by Mark Teppo
"What bullshit piece of scripture did you pull that from?"
"Isn't enlightenment our goal?" Pender continued, ignoring my question. "What child doesn't want to be with his Father? What child likes being separated from the embrace of their parent?"
"But we're not separated," I countered, trying to pierce the fervor of his argument. The first principle drilled into the skulls of children is that God is everything and everything is God. It's the basic concept which informs all of Hermeticism and most of Western thought. Just because we aren't consciously aware of Infinity doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Every child understands the idea of object permanence. Take away a toy and the toy doesn't self-destruct. It is still there, just existent outside the child's perception. The 'toyness' of the toy doesn't change."
"But a toy is an inanimate object. It will never change. It is only a representation of Form." Pender shook his head. "It is a khabit, much like we are, of the Real."
"Shadows. Huh," I said, letting go of the argument. He was spouting the same obscene rhetoric that Julian had tried to feed me. Light and shadows. The imperfect Creator that bound our sight so we couldn't see the Truth. Archons and blind idiot Demiurges. Very Gnostic and not unexpected from students of Hermeticism, but still so very broken.
Whispers in a dark wood. All things are broken, all things have holes in them. Man is the only creature that can mend the tears and breaks. Man is the only Creator.
"Man is the true shadow of God."
"Exactly."
"And you and yours needed to remind the rest of this Truth."
Pender nodded.
"They all Saw," I said. "At the end. They all Saw-" I stopped. They all went willingly. I realized I was still holding the tarot card, still holding the Moon with its twin paths. No, they all went. Without Will. The light of the mirror had taken that from them already. "Hermes Trismegistus talked about a schema for one's own soul. Enlightenment is a personal choice. You can't bring a whole society with you. You can't just engage in the wholesale slaughter of innocents just so you can split Heaven and talk to God."
"Maybe an audience isn't what they're seeking," Antoine said.
I stalled for a second, the word caught on my tongue. A horrible flame licked at my heart. "Mahapralaya," I whispered. If Ravensdale gave them the power to devastate Portland, what would the collected power of Portland do? What logarithmic scale were they operating on? "He really does want to remake the world."
Antoine remained inscrutable, neither confirming nor denying my accusation. Giving me no sense if this was indeed the goal to which his machinations pointed. Had Antoine intended to step in at this point and take everything away from Bernard? Put himself at the top of the tower instead of his alchemist to face the dawn?
Devorah spoke from behind me. "By thee adulterous Lust was driven from men, among the bestial herds to range."
Lust. There is no room for it in God's pure realm. Lust was what imprisoned the soul in the flesh. Bernard's quest wasn't one of enlightenment, not in the way he approached it. "What happens when God doesn't take lightly to the manner in which Bernard has assumed the mantle of Creator?" I asked. "What happens when dawn arrives and Bernard realizes he's just a psychopath who has murdered an entire city in an effort to prove what may be nothing more than a philosophical distinction?"
"What if he isn't?" Antoine asked. "Murder has been done in the name of God before. What is history but a litany of our efforts to show God our affection by smiting unbelievers. Hasn't Bernard done one better? He's taken those without real faith and made them part of his purpose. He's converted all of them. They are of one faith. One vision. How could God not love that?"
I sighed and rubbed at my face, feeling the scabs and stubble of the last twenty-four hours. Two paths. Was Bernard's way just a twisted variation of Severity?
This time yesterday I had been wreathed in fire, stalking Hollow Men through the shadows of their warehouse. I had been filled with vengeance, flush with the desire to do damage to those who had done harm to me. What had I brought to them? Not enlightenment. I had taken their souls, broken them upon the rack of my mind, and poured their spiritual essence into my vessel. They had been transformed, subjugated to my Will. Could my role be accorded the same distinction, the same rationale as an "act of devotion to God"?
I had justified my actions over the years by warping John Stuart Mills' axiom of the Greater Good: what ultimately served a beneficial purpose was worth the destruction. Love under Will, as long as it was all my Will. Bernard was just applying the same axiom on a larger scale. Thousands died so that he could remake the world in his image, a design that was better simply because he had thought of it. Because he had faith in it.
This was the cosmological closure, the bending back of the Universe on itself to a single point. The big magico-religious Bang where the world could be created anew. Here, at the center of the world-at the axis mundi-we would be able to perform that Act of Demiurgery that reflected the initial creatio ex nihilo effected by God. Bernard would become God by imitating God.
I sighed, and looked at the single star floating above the sea of darkness. "If this is the Apocalypse," I wondered aloud. "Then why did the Watchers send just a Protector? Shit, they would have sent all seven of the Architects. Philippe himself would even be here." The Hierarch's name caused a twitch in Antoine's ruined face, a break in the Protector's death-mask face. A flinch. I had struck a nerve.
"He doesn't know you are here, does he?" I said.
Antoine didn't answer, and I knew him well enough to know that he wasn't deigning to not answer the question. He was ignoring me because he was thinking about something else entirely. The Weave had just shown him a new pattern-one he hadn't realized was there. That had been there all along.
He had suggested to Nicols and me the existence of a bigger picture, a larger scheme beyond my perception. I had ignored the hints-the presumptive tone had always been part of Antoine's character-but, seeing Antoine's mental peregrinations now, I realized the Weave's complexity may be more than he anticipated. There were threads still hidden, even from him.
"This isn't sanctioned by the Watchers." I tried to chase the same threads. Tried to figure out what he already knew, and what he thought was the truer pattern. "This is a rogue action. There is a revolt happening in the ranks, isn't there?"
It was the corruptive lure of power: that seductive siren that pulled us down into the flesh. I could read it plainly in Pender's face: he was in bed with Julian and Bernard. Siding with the Hollow Men had been his play for power. Just like Antoine, who sought to usurp this action for his own ends. A faction within the Watchers knew; they had sent Antoine, and hadn't realized their toy had his own ideas. Everyone wanted to use Bernard and Julian for their own design. Everyone had their own plan.
"Whoever remakes the world can challenge the Hierarch." I spelled it out carefully, watching their faces for more clues. "That's what this is all about. This is a power play for leadership of La Societe. Pender and the others thought they could hijack it from you, but you knew they were going to screw you, and you planned on taking it from them in turn. When the time was right. But, not for your brothers in Paris. For yourself. I was just the lucky distraction that everyone thought they could use on the others."
"Perhaps," Antoine said. I stared at his ruined face. Was that a smile on his burned lips? "Perhaps there is another pattern beneath all of our machinations. A deeper Weave than we anticipated."
"What do you mean?" Pender demanded. His hand twitched toward his coat, toward his gun. This conversation had suddenly gone off-script.
"Bernard is there," Antoine said, inclining his head toward the star. "We are here."
"So?"
"There are three of us."
Pender didn't get it. And I wasn't following either.
Antoine was definitely smiling now, a grim death's head. "I was supposed to be here. The lieutenant was supposed to be here. But, you, Markham, dead man lost to us all, how
did you manage to get here?"
"Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim my other half," Devorah said, providing an answer to Antoine's question.
Answering so many questions. I Saw it too. Beneath the shimmering pattern of our threads, beneath the confusion of the cards and our efforts to interpret them. Under it all, I saw the design.
Tiny steps, seemingly unconnected in their inception-in the infinitesimal realm of their immediate effects. The false memory of Kat's hand on me, the confusion laid upon me in the woods and the poisonous cargo freely taken, the Chorus growing in my head. And then Paris: Marielle, a catalyst for the course prefigured for us; Antoine, an unwitting marionette, acting out his role at the bridge.
The actions of the past cascaded into the present: my arrival in Seattle, the discovery of Doug and Kat again; their connection to the Hollow Men, to Bernard, and to the diabolical plan concocted by Antoine's splinter group within the Watchers. All of it was woven into this knotted nexus. This point, this place. These players. A man, standing on the edge of the Abyss, who hadn't sought to be here. Not the detective.
Me.
The Watchers didn't believe in accidents, nor random chance. There were only machinations deeper than their own influence. Designs which they couldn't twist. And each of them could twist very deep.
And only one of them could twist deeper than the rest.
"I have to go back," I said. My hand strayed to Reija's hair about my throat, fingers tracing the braid of our thread. What you do is who you are. . "I'm going back."
"What-?" Pender pulled out his gun, violet light rising in his eyes. "You're not going anywhere."
I looked at him sadly for a moment-he didn't understand what lay in the Weave-and then turned my gaze to Antoine. "What say you, Brother?" This isn't done.
He nodded, and the metal cap on his hand sizzled into a new shape. Before Pender could realize what was happening-before I could react-Antoine stepped behind the other man and punched through his spine with his freshly formed hand. Silver fingers, wet with blood, erupted from the hollow of Pender's throat.
"It was never meant for me," Antoine said, holding the struggling man upright with the force of his Will. "I am a Watcher, mon ami. I had, indeed, forgotten that. I am to be your Witness."
Pender's eyes fluttered, rolling back in his head. Antoine shook his hand, making the lieutenant's arms wiggle. "Time is short," he said. "Take him while you can."
"What?"
"It is a long walk," Antoine said. "You haven't the strength."
"You have got to be kidding."
"Take it." Antoine's voice was hard, a commanding tone that brooked no more discussion. He flexed his metal fingers, and white fire vaporized Pender's spine. Pender's atlas bone exploded, blowing out the sides of his neck. The back of his coat caught fire.
The Chorus swarmed in my head, ready and willing to take the soul of the man as he died. I was exhausted; I could use the energy. Didn't it feel good? That euphoric rush of strength and clarity. The precision of Will brought about by taking another.
Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill. This was the price of our transgression in the Garden; this was the cost of tasting the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. This was the sacrifice made so that we could understand the difference between night and day, light and dark, dream from reality. We learned to kill when we ate from the Tree. We opened our souls and listened to the passions of the flesh. So that we could know the difference, so that we could chose a path and find our way back to God.
"No," I said, refusing Antoine, refusing the Chorus, refusing everyone but my own Will. I turned away from Antoine as Pender died, his soul leaving his burning body. "His death is your sin. Not mine."
I had enough of my own.
XXX
Devorah stayed with Antoine, the Seer supporting the Witness. She kept her back to the city, always turned away from the carnage that I had forced her to foresee, but in farewell, she turned her head toward the east enough for me to see the dark streaks of dried blood on her face. Her tears had stopped.
I left the tarot card on the river bank. This was one side-one path-and I was going to cross the river to take the other path.
I made the Chorus support me as I walked across the water to the dead city. The river was dark with ash, a turgid inkiness beneath my feet. There were no bodies and very little flotsam, just a continual pall of ash in the water. It got darker and thicker as I reached the western shore.
I stepped onto hard land again between the Freemont and Broadway bridges, just downriver from the Amtrak station. The clock tower at the depot was a crooked black finger in the empty field of steel rails. The cars in the parking lot beyond the station were coated inside and out with grime and soot. They looked like the cracked eggs of giant birds.
The storm of soul-death had blown through every structure, leaving every surface charred and black. The inhalation of Thoth's Key stripped all light, all color, from the world. Windows were empty mouths that revealed blackened throats; walls had been breached and broken like bodies burst in heat, organs exploded and crisped. Older buildings-the northeastern edge of Chinatown-leaned toward the shining tower as if made crooked by the vacuum. Their roofs were torn off, shingles and strips of tar paper littering the street in long patterns.
The skyscrapers were monolithic trees caught in the dead of winter, their external layer of marble and chrome peeled away like cracked bark. They were dead husks, a forest of hollowed-out sycamores. Blighted. Devoured. Empty.
A black forest in a black land. With each step, I stirred up ash and filth; the detritus clung to my clothes and skin, making me a black wraith wandering through a nocturnal landscape.
As I approached the spire, I knew who would be waiting for me. The circle was closed. This wilderness was a hollow vacuum, filled with death and shadow. He would come to this place. One last attempt to lure me astray.
I started to hear a whisper, like the rustling of dry leaves, as I crossed Burnside and entered downtown proper. They were nearly invisible against the landscape, covered in ash like the rest of the city, and they gave off no signal the Chorus could find. They were darker holes against a dark backdrop.
Soul-dead. Following me.
I was a beacon after all. Even under the layer of soot and filth, I was the single source of light in the city other than the bright point at the top of the tower. They were denied that light. It was the other side of the Abyss, after all. The soul-dead were trapped in the black crack between worlds. Trapped by the eternal hunger of the Qliphotic master of this place.
He crouched in the ruined entrance of Eglanteria Terrace, resting on his haunches. His gray and yellow robe was spattered with dark stains and the back of his head was open like a burst piece of rotten fruit. His single eye was a milky cataract in an otherwise dead mask. A pearl lost in the black reeds.
He had been Julian once. But, after I had infected his soul, something else had taken root in him. And, as his body had lain on the grass outside the building, that root had grown. Had grown into a dark flower that made his shell walk. The flower had many names: Choronzon, called "Coronzom" by Dr. Dee; Asmodeus; Yaldabaoth; Shemal; Yog-Sothoth.
"Samael." I bound him to the name I knew, the name I had learned so long ago in the woods and which I had sworn to never repeat again.
He raised his head and smiled at me, black teeth against black skin. His tongue was red, vibrant and wet like his pearlescent eye. "So bright, little worm. So bright and tasty."
"Your work, Archon. Your hand upon this world."
"Ah, it is. Yes, it is. I Know you. I Made you." He raised his face and sniffed the acrid air-inhaling my living scent. "Lost in her hair, I found you." He made a chattering noise with his teeth. "I came when you called."
I grimaced and looked behind me. The street and the plaza were filling with soul-dead, silent sentinels. Witnesses to this final conversation. They were the still breath of Death, waiting. They crept closer, their rank deepening. T
hose in back slowly pushed the ones in front forward. They quivered and shook, dead inside but still suffused with a terrible need.
"I no longer carry your lies. Your poison is gone."
"Never gone," he said, waggling a finger. "The flesh never forgets."
This was the fear that tore at our hearts and could never be purged from our brains: the intractability of the flesh, bound by passion. While our brains might lock away the memories and our hearts might burn out the emotions, we were just hiding from our Egos. We made our own personal Pandorian boxes and tried to lose the key.
And thee claim my other half. The lost part of myself that I spent years blaming on Katarina. I had chased her for ten years, thinking there was something she could have given back to me. Something lost which could be found again. It was just an excuse I used to hide the truth from myself; the truth I knew, but had locked away.
Denial and obscuration: that path chosen in the wood, the way that took me further into the dark trees. It had led me to blame Katarina for something that had never happened. I was a victim, a gullible scapegoat who walled off his entire heart to hide the hurt sustained there. The Chorus had become my validation, the voices who kept me from the wall I had built. They gave me reason to not look within. And, with my eyes turned outward, the wound in my heart festered and turned black. By raising those walls, I had given it permission to poison my core, to grow its deadly fruit.
Nicols had drawn the Three of Swords, the pain that must be endured. The trial that must be undertaken. All adepts must cross the Abyss; they must face the demon of darkness-the incarnate foulness of their own Ego-and dissolve it. My devil, born in a moment of fear, had haunted me for a long time.
He haunted me still, standing here on the threshold; he blocked me from my goal, from crossing the Abyss.
Read thy lot in yon celestial sign, Devorah had prophesied for me, where thou art weighed, and shown how light, how weak, if thou resist. When the Egyptian souls were taken to the underworld, they were weighed by Anubis at the Gates of the Underworld. Their component parts-the physical organs of the deceased-were placed on a scale and considered against ritual objects. Those incorrectly weighted were thrown to the hounds that slavered and begged beneath the scales. Those who were in balance were allowed access to the Afterlife.