“The pain of exile,” Cynthia pronounces, “is something we have all shared in words together—told our tales to one another, have we not?” She drops a venomous scowl to Julia, and then turns to the sleeping boy, “But mighty Thi, my Lord and Maker, I think it infinitely more powerful to show you the torment and misery you have wrought within us through banishment.”
The two guards grab Julia’s shoulders and arms as she involuntarily flails her body to escape. Both of Cynthia’s hands seize Julia’s face. One clamps over her mouth, the other pinches her nostril’s shut. Cynthia wrenches her captive’s head and crushes it against her armored abdomen.
“Does it not feel like this, brothers and sisters?” Cynthia hisses between her teeth. “Banishment from Thi’s creation? To endure perpetual epochs away from Thi’s masterwork? Does it not feel like this?” The throng is silent, but Loche senses an overwhelming wave of empathetic pain and longing. Tears form in the eyes of some watching—as if Julia’s desperate need of air is a sensation well known among them—but only a metaphoric hint at the real torment they have been forced to endure as they suffered the torture of banishment.
Julia writhes and thrashes, thirsting for oxygen. The white ovals of her eyes are wide in terror.
“This is what we suffer! We, deathless gods through time unfathomable, beholding that which we cannot have!” Julia’s body jerks violently. “And if by some miracle we break Thi’s ancient law, and we arrive here, we cross over, and we taste the salt of the sea, touch the lips of a lover, hear the voice of a laughing child, scent the spilling blood of our enemies—”
The woman’s merciless grip tightens, tearing deeper into her victim’s skin. Julia slowly loses strength. Her resistance convulses and recedes. The two guards let go as her arms drop limply to her sides. Cynthia throws Julia’s head forward and down—her right cheek smashes into the wood slatted stage. Her nose is bleeding. She coughs, spraying blood out in bright red beads.
The struggle between rushing to her aid and remaining hidden starts a hammer-like pressure beating within Loche’s inner ear. He shakes his head attempting to rouse his senses to some kind of order.
“And behold, the suffering of the Immortal!” Julia’s eyes flip open as she heaves in gulps of air. “Our treacherous enemy that, for eons, has starved our lungs from life’s breath—we do not forget! We cannot.” She speaks to Julia, “The sight of your pain is to us like the delicious oxygen you drink in now, Orathom Wis cur!”
Cynthia crouches down beside Julia. “But for this short season,” her tone softening, “we are not banished. For this brief moment in eternity, we will breathe, and we shall taste, and touch. We shall listen to the screams of our enemies, and we shall watch them bleed.”
She appeals to the throng, “Shall we make her bleed?”
The chorus of ecstasy and anger is like a dagger stabbed into Loche’s ear.
Julia struggles to gain her composure. A light white foam envelops the cuts along her nose. Her right eye is swollen shut.
Cynthia raises her hand and the clamor dies again.
“Or shall we make all of our enemies bleed?” she asks simply. She rises from Julia and strides to Edwin’s raised body. “For we are but surrounded by enemies, it seems.” She positions herself behind the sleeping child and stares out to the assembly.
“Some of our enemies we must seek out. We will know them by sight.” She looks at Edwin, “But, as the Fates would have it, enemies are delivered into our keeping without understanding. So often our piteous senses seek outward for adversaries, when in truth, the real demon lurks within.”
The gathering issues sounds of revelation and fear. Loche’s adrenaline surges and his focus narrows on the distance between his son and himself.
A man nearby utters a whispered, “No.”
Others sound out affirmation. “Our Creator is our torture,” one shouts.
A few begin to chant, “Thi is pain!”
A gleaming long-bladed dagger flashes like a spark thrown from between the framing fires. Cynthia raises it with both hands above her head and aims its point downward at Edwin’s chest. She holds the pose and watches the audience. Gasps of shock rush in the air like the sound of sea spray in a storm.
Many things happen simultaneously.
Seeing the suspended knife, Loche’s hand flies to his sword hilt. Just as his body commits to a lunge forward, a hand on his shoulder yanks him back. The heat of a hissing whisper tears into his left ear. “Do you believe in the Devil?” the voice says. “For there she is. Behold the Nicolas Cythe to come.” Instantaneously, Loche notes that the words are spoken in perfect modern English. His head swivels to see another robed man. Within the shadowed hood are the familiar deep brown eyes of Corey Thomas. His breath smells of scotch. “You have friends here. You are not alone. Do not attack yet. Be still. Trust me…”
At the sight of the dagger, a maniacal tremor of both debate and epiphany sweeps through the crowd. One shouts, “It must be done! God hath taken our lives, let us take His! Kill the boy god!”
Another cries, “Stay your hand, O Cynthia! Vengeance will be Thi’s in the end!”
“If He is truly Thi, He will save himself!”
“Kill him!”
For Loche Newirth, reason and hope fade. Periphery blurs. The single instinct to hurl himself to the space between the dagger and his son ignites every muscle. Unable to process Corey’s words, his legs press toward his son. Corey’s grip intensifies and sends flashes of searing white light through Loche’s vision. His limbs paralyze. His mind overloads with helpless fury.
“Do not move, Loche. Not yet. She will not strike. Wait.”
Cynthia holds the sacrificial dagger high and surveys the riotous storm before her.
She cries out, “Hold your breath, brothers and sisters. Hold your breath…”
When the Doors Shut
November 11, this year
Upper Priest Lake, Idaho
5:45 pm PST
When the doors shut, there is no light. She cannot see her hand before her eyes. She questions if her eyes are indeed open. She questions if she will ever see light again.
When one sense is removed, the others become more acute. Her feet can feel the gentle vibration of the running engine. She can hear its low hum. The scent in the stifling compartment is similar to most new vehicles. A kind of manufacture’s perfume: new oiled parts, sweet polished leather. She would reach to find a door handle if she could. The plastic zip tie holding her arms behind her back cuts into her wrists. She stoop-stands, turns and lets her fingers search for a latch. There is nothing but smooth, cold metal.
Her mind is seething. Thoughts crowd for space like strobing pictures on a screen. Rearden’s face behind a pistol. Yafarra encased in crystal. A red spiral notebook. Graham Cremo’s pale face. The mystery of Aethur or Loche Newirth… The blackness sucks oxygen from her lungs. Her chest concusses as if a stone bangs against her rib cage. An anxiety attack is coming, she thinks. She suddenly becomes aware that she has been screaming and crying out, “Let me go! Let me go!” She holds her breath. Perhaps for the first time in her life all she can do is weep. The darkness somehow makes it easier. No one can see her crying.
Courage, Astrid.
The thought drapes over her, They are going to kill me—They are going to kill Graham.
As if in answer, she imagines Graham beside her saying, But they need us still. They have questions about the site and Yafarra, and I’m sure, the Itonalya. Things that only we can answer. But we’ve seen too much—and they won’t let us go knowing what we know.
Astrid inhales slowly, and for a moment believes he is with her. I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out earlier, her mind lets him say. I’m afraid we were both trapped by what we love.
Astrid lets the thought sink in. Graham’s warning at the crystal tomb did not deter her. In fact, it spurred her on. She saw a door. A door to her dreams. A door she has longed to open and, come Heaven or Hell, she would open it. She fi
nds it ironic suddenly that the door upon which she gazed when Graham issued his warning in Elliqui, was the lid of a coffin.
The vehicle gently dips as if a driver has climbed in. Instead of the a door slamming, it closes with a quiet, yanking click. It drops into gear. Then, movement. It begins to roll. Menacingly slow.
Again, Astrid wishes that this imagined Graham in her head would quote a movie—but she is afraid he would bring up some vision of a car crossing into the Las Vegas desert with Joe Pesci at the wheel and a body in the trunk. Or fat Peter Clemenza telling his henchman to, leave the gun. take the cannoli. Instead, her Graham is silent. She feels his hand tighten on hers.
The compartment wobbles over uneven roads, and thuds into ruts and holes. The vehicle is still rolling slowly.
Just as Astrid is about to pose the question, why so slow? The van accelerates and the engine pitch winds up in bursts. She is thrown to the side and her body crashes to the floor. She braces her feet and presses back against the wall. The vertigo of speed, breaking, the pressing of hard turns, and the rattle and pounding of the wheels forces every sinew and muscle to anchor. Below is the scrape of gravel and skidding tires. Another turn and the van throttles up. The road smoothes as if they have skidded onto pavement. She notes the transmission gearing up to an even cruising speed. Gut wrenching, blind curves follow. Her temples ache from squeezing her eyes shut. Stomach acid burns the back of her throat. She imagines a view through the windshield and attempts to predict each wind in the road and the double yellow lines snaking just out of the reach of the headlights.
The van brakes hard and she vaults forward to the front of the compartment while the rest of her pulls back for balance. Then a sharp turn to the right. Astrid guesses they have left the pavement and are now hurtling down a dirt road.
“What’s the rush?” she cries.
When her imagined Graham does not answer, she pictures another of those packed-with-meaning, blank expressions from Eastman’s face—one eye hidden by a swoop of grey hair, the other eye winking to the driver, Get rid of her fast. No loose ends.
A faint taste of dust rises. The turns, the whirling motion and rattle of the wheels—what dark clearing is the driver heading for? Will she be able to see the lake before the end? The sky? She did not tell Graham that she felt… something… something electric… when they met… she did not tell him that for the first time in her life, the door to her heart could open.
The van lurches hard to the left, slows and halts. The engine dies. Silence. The Graham in her heart whispers, we’ll find a way out of this. His fingers find her cheek. Ag shivcy. Linna avusht. She tries to believe him.
The driver’s door opens. Shoes crackle on the ground. Footsteps circle around to the back of the vehicle. Keys chime. A key slides into the lock, the latch clicks and indigo light pours through the widening doors.
The driver peers into the dark compartment. His eyes are concerned, curious and familiar. So, too, is the tuft of red hair sprouting from his head, the carved and elegant face, the glowing blue eyes. “Professor Finnley?” he says, straining to see.
“Marcel? Marcel! Oh God, Marcel!”
Framed in the door with the glittering night behind him is Astrid’s assistant, Marcel “Red Hawk” Hruska.
“I stole a van,” he says. “And a professor.”
The Old Law
Date unknown
The Realm of Wyn Avuqua
Shadows bend and waver. To massive pillars of fire bookend the stage. Between their high flames, a knife is held aloft by the hand of the Devil. Below its point is young Edwin, asleep. Julia Iris tries to crawl away, teetering on the edge of consciousness.
“Wait,” Corey hisses again into Loche’s ear, “it is not his fate to die—not yet.” The chaos of debate rages through the enclosure.
Cynthia lowers the knife and steps back from Edwin’s sleeping body. She circles around the bier and positions herself in the center of the stage. Cold air whistles in from an open door. The blazing flames brighten, devouring the new oxygen. Cynthia neither motions or gestures but the monk at the far corner of the stage, Erinyes, rises as if summoned.
“Remember,” Corey’s voice whispers, “we must take care in our actions. We must not alter what is to come. Beware of all you do.”
With both hands, Erinyes pushes his hood back. Loche is again confounded by the features of the face now fully visible in the firelight. Is it a woman? A man? In the expression there is the weight and surety of a male’s dominating nature, yet, somehow, as the robed figure raises open palms high above the long locks of black hair, as if to embrace the assembly, the face takes on the comfort and care of a woman’s grace. Erinyes’s focus is unmoving. The irises are alarmingly black—profoundly dilated. Posed and staring across a sea of silent gods, Erinyes’s otherworldly visage reminds Loche of the shuddering terrors within Basil Fenn’s Center—the blurred streaks of light, the smears at the edge of vision. Erinyes belongs across the gulf, he thinks.
Cynthia pronounces, “The Old Laws we must obey. Even our Maker, our Lord and Light, Thi is bound to the Law. The Fates will decide…”
Erinyes shouts for all to hear, “As with all that bear a thread of light to our prison, our exile, fate shall decide. Thi has broken His own command and has interfered with His beloved creation. So it is just that His thread be cut.” A murmur of approval rustles through the crowd. Erinyes turns to the still kneeling Fates and says, “Thi’s destiny shall be determined in the old ways—His path shall be dictated by blood. Only through a contest of arms shall the Fates be appeased and the Old Law upheld.” To Cynthia, Erinyes says, “A lesser god must win the right to cut our Maker’s light. Chance commands…”
Cynthia replies, “I will obey,”
Erinyes calls out to the witnesses, “Cynthia seeks the right to kill Thi, our Maker, our Creator. But Thi must have a champion. Bring one of Thi’s immortals—bring one of His Guardians!”
The challenge incites jeering shouts from the host. Two soldiers wrestle the cloaked drunk at Etheldred’s feet forward and stand him up. It is suddenly clear to Loche that the drunkard’s presence and condition was planned. Immediately, the man falters, tips and tumbles back. But before the guards need to catch him from falling, his legs straighten and flinch, and he catches himself. Laughter erupts from those at the front of the assembly. Gaining his balance, the cloaked man is escorted to the stair with slaps and shoves, and he is thrown upward onto the wood planks. The cheering and mockery continue.
“A Guardian! Thi’s guardian. An Orathom Wis! A Wyn Avuquain soldier is before you! Shall this be Thi’s Champion?” Erinyes asks.
Riotous applause and approval.
The man laboriously crawls toward Julia near the edge of the stage. Her wounds are now ebbing a white foam. She brushes at her left eye as if struggling to see. The drunkard gets to his feet after some unsteady wobbling, his cloaked head angling down as if studying her—as one immortal might show concern for another. Julia, too dazed and injured to notice him, rolls onto her side and presses her hands over her eyes.
A sword clangs onto the wood platform at the man’s feet. The hood swivels to it. After a swaying pause, he bends to pick it up. Rising, he nearly totters over. His legs stumble to a clumsy balance. More laughter explodes from the crowd.
Erinyes calls, “Bring wine!”
Someone in the assembly jeers, “The Itonalya has had his share!”
Loche watches Cynthia, who is stoic, still. She has already drawn her sword and she rests her gauntleted hand upon the pommel, the blade tip is tacked to the stage.
A wooden tray is brought to Erinyes with two goblets of wine. Erinyes presents the tray. Cynthia takes a goblet. The tray is then brought to the man. His gloved hand reaches to receive the wine but misses the cup’s thick stem. He tries again to take hold of the goblet. He staggers, sways and then holds his palm out. His hood shakes from side to side as a gesture of no.
Insults and mocking cries are thrown. “He’s
had too much!” some cry out. “Can’t hold his wine!” others laugh.
Cynthia lifts her goblet high and proclaims, “For the right of vengeance! To the death of Thi. To our freedom.” Her army cheers. She tips the wine into her mouth and drinks, then tosses the goblet out to the assembly.
The drunkard, his body still lolling to and fro as if he were standing on the deck of a boat at sea, lifts his hand again, signaling both Erinyes and Cynthia to wait.
He leans over and fumbles the long cloak to the side exposing his forward leg and high leather boots. He crams his hand down inside the cuff above the knee. After a moment of struggling, his body attempts to raise back up, pulling against something tucked down against his calf.
It is at this moment Loche hears Corey speak into his ear suddenly, “When it is time, get Edwin out of the fort. Go through the east door. Once you’re out, follow the others. But now, wait. You’ll know the time. Remember to take care in all you do. We cannot alter what is to come.”
The man frees from his boot what looks to be a bottle—a glass bottle. Loche squints to make out the contents. Even in the orange firelight and the man’s fumbling, Loche recognizes the liquid and its container immediately. It is a nearly full fifth of The Macallan single malt scotch.
The cork squeaks out.
Then the man’s clear voice rings. The sound of it sends an electric jolt through Loche’s heart. “To the Old Law,” he proclaims in modern English, delivered as if it were a line in a play. “And to this beautiful boy—my dear grandson!”
He lifts the bottle to his lips and tips it back. The hood falls away and drapes his shoulders, exposing an angular face and long dark hair. Standing now between the two raging pillars of fire, pulling a mouthful of scotch, is William Hubert Greenhame.
Loche’s breathing halts. Tears rush and blur his vision. Disbelief and joy collide in his mind.
The Shape of Rain Page 21
