The Key s-2

by Simon Toyne

  Flipping back to the Google results, she trawled through them in search of another number. In an hour or two she could call one of her colleagues at the paper and get them to dig out a home or mobile number for Dr Anata from the database, but she didn’t want to wait that long, nor did she want to get caught up in a conversation with a reporter who would inevitably want details of everything that had happened to her in the last two weeks.

  From somewhere down the corridor came the lonely sound of a door slamming, followed by footsteps hurrying away. It occurred to her that she could sit here all day, if she felt like it, until Ski came back to check on her and politely tell her that they needed the room and was there anyone she could stay with? But there was no one. Her family were all dead. Everything she had been was gone.

  She wondered how many of this room’s occupants had experienced the same feeling; key witnesses, preparing to burn down their old lives by giving testimony in big trials. Perhaps the room was somehow tainted by too many desolate thoughts of lost histories and uncertain futures. How easy would it be to give up, standing in a room like this with a brick wall for a view?

  Unnerved by the dark dead-end route her mind was taking, Liv jolted herself into action. She emptied the remaining contents of her holdall on to the bed and started to fold the clothes, giving order to the few things she still possessed. She placed the history book on the nightstand along with her notebook and found the envelope that had contained the Turkish currency. She was about to drop it in the bin when it occurred to her that the few receipts it contained might hold some clue as to where she had been during her time in Ruin. Inside were a couple of taxi receipts, one for food, and a large piece of folded paper. She opened it up, hoping it might be an itemized hotel bill or something more informative. She was completely unprepared for what it turned out to be.

  One whole side was smudged with charcoal where it had been rubbed against a stone relief. And where the charcoal was missing, symbols were revealed: the same symbols she had seen in the book. She turned it over and found a handwritten note: This will not explain everything, nothing ever could, but it may be a start. I hope, having eased your escape from the mountain, things will change and we can talk of this further in person. But if the Citadel remains closed, as well it might, know you always have a friend here. To contact me, give confession at the public church and ask for Brother Peacock. Any sealed message you pass on will come to me unopened. Yours Brother Athanasius

  The note jarred a series of fresh memories loose.

  She remembered the monk, his smooth head glowing in the dark of the chapel as he led them away through the smoke-filled tunnels of the mountain and down to where the outside world had broken in. He had helped them get away — he was offering help still. She turned the page and stared at the smudged symbols, so strange yet familiar. The main body was in a solid block, but at the bottom they formed the shape of the T. It was the biggest example of the lost language she had seen — bigger than any of those pictured in the book.

  As her eyes traced the outlines, the whispering in her head began to rise in volume and her skin started to prickle. She had been out of the hospital far too long now to write these symptoms off as some kind of drug-induced side effect. Whatever was causing them wasn’t chemical; it had to be psychological or something else she wasn’t fully prepared to consider.

  Spreading the piece of paper on the desktop, she focused once more on the symbols. Almost immediately the whispering rose again, getting louder the harder she concentrated. It swamped the hiss of traffic from the road outside, filling her head while her skin crawled with tiny pinpricks. Liv rode it out, forcing herself to bear it as if she were holding her hand over a flame.

  The whispering took form, becoming a voice in her head, and the symbols before her eyes began to shift, revealing words that explained everything…

  55

  Dick watched the hotel from a bus stop across the street, his crumpled businessman persona fitting in perfectly with the early-morning commuters who came and went with the steady stream of buses. The police cruiser had pulled away a while back with only the cop in the driver’s seat. If he was a boyfriend then there wasn’t much romance going on. A quick call to the hotel had established that there was no Liv Adamsen staying there — at least, not officially.

  The fact that the cop had managed to check her in under a false name so quickly hinted at an existing system that everybody was familiar with and nobody questioned. Given that the hotel was round the corner from the main courthouse, Dick concluded it must be a safe house. Ordinarily this would be a major problem — safe houses were specifically designed to keep people like him out — but there was no squad car parked outside and probably no guards stationed in the corridors with their eyes sharpened by suspicion and too much coffee. The girl might feel comforted by the illusion of safety this place provided, but that was all it was — an illusion.

  Dick liked this kind of calm surveillance, the cool-headed fact-finding before the heat of what was to come. Another bus pulled in and a posse of work zombies shuffled on, leaving him alone in the shelter. It was early enough in the year for it to still be gloomy at this time of the morning and he watched the lights coming on as the guests in the hotel woke up. It didn’t seem to be that full.

  His phone chirped in his pocket, telling him he had a new message. He opened it and spotted two words that he usually savoured, but in this case tasted slightly sour.

  Si-lence

  Im-me-di-ate-ly

  He deleted the message and headed for the entrance to the hotel, adopting the bearing of a weary businessman in search of a cheap room.

  Once again, any notion of taking his time had been taken from him. Everyone was in such a hurry these days.

  56

  Liv grabbed her notebook and frantically transcribed the words running through her head, not trusting her fitful memory to keep hold of it for long. But even as she wrote she found things difficult to pin down or understand, the meanings shifting and slipping away within the whispering. It was as if whatever the symbols were trying to express was too nebulous or slippery to capture in language. When she had finished she collapsed back in her seat and breathed deeply, allowing the whispering to subside until she felt in full possession of herself again. She got up from her chair and stumbled into the bathroom, splashing water on her face before returning to read what she had written. So they kept her weak. The light of God, sealed up in darkness, For they dared not release her, for fear of what might follow, Nor could they kill her, for they knew not how. And as time passed the men became chained to their own guilt, And their home became a fortress Containing the only knowledge of the deed they had done, Not a mountain sanctified, but a prison cursed. With Eve still captive, A holy secret — a Sacrament, Until the time foretold when her suffering would end

  Liv jumped up, knocking the chair over as if she had discovered a snake on the desk. She reread the last three lines, the key words pulsing in her head: Eve… a holy secret… a Sacrament.

  Just saying them conjured clear memories of what she had seen in the Citadel. She remembered the Tau and the eyes inside it, green like hers, staring out at her. She remembered the front of the cross levering open, and seeing the frail girl inside with hair like moonlight and a body running with blood, ravaged by pinpricks and terrible wounds. She rubbed her own skin, remembering the prickles of her own recent experience. It was the same. She was the same. But it was not her experience she was remembering.

  She looked back down at the notebook and read the rest of the translation: The one true cross will appear on earth All will see it in a single moment — all will wonder The cross will fall The cross will rise To unlock the Sacrament And bring forth a new age Through its merciful death

  It was the prophecy that Gabriel had explained to her. And now she could see how it had all come true. Her brother had made the sign of the Tau — the one true cross — before he had fallen, and she had risen in his place, flesh of his flesh. S
he was the cross. She had unlocked the Sacrament.

  More memories came. The knife in her hand, the spilt blood, hers and… Eve’s, mingling on the floor. Their spirits joining as their blood flowed. She looked up at the mirror and stared at her eyes. Green eyes — hers, but not hers — like someone else was staring back. She reached out to touch her reflection but the sharp sound of a doorbell made her head whip round. Adrenalin flooded through her. Who could be there this early in the morning? It rang again and she realized her mistake. It was just Ski’s mobile ringing on the bed. She lunged for it, fearful it might stop and jabbed the button to answer it.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was the briefest of pauses — satellite delay — then he spoke.

  ‘Liv. It’s me. It’s Gabriel.’

  Never had she experienced such relief at the sound of somebody’s voice. Liv felt the smile start somewhere deep inside her and radiate upwards like heat. So much had happened — so much to say. ‘Hi,’ she managed, her smile lighting up the word as though it was written in neon.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. He was smiling too. She could hear it in his voice. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m…’ She was about to say ‘home’, but the word stuck in her throat. ‘I’m back in New Jersey in a hotel a friend sorted out for me.’ She caught sight of the TV and remembered the news she had seen on it. ‘How about you? I saw the news.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ he said, shutting down her question, the smile suddenly absent from his voice. ‘We can talk about it later. Right now we need to get you safe before the Citadel finds you again. Have you got your laptop and access to the Internet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you ever used Skype before?’

  ‘Of course.’ Skype was every journalist’s friend. Wherever there was Wi-Fi it could be used instead of a phone to make free calls. It also worked as a videophone and was increasingly being used to file news reports from difficult foreign locations. Liv opened up the application and copied Gabriel’s Skype address. Then she clicked on ‘new contact’ to make the call.

  57

  The receptionist looked up at the man in the crumpled suit lumbering towards her and clipped on her corporate smile.

  ‘How can I help you today, sir?’

  ‘Well, you could have a word with my boss and tell him these early-morning flights are killing me.’ He dropped his holdall to the floor and leaned heavily on the reception counter, glancing down at the computer screen.

  ‘Do you have a reservation with us, sir?’

  Dick took a deep breath and let it out slowly in a pantomime of weariness. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. What I do have is a court appearance later this morning and, after getting exactly zero sleep on the overnight from London, I need somewhere to rest my weary head for an hour or two, otherwise I’m not going to be much use to my client. I guess they don’t call it the red-eye for nothing.’

  He handed over a passport and a dummy credit card in the same fake name.

  ‘Let’s see what we can do for you, sir,’ she said, taking the documents and pecking away at the keyboard.

  ‘I don’t need anything special,’ he said, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. ‘Just a basic room where I won’t get woken by the noise of the traffic or the morning crowd heading down to breakfast.’ Her fingers continued to tap. He leaned in conspiratorially, the counter creaking under his weight. ‘In fact, a lawyer friend of mine says they sometimes use this hotel to put up jurors and witnesses in key cases. I bet those rooms are nice and out of the way. One of those would be perfect.’

  Her fingers finished tapping. She hit the return key, extracted a plastic card from a coding machine and slipped it into a cardboard wallet. ‘Room 722,’ she said, writing the number on the front of the card. ‘Take the elevator to the seventh floor and it’s at the end of the corridor to your right. Do you need a hand with any luggage?’

  Dick took the keycard along with his passport and credit card and winked at her. ‘No thanks,’ he said, picking up his holdall and heading away across the lobby. ‘You’ve been more than enough help already.’

  58

  The rapid beeps of a number being dialled fed through the stereo speakers of Liv’s laptop. She was still in shock from the flood of memories the translated text had brought back. For all her scepticism and rationality what she had read there made a sort of sense. It explained why she could understand an ancient language she had never heard of or learned. It explained why she felt the sting of needles every time the whispering rose up. But it didn’t explain what ‘The Key’ was, or what it had to do with her. The dialling tone switched to a ringing one. Liv cleared her throat and pushed herself up in the chair, suddenly nervous about seeing Gabriel again.

  On screen the feed from Liv’s webcam popped up, revealing a low-res version of herself, amplifying how tired and dishevelled she was looking. She fussed with her hair and rubbed at the dark circles under her eyes as if it was dirt that could be wiped away. She considered cutting the connection and splashing more water on her face first to try to make herself more presentable, but a click cut off the ringing sound and the main window expanded to display the incoming feed.

  Gabriel’s voice materialized first, much richer than it had sounded on the phone and just as deep as she remembered.

  ‘Liv? Can you hear me?’ Then there he was, gazing at her, his brow knitted with concern, his blue eyes burning from the screen. She reached out involuntarily to touch his face. ‘Hey,’ she said.

  A smile softened his face and he reached out for her. It was the first time they had seen each other since the Turkish police had taken him away and he had told her to go somewhere safe, promising he would find her. And now he had made good that promise, though it was not quite the reunion either of them had envisaged.

  ‘I need to show you something,’ Liv said, reaching for the piece of paper she had found in the envelope. ‘The monk who helped us escape from the mountain gave it to me. Let me know if you can’t read it — turns out, I can!’ She held it up to the screen and four thousand miles away in Ruin the symbols came into focus. She held it long enough for him to translate it. When she lowered it again Dr Anata had joined Gabriel on the screen. From the looks on both their faces she could tell that they’d both read it.

  ‘Of course,’ Anata said. ‘What else would the Sacrament be but something of the original divine. It’s the only thing old enough or powerful enough to make sense. The Sacrament is the earth goddess, trapped in darkness by envious men, and you have set her free. The prophecy has been fulfilled.’

  Liv shook her head and let out a long breath. ‘I have to tell you I’m having a lot of difficulty with all of this. A couple of weeks ago I would have laughed in your face if you had told me half the things I’m now taking seriously. Let’s, for argument’s sake, say that all of this is true, then why do I feel like crap? If some divine spirit has entered into me, shouldn’t I be feeling fantastic? And why am I getting whispered messages that don’t make sense? And how come those maniacs in the Citadel are still killing everyone? Doesn’t feel like very much has been fulfilled to me.’

  Gabriel and Anata exchanged glances.

  ‘What?’ Liv said.

  ‘There is a second prophecy,’ Gabriel said, ‘the Mirror Prophecy, and it follows on from the first.’

  He held Oscar’s diary up to the webcam and this time Liv’s screen filled with the familiar symbols. The whispering rose again as she stared at it and again she scribbled the translation into her notebook directly below the other. Even as she was transcribing she realized its significance. She had wondered what the key was and now she knew. It was her.

  The Key unlocks the Sacrament

  The Sacrament becomes the Key

  And all the Earth shalt tremble

  The Key must follow the Starmap Home

  There to quench the fire of the dragon within the full phase of a moon

  Lest the Key shalt perish, the Earth shalt splinter and a blight sha
lt prosper, marking the end of all days

  She had been yearning for home ever since waking up in the hospital. At the time she had thought it was her survivor’s instinct driving her to return to the familiar and the safe, back to America and away from the dark, threatening streets of Ruin. Now she realized it was something different. It had not been her own home she had been craving — and continued to crave — it was wherever the Sacrament had come from. ‘The Key must follow the Starmap Home,’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ Dr Anata said. ‘The Home referred to by the Mirror Prophecy is the original home for all of us, the place where the Sacrament first walked: Eden.’

  Again Liv felt her rational self take a body blow.

  ‘The Mirror Prophecy is clear,’ Anata continued. ‘The dragon is the symbol of fire and destruction. If you do not carry the Sacrament home to Eden in time, then the end of days will be upon us.’

  ‘How long have we got?’

  ‘Seventeen days — maybe less.’

  ‘And if we fail?’

  ‘The end of days is described in the Book of Revelation of Saint John the Divine. An antichrist will arrive on earth bringing plague, famine, earthquakes and flood. The oceans will rise up and swallow the mountains and the mountains will crumble to the sea. Cities will be destroyed. Life as we know it will end and the righteous will be gathered to God.’

  Liv slumped in her chair.

  Gabriel leaned forward until his face filled the screen. ‘I’ll arrange safe transport to bring you here. All the ancient biblical lands are close to Ruin and that’s where we’ll need to look. By the time you get here, I’ll have worked out a way of getting into the Citadel.’

  Liv snapped to attention. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s where Oscar hid the Starmap. If we don’t find it, we won’t find Eden.’