Lisa Emmer Historical Thrillers Vol. 1-2 (Lisa Emmer Historical Thriller Series)

by Rob Swigart

  “Indeed. Or Destiny. But perhaps Namtar is more a role than a name. How does it happen that you know it? You are not of Ophis Sophia.”

  “I witnessed your… elevation.”

  “Ah.” He tilted his head, appraising her. “That is something curious. I sense no hostility, yet the Teacher tried to kill you. Why is this?”

  “It’s no longer important. We’re here for the same reason you are, Lex,” she said, deliberately using his birth name.

  He grunted softly. “To welcome the Child, yes. But what is the Child to you?” Her brief burst of merriment drew a frown. “You find this question amusing?”

  She grew serious. “Were it not for Ophis Sophia I would never have concerned myself with this matter,” she admitted. “Soon, though, your interest became mine.”

  He nodded gravely. “Yes, I see that, too. A change is coming. You know this.”

  “I do. It’s possible none of us fully understand what kind of change.”

  A slow smile toyed with the corners of his mouth. He straightened, blocking the saint’s face. Again, Alain reached for his gun, and again Lisa signed for restraint.

  Lex, focused on this woman who had been so resourceful in thwarting Ophis Sophia, ignored the two men. He had never been this close, and in the intimacy of this meeting he realized something disturbing that puzzled him: she had no fear of him, or Ophis Sophia, or the coming chaos, though she understood the implications well. Odd. His size, ruthless determination, and single-minded devotion to Nizam al-Muriq had always intimidated others, even Ibrahim. Yet this slight blond woman looked at him with clear, untroubled eyes. Of course, his devotion had taken something of a turn since his Ascension.

  He had passed through the portals of death, achieved the Second Mystery, and now controlled powers once unimaginable. Yet this slender woman had taken possession of the Tablet of Destinies. She had rescued the Jesuit. She had witnessed his transformation. She should have died when he ordered the attack on her apartment, yet she was here and Kemal and the others were probably dead and unburied.

  These reflections were running through his mind when she touched his bare forearm. The muscles there jumped, but he suppressed the desire to jerk it away. “Do you truly know what is about to happen?” he asked in a tone so casual she might have thought he didn’t care, had those muscles not twitched.

  His question was rhetorical, but she answered honestly. “Not exactly— it doesn’t work like that. But I can say you’re quite correct, a change is coming.” She shook her head once, and her hair swung back and forward again.

  With a curt nod he turned abruptly and walked back to the Chapter House.

  “That was odd,” Alain said after he disappeared inside.

  “Yes,” Steve agreed. “I thought he was stalking us.”

  “Hmm.” Lisa tipped her head. “I said he was hunting. I didn’t say he was hunting us. Come on.”

  “Whoah, what are you saying? Is there trouble among the snake people?”

  “An opening,” she replied. “Something unexpected.”

  At the door to the Paradise Garden she looked up into the night. The moon, still out of sight, was bleaching out the stars. The crowd of girls gathered at the opposite door was barely visible in the shadows.

  “Up there.” She pointed at the sky over the Church.

  The comet Lamaštu now stretched the width of Boötes, dimming the dagger point of Arcturus. With an explosion of silver light, the cross on the steeple sprang into being and the moon appeared, close enough to touch.

  “Less than an hour,” Lisa said. Her words were urgent, but she moved with deliberation toward the Chapter House. The two men followed, exchanging glances.

  The long, dreadful moan came again. Celia’s contractions were closer together. The Miraculous Child was struggling to emerge in the presence of most of the staff of San Akakio, not to mention the leadership of Ophis Sophia and the Delphi Agenda.

  The girls from the Children’s Hall had crossed the Garden and crowded into the hallway behind Lisa and the others. Just before going in, Lisa looked back at them. They were open mouthed and silent. She waved.

  Another long groan from the Chapter House rolled down the hall and died away.

  Blood Moon

  Lisa paused on the threshold. The room was familiar: she had seen it before, in flashes and fragments. Now, here, all the pieces were assembled, complete, whole, and densely real.

  Directly in front of her a dozen nuns and priests stood stiffly a meter or so apart, as though paired and composed, waiting for the orchestra to strike up a waltz. They were the mannequins on the top floor of Alamut, only alive, and old, and shrouded in black.

  The young woman on the table in the center of the room was most familiar of all, with her wide gray face and large square teeth. That face had first hovered over her at Rochers des Souris and had appeared to her countless times in the days since, yet she had seen it in the flesh only a few hours earlier.

  The girl grunted with effort. Each contraction produced a moaning scream. The elderly nun acting as midwife focused on the delivery while her assistant crooned, “There, there. There, there, push, let it come.”

  What, Lisa wondered, could these women know of childbirth? For that matter, what could she know, she who had never given birth, who would never have children? Sorrow froze her, but only for a moment. She stepped into the room.

  The priest sat beside the girl, holding her hand. The cuts on his forehead and face were angry red tears in his pale skin. He was mumbling to her, or to himself, and there was a wild look in his eyes, part exultation, part savage compassion. This was personal for him, and that surprised her. Then it didn’t. She had sensed someone helping the girl, a friend in this fortress of pain. Here he was, an unlikely ally, but she comprehended his role. This was going to be interesting.

  “Celia,” Alain whispered.

  The moon suddenly flooded through the clerestory windows, igniting the ceiling and top of the wall above the entrance with frozen light. Candles flickered everywhere, mixing gold with silver.

  Lisa swept her eyes over the ranks of witnesses standing in shadow along the sides, silent, black-garbed, and unmoving. The whole staff of the monastery must be here. The gifts of the Magi had brought them to this room to witness something normally routine. A million euros commanded respect.

  She noted Ibrahim’s hands, folded primly in front of his belly, while Nizam’s hung by his sides like trophies of a hunt. It was no wonder she saw them that way: his beliefs were the oldest in the world; they had an odor of antiquity beyond history. Lex stood stolid and unblinking slightly apart from Nizam and Ibrahim. She noted that after his eyes scanned the room, they returned always to appraise his Teacher.

  Yes, she thought, al-Muriq, the ‘one that keeps the enemy at a distance,’ was old, wounded, and in failing health. Interesting. There was trouble in the monastery and trouble within Ophis Sophia.

  Nizam noticed her gaze and stirred. His expression was stoic, but antipathy leaked through. He would kill her, and wanted her to know it.

  But not now.

  The porters had set the sedan chair down a couple of meters from the laboring girl. Its voluminous occupant, encased in enormities of flesh, her small, dark eyes fixed on the girl, was pointing at her with the golden snake.

  Why, Lisa wondered? Why was this child so important to her in particular?

  The answer came, as it sometimes did, obliquely: the Divine Mother was a prisoner in her gilded chair, and Celia was her deliverance.

  Lisa set this aside. No one was much concerned with Celia, only the child to come, the Miraculous Child who would initiate a new world with new gods and new rulers, the third great change after Abraham and Jesus.

  Someone was going to be disappointed. Lisa’s presence here assured it. She had been propelled at first by external events. This she understood. There was something more, though. This birth was important to her personally. Aside from her regret at being childless, she had to w
onder why.

  All in good time.

  The nun with the bruised cheek stood at the girl’s head, holding her large black cross more like a weapon than an instrument of faith. She was staring into the distance, ignoring the girl.

  Celia’s groans had slowed to a deep rasp punctuating her rapid breathing. No one moved. The rising moon sent silver light down the opposite wall. When it reached the door, the light dimmed and turned a deep red the color of blood.

  Birth

  Al-Muriq watched the laboring girl intently. When the moonlight turned red, the men from Ophis Sophia began to chant, enunciating each syllable as if events depended on the precision of their rhythm and inflection:

  Zurrugu zurrugu kili zurrugu kiri kirip kisu

  huppani huppu suppani supu….

  Sister Mary Lamiana turned with a frown of disapproval at the ancient, disturbing syllables of a pagan liturgy. But the cedar box caught her eye and her concerns evaporated. Its contents could restore the Monastery and Church to their original glory and enhance her right to the title of Prior.

  “The baby’s crowning,” the midwife announced in Spanish. Her assistant encouraged Celia to push. The girl was doing her best, but she was near her limit, racing for a release that eluded her. Her breath came fast and shallow, her groans ever closer together, and still the child seemed to pause on the very threshold of life.

  The chanting continued without break, Zurrugu zurrugu, and suddenly events were rushing forward. Her eyes flew open. She glanced up at the priest and for a fleeting moment a smile crossed her rough-hewn face. He touched her forehead tenderly.

  Lisa saw all this, and announced to Steve, “I know why we’re here.”

  “Why?”

  Before she could answer, the infant slid in a great spurt of blood into the midwife’s waiting hands. The placenta followed almost immediately.

  The midwife held the child aloft for all to see. “A boy,” she announced.

  “No!” Nizam shouted.

  All eyes turned from the child to him.

  The Divine Mother had turned away with a deep groan, and begun stabbing her snake staff into the cushions of her chair in a fury. Feathers flew free and swirled around her.

  “It can’t be,” Nizam shouted. “The prophecy promised a girl, the new Divine Mother. The prophecy cannot be wrong.”

  Lisa smiled. The tablet said nothing of the child’s gender.

  Sister Mary Lamiana turned away from the exhausted girl. Celia and her child were of no further concern. “What are you talking about?” she demanded of Nizam.

  “It must be a girl,” he repeated, but his voice had lost all force. “This isn’t the prophecy, the Miraculous Child. This isn’t….”

  “What difference does it make?” Sister Mary demanded. “You people, you brought gifts. Your faith is great. Be grateful he was born at all. He almost wasn’t,” she added under her breath with a glance at Father Colmillo.

  Sister Mary Lamiana cared nothing for these people and their mission. Her only interest was the contents of that cedar box. She watched Ibrahim scoop it up and hand it to one of the Divine Mother’s porters. The box vanished before her eyes.

  She began to tremble. “Father, why do you do nothing?”

  “What? About what?”

  “They’re taking back the gift!”

  “This child is what’s important, Sister; this child, and his mother. The money is not important. Are you so blind?”

  Celia was exhausted, but her face had cleared of all pain, all sorrow. She was breathing softly, the child on her breast.

  In that moment Lisa and the child locked eyes and something passed between them. Lisa closed her eyes and opened them slowly, lowering her head in acknowledgement.

  The child gurgled and groped for the breast, but his eyes lingered on her.

  Sister Mary moved stiffly to Father Colmillo. She leaned down and stared into his rheumy eyes. “What did you say?”

  “I said the money is not important, you fool. Wake up.”

  “You defy me?” she hissed.

  He glared back at her, his eyes dark with contempt. “Get thee gone,” he said. “You don’t belong here, not any longer.”

  The nun straightened with a sharp shriek, and driven by frustration and rage swung her large silver cross.

  Perhaps she did not mean to harm him, but if that thought passed through her mind at all, it appeared too late, for the heavy silver object was on an inevitable trajectory, carried by the force of her arm and the aftermath of her spite. One arm of the cross, the hand of the Christ curled over the head of the nail, the tensely delineated muscles of His forearm plunged into the left side of Father Colmillo’s neck just under the jaw. It ploughed through all the way up to His shoulder, parting flesh, ripping a five-centimeter tear in his jugular vein. It lodged behind his windpipe and his eyes went wide with shock. He began a series of rasping gulps. Blood poured down his neck and chest, as one hand reached to his ravaged throat. Air bubbled wetly.

  “No,” Celia cried. She seized his other hand and clutched it hard.

  His struggles faltered and slowed. His hand released hers. He slumped, and the flow of blood slowed to a trickle.

  A paralytic silence seized the audience around the perimeter, the girls at the door, the Divine Mother and her attendants, Nizam and the others. All eyes were on the dying priest.

  Several things happened nearly simultaneously.

  Father Colmillo’s body shivered once and slowly crumpled.

  Sister Mary leaped back, her face twisted with horror. The rosary on her belt snapped taut, tugging at the tarnished cross.

  Father Colmillo continued to topple from his chair. He sprawled on the stone floor, pulling free of the cross with a final gout of blood.

  The nun hurriedly undid the rosary and threw it from her, glaring around at the shadowy witnesses. Her mouth moved, but no words emerged. Her bruise swelled up, as though embossed on her cheek.

  And the moon’s light reached the bottom of the door. The red began to drain away, gradually replaced by bright silver. The blood moon had lasted exactly forty-six minutes.

  Agitation swept over the room like a surprise storm over summer wheat. Conversations began, faltered, burst out again in a series of hesitant, truncated, inconclusive bursts.

  Two monks squatted by Father Colmillo, hands fluttering. The old priest told them to touch nothing; the police would want to examine the scene first. He left the room to call.

  Celia’s large eyes watched three nuns help Sister Mary Lamiana to a chair. The nun had become an old woman, humbled, obedient, without will.

  The infant hiccoughed a few times. Celia took her eyes from the nun and patted him gently on the back. As she did, she stared down at Father Colmillo’s body.

  Sister Mary, slumped awkwardly in a straight-backed chair, groped fruitlessly for the rosary she no longer had.

  Some time later the elderly priest reappeared in the doorway and interrupted all the strands of conversation to announce the Guardia Civil was on its way.

  Despite the tension and drama of the death, Lisa had remained calm, alert and receptive to the configuration of the room. All the small movements and gestures, shifts of posture after sudden violence, were pointed to something, yet there was no consistency in the movement. Attention was scattered, even random. She was puzzled, for her feeling had nothing to do with the priest’s death. Was it the newborn? It didn’t seem so; she knew why she was here now.

  Nizam, Ibrahim, and Lex were paying no attention to the nun and priest, but they, too, remained vigilant, observing the rest of the room closely. They were still dangerous, perhaps more so now their prophecy had gone wrong, but even that wasn’t what puzzled her.

  Then she knew. She walked over to the Divine Mother, slumped back against her cushions, eyes closed, her fit of rage and despair spent. Lisa laid her palm against the Mother’s enormous wrist. “I understand,” she said softly.

  The small eyes opened.

&nb
sp; “That child was your release, Beletili. But it was a boy. How bitter must be your disappointment.”

  The eyes closed and opened in assent. “Who are you?” she whispered.

  “My name is Lisa Emmer. I’m not your enemy.”

  “How did you know my name?”

  “You’ve been with them, with Ophis Sophia all your life. Beletili is well known to many and easy to Google. You have many followers, many believers. Yet you yourself do not believe. Not any longer.”

  Again the eyes blinked. She looked over at the new mother and her nursing infant. Her voice was faint, distant, and profoundly sad. “They said Muššatur chose me. Out of all the girls in the world, I was the one.” Her sigh was long. “All the years talking to people I couldn’t see. Yes, they tell me there are millions listening, watching. I don’t know about any of that. I only know I’m tired, tired of repeating their words, helping them. So tired,” she repeated.

  “It’s over,” Lisa told her. “The prophecy wasn’t wrong; there is a Miraculous Child, after all. It simply isn’t the one they expected.”

  The woman’s tense face relaxed a little, and she almost smiled. “Yes, there is a child, isn’t there?” Her tone was tinged with sorrow, but some light came back into her face.

  Lisa could see how complicated that satisfaction really was. “How long’s it been?”

  “Six decades, I think, perhaps more. I remember a different Teacher before Nizam. Ophis Sophia is all I’ve known. This chair.” She turned her hand over to show the underside of her wrist wrapped in layers of fat. “How I’ve longed to cut this, just drain it all away like that poor man. A priest, wasn’t he? But I could not.” Her small head wobbled in the tallow folds of her neck. “They watch me. And how could I pray for release? I was the secret face of Ophis Sophia. I was Beletili, also called Ninmah, Great Lady, the Divine Mother, the only one on earth.” Her laugh was short and still bitter.

  “It’s over,” Lisa repeated. “You can be free, I promise you. We can take you back to Paris. We can help you.”