by Rob Swigart
He paused, caught in the memory. “I remember clearly. I was young, only seventeen, a boy. I had been studying with a Teacher in Isfahan, a very demanding man, a man of true discipline. I was in Edessa asking this old man if he could direct me to a particular object in the Mevlid-I Halil Mosque. He stopped me before I could finish my question. ‘She will die in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Who will die?’ “Your mother, in Isfahan.’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘Isfahan is over a thousand kilometers from here, how can you know this?’ He just shook his head. He truly didn’t know how he knew.”
“Do you bleach your teeth?” Lisa asked, suddenly.
Nizam’s dark lips drew apart. On anyone else it could have been called a smile. “I know what you’re attempting, Dr. Emmer.”
She tipped her head slightly, mimicking his economy of movement. He was so unnaturally still she had to assume he was breathing.
“I had no need to telephone my father’s house in Isfahan,” he continued as if she had not interrupted. “This man in Edessa, the city in Eastern Turkey some call Urfa, had no way of knowing I had ordered my mother’s death for this very day. I had done it when I was still back in Isfahan, before setting out for Edessa. My Teacher had demanded it, for reasons I did not understand for many years.”
“Your mother?”
“My mother, yes. When the old man said that, the hair on my neck stood up. That man, that uneducated, insignificant custodian at the mosque, had the gift. I knew that at once.”
“So you killed him, too,” Lisa said, because she knew.
Nizam showed the edges of his teeth. “The gift is dangerous. People cannot abide too much vision, too much truth: such things burn the unprepared. Ophis Sophia knows this.”
“Ophis Sophia? The only ones with this truth from the time before the gods?”
“Most of the truth, yes. The Tablet of Destinies will confirm what we believe.”
“The child.”
“Mmm. The dumu Dimme, Child of Lamaštu.”
“Boy or girl?“
Nizam’s smile darkened a little. “The answer to that question must be in the Tablet. But I think you already know.”
“What makes the girl so special? Something to do with Muššatur?”
“You, Dr. Emmer, have the eagle sight; why don’t you tell me?”
The aqueous room slipped sideways and dissolved to a watery gray. She stood on a platform of hard stone. At her feet the land plummeted into a chasm of churning mist. An infant started crying behind her. She turned and saw dim outlines of an enormous building high above her, and above the building a figure rose, elongated, and stretched into a twisting column of vapor. It condensed, took form, and opened a gaping dead-white mouth bracketed by down-curved fangs. The infant leaned out between the fangs and stared into Lisa’s eyes. It had the black, reflective eyes of Nizam al-Muriq, ancient and pitiless.
Lisa shrank back and put her hands up to ward off the vision. Words formed in the mists. She read them aloud, and as soon as she pronounced a word it shredded away like smoke, erased in the speaking of it: Adjuro te, serpens antique, per judicem vivorum et mortuorum, per factorem tuum, per factorem mundi, per eum, qui habet potestatem mittendi te in gehennam….
Nizam’s monotone came from very far away. “Interesting; the Catholic Rite of exorcism. Anathema of course; heretical, misguided, deceitful. The ancient serpent is not Satan, and the ‘He who judges the living and the dead, made the world and the Serpent’ has no power to send her to Hell. Best you remember that.”
Lisa couldn’t reply. Through thick, shifting smoke shoots of brilliant light flashed across a room with high windows on three sides. The smoke was sweet on the tongue, but something dark lay beneath, a scent of rain, the flinty taste of lightning.
The infant’s mouth was a small red hole inside the death white of the serpent’s mouth, and she saw that the infant was laughing. Its delight was contagious, and she began to feel oddly at ease, so much that when the room returned, she smiled up at Nizam.
He leaned back a fraction with a soft hiss.
His bleak smile hardened. With a curt nod he went to a window and looked out. The light was fading fast, but Lisa caught a glimpse of the courtyard, bare gravel, and the black bars of the gate, all leached of color, the gilt a dull bronze.
She thought she might level the field by standing up, but before she could act, the one she dubbed Tall man walked to the window and spoke to the Teacher. They both left the room.
She looked at Ibrahim.
“Come,” he said, leading her two flights up the spiral staircase to the third floor. He unlocked and opened a door. “You will remain in this room. Do not try to leave.”
“Now why would I do that?”
This time he failed to note her sarcasm. “Do nothing against Her will.”
He left, closing the door behind him. The click of the lock sounded unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.
The room was too small, too hot. This thick air would lull her to sleep in the high, soft bed draped in silk of royal blue and lavender.
The antique wooden armoire contained a single white terry robe. In the tiled bathroom were two large white towels and a bar of soap, but no small bottles of shampoo, no shower cap. Ophis Sophia’s taste in décor ran to a generic nineteenth century bourgeois chic.
She peeked between the heavy curtains. The window faced the blank wall of a neighboring house at least ten meters away, too far to reach despite the large honey locust between the houses. The window itself was barred on the outside. To her right she could make out the end of a high wall topped with broken glass. Beyond, she could see the foliage of a plane tree in the park. Around the corner to her left would be the courtyard entrance.
She paced out the room: so many steps, turn, so many more. Ibrahim had taken her bag and cell phone, so she had nothing but her clothes and her wits.
She still didn’t know where they were keeping Usem, but reasoned he was not on one the floors she had seen so far. The patrols were too casual for such an important prisoner. They’d want a secure location, somewhere secluded like a basement or attic. Dormer windows under the Mansard roof meant rooms above her. When she escaped this bedroom, she would go up.
She saw no camera, but assumed the man at the entrance was watching her. The room might have motion and sound sensors as well. She could have used Steve’s skills right now. He had an eye for such details.
Someone outside the room spoke. She recognized the voice of Nizam al-Muriq. “Divine Mother is moving.”
“When?” Ibrahim replied.
“Tomorrow. She must be present when we have the exact location.”
They passed on and the voices faded.
Divine Mother? Lisa wondered. Not Nizam’s, his mother was already dead. Whose, then?
As for the exact location, they still didn’t know where the child would be born.
She sat on the bed and listened, heart thudding. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, gathering the building around her. Even so, it kept its secrets.
The infant was laughing. Something like lines of light that was not exactly light connected her with the child. The lines, under attack, coiled angrily, hissing like electricity discharging. Or snakes. The child reached, hands grasping at the air, and Lisa could no longer say that the sounds it made were laughter. She craned her head back, looked up at the building, a dark gray outline against a darker gray sky. She reached for the child, and her hands touched slick stone, the face of a towering cliff stretching upward. The building crouched at the summit. Was this the Desfiladero de las Xanas, in Asturias, Spain?
Protect, Bruno said.
What did Ophis Sophia want with this child? To raise it in their cult? Was it supposed to be a reincarnation of Maššatur?
Who was the Divine Mother? The mother of the child, or someone else?
She must rescue Usem and decipher the Tablet of Destinies. Stop Ophis Sophia. Reach the child first.
Time to move.
She lifted a heavy brass lamp from the bedside table and, crouching down beside the bed, unscrewed the fixture holding the shade, removed it, and carefully broke the bulb under her heel, leaving the filament intact.
She listened, but there was no immediate reaction. She switched on the lamp and the metal loop glowed red. She held it to a corner of the bed sheet until the material caught fire. She tugged the sheets from the bed and fed the flames. Soon they were crawling up the brittle old wood of the headboard and pumping out clouds of acrid smoke. An alarm began shrilling.
Men were already racing toward the room, steps heavy on the stair. She smashed the window with the lamp, pushed her face against the bars, and screamed.
The smoke began swirling toward the open window. She took a deep breath, dropped to her hands and knees, and crawled into the curtain of thick black toward the door.
Even before she reached the door, she could hear over the roar of flames licking at the bathroom door the metallic grind of a key in the lock.
Reconnaissance
Once the gate closed behind the van, Steve and Frédo climbed out of the car and stretched while Alain collected a bag from the trunk.
Saturday traffic was heavy this late in the day. As usual, Paris drivers pretended they couldn’t see people crossing the street. Even pedestrians with a green light had to dodge and pirouette like bullfighters.
They strolled by the gate. The van was parked in the court, door gaping open. A man on a wicker chair watched the gate. Otherwise the courtyard was empty.
“There are only six private houses left around the park,” Steve said. “This is one. The only house plans I could find were from the nineteenth century, and we can see that things have changed. There’s tight security, electronic locks on the gate, mini cameras, motion detectors, no doubt stuff we can’t see. OS has owned it for eleven years. They’ve had plenty of time to remodel.”
“Count on it,” Alain agreed.
Frédo was squinting up at the gate. “I don’t see a camera.”
“Shall I call for backup?” Alain suggested. “We could take it by force. When the time is right, naturally.”
“Mm,” Steve agreed. “They’ll be armed. I propose a walk in the park.”
“This is the third park today.” Frédo said, still eager, ticking them off on his fingers. “Montsouris. Jardin des Plantes. Now this. We on a tour?”
“Reconnaissance,” Steve said.
Paths in the Parc Monceau form a long oval around what its original architect called a “garden for all times and places.” The park had once sported a Roman colonnade, a Dutch windmill, a minaret, and a vineyard, among other attractions. Most had been swept away in the intervening centuries, but some survived, including the lily pond and rotunda, along with many kinds of trees and ornamental flowerbeds. Breezes whispered restlessly in the trees.
The absurdity of the squat gray pseudo-Egyptian Hobbit-sized pyramid had also survived from bygone ages. Steve poked around in its doorway while Alain, facing the back of the Ophis Sophia house, described what he saw in a low voice. “Four floors, dormer windows under the Mansard roof, big honey locust between the house and the neighbor. A wall topped with razor wire and glass, except for the gate.”
“Park access. One of the perks of a house like this,” Steve said. He walked away up the path.
“Wow,” Frédo breathed, following.
Once out of sight of the house, Steve said, “Time to do your magic, Alain. Passive viewing only.”
“For now,” he agreed, removing a small thermal camera from the bag. He snapped a few pictures from behind a large tree, with Steve and Frédo gathered around like tourists. The house appeared on the screen in cool blue. A flame-red human figure stood at one of a yellow-orange window on the first floor. Pipes were clearly visible inside the walls, cold in blue, hot in red. “Can’t see past the first rooms,” Alain said. “For that I’ll have to be more active— radar, microwave tomography, sonar….”
“Wow,” Frédo repeated.
Steve nodded. “Active scanning might alert them.”
They strolled around the park, taking pictures of each other with the house in the background. A quarter hour later they looked over what they had.
“I count six adults,” Alain said. “Two in the kitchen on the ground floor. The one at the window hasn’t moved, another coming down the stairs. If there’s a basement, there are probably others.”
“You mean a dungeon?” Frédo squawked. “Where’s Usem?“
“Perhaps we should listen,” Steve suggested.
“OK, but listening won’t be entirely passive,” Alain said, removing a small gun from the case. He fired at the wall just under the second story. A brief pfft-click and it was done.
Steve aimed the camera at the house. The orange and red figures inside bloomed on the screen. “No reaction,” he said. “I don’t think they heard.”
Alain cupped his hand over the speaker in his ear. “They’re discussing food. Other conversations I can’t make out further in where we can’t see.”
“Recognize any voices?”
“No. One female, though.”
“Lisa?” Frédo asked.
Alain shrugged. “Can’t tell. Could be. How long do we give her?”
Steve snorted. “It’s already six. If she hasn’t signaled in a half hour….”
“Then?” Frédo had developed a jitter to accompany a deepening scowl. “Then what? What?”
Shadows enveloped the house and lights snapped on. A silhouette crossed one of the dormer windows.
Frédo started to repeat his question when Steve’s phone interrupted. He held up the phone. “Text from Constantine. Because you asked: 1, a comet just announced in Boötes. Discoverer names it Lamaštu; 2, Blood Moon in four days, next in December. Treadwell also curious.
Steve uttered a lengthy but quiet string of invective. He included the phone, Ted, Ophis Sophia, Ibrahim, and the tablet. When his list ran out, he explained, “According to Ted, that devil-damned miracle baby’s due in four days, Lisa’s in there, and all we know is, it’s going to be born in Spain.”
Alain, listening intently, shushed him. “We have a problem,” he whispered. Even through the tiny speakers in Alain’s ears the others could hear breaking glass followed by a scream. Alain tore off the earbud, threw his equipment in the case, and started running toward the house.
He and Steve vaulted the gate together. Frédo tried to open it, but it was locked. He climbed over. On the other side, he took out his gun.
Exorcismus
Father Colmillo and Sister Mary Lamiana walked, right-left, right-left, soft soles falling together soundlessly. They moved along the corridor from her office, down the first hall, past the door to the Paradise Garden, into the second hall. At the far end the Chapter House door was closed.
By custom, the Prior and the Abbot’s offices were left open in their absence. Both men had been gone, in point of fact, over two years. Some of the nuns said they had gone to Egypt to study and pray at the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai. Father Colmillo paid no heed to such rumors. Cloistered religious were always as short on facts as they were liberal with gossip.
He glanced sideways into the Abbot’s office and saw the grim façade of the monastic church through the mullioned windows behind the desk veiled but not softened by rain. Father Colmillo knew well that the squat thick-legged building was in truth a disheartening pile, stingy with light, cramped and damp in winter, suffocating in summer.
A fleeting smile rippled across his fleshy lips: this office was under the watchful eye of the Church, hence perfect for those who chose to endure in the name of God. It was no surprise the Abbot, neither a brave nor a self-restrained man, had lingered in sunnier lands.
Since her superiors’ extended sabbatical had left Sister Mary in charge, she could have moved into the Prior’s office, or even taken over the Abbot’s heavy mahogany desk. Father Colmillo wondered again why she had chosen to remain i
n her small office by the refectory. He concluded now, a little cynically, that she, too, disliked looking at the church.
They arrived at the thick oak door to the Chapter House, a vast chamber alongside the Church. Sister opened it with a long iron key hanging from her belt. The door swung back slowly.
Rain sluicing down the plain leaded glass of the clerestory windows made the feeble natural light shimmer like scales; candles struggled to fend off the gloom.
Chairs and tables pushed against the outside walls left room for a plain wooden table in the center. Around the table were three hard, straight-backed chairs.
Celia, wearing only a thin brown smock, occupied the chair at the end. Her eyes were wide and vacant. She had let her mouth go slack, and a line of saliva crept from the corner and crawled down her chin, but her hands drummed restlessly against her swollen belly.
“Good afternoon, Celia,” Father Colmillo purred. He wore his kindly tone like a favored chasuble.
Celia stared without apparent comprehension. He bent to his task. Had he looked up, though, he would have seen something shrewd and intent come into her eyes.
He opened his case on the table and removed the pincers and hammer, his own innovations for the Rite. She was a container of evil, a victim possessed. Evil must be plucked or beaten out.
When he did look at last, the intelligence in her eyes had faded.
Sister was flipping through her rosary beads with the thumb of her right hand, showing no other sign of the impatience she felt. Her left palm rested on the back of Celia’s chair, ready to grab should the girl try to run.
The priest placed the scapular with the shield of Constantine beside the pincers and hammer. He brought forth his rosary, Bible, and bottles of oil and salt, and lined them up carefully. When he had finished he looked intently at the nun.
She stopped her counting and held the tarnished silver cross up to her breast. She leaned down and whispered, “It’s up to you, Celia.” Her voice was hoarse and sharp-edged. “Father and I are here to help.” She straightened and kissed the cross.