The General's Bride

by M F Sullivan

  From a distance, Miki opened her mouth, and Dominia was amazed her friend’s voice emanated from that same no-/everywhere as the Lady’s choir.

  Are You death, the young Lady asked as the old one reached to embrace her. Miki, though frightened, seemed compelled to do the same.

  Yes, answered the voices of the Lady. And because We are Death, We are Life.

  With the tilt of her head, Miki’s eyes fell closed, and the darkness of the Ergosphere accepted her kiss, returned it, wrapped itself around her and began to dissolve—or began, perhaps, to dissolve into her. The oversize bow tied in back of Miki’s kimono fluttered in the pressure of the tear like the wings of those butterflies fleeing through the open skylight panels. Blood red, their wings: red as the sky into which they fled, and red as the waistcoat of the magician who, a flickering light between the merging entities, lifted his head to admire the lingering insects. The dark figure of the old Lady had almost completely dissolved, and Miki, doubled over, stood between the General and the magician with her mouth open and her gaze miles away. When she looked up at Dominia, those unseeing eyes glowed white. The astonished General met her gaze and was, yes, dazzled—dazzled, like Amaterasu consulting her mirror. This clear white light swallowed Dominia’s body along with all noise and sensation until existence vanished in submission to higher Truth.

  This was not the Ergosphere. Not the event horizon. Possibly. She could not explain what this was, for she had not even a dream body here; yet she knew this space, empty and eternal, contained both Miki and Dominia. Moreover, she sensed in this place they were the same, and she talked to herself. Perhaps that was just the spirit of the Lady, which was in everything. Somehow, in a way beyond hearing, she heard Miki tell her, “I guess this is goodbye for me, huh? In that place, anyway.”

  “I can’t believe you have to go.”

  “We all have to sometime, right? But, I know what you mean.” Stillness. “I’ll miss you.”

  “And I’ll miss you. I never could have—oh, Miki.”

  “Don’t cry!” Although there were no bodies, there was the sensation of touch, like a hand on a shoulder. “Big, tough General—don’t cry! You’ll make me cry, stupid.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s important I do this.”

  “I know. But…thank you. I could never thank you enough, Miki.”

  “You can try when we meet again.” Laughter rang in the fading voice of Miki Soto, whose body appeared, perfect and female and nude as the one into which Dominia dropped, and around which clothes appeared, and space re-formed, and the flying soul of her foul-mouthed friend called, “So cheer up, you silly bitch!”

  These were the last words the ears of Dominia’s body ever heard her friend speak, and they made her laugh, albeit tearfully. This meant she was forced to cover her mouth when the tears dissolved into a gasp to find, as she came to her senses, the Lady’s new body had swooned beneath the intensity of the transition and had been caught: not in the arms of the Bearer, but—at long last!—those of Saint Valentinian. His head lifted to reveal a grin for the many flabbergasted women, who had, for the most part, seen a dog blink into the shape of a man. Even those nearest, for whom time’s flow had been least interrupted, surely had not perceived the sleight-of-hand moment the exchange was made. A dog and an old woman in exchange for Valentinian. Impossible.

  Yet, the impossible was inarguable. More so when, once the new Lady was passed to those Bearers who hurried up the path, he turned to wave at Dominia.

  “Hey, buddy!” As he called out, she was stunned to realize his voice was real. He was real. Real! Clear, more static than the magician of the Void where all was dark and shifting. With him, hope became real, too. Driven to tears, she sprinted down the aisle to throw her arms around her patron saint, her dog, her friend. The laughing magician embraced her. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you,” he said into her scalp. The General’s grip around him tightened with her sob.

  “Just help me, please. Help me restore Cassandra’s life.”

  “I will.” He patted her, then released her to call, “But, first, why don’t we party! My God, I have a body! Physical thumbs! I could dance!” Cheesily, he hopped into the air and clicked his heels while Lazarus arrived behind them.

  “Don’t hurt yourself. The last thing we need is a magician with a bad back.”

  “What will happen now?” asked the General of the mystic. “Will you stay here? Is this your marriage, too?”

  He has made a union with Our body to allow it to receive Us, as We have made a union with Our body to maintain the world. In the arms of Gethsemane, Miki’s frame straightened, and its eyes reopened to appear, for all the world, normal organs. The body’s mouth, as Trisha’s, did not move, and never would again. Yet, amid that vast choir of feminine speech, Miki’s voice displaced the previous avatar’s as the most prominent. Lazarus’s wanderings must be ended. Those final souls who would follow him only by knowing him will soon be initiated into the faith—was She talking about Dominia?—so it is vital he remains within Our reach. Elsewhere on Earth he would be too easily swept into the hands of your Father. Until now, Our actions—yours, and his—have had the capacity for variance. The choice you made tonight has limited the possibilities of the future. Of those limited possibilities, the safest for Lazarus is to remain by Our side.

  “Lazarus was Trisha’s—boyfriend,” said Dominia with a glance to the perpetually exhausted-looking man. “What does he have to do with the Lady? Why can’t he retire to the Void in peace?” Even as she spoke, she caught Valentinian’s glance and thought of his Mandelbrot lecture.

  His blood, said the Lady, taking Her final, unsteady steps to the throne, is Our body. With it, all worlds will have the keys to the Kingdom.

  “So you’ll ship him to Mars when you’re done here?” she asked wryly. Miki’s body smiled as it eased into its seat.

  Another like him will rise there, and his key will be of a different substance than mere blood. The same old story will continue again.

  “What about me?” The General spared an anxious glance the way of the magician. All those weeks ago, she had been certain this moment would be how and where her story ended. She would hold Cassandra in her arms and—what? They would live happily ever after? What had she expected? What did she expect now? The gravity of the situation settled in. Having forsaken her country, her people, her Family and their Church, she had been labeled a terrorist, pursued across the globe, had eyes removed and replaced, killed many and been nearly killed—and all so Lazarus could get shacked up in a polygamous marriage with an avatar and her goddess? So Miki could lose her life? So a dog could be made into a man who scrutinized her from the corner of her tear-filled eye?

  “What about everything I’ve done,” she asked, “everything I’ve been through? Where will I go?”

  We have much to discuss on that subject, General. The Lady folded Miki’s hands in the colorful fabric of Her lap. We shall require an army. When We have one, We wish you to lead it.

  Astonished by the flat implication that the Lady intended to initiate war, the General had time to ask, “Against my Father?” before the first, not-so-distant explosion rocked Cairo. As power failed outside the room, Dominia, along with the rest of the women, became abruptly aware of the thickness of night that had fallen above. In the distance, sirens rose. The light-poisoned sky relinquished its hidden stars only to see them dismissed by the next rocket, which, screaming past, destroyed in a violent spew of dust some part of the palace only visible from Dominia’s position by the emitted debris. Amid the smoke, the sirens, and the screams, the General recognized the noble constellation of Orion.

  XIII

  Prisoner of War

  Were it not for the thousand battles in which the General di Mephitoli had fought, there would have been no comprehending the horror underway. Between the sickly-sweet waves of the drug that opened the cleft between materiality and consciousness enough to render both distinguishable, all emotion
s were amplified, and those amplified emotions bled through the room so swiftly that fear, like toxic gas, raced between the bodies from the first scream. Shadows poured into the room. Some had guns, some had blades, but all shouted, and the General was never too disoriented or too peaceful to recognize a battle. As Cassandra’s diamond fell into its place against her heart, Dominia snatched up the nearest brazier, and Valentinian, amid the madness, asked Lazarus, “Are we doing this already?”

  “Do all the drugs you do in the Ergosphere impact your physical memory, too?” was the mystic’s contribution as the Water Bearers, with ceremonial knives secreted somewhere upon their persons, fell into battle. The demons, named by the scream, “Al-Saalihin,” were soon revealed as but men. Perfectly killable no matter how great their number as they poured, like ants through a beehive, into the temple’s throne room. This recognition of reality elicited an inappropriate laugh from the General as half the women fled behind the throne, and half, ill-suited for any fight, charged to meet the men. She experienced an instant shift of priority, from defense of Miki—no, the Lady—to handling the threat. As she sprinted for the fray, Valentinian’s distant laughter rang around the words, “Go get ’em, tiger.”

  Oh, did she. With animal grace surmounting that of the image into which the dreaming Void transformed her, the General covered the length of the marble aisle, pushed past women who arranged themselves to block the way, and began freeing space in which to fight by sweeping the brazier like a spear whose claws penetrated the breast of the first man she met. This action earned not just her first kill of the night but also a weapon: a vibroblade more eager than ever to cut down man after man. They forged a brief, unique relationship, the General and that blade, as the brazier fell out of her hands and the handle of the sword, in. Thereafter, the shimmering metal swept up, left, into another man’s gut and through his comrade’s hip bone like butter in such a slick, smooth, easy way that the martyr’s drugged mind felt precious more than lurid fascination. The muted voice of her horrified conscience reminded her of the wish made to Gethsemane: but there was no time for hoping these men were willing to talk. In a free moment, she withdrew her gun from the sleeve of the kimono and emptied its rounds into the hearts and heads of three soldiers, and she wished she could apologize. Maybe that was just the acid talking.

  Most of the women (indeed, most people) could not handle the mere concept of a sword fight on LSD, and certainly not amid a storm of gunfire. The General was not most people. Fighting had been her life for a longer period than memory served. On a mental front, she had spent three centuries fighting with her Father and Cicero. But it was the physical dance she always loved, and how well she knew those steps! By their nature, insurgents used unlocked guns; her own beloved weapon swiftly out of bullets, the General dropped it to snatch the first abandoned rifle she found. With it, she laid down a line of black-cloaked men, which allowed the Bearers to collect more guns from the wreckage. Gethsemane, trailing past, tugged her vulnerable consciousness briefly after and cost Dominia a nice scratch in the face. Even so, that same drug that distracted her produced a kind of tunnel vision, slowed time, and illuminated to her every intended movement of her opponent’s paltry human muscles better than even the DIOX-I. Indeed, it felt not dissimilar from those times in the past, when prayers to the Lamb invited his spirit into hers to guide her victory. (The place she saw when he came into her—all that time, that must have been the Ergosphere! All her life, imagine! Yet never once had she known of that space, not in over three hundred years.) The flow felt more natural than running, more thrilling for the intensity of her connection to the sorrowful aspect of her duty.

  After all—was it not that bleak, wandering Ergosphere to which she sent these men? Or were there those among the Hunters who had somehow, like Akachi, acquired Lazarus’s blood, so their souls would fly at death to their eternal resting place? Would that be the Kingdom? Most of them thought it was Jerusalem or Mecca. Once upon a time, the fringe religious groups who were the forebears of the Hunters had placed symbolic emphasis on only the earthly city of Mecca, as had those more centrist followers of Muhammad who had drifted into the human conglomerate known as Abrahamianism. Most of these good Muslims still placed emphasis on Mecca, like their ancestors; but the Hunters, who also called themselves mujahideen, had shifted emphasis upon the movement of the Holy See of the Catholic Church from Mephitoli to Israel. This was not for a religious reason but a practical one: they recognized the Hierophant’s specific interest in claiming Jerusalem and smiting the final tatters of what was once the most powerful faith in the world in hopes of absorbing the rest of its followers into his flock, and justifying his control of human souls. What he really wanted more than anything was what Jerusalem represented, and this Dominia knew better than anyone on the planet. What he really wanted, what he dreamed about at day (if he ever slept, which she doubted), was the night the Holy Martyr Church could finally claim it was the Roman Catholic Church, and nobody would bat an eye.

  That night had not yet come, suffice to say. The word “mujahideen,” which had once meant “jihadist,” now meant something akin to its own brand of faith—one distinguished from the Abrahamians largely by the feverish psychopathy its members vented on martyr and human alike. They did not want Jerusalem for any particular religious reason. They wanted Jerusalem because her Father wanted Jerusalem. But perhaps they really craved the city for the other reason her Father desired it: all those souls, believers who took their faiths too literally and flew to the Ergosphere’s interference pattern variants of Jerusalem or Mecca. Claiming either one of those would have disturbing implications for the Hierophant’s spiritual power. Who knew what he would be able to do with, or to, all those souls? And who dared think he’d stop at Jerusalem, without going on to take Mecca? Then, one by one, all the Eastern countries, and their holy cities? The Hunters convinced themselves they did a service for mankind by keeping the Hierophant out of Jerusalem, and that was true to a certain extent, but the sad fact was that Hunter interference in and around the city was the cause of violence and turmoil. Was the suffering of the living worth the protection of the dead?

  One of the Bearers screamed for her sisters to halt: all the women obeyed, which produced the uncanny effect of stilling the entire room—save for Dominia, who was midway through decapitating a man while deep in thought. Now, she returned to herself with some surprise for the carnage produced by the blade and her body while she ruminated on the nature of Hunters. With another glimpse of that elevator conversation, she regretted her lack of awareness, and turned with a surge of disdain to see Dr. Tobias Akachi standing behind the throne, one hand upon the Lady’s shoulder.

  “There.” The dentist’s teeth illuminated a room long-since dimmed by the crashing of its standing braziers and the disappearance of the sun. “You know, I do a bit of teaching now and then. When my pupils are unruly, I find the best way to attract their attention is to stand in perfect silence! They always look up, soon enough.”

  Dominia made a fast move forward until his pistol was against the Lady’s head. As the martyr froze in place, the dentist carried on, “And when they continue disobeying, the second-best way to acquire attention is by threatening something they cherish. Put down your weapons, Miss Mephitoli.”

  “Do as he says.” Lazarus’s body was tense, but his words were so calm and gentle that one might not have expected the mystic to be surrounded by (merely incapacitated) bodies.

  “How did he get up there?” asked the General, shutting off the vibroblade and lowering it to the floor. She was more reluctant to relinquish the gun when she had misplaced her precious antique somewhere amid the fray.

  “I was given a private tour. This place has an elaborate series of escape tunnels, but they are not convenient routes by which to bring an army. Why, it is not even wise for all those fleeing women to use them now. A few men behind and a handful waiting at the end could cut them down like wheat!”

  “Don’t,” demanded Domini
a as the dentist laughed.

  “It does not matter where they go today. We will see them again eventually, I am sure. Tonight’s number of casualties is already high enough, don’t you think? Why, I do not even wish to harm your false idol, but truth be told, I do not care one way or the other.”

  Now, the Lady’s voices rose, Her lips unmoving as She said, Let your finger be quick and your shot true, lest We open Our mouth and share Our true voice.

  “I suppose we are in something of a standoff! My death would be a worthy fee for killing you and sending your vile putrescence back into that unclean place from where it comes: besides, there would be someone to take my place, whereas I have read that if the Lady were to die before Her disease was passed on, there would no longer be a Lady on this Earth.”

  The goddess did not speak, did not move, and Tobias smiled in a vile way. The General, emotions tipping into panic with the drug in her blood, demanded of Lazarus, “Where’s Valentinian?”

  “The magician was here?” asked the dentist. The question made Dominia sick, but not as sick as when Lazarus looked on in pointed silence. After assessing the room, Tobias emitted another, lighter, laugh, perhaps of relief. “Well, if he was ever here, he does not seem to be now. He can never resist coming when called. Too great a lover of attention.”

  As the General’s head whipped this way and that, no sign of the crimson waistcoat was found. The Bearer spoke of the drug as being necessary to ease a gap in reality. Had he ever been there, or was it all some hallucination at the peak of an acid trip? Or—worse, had his manifestation been dismissed by the presence of destructive interlopers? Whether or not this was the case, there should have been a dog—right? Where was Basil?