Hammer of the Witches

by Kai Wai Cheah

  My heartbeat involuntarily accelerated. My hands drifted to my waist, but no weapons were to be found. I forced myself to breathe, to think, to remind myself that this was Amarantopolis. Not the Near East. Here, the people around me didn’t obediently trudge to the nearest mosque; they simply carried on with whatever they were doing. Some of the Asians paused to take recordings of the Adhan, and I maneuvered myself to present my back to their cameras.

  There was a circular water fountain at the far end of the Hippodrome. Across the street was the Hagia Aletheia. The church loomed over the city, its signature dome rising above the tops of nearby trees. Smaller domes ringed the exterior, marking galleries separate from the nave.

  Benches ringed the fountain. Pete and Alex sat at one of them. They glanced around nonchalantly, as though people-watching.

  I moved on, crossing the street. Circling around the church, I logged traffic, people and visible security measures. Tourists wandered the church grounds, easily recognizable by their foreign clothing, their cameras, the languages they spoke. Vendors sold snacks, T-shirts and trinkets in the atrium. For visitors seeking more satisfying meals or beverages, there was a cafe nearby. Keith and Ricky sat at an outdoor table, enjoying glasses of cold fruit juice and watching the crowd.

  A trio of cops armed with carbines walked the grounds, accompanied by a canine. The dog panted heavily in the heat, and as I passed, it turned to look at me, wrinkled its cheeks and opened its mouth. I wondered if it could sense the charagma within me. Or maybe I just was being paranoid.

  Security cameras protruded from the exterior walls, disguised as dark domes. As I continued my walk, I spotted another police patrol on the opposite end of the church. A block away, an ambulance and a fire engine idled by the road. The Hellenes weren’t sparing any expense today. The terror alert for the country was still elevated, and the news still warned of possible Hexenhammer attacks.

  Returning to the courtyard, I mimicked the tourists around me, training my buds on the church, the courtyard, the architecture. They weren’t holobuds, though; they were disguised radio earpieces. I tapped the push-to-talk switch, conveniently located in the same place a holobud’s control button would be placed.

  “All callsigns, this is Fisher. I’m on station. SITREP?”

  “Fisher, Brick. All quiet.”

  “Preacher here. No sign of trouble.”

  “Copy that. Longsword, you here?”

  No response.

  “You can always count on women to show up late,” Pete remarked.

  “They just perceive time differently,” I said. “Any way we can get three-sixty coverage?”

  “Fisher, Cowboy. No can do. The cops are chasing away people who loiter for too long in a one-block radius around the church. Even those in vehicles.”

  It wasn’t ideal. On the other hand, it also meant it was extremely unlikely that the opposition could set up static surveillance around the church either. Unless they had pull with the police.

  We just had to roll with it.

  “Copy that. Cowboy, where are you?”

  “Two blocks east of the Church. I’m headed to Brick’s position.”

  “I reserved a seat for you,” Pete said.

  “Roger,” I said. “Fisher out.”

  I tapped the switch again and examined the concessionary stands. It was the usual tourist claptrap: shirts with prints of the Hagia Aletheia; commemorative cards; statuettes of Asa Phoster, Meira, and the Archangel Michael. A small crowd gathered around a gyro stand. I waited in line and purchased a barbecued chicken wrap. In the cafe I washed down the food with mineral water.

  “Fisher, this is Longsword. I’ve entered the cafe.”

  I spotted her walking through the door. She was a redhead with too-pale skin. Freckles danced across a pinched ridge of a nose. Her eyes were green, her lips pale, and somehow she had turned her straight hair into a fluffy mane, barely obscured by a sunny yellow headscarf.

  To most people, she was a stranger. But I had observed her plenty of times in close quarters. Her white long-sleeved dress, adorned with floral patterns, covered her arms to the wrist, but could not hide the width of her shoulders. Her dress extended to her ankles, wrapping neatly around her hips, but it could not conceal her gait. And, like me, the moment she entered she scanned the room, assessing threats, danger zones, corners, exits.

  I raised my bottle. She sauntered over.

  “Is that you, Luke?”

  Her voice hadn’t changed.

  “Yup. Took you long enough.”

  She patted down her scarf. “We’re going to church. We have to look our best before the Creator.”

  “Very funny. Let’s go.”

  The queues at the entrance spilled out across the courtyard. Nearby, buses disgorged fresh loads of tourists. We hustled for the shortest queue. It took us a mere fifteen minutes before we reached the entrance.

  A squad of policemen controlled passage into the church. The original doors had been converted into security booths, complete with baggage scanning machines. A stern-faced cop at the entrance waved me into a booth. The moment I stepped in, the door hissed shut behind me. Through the translucent blast-resistant doors I saw the church interior. A wall-mounted thermographic camera peered down at me, looking for the elevated temperatures that betrayed disease or ingested ambrosia. I imagined invisible millimeter waves bombarding my body, passing through my clothes to peer at what lay beneath. They wouldn’t find anything of interest, of course. After the millimeter wave barrage came a volley of ultra-high-frequency waves, specially tuned to mimic a psion’s neural oscillations and to detonate any ambrosia I had on my person. The UHF waves wouldn’t affect the charagma, but my skin crawled. It was probably psychosomatic, but I couldn’t help it.

  Finally, the door slid open. I stepped out and entered the Church of the Holy Disclosure.

  In the fifth century, there were two Hellenic empires. Western Hellas was centered on Athens, a puppet of Rome, led by Emperor Maximilian Augustus Aurelius. Eastern Hellas, composed of an alliance of Hellenic cities which resisted Roman influence after the fall of the Macedonian Empire, acclaimed Amarantos of Byzantion to the throne.

  Maximilian intended to rule all of Hellas. Amarantos gathered his forces and marched on Athens. Maximilian himself led the defense. On the eve of battle, Amarantos dreamed of an all-consuming light obscured behind a sea of cloud. The light partially burned through the cloud, forming a unicursal hexagram. A great voice behind the light commanded, “En toutoi nika.” In this sign you shall conquer.

  When Amarantos awoke, he looked up at the morning sun and saw a hexagram of light beaming through a cloud. He commanded his troops to carve the sign on their shields, and he emerged triumphant. Maximilian fled in disgrace, and soon afterward, he was slain on the battlefield.

  Within a decade, Amarantos had defeated Western Hellas, repulsed a Roman invasion, and united all of Hellas under his rule. When he returned to the capital, he commissioned a great church, the largest and most majestic church ever built in the history of mankind, in commemoration of the divine revelation that had secured his success. One and a half millennia later, the Hagia Aletheia still stood.

  Light flooded in from the heavens, spilling through the arched windows in the vaulting and the domes, illuminating the vast central nave and the icons on display. Footsteps and quiet conversations echoed off the ancient marble. Small knots of people circulated around the nave and the adjacent nooks, seeking the best angle and lighting for photos, selfies and videos. Lay staff with bright nametags and microphones led larger groups on guided tours, fluently switching between languages. Ushers politely shushed people who made too much noise and handed long swathes of cloth to improperly attired visitors.

  I made the sign of the Flame, touching my chest and my crown and then describing a clockwise arc that encompassed my right shoulder, my heart, my left shoulder, and my crown again. Orienting myself to the iconostasis at the far end of the cathedral, I bowed to the imag
es of the saints, angels, and Asa Phoster.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done this. But today, I wasn’t Luke Landon; I was just another tourist taking in the sights.

  Eve sidled up next to me. “It’s… huge, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  The architects had played careful tricks with light and space, making the interior look larger than it really was, while ensuring that the church was always filled with light during the day. Armies of candles stood watch at every nook, regularly extinguished and taken away by diligent monks for recycling. Nearby, volunteers manned a massive desk, handing out candles to whoever requested them.

  “Shall we pray?” she asked.

  “Sure. We need a cover for action.”

  That explanation sounded lame to my ears. I’d been to church a few times before. In Nice, when stashing an abducted terrorist; before that, in New Haven, when off the clock; a few more times before that. But after the World Fair attack, after al-Ikhwan murdered Angela, after their daimons stormed a church, I stopped praying. I had seen the face of the Devil and his minions but not the Creator and his agents on Earth.

  But now…

  Complex emotions roiled up in my heart, like rogue waves threatening a tiny boat. There were daimons. There were also angels. There was the Unmaker. There was also the divine.

  But which? Al-Asul, who had departed to places unknown? Sol Invictus, a minor god with comparatively limited powers? The Creator and his Elect, none of whom I have encountered? Other foreign or pagan gods from elsewhere? How could they possibly co-exist simultaneously? Their mythologies and teachings contradict each other. What was real? What was false? What was simply the inevitable corruption of imperfectly recorded history passed down over the aions? Where did I stand in the grand scheme of things?

  And after what I have done, what is the fate of my immortal soul?

  I was overthinking this. Had to move or be spotted.

  Eve and I accepted a bundle of beeswax candles offered by one of the volunteers. As I turned to go, I saw a donations box. I fished out a hundred-pan note and slid it in.

  “I never knew you were a believer,” she said.

  “Charity is a Phosterian virtue.”

  Chuckling, she extracted a note from her wallet and dropped it into the box.

  “Kai su, teknon?” You too, child?

  “Charity is a Phosterian virtue,” she parroted with a smile.

  We melted into the crowd of worshipers paying their respects. Our first stop was the Weeping Column in the north gallery, a copper disc fastened to a marble column with a thumb-sized hole at its heart. A nearby plaque explained that if you stuck your thumb in the hole and it came out moist, your illnesses would be cured. There were so many people that any semblance of a queue had disappeared long ago, replaced by the simple expedient of first come, first served.

  Past the column were galleries holding the treasures and mosaics of the church. Protected by heavy glass coverings, many featured braziers where the faithful could light and leave candles.

  There was a mosaic of Saint Ioannes Chrystotum, the first archbishop of the city, engraved urns from every corner of the Amarantine Empire and icons featuring the major saints of the faith. Around me, men, women and children of the faith lowered their heads, muttered prayers in their native languages and left behind a lit candlestick.

  I didn’t pray. It wasn’t right. I wasn’t a Phosterian, and as a covenanter with foreign divinities, praying here felt like an insult.

  Funny. A year ago I would have thought nothing of mouthing words to maintain my cover. Today, I compromised by tilting my head, closing my eyes, remaining still for a moment and lighting a candle. Eve did the same. I didn’t know if she was the praying kind, and this was the wrong time and place to ask.

  The worshipers surged out of the north gallery like a human tidal wave, flowing into the other gallery to the south. Where the former focused on the saints and church fathers, the latter celebrated the glory of God.

  The first painting I saw was the Deisis: Meira Theotokos, the Mother of God, and Ionnes Nurono, the Witness of the Light, flanking Asa Phoster, the Illuminator and the Savior of humanity. Meira and Ionnes had their hands raised in supplication on behalf of mankind, pleading for mercy as the son of the Creator sat in judgment of the world. Behind the trio were the archangels Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael. I had the uneasy feeling that all seven pairs of eyes were following me as I walked past.

  The next icon depicted a parliament of angels. The artist had followed the traditional description, not the watered-down version sold to the modern public. I recognized the archangels from their human appearance. The thronoi were wheels within wheels, their rims lined with countless eyes. At the center of the proceedings was a cherub, a being with four faces—a man, a lion, an ox, an eagle—and four conjoined wings festooned with eyes, mounted on the body of a lion and the feet of an ox. High above them were a pair of disembodied faces bearing six blazing red wings. Serapheim, the highest order of angels. Above the serapheim was a golden light. The Light of the Creator, issuing from wherever he was now.

  Holy, holy, holy is God Almighty, he who was, is, and shall be!

  I blinked. What was that?

  Whatever it was, there was no response.

  More icons filled the gallery. Asa Phoster as he ascended to Heaven, Taxiarch Michael throwing down the Unmaker, angels visiting the saints, the Apokalypsis. I expended my candles one by one. When I was done, a monk swooped in and cleared the braziers, making room for fresh candles.

  At the far end of the gallery was a selection of portraits depicting emperors long turned to dust, starting with Emperor Amarant I and ending with Amarant XI. There were many gaps along the way, of course: war and time had stolen many of the original paintings, leaving only a half-dozen behind. No one prayed here—they weren’t saints—making up for their lack of prayers with an overabundance of photos.

  A nearby annex held the Special Collection. It was a small museum chronicling the Turkish occupation. Shortly after taking the city, the Turks had converted the church into the Imperial Mosque, adding an annex that served as the private library of Mehmed the Conqueror. When the Hellenes recovered Amarantopolis, they expanded the annex to house war trophies and artifacts. A well-preserved minbar stood in a corner. Scrolls and medallions covered in calligraphy hung from the walls. Among the exhibits were the three books of the Wahi faith bound in gold-trimmed leather, fragments of the stained glass windows, spent munitions from the battle to retake the city. A series of ancient photographs displayed the four minarets that used to surround the church.

  Everywhere I went there were cameras and phones and uniformed cops. I wouldn’t bet against the presence of undercover guards, disguised as lay staff or monks. There was no way to hide my face from them all, but the one I wore wasn’t mine.

  The worshipers swept up Eve and me in their wake, carrying us into the vast nave. Candlelight from the earth and sunlight from the heavens highlighted the golden dome above and the blue-green marble all around. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, but none was lit.

  At the far end of the nave, the iconostasis loomed above me, walling off the sanctuary from the nave. The iconostasis had been painstakingly reconstructed from Amarantine-era records, but, as a nearby tour guide said out loud, with so few surviving documents there was just no way to be sure that the reproduction was perfectly accurate.

  The iconostasis was covered in gold and hexagrams. It was so bright it was almost painful to look at. There were three sets of doors: the Deacon’s Doors on either side of the Iconostasis and the Holy Doors in the middle. To the left of the Holy Doors was an icon of Meira, one hand cradling a baby, the other pointing at the child, the door and beyond. On the right was Asa Phoster illuminated in holy fire, left hand holding a Theograph, his right raised in benediction.

  The iconostasis had three major tiers. Images of saints occupied the remaining panels on the lowest tier. Depictions of the Gre
at Feasts filled the second tier. The topmost was reserved for patriarchs, prophets and apostles.

  Once again, I had that strange feeling that the graven images were watching me, judging me, as if asking, What are you doing here, Luke Landon?

  I don’t know.

  Worshipers congregated at the nave, forming an orderly line and snaked across the length of the nave. They were here to kiss the Theograph mounted on a granite table in front of the altar. As we joined them, I saw that the Holy Doors were open, revealing the most famous treasure of the Church: the Great Paling.

  It was a massive slab of glittering crystal, half the height of a man. Engraved at its heart was a perfectly symmetrical hexagram, framed within a circle. Precious stones marked every point of intersection. The largest was at its center, reflecting rainbows into my eyes.

  The Church had older relics—the bones of saints and prophets, the possessions of the Apostles, the remnants of the pyre that consumed Asa Phoster—but none was as celebrated as this.

  Church lore held that in the eleventh century, a group of monks witnessed a star falling from the sky in the region of Meteora. It was a chunk of pure aetherium. They surrendered the treasure to the Emperor, who commissioned the greatest artisans of the time to incorporate it into the Hagia Aletheia. The artisans divided up the stone among themselves, with the largest segment going to the altar.

  Unlike the hexagrams found in most mundane churches, this was a true paling. During the siege of Amarantopolis, on the eve of the decisive battle, the defenders brought the Great Paling to the city walls. Jinn retreated before it, and neither majusi nor fedayeen could access their powers. The crystal’s mere presence solidified reality all around it, preventing the Void from corrupting the world.

  The Janissary Corps, being mere humans, were unmoved. Legend held that they feared to fire on the Paling itself, but the more prosaic reality was that the Paling was probably placed safely behind the walls. The Janissaries eventually broke through a side gate, and the invaders flooded the city.