Sword- Part Two

by D B Nielsen

  Everything seemed quiet and still but I knew we were slowly approaching the trapped, but living, creature that had once been amongst the most beautiful and blessed of God’s warriors. I squinted into the curious murkiness that made depth and distance impossible to judge, but nothing was visible beyond the parabola of light the torch’s flame emitted.

  Chilled air, darkness, and an uncertain path made it slow going.

  ‘How do you know where you’re going?’ I asked my twin in peevish exasperation, after a long stretch of silence.

  ‘My uncanny navigation skills. Lol. No, actually, the markings on my shoulder and the charm necklace the fortune teller gave me are burning my skin. We’re getting closer, I can feel it. Don’t worry, I’ll get us there,’ Fi said, sounding decisive.

  Despite my sister’s confidence, I trod gingerly, feeling grave dirt and stone softly crumble under my feet. Every now and again, Fi stopped, seeming to get her bearings like a compass pointing true north. She would turn, this way and that, the light from the torch moving with her, casting shadows upon the ground and across the bones of the dead, so I saw them distorted, elongated, unnervingly moving with the flicker of flame, then sliding away into the darkness beyond its reach.

  I imagined I could still smell the fecund, loamy stench of death and decay all around me, mingling with the chill, damp earth, and the burning, stinging sulphur from the torch – but I was scaring myself for no reason and tried to adopt a stoic attitude. The pallid flame flickered with a sudden draught of air, and I looked to my sister for confirmation of what I knew to be before us. A tiny cavity emerged from the gloom but the centre remained cloaked in forbidden darkness and unknown terrors.

  ‘Fi,’ I began, trying to protect her from what lay ahead. ‘Maybe you should wait–’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’ Her tone was resolute.

  Weariness and fear made me terse. ‘Out of the question. I won’t allow it. You’re staying here.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to allow it, Sage. I’m coming,’ she said in a tone that did not invite conversation or argument.

  I sighed – it was a long, drawn-out sigh filled with frustration, anger and resignation – adding, on a final grumble just for the sake of it, ‘I don’t like it.’

  But she didn’t answer me. She made to turn back towards the cavity.

  And then I remembered St. John’s caveat.

  ‘Wait, Fi!’ I whispered, and the warning in my voice held her still. ‘Elijah might have once been an angel and cast out from heaven but even now he has incredible power. You know what that means, Fi. You faced his brother. Look ... Just ... Don’t underestimate Elijah. Don’t look upon his form for more than a moment unless you must. Do not use your name or mine – St. John told me that true names confer power – and don’t cross the pentagram, no matter what you do.’

  She gave a sharp nod. ‘All right. I’ll keep to the edges of the room.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said, with a smile that checked my anxiety. ‘His power is mostly contained within the pentagram but it will have even more effect upon us, the closer we get to the centre.’

  She raised the torch in assent and led the way, following what passed for a path and making as little noise as possible. But the quiet shuffling of our feet seemed extremely loud to me, echoing and spreading down the vacant twists and turns of the stony labyrinth and back again towards the gloomy, obscure opening ahead of us.

  We entered into the Watcher’s lair under its macabre arch, crafted from hundreds of yellowing skulls, their leering smiles mocking us with grisly, silent laughter. At Fi’s indrawn breath, I relived my first reaction to the sight of the hundreds of vertebrae and femurs forming gruesome curlicues and fleur-de-lis on the ceiling of the chamber, whilst the floor was patterned and enspelled in a cadaverous pentagram to imprison its monstrous denizen.

  Again, all seemed the same yet terribly different.

  Enclosed in the centre of the pentagram, a ghostly symbol of life coming to birth, was the fallen angel, Elijah. Forced to enact a ghastly parody of the Archangel Michael, the Prince of Light, he held a blade – a symbol of death – in his right hand and in his left, a set of scales, meant to symbolise the weighing of each mortal’s soul with its good and evil deeds on Judgement Day. The malice of his prison guards was evident in the hideous beauty of the effigy – his human oppressors had ensnared Elijah in not just a prison cell but tortured and mocked him with the final thrust of the dagger as the Angel of the Final Reckoning. It was heartbreaking to look upon, and I felt ashamed to be numbered amongst those whose cruelty and spite exceeded their humanity.

  His head remained bowed, as if in supplication or surrender, and tendrils of loose, polished brass curls – a reminder of St. John’s angelic heritage – obscured his strikingly beautiful face from observers. Behind him, glossy black feathers framed enormous wings brushing against the floor of the crypt; an ink stain upon the ground as if bleeding his eternal pain and suffering.

  I tried to harden my heart to this tormented creature – but failed dismally. Beside me, I knew, that Fi was equally struggling.

  ‘You have returned, Wise One.’ It was then that Elijah spoke. Yet he didn’t speak.

  Sound poured forth; poignant, powerful, predatory. It was a pure note that held all passion and all despair. It rose above all earthly sound. Elijah’s voice engulfed us as he finally raised his head to lock eyes with mine – and the temptation to fall into those strange, glittering eyes, against all reason pitch dark like bottomless pits, like falling into an abyss, held me immobile and enthralled.

  In the glow of the torch, which lit the macabre décor and the otherworldly pallor of the Watcher, my sister seemed rapt. The fallen angel in front of us was an artist’s muse with its flawlessly perfect features – eerily symmetrical and ageless. He looked as young as his Nephilim son – indeed, would forever hold this pure, flawless form – and there was no mistaking him for a mere mortal. His breathtaking beauty was so pale, as if touched by moonlight and starlight, and his bluish marbled veins and the diaphanous skin so sensually erotic, he enticed the senses of the beholder.

  Elijah held the shape of a man but, as he unbent from his superficially cowed posture rising to his impressive height, he stretched his onyx-black wings incredibly wide, until it reached the chamber’s ceiling and could spread no further, and dared us defiantly to look upon him. Pressing my lips together and locking my jaw so as not to show my quivering reaction, I met his appraising stare. Only then did his all-knowing, dark eyes slide away from mine to move slowly and deliberately to my sister.

  ‘Ah.’ The sound was drawn out like a dying breath and filled the gaps and spaces around us. And with that one syllable, Elijah conveyed that he had known of my twin’s existence – and much more besides.

  I tried to take the upper hand, despite feeling that I was slipping into quicksand. I had broken the first cardinal rule. ‘Elijah, we beseech you. Our world stands upon the brink of destruction. We need your help.’

  ‘The time of the Grigori is over. This is the age of mortals. This is the age of science and reason. Not of angels and gods.’ As he spoke, Elijah shone. Radiant. Brilliant. On the edge of painful to look upon. ‘This peril belongs to you and your offspring, Wise One. And you alone must decide how to fight to end it.’

  I didn’t ask for this, I thought, shocked and scared by his words.

  ‘No more did I.’ The Watcher’s statement was uttered in response to my thoughts, as if he could read my mind, his unfathomable eyes piercing to my very soul. ‘You may easily perceive that not all events and trials of great significance are within our power to change or control. But you have some influence here. You did not write this story’s beginning, but you may have the power to write its end.’

  I fixed my mask in place before replying. ‘And what if I don’t want it to be the end? This world is my world. I don’t want to lose it. This story is not only mine. How can I alone decide how it should end?’

  His eyes wer
e darkening as he watched the both of us intently; watched my sister and me. ‘The children of the Watchers are fallen. The children of Adam are doomed. What will you do, Wise One? You, two-as-one, must decide.’

  My mouth was dry – too dry to manage speech. I understood he saw my sister and myself collectively as the Wise One and was compelling us to be accountable for our actions. But Fi spoke for us both – the urgency and panic in her voice, ‘You began this. You and your kind. And all life will be annihilated if Semyaza triumphs. Don’t you even care?’

  ‘Life exists everywhere.’ His voice was the waves breaking on the rocks. His voice was the first cry of a newborn babe. ‘And everywhere it is defeated and destroyed through the folly of human beings. Do not be so hasty as to lay blame upon me and my kind.’

  I swallowed the acrid taste of bile to speak. ‘We are all to blame. But we are not all doomed. Is that how you felt when you loved Miriam? Or have you lost all hope of love and redemption?’

  But the Watcher spoke in riddles to confound the mind and break the heart.

  ‘We are but the quintessence of ash and dust. We exist in the shadow of what was lost. And there are few who bear the burden of memory.’

  Fi shifted restlessly by my side, keeping her eyes downcast, as if to say that this was a waste of time. But I wasn’t so sure. It was true that he voiced a melancholy and disenchantment but, within the fallen angel’s words, I heard the pain of loss, regret and nostalgia too. And it gave me hope that I might reach him, reason with him.

  ‘I cannot bring Miriam back. And I cannot promise you redemption.’ I lifted my hands, palms raised outward, exposing the mark of the Seed. ‘But I can offer an opportunity for you to redeem yourself, if that is what you wish and the Creator wills. At the very least, I can offer you the ability to reclaim your honour and dignity – and a chance to help your son who, at this very moment, is surrendering to madness and death.’

  ‘I am not the author of my son’s fate. No more than yours. We, each of us, walk our own path.’

  ‘But that’s not completely true, is it?’ I challenged the fallen angel, recalling the Greek and Norse myths of the gods and goddesses and the fates. ‘Our fates are not separate pieces of thread. If anything, our fates are woven together. Plied. We are spun from the distaff onto the spindle. Intertwined to make a stronger, more balanced, more durable yarn. Impossible to pull one strand and not affect the others.’

  His eyes closed, as if in satisfaction, releasing me briefly from the intensity of his regard. ‘You are wise for one so young.’

  Ignoring his comment and the curious feeling that he was testing me, I ploughed on, ‘You loved the woman who bore him. She might have lived had she loved another, but she did not. Elijah is your child. Will you abandon him to torment and death?’

  ‘What would you have of me, Wise One?’ Elijah asked, and his ancient voice was so wondrously musical and melancholy that the sound of it pierced right through me.

  Fi said aloud, as if uttering an incantation, ‘We bid you, help us to obtain the seraph blade of the Archangel Michael.’

  ‘We bid you, help us save your son. Help us save Miriam’s son,’ I intoned as if saying a prayer.

  The Watcher opened his eyes and lacerated me with a look.

  ‘Empathy would have me save Elijah, my son, for the sake of my beloved, yourself, and the Seed. However, I shall save him not because by my virtue I am compelled to do so, I shall save him because it is written. He is the Keeper of the Seed. No less. No more.’ The Watcher’s words rang with truth.

  ‘And the seraph blade?’ Fi demanded, her jaw set in a stubborn line.

  ‘Are you certain that is what you desire, Wise One?’ The fallen angel’s boundless dark eyes pinned my sister and me in turn. ‘I know what it is that my brother told you. Always hasten slowly. There will be a price to pay.’

  Fi raised her hazel coloured eyes to probe Elijah, demanding, ‘What is it that you want in return for your help?’

  ‘Ah.’ He breathed.

  And then a flood of images rose up to scour my eyes.

  Green pastures, blue oceans, vast as fields of prayer. Trees and flowers blossom everlasting. The freshness of Time breathes and scents the air. And the whole heaven, from all the dark horizons, harmonise to hallowed orisons, replete and adrift and strewn with stars, hanging in immensity.

  Life is too long.

  A woman with a virgin smile. So beautiful – the angel himself quails before her, torn between duty and desire. She waits calmly. White as alabaster female limbs. Supple and smooth. In her eyes, see the bones of generations, see the offspring who would navigate these stars, these oceans, these pastures. In her smile, the ripeness of life. Of love. Consummated in the velocity of liquid light. Fingers knitting. Palms pressed. Thighs caressed. Wings bell-beat rhythm to a feathered exaltation.

  We outlive so many loves, so many lifetimes. Take one day for each day that I have desired to die.

  Time snatches at the rushing galaxies. The foresight of anguish. A pregnant pause to learn the weight of mortality and the mellowness of death.

  Life is too short. Give me enough time for a time that was never enough.

  Beloved of the Grand Architect, the fragility of flesh. The woman with the virgin smile lays dead. But Time does not touch the abandoned angel.

  The Creator’s visage in the eternal order. The men come with their stones and words and demand knowledge.

  The perpetual star winks and is sightless. The men come with their whips and chains and make war.

  The impalpable ash carries on the night wind. The abandoned angel weeps for the fall of his brothers and the darkness of their hearts. He weeps for the fall of the sons of Adam and the end of innocence. He weeps for the loss of his beloved, the season of bones, and the coming of wisdom. And he waits for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

  My mind reeled in backlash. I felt myself losing consciousness and with my whole being I willed myself to stay upright. Focusing on the silent figure before me, I managed to croak, ‘Help us.’

  The Watcher considered my offer then bowed his head, this time in acquiescence.

  ‘In order to help you, Wise One, I must have my freedom ... as it is not in your power to promise me liberty.’

  ‘We will grant your freedom,’ said Fi with an unnatural quietness after the odyssey of the mind. I could see from her stricken face that she had experienced the same vision given by the fallen angel before us.

  ‘Then come forward, Wise One. Come to me. End my imprisonment. Cast away the bindings of the pentagram and grant my freedom, grant my release.’

  Abruptly, Fi moved to stand beside me and reached out to take my hand. Her lifeline pressed against my palm, against the mark of the Seed. Our joined hands flared with a shimmering light – golden, silver, violet – in a blaze of holy enchantment.

  We were to break the third cardinal rule.

  Together, we stepped forward, passing through the barrier of the pentagram. I felt a dark rush and a strange roaring in my mind. The torch spun from Fi’s grip and speared the floor of the bone cavern, continuing to burn with renewed potency.

  The Watcher’s form seemed to catch fire too – his body lit in the purity of starlight as if returning to the moment from which the cosmos was given life. His wings arced wide, a fan of obsidian feathers. The manacles that bound him – both physical and metaphysical – and the blade and scales forged by his captors melted to ash as he gracefully glided forward, towards us.

  Elijah’s expression did not change as he reached to caress my face lingeringly with a gesture of sinuous grace. Against all expectation, his elegant, slim, pale hands – pulsing and iridescent with the preternatural light which ran through his veins – were surprisingly warm and strong. I almost swooned. Everything about him – his size, his beauty, his presence – was overwhelming. And it would have been too easy to succumb, forgetting everything that mattered, forgetting my duty to the Seed and my love for St
. John. I fought against an overwhelming compunction to surrender and realised it would demand constant vigilance to remain on my guard against the fallen angel. Elijah then removed his hand and touched Fi in turn – as if committing our faces, our lives, our very beings to memory by touch. His look said, You are known.

  ‘Choose wisely what you desire, Wise One. Is it the sword of the Archangel that you truly seek?’

  Fi nodded, cowed.

  ‘So be it.’ The Watcher hovered over us like a beacon of light. ‘There will be a price to pay.’

  I felt Fi start – or maybe it was me, I could not tell. Horrified, I floundered. I thought he was about to renege on our bargain.

  ‘But you asked for your freedom!’ I protested.

  The Watcher’s dark eyes blazed. ‘I did not ask for my freedom; you granted it. It was necessary so that I may, in turn, grant you your desire. I did not ask for any payment. Indeed, I did not ask for anything, Wise One.’

  Fi, her hand now numbing mine, her grip so tight, stared at him in defiant, angry silence.

  ‘We granted you your freedom,’ she said after a moment which she took to recover herself, her voice shaking with repressed anger. ‘We paid the price.’

  His face was unreadable. ‘You have paid nothing. Yet. But you will. You will pay. Dearly. Did you not hear my brother? Did you not listen to what he foretold?’

  I thought of the Cherubim’s words and nodded, but I felt painfully cold and helpless.

  ‘Ah.’ He looked through me. ‘But you did not understand.’

  I fought back my tears. I had paid a price – but not the one I had expected – this was instead the price of my folly, my stupidity.

  ‘I will pay whatever price that is asked of me,’ I said resolutely, blinking away my tears.

  ‘Do not make promises lightly, Wise One. Belief wavers in the face of untold sorrow and suffering.’ I might have thought he was mocking me but his face bore no sign of his derision nor amusement. Elijah stood before us both. Still. Indifferent. ‘When the time arrives, will you have the strength, Wise One, to do what must be done?’