The Singularity Cycle 02 Song of the Death God

by William Holloway

  “Forgive me for asking, but have you proceeded on to the rituals in The Song of the Death God?”

  Cihan sighed. “I began, but quickly knew it was far too dangerous, and even if I had been reckless enough and had survived, it could take lifetimes to accomplish.”

  Carsten said nothing for several moments, then asked, “What do you mean?”

  Cihan smiled bitterly. “Allow me to answer your query with one of my own: what do you think The Song of the Death God is?”

  Carsten began to answer, then stopped and then began again. “I’ve got to confess, I only know of it from Piroska and from the notes I found in the margins of The Immortal Body.”

  “It is the narrative of a Roman from Carthage named Gaius, who travelled down the Nile, all the way to what is now called Lake Victoria by the English. He was told that the wise men there could resurrect the dead fully and that the resurrected could speak.”

  Cihan gazed off for a moment, then continued, “He captured one of the so-called wise men and brought him back to Carthage, where he had the man tortured to extract his secrets. The man told much. Gaius learned how to resurrect the bodies of the dead, but not their minds.”

  Karl spoke, “They were dangerous.”

  Cihan nodded, “Extremely dangerous, murderous and cannibalistic.”

  Cihan looked squarely at Carsten. “More dangerous are the devils that must be drawn to give life to the dead.”

  “When you drew forth the spirit to perform the final ritual in the first book, were you able to control it?”

  Carsten shook his head. “No, it would have killed me if Karl had not interceded.”

  Cihan looked hard at Carsten. “Hear me when I say this: you are no child. In my world, in almost all the world, you would be a man and married by now. You know what the risks are. You know how impossible the thing is that you seek. It will consume you; it will devour you.”

  Carsten looked back into Cihan’s eyes with an awareness and understanding that almost no man on Earth could hope to match. “I know this may be true for others; however, I am not like others. I have proven it in my deeds. I will not be deterred.”

  Cihan spoke regretfully. “I know this. I know that you are a singular young man. I know this by the very virtue that you are here. I do not doubt your resolve. What I do doubt is your ability to understand the consequences apart from your own death.”

  Karl spoke, even though this was not his conversation. “What consequences?”

  Alim Cihan looked to the young boy who had fallen asleep at his side. “Family. Friends. Any hope for a human life. You turn your back on those things when you walk that path.”

  Carsten gave a hard knowing smile, “My family are parasites that live to take without a thought. If it meant killing me to take my inheritance, they would do it. As for friends, they are for people who do not respect their own thoughts, their own beliefs, and do not trust the evidence of their own senses. I have no need of the affirmation of another.”

  Cihan said, “Friendship is not merely the thing that you describe. Do you really have no friends?”

  Carsten said nothing for a moment then conceded, “Yes, Karl is one. I respect his strength. There is one other…”

  After Carsten sat silent for a moment, Cihan asked, “It is a young woman, is it not?”

  Carsten nodded.

  Cihan said, “I’m not going to debate the statement you made earlier. Yes, you are strong. What you seek is to look upon the infinite, to gaze into the void. But I ask you this, just to consider: if it meant losing her for this goal, would you hesitate?”

  Carsten said, “This will never even be a consideration.”

  Cihan exhaled and inhaled and said, “All of us who have looked upon the path you trod have had to face these questions. I cannot answer them for you. Only you can do that. But I tell you this, the time will come when you will choose your humanity or this quest. Those who choose their humanity survive as humans.”

  “And what of those who choose their quest?”

  Cihan shuddered. “Those who survive become monsters.”

  No one spoke as this dark cloud settled down into their hearts. But of all the people at the table, Carsten had heard something that piqued his curiosity.

  “Cihan, you said ‘all of us’ who had attempted these things. Are there others?”

  “Yes, we are few… but we do exist.”

  “A brotherhood?”

  Cihan nodded. “Scholars mainly, a few women… Piroska was of our order.”

  Karl asked, “Does your group have a name?”

  Cihan shook his head and replied, “No, even though the associations go back far… to early Roman times. We simply refer to ourselves as the Old Order.”

  Karl raised an eyebrow. “Would this Old Order sanction your sale of this book?”

  Carsten asked, “What would happen if they found out?”

  Cihan did not answer these questions. His expression said everything. The Old Order would seek to redress this wrong, at all of their lives’ expenses.

  Karl said, “We understand. But I must ask: if that is the case, why would you sell it?”

  Cihan looked down to the sleeping boy beside him and closed his eyes. He shook his head. “The world is changing. The Ottomans are in decline. They grasp for their old power, they lash out at the world around them, at the subjects beneath them. They become paranoid.”

  Carsten said, “But you are respectable bourgeoisie, why would they…” Suddenly he knew the folly of his question; this was not his world, this was a world on the brink of collapse. Cihan was seeking to escape while he could. The sale of this book would provide a start for him somewhere far from the Ottomans and far from the Old Order.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  One week from that night in the courtyard of Alim Cihan, Carsten and Karl were seated in the salon of the Banco do Giro in Venice. It took a day for the wire transfer of five thousand gold Marks, and another for that to be converted into bearer bonds.

  The invoice they viewed with a Swiss banker stated the antiquity they were purchasing was an early translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam. Cihan said this was a common ruse for selling books viewed as haram by the Ottomans who needed little excuse to harass the Bektashi sect.

  Soon, they would all go down to a private bank vault, where the book was in one safety deposit box and the bearer bonds in the other. All would be laid out in full view of both parties for mutual inspection.

  Karl took off his top hat and put his new monocle in place. Carsten liked his right-hand man. He seemed to be able to transition from actuary to mercenary without pause. He almost laughed, but was far too anxious.

  “Karl, I want to thank you for all that you’ve done for me.”

  Karl squinted his uncovered eye. “We still have to inspect the provenance of this book of yours, so don’t thank me yet.”

  “Do you think Cihan would sell us a forgery?”

  “If a market exists, then fakes exist. But this? I doubt it.”

  At the far end of the hallway to the salon, Cihan and his grandson entered, accompanied by the Swiss banker.

  Karl quietly said, “And he certainly wouldn’t bring his favored grandchild with him to try to rob someone in a bank vault.”

  Cihan had altered his appearance dramatically. He had no beard or headdress, and wore a French suit complete with walking stick. The grandson was attired similarly, minus walking stick. Practically the only thing remaining of the man was his stern and severe gaze.

  Karl and Carsten stood as they approached.

  The Swiss banker said, “Gentlemen, please. We go to the vault to complete your transaction.”

  They took a wide marble staircase down into the basement of the bank. They passed through a steel door guarded by two men in soldier’s garb with bolt-action rifles and revolvers at their hips.

  They assembled around a table and waited while two bank clerks in spotless white gloves went into the vault behind them and broug
ht out two drawers. They unlocked them from the shelves and set them on the table. Carsten and Cihan were handed two further sets of keys to open the drawers themselves. They were given white gloves to wear while inspecting the contents.

  Alim Cihan was given the nod by the Swiss banker to go first. He unlocked the drawer and removed the stack of ornate bearer bonds from the Bank of England. He leafed through them. He nodded to the banker to continue. Then he stroked his grandson’s head and smiled at him. It was the first real smile that Carsten had ever seen on the man’s face.

  The banker indicated for Carsten to open the next drawer. He put on the stark white gloves and turned the key. Inside was a red wooden box covered in gold Arabic characters. It was a box that would be associated with an illuminated version of the Rubaiyat.

  Karl looked to Cihan with a quizzical glance.

  Cihan said, “The book is in Latin. The box is merely for its safe transport.”

  They opened the box and were hit by a wave of stench. Immediately they all covered their mouths and noses. The book was bound in moldering brown leather. It was old. Very, very old. But that could not account for the smell.

  The Swiss banker swore, “Mon Dieu! What is that smell?”

  Cihan looked to Carsten. “The smell of the thing is part of what it is. Do you understand?”

  Carsten nodded and took his hand away from his face.

  The Swiss banker said, “I must say for the record, this is not like any transcription of the Rubaiyat that I have ever seen. I do not believe that this is the Rubaiyat.”

  He looked around at them. “This is something else entirely. Do you wish to halt the transaction?”

  Carsten reached over and touched the cover of the book. He gently opened it about halfway through. It turned to a browned page of illuminated text printed on linen. It was a picture of the landscape from his dreams, an eternal stone plain with jet-black clouds in the sky. Out of the clouds protruded giant black tentacles like those of an octopus.

  The clouds were pierced by a shaft of light falling to the stone plain below. The plain was inhabited by a multitude of ghosts, and a single one ascended to the sky on the beam of light from the clouds.

  Karl took one look at the picture and averted his gaze, as did Cihan. Only Carsten and the banker held their eyes to the terrifying vision on the pages. Carsten closed the book, and the Swiss banker slowly emerged from his stupor.

  Carsten said, “This is the book we have come for. There is no doubt as to its provenance.”

  The banker stammered, “What… what was that?”

  Karl said, “Our business is done here. Please have this shipped to the Ernst estate in Munich in a bank car.”

  They strolled through the Venetian afternoon with Cihan and his grandson. They were both leaving that day, Carsten and Karl for Munich, Cihan and his grandson for somewhere else. Cihan didn’t offer up this information and they didn’t ask. It was obvious he wasn’t returning to Crete. When they said their thanks and goodbyes, Cihan and his grandson headed for the docks, where the much larger ocean-going vessels waited.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  Wilhelm Ernst sat in his usual seat in the empty bar in Paris. He was here every afternoon at this time. The bartender knew what he wanted and that he didn’t want to talk, at least not until he was good and drunk.

  While he was accustomed to his life being a rollercoaster ride of drunken debacles, he had always been able to muster the bravado to live like that. But the death of Uli stripped all of that from him.

  His brother was dead, and he could not shake the overwhelming sensation that he was somehow culpable, that there was something he could have done.

  And then he had found the letter.

  It was now pinned to the wall above his desk, and his easel held that one painting, not one of his own. It was a simple enough theme, a young boy peering through a keyhole in an alley. But this simple theme was made malevolent and sickening by use of ugly, dissonant colors and angles. It was repellent on first sight, but hypnotic on subsequent viewings. Wilhelm bought it because it was simply better than anything he had ever produced, and he wanted to hide it. He was petty and rich enough to get away with it. He bought it, put it in a closet and forgot about it. But after he had found that letter in his pocket, he raced home from the bar and went straight to this painting.

  He didn’t know why, but he had to see it.

  The boy in the painting was Carsten.

  The letter in his pocket was written to Carsten.

  There was no escaping that these were pieces of a puzzle he was unequipped to put together. This terrified him. There was some vital understanding to Uli’s death that he had known… but didn’t know now.

  He told no one, fearing that merely admitting what he had found would be an admission of insanity. He tried to put it aside, he tried to socialize in his accustomed fashion, but everything fell flat. He was tongue-tied, halting and timid, afraid to look anyone in the eye lest they know. He tried whores, thinking he could fuck his way to his old self, but he felt nothing. He tried fighting. He beat another man seriously, but still he felt nothing. He tried absinthe and laudanum, but he woke up to the same fear.

  Something was missing from his mind, and it wasn’t due to alcohol. It wasn’t just a blackout. He really was missing time, the time during which Uli died, and Wilhelm wrote some kind of paean to Carsten apologizing for destroying something of his that was causing Uli to go mad… and a whole lot of lunatic raving about speaking with the dead.

  For almost an entire year, he had spent his days staring at that painting, reading and re-reading the letter.

  Why did a mad painter in Paris create such a likeness?

  What on earth did this letter mean?

  The letter hadn’t been written while he was drunk. The words were in neat orderly lines flowing in a sober and sane way across the page. But what the words said was madness.

  He was accusing his brother of black magic.

  Carsten, the last person in the world who would ever engage in superstitious nonsense.

  Carsten, the only sane and sober one in the whole stinking lot of the Ernst family! But there it was in black and white, and there was Carsten in a painting made by a mad artist in Paris.

  Wilhelm wanted to cry, but he would not shame himself by doing that ever again, even if the only person who saw was a bartender calmly wiping down wine glasses. He breathed in deeply, in and out. He needed to get hold of himself. He had work to do today.

  Wilhelm was only stopping by the bar. He wasn’t here to get drunk, just to get steady. Yesterday, a messenger came bearing an invite from an art gallery that showed some of the better modern works, a place that would politely decline his own work if he proposed such a thing. Not that his work was too provocative or risqué; his work just wasn’t good enough, so he wouldn’t embarrass himself by asking.

  He wasn’t sure what they wanted with him. The messenger only conveyed that it was for a private meeting and not for a general art showing. He was curious, hopeful even, as he walked down the civilized streets of Paris. He allowed himself to speculate, to get out from under his black cloud. The most likely explanation was that the bizarre painter who had produced the likeness of Carsten in the alley had been found. Perhaps they had more of his works and this would be a private showing. Wilhelm nodded his head at that thought. That could be interesting.

  Another possibility was that they needed an authority on bad art. In the past, Wilhelm would have taken that as a badge of honor, but now he couldn’t see himself in that role. It just seemed stupid… because it was stupid.

  Wilhelm stepped through the doors of the Galerie d’art Voltaire to be greeted by Renaud, the ingratiating proprietor. Ordinarily, Renaud was polite, but kept his distance from Wilhelm. He was never rude, but certainly wasn’t as friendly as today. Renaud handed him a large glass of red wine. “My dear Wilhelm, it is so very good to see you!”

  Wilhelm shook the man’s effeminate little paw. “
Anytime, Renaud. I’m always happy to receive a summons from the Galerie d’art Voltaire.”

  Renaud grinned widely and wove his arm around Wilhelm’s, steering him over to a red Louis the XXIV couch in the middle of the large, high-walled gallery. The room was empty save for the couch and a painting covered with a drop cloth.

  He sat down on the couch, but his breath was caught in his chest. He hadn’t expected them to find the painter, but it seemed as though they had. He sipped his wine and looked back to Renaud, who regarded him with a strange expression. “Wilhelm, have you changed your appearance? You look…”

  Cadaverous? Stark raving mad? Wilhelm shook his head and produced a fake sounding laugh. “No, Renaud, I’ve just been… theorizing. Yes, theorizing some ideas on the role of art in deconstructing… art.”

  Renaud attempted to disguise his skeptical look. “Ah, Wilhelm, so far ahead of your time! Such deep thoughts must keep you up at night!”

  “Yes, indeed, Renaud, it’s hard to sleep when the spirit of art is so…”

  Wilhelm ran out of words and his eyes drifted back to the drop cloth covered painting. He caught himself and drew his eyes back to the little Frenchman. In return, Renaud regarded him with genuine surprise. “You look even more curious than I am, Wilhelm. That surprises me. I thought you knew…”

  Renaud stood up, walked over to the first painting and pulled away the drop cloth. “This was painted by your brother Uli….”

  Wilhelm couldn’t breathe. His eyes stared, but his mind couldn’t process what he saw. It was Uli’s painting, all right, but one he had never seen before.

  It was a painting of Wilhelm standing in the living room of his home in Munich staring at another painting above the mantel of the fireplace. That painting was of nothing more than the front of the old servants’ quarters behind their mansion. It was a prosaic, even clichéd scene, but… it was evil. The colors were normal, but it was a hellish combination of strange lines and rings. Some of the rings looked like footprints in concentric circles around the subject… Wilhelm.