintings for some clue.
“This is the story of Saint Mary and the Water of Correction,” said Eskinder as I frowned at a panel, his expression expectant as he waited for understanding to dawn on me. Unfortunately, I was ignorant.
“What’s that?”
He pointed at the picture of the girl taking a pot from some bearded priests. “Mary is twelve, and she is taken to the Temple when they find her to be carrying the baby, the Christ Jesus, but with no husband. They give her the Water of Correction to test her.” He blinked at me, waiting for me say Of course.
I however was trying not to pull a face at the off-handed assumption that the Virgin Theotokos was only a child. Though that made a horrible sort of sense, of course, given the times.
“If she does not lose the child and die, it is seen that God blesses the baby and wishes it to be born,” he explained.
“Wow.” My stomach roiled. It was coming home to me how much the Christianity I thought I knew was, in foreign lands, a strange and unfamiliar religion.
We passed from Bet Amanuel to Bet Merkorios, which had lost its front half to collapse and whose remaining rooms smelled of damp. Apparently iron fetters had been discovered here, suggesting it had once been an ancient prison before conversion to a church—a revelation that made my skin crawl. Its patron was also depicted with a spear, but he was using it from horseback to gorily disembowel the evil Emperor Oleonus. I’d never heard of either. In the forecourt of that building was a trapdoor in the floor.
“Look at this. It is the Valley of Death,” Eskinder told us. “We go in.”
Roshana fanned herself with a postcard, looking skeptical. “Really?”
“The tunnel runs right through from church to church, one hundred fifty feet. You can use a torch if you like, but to walk through in darkness is to feel the grave. That is what pilgrims think about.”
“I see.” She winked at me. “We’re up for it, aren’t we?”
We scrambled down rock-cut steps into the darkness. There seemed to be a choice of ways, but Eskinder led us off to our left, and we lost the light almost immediately as the tunnel curved. The slot was narrow—I found I could easily touch either wall by stretching out my arms—and the blackness absolute.
“Be careful,” came Eskinder’s voice from ahead. “The roof is low in places. Put your hand above your head.”
“I hope there are no bats,” Roshana grumbled.
“Yes, bats. But not here.”
Bats didn’t bother me, but the darkness did a little. It felt too much like the tunnel under Papa’s chapel. I was at the back of our little line and it felt like the other two had consumed all the oxygen. I wondered how many of these tunnels there were under the church complex. I wondered how far they stretched, winding above and below each other, and whether anyone ever snuck in and got lost. I wondered if Penemuel was within shouting distance.
Then we heard voices ahead. Clearly another party was coming down the tunnel in the opposite direction. The afterlife was a crowded place, it seemed.
“…passage runs right the way through to a trapdoor inside the House of Immanuel, but that’s blocked off and we’ll come up earlier, in the House of Mercurios.” The indistinct words came in a tone that first sounded weirdly familiar, and then made my heart clench.
It was Egan’s voice.
Dear God. He’s heading right toward us.
“Hello?” Eskinder called.
“Hello there.”
“Hello!” A woman’s voice.
“We should pass to the right,” said Eskinder.
“Sure, no problem.”
What if someone puts a torch on? I shrank against the right hand wall of the passage, putting my hand up to shield my face and hoping that my hat and fake yellow tresses were enough to fool him. The sound of scuffing feet and muttering grew closer. He was with an Englishwoman—no, two of them, who were giggling and panting a little, enjoying their subterranean adventure.
The lights stayed off.
Why’s he showing women around? I wondered with a pang, but I knew the answer. Egan’s protective instinct was in my opinion close to masochistic. All it would take was for the women to wander past him in a ravine, looking lost or pestered by touts or both, for him to offer his every assistance—and not in any hope of gain, but simply because he was one of nature’s white knights.
Then they squeezed past, one at a time. I felt Egan brush my shoulder, an electric jolt through my straining nerves, and he apologized. I caught the scent of his skin, shockingly familiar in this dank underground hole, and it made my insides ache. I held my breath and tried to stop my heart from hammering. He won’t notice me. He won’t notice me.
Then he was gone.
“Thank you.” The women smelled of soap and lily-of-the-valley, and their voices as they squeez
ed past each of us betrayed their advanced years. The wave of relief as their voices faded away made my skin clammy.
I didn’t even notice the rest of our subterranean journey, or the scramble through the defiles and staircases beyond. I wasn’t paying any attention to our route. It wasn’t until we came out under a railed overhang, and looked across a small bridge over a moat fifty feet deep to the slab-like face of the building beyond, that my brain clicked back into focus.
“That’s…stunning,” I said weakly.
“This is Bet Gebriel-Rufael,” Eskinder announced. “It is the oldest building on the site, older than all the churches. It was here before King Lalibela. We think it was a fortress. But now it is two churches, Saint Gebriel and Saint Rufael. Look at this, to the right.” He pointed at a huge ramp of rock, a towering narrow knife-edge like a wall blocking off the end of the moat. “That rock is called the Way to Heaven, because it is so steep, so narrow.”
“It’d certainly be a shortcut,” Roshana muttered. “Look at the drop.”
“Look down here. Those two stone hatches in the floor? They are the covers to a cistern underneath the rock, where the rainwater is collected.”
I gripped the modern railing and stared down, feeling a little dizzy. There was an inch of water across the bottom of the trench, bright green with algae. Maybe it was the contrast with the claustrophobic darkness of the Valley of Death, but the moat seemed shockingly vast, and the ex-fortress beyond it looming and majestic with its tall arched niches. It certainly looked like a structure built for defense and intimidation.
“This is the bridge over troubled water then, I guess,” suggested Roshana. The snark went over Eskinder’s head.
“The bridge is new. The old entrance to the church is around the back, down at the bottom. But it is closed now. We go in this way.”
We trooped across the wooden planks, and—after shedding our shoes—into the church beyond. The twin rooms inside were irregularly shaped, sparsely decorated and bigger than most of the other churches. It felt to me more like a theatrical stage with most of the sets removed than an ecclesiastical interior. The priest here was neither waiting by the ubiquitous red donation box with a cross for pilgrims to kiss, nor dozing in a corner; he was crouched before the curtain of the Holy of Holies, reading aloud from a hand-lettered book. He ignored us completely.
The drone of his words made my skin prickle, and the longer I paid attention the more uncomfortable I felt. “What’s he saying?” I whispered to Eskinder.
“He is praying. The words are in Ge’ez not Amharic, so it is hard for me to hear…” He frowned and after a moment’s hesitation had a stab at translation anyway. “Selam to you, Rufael, gracious and good, rejoicer of hearts. Selam to you, Gebriel, messenger of the King of Heaven. Stand before us against the powers of evil. Save us from the darkness.”
My stomach lurched. I recognized the words from my dream at once, and I knew better now than to ignore my dreams.
Oh oh oh.
“Are you unwell?” Eskinder asked. My sudden alarm must have shown on my face.
“I want some fresh air.”
I lurched through the second chapel and out onto a stone platform overlooking the moat. There was as much fresh air out here as anyone could ask for—and no safety railings this side, I noted, inching toward the edge to squint down. I could see carved steps descending into the hatch of the flooded cistern.
Okay, she’s here. Somewhere. God, what if she’s underwater there? No…more likely in the bottom floor of the church. The old entrance at the rear.
“Well?” said Roshana, strolling out to join me and popping her sunshades back on the moment the sun struck her face.
I nodded, swallowing my anxiety. “Here.”
Her lips formed a tight pout. “Really?”
“Yes.”
Eskinder appeared in the doorway, just making sure we didn’t topple into the pit or something.
“Eskinder, why was the old entrance to this church shut up?”
“I don’t know. I think the way in was very difficult—up a ladder to this floor. The bridge is easier for tourists.”
“Can we see it?”
“It is shut,” he repeated patiently.
“I know. I just would like to see it from the outside.”
He shrugged. “This way then.”
We retraced our steps through the twin chapels. I could hardly look at the priest with his white turban and his white beard.
All these centuries you’ve been waiting for a jailbreak. Girding yourselves against the powers of evil. Now we’re here. Two sort-of-American broads in sunhats and sandals. And it’s going to be tonight.
Coming, ready or not.
“Are you sure?” Roshana asked, as we sat with our drinks at the hotel. She’d bought me a blue cocktail that tasted of coconut, and I had no idea what it was called.
“Yes.” I was sure, and now all my nervousness had disappeared. This was my thing—something I could do that Roshana couldn’t, it seemed. I liked that.
“Okay.” She leaned forward in her chair and took a sip of her own cocktail, which was clear and, I suspected, a lot less sweet than mine. “I’ll take your word for it.” She poked her tablet awake and indicated the plan of the Lalibela churches that she’d found online. The doorway we were interested in was situated down a black trench cul-de-sac and wasn’t labelled, but the steps were obvious in the diagram. “Well, the route from the road looks easy enough, so long as we stick to the bottom of this ravine. What if the door’s bolted from the inside?”
“It won’t be.” I took a deep breath. “Someone forgot to lock it last time.”
She opened her mouth to protest skeptically and then saw the look on my face. “Ah. Well, if you can pull that one off…”
“If I can’t, we can always get Azazel to break in.”
“I’d rather avoid that. Letting Big Boy out will set off all the alarms.” She picked up the bar receipt and began to idly fold and rip it. “Save him for emergencies, like getting the hell out of there.”
I fingered my plastic loop necklace, the one with the wire-saw core, and nodded. Maybe Penemuel was just tied down and we’d be able to cut her free. Maybe she was buried under a slab too, like poor dead Jomjael. I bit my lip. It was bugging me that Azazel could not hear Penemuel when she called out to him. And that Michael had not responded when challenged by name in the burial mound. If the prison cells were sealed, as we suspected, to angelic eyes and ears and voices, then it would take human guile to cross the minefield of consecrated ground and get us inside. “We can’t talk much once we’re on site, remember,” I said. “It’s all audible.”
“Yeah, yeah. I remember.” She was crafting a crude paper butterfly, it turned out.
“Bring your phone so we can write messages to each other.”
“Honey, I’m carrying everything of value. D’you think we’re coming back here for drinkies when it’s done?”
“Fair enough. Okay.”
“I’ll book a table tonight at the Seven Olives, and we’ll get a taxi into town. We can walk from there when it’s good and dark.” She flicked the paper butterfly off the end of her fingers and it took flight, beating its white wings frantically. We both watched as it bumbled to a nearby shrub, some sort of red-hot-poker, and investigated the fiery orange flower spike—before suddenly falling to the ground, nothing but a lifeless paper scrap once more.
I cleared my throat. “I guess I should go…get ready then.”
She smirked. “Give him all my best.”
I called Azazel to my hotel bedroom, and he came down over me like the blackest oil, silky and opaque, covering me with a sweet darkness in which all the words of my anxiety and my doubt and my insecurity, written and rehearsed and repeated so often, were blotted out. His embrace was an escape from self. He moved upon me softly, like a shadow made flesh; skin upon skin, breath to breath, his hair a dark veil circumscribing my field of vision, his limbs the pillars of a prison I
had no desire to escape.
He didn’t even mention my change of hair color.
“Milja,” he whispered, all lips and hot breath and barely curbed appetite. Sometimes he is almost too urgent, too impatient—but not that afternoon. This time he held his own desire in check, to indulge it the deeper and more keenly. The voltage of his suppressed power crackled across my skin. He savored my passion and my body alike, making me cry out for him, making me sob with need and release, one and then the other, over and over. I felt like a shimmering jag of lightning wrapped in a thundercloud. He brought me to a place beyond words and thought, a place where I was only ache and flare and shining tumble into more ache.
If he had carried on I would have died and dissolved into him, and the storm would have lasted forever.
But he lifted me off the soaked bed sheets and carried me into the wet room and set my burning slippery body against the tiled walls, my breasts and face and forearms pressed to their coolness as his hands poured over me, as he hefted my weight without effort, as he cupped me in the hot hard nest of thighs and crotch. My toes left the floor and I arched my spine and made room for him, taking him deep. My fingers scrabbled across the tiles, seeking purchase. My breath gusted mist on the glaze.
“Yes,” he growled in my ear. He wasn’t thrusting, was hardly moving. “Let me in, Milja. Let me in.” He kissed my shoulder and my neck, his lips so slow that it felt like delicious torture, and his voice was a thick soft needful murmur that made me run wet. “I’m inside you. You like that, don’t you. I am closer to you than the veins in your throat. Closer than your heartbeat. I am part of you, your flesh. I am the fire in your blood. I am the seed in your belly. I am the star-stuff in your bones.”
His finger, curled around me, found the point of ignition.
In Bonds of the Earth (Book of the Watchers 2) Page 14