Spiderwork Apocalypto 2

by LK Rigel

  Jake got behind Maribel and pinned her arms to her sides. She let loose a scream that sounded like it could rip through flesh. Maribel's eyes popped open. There was no one in there.

  Khai nearly ran into a woman in the entryway, Lydia, the settlement priest of Asherah. She said, "The Emissary is no longer in danger from the broken chalice." She touched Durga's forearm. "She could have died, Lord Ardri, but your touch broke their connection."

  Prince Garrick signaled his guards, the ones not subdued by Gordon, to fall back.

  Lydia crossed the room to Jake. She wore the standard garb of a priest of Asherah, light green shift and forest green tunic, embroidered with stylized seven-branched trees. Her hood was thrown back to expose straight, light brown hair in a loose braid. She had hazel eyes and a fair complexion, and her features were plain and ordinary. Char had never thought about it, but Lydia was as beautiful as any chalice.

  The priest touched Maribel's blank face and said softly, "All is well, my sister."

  "All isn't anywhere near shibbing well." Char broke the room's awed silence. "Can't you see she's gone to a place far, far away?"

  "What do you know, Lydia?" Jake said.

  "I suspect that my sister tried to look into your soul, Lord Ardri, and found none. This one has fallen into the abyss."

  Shock rippled through the room. People took a collective step away from Jake. If it wasn't so horrible, it would be comical. This couldn't be happening. Everyone had a soul. Jake of all people had a soul. Char would bet her life on it.

  "You called Maribel a broken chalice," she said. "How do you know Maribel? I've never seen you in Sanguibahd."

  "I have never been to Corcovado, and I have never met Maribel. But I recognize my sister. I too am a broken chalice."

  "I don't understand."

  "Not every woman who bleeds longs to become a glorified prostitute."

  "It's not like that." But part of Char said it was exactly like that.

  "Perhaps not," Lydia said. "This is not the time to argue that point. I'm one of the older chalices. I was forty-five years old when the gods returned."

  A murmur ran through the room, disbelief in some voices and the satisfaction of confirmed belief in others. Lydia appeared no older than her mid twenties. That's what it would have been like. Char had never regretted being passed over as a chalice, but she had to admit it would be nice to keep such youthful good health and beauty for more than a hundred years.

  "I was never religious," Lydia continued. "I had a husband who was no lord or king of anything. Then I was given fertility. If I was going to have natural born children, fine. But I wanted them to be my husband's children. I hid from the Great Red Beast—"

  "Monster," Jake and Char said at the same time.

  "Quite."

  Lydia closed her eyes and touched Maribel's arm. Maribel's eyes closed and she slumped against Jake's chest. After a silent minute that felt longer, Lydia continued.

  "I did become pregnant with my husband's child, but I lost the pregnancy in the fifth month of gestation and with it my ability to bear a child. Asherah punished me for my sin. My husband suffered an aortic aneurysm the day my uterus ruptured. It was as if she had spoken to me directly."

  "And so you became her priest?" Char said. "I'd think you would hate her."

  "The gods are mysterious in their ways," Lydia said. "I am still a chalice, if broken. I have another purpose now, and I accept it."

  Lydia radiated serenity. She had the beatific certainty of someone possessed by a divine force. Char thought of her own response when Asherah no longer needed her. She can smite me. Not so classy, but she still felt that way.

  Lydia turned to Jake. "Chalices are able to do more than conceive and bear natural children. Trained properly, a chalice can pierce the veil between the sacred and profane realities."

  The only sounds were Lydia's voice and the crackling of the fire.

  "Maribel seems to have discovered what Sanguibahd has not. A chalice can look beyond that veil into a human soul. It's a blissful, ecstatic experience, as long as there is a soul to behold. When there is no soul, the attempt fails and the chalice may well fall into the void between realities."

  "Priest of Asherah," Khai said. "How do I save the Emissary?"

  Lydia closed her eyes, then said, "Like Maribel, Durga's constituents have disintegrated. Her soul is there, but her spirit has fled. I am sorry, Khai of Luxor. I don't know if anything can save Durga."

  "I demand you examine the infant Sanguibahd tried to foist on Versailles!" The delegate from Versailles knocked Char aside and tried to grab the priest. With a nod from Khai, two Luxor guards lifted the Versailles delegate off his feet. As they took him away, he shouted, "I'll wager that infant has no soul."

  Lydia didn't hide her contempt, and she didn't answer the shibdab. "I'll take Durga and Maribel with me to the ashram. We will maintain a constant vigil of meditation and invite their spirits to return."

  "That is not acceptable," Prince Khai said. "Do what you will with the other. The Emissary must remain in the citadel."

  Durga's head rested on Khai's chest. She didn't look psychically damaged. She looked like a young woman in the arms of a man who cherished her. A twinge of pain pricked Char's heart. The prominent spider on Durga's shoulder told all. The Emissary could never be a young woman in the arms of a man who cherished her.

  "I agree," Jake said. "We can't let the Emissary go. Maribel should stay in the citadel too."

  Lydia said, "It might be better to separate them. Let Captain Gordon bring Maribel to my sisters, and I will visit the Emissary here."

  "Wait." Prince Garrick stepped forward. "Isn't everybody forgetting something? If Lord Ardri has no soul, then he is no longer lord sheriff. A soulless human being can't be put above humans with souls. Certainly not as lord or king. His offspring must also be soulless. There is no dynasty. His coronation would be a sacrilege."

  Magda's face had gone white, and she said nothing. Char didn't know what to say either, but she took hold of Jake's hand. It didn't matter if he had a soul or not. He was still her Jake.

  He kissed the top of her head and squeezed her hand.

  "There is a way," Lydia said. "That is, there may be a way." She looked shibbing tentative. "We would have to do it at the ashram. In the citadel there are too many people. Too many competing psychic signals."

  "It's dangerous," Char said. Of course it was.

  "Very," Lydia said. "You see Durga and Maribel. The risk is ending up like them. In our meditations on the soul, my sisters and I have been able to induce a phenomenon we call the liminal gauntlet. A metaphysical tunnel. One of my acolytes calls it a wormhole between the sacred and profane worlds. I think that's right."

  Acolytes? Char had met Lydia once. Unimpressive and unimportant. Jake's settlement priest of Asherah. Char had clearly read Lydia wrong.

  "Why are you here?" Char said. "It can't be a coincidence."

  "It could be." That beatific smile was irritating, actually. This was a crisis. Serenity was not the appropriate response. "It could be that Asherah told us to establish our ashram here. Or it could be that one of us knew about Lord Ardri's condition and came to study him. When she discovered his tolerance for all religions, we decided this was the place to do our work."

  "Tell me about the wormhole," Jake said.

  "The liminal gauntlet is a direct connection between the mundane and the divine. We can open the gauntlet to allow a human in deep meditation to enter the liminal space. The presence of a soulless human within that space attracts a shard of the All—a soul. That's the theory."

  "No one has made it through the gauntlet yet?" Jake said.

  "No one has tried."

  "What about children? My daughter is only a year old, and my son is yet to be born."

  "Your daughter will have to enter the gauntlet when she is older, but you can easily give your son a soul before he is born. Once you have a soul, you can perform the hieros gamos with your chalice."<
br />
  Char was a petty, petty person. Whatever this hieros gamos was, it sounded like something she definitely did not want Jake doing with Faina.

  "As Matriarch of Sanguibahd, I speak in the Emissary's absence."

  Magda had found her voice. Confident and commanding, she drew every eye her way, demonstrating why an Emperor had been fascinated by her. Too bad for Jake the fascination hadn't gone both ways.

  "The liminal gauntlet wouldn't exist if the gods didn't intend us to use it," Magda said. "If Lord Ardri is willing to undergo the ordeal, who are we to deny him?"

  "Matriarch," Jake said to his mother. "May I impose upon you to preside over the feast while Lady Char and I take care of Maribel and the Emissary? There is no reason the rest of our guests should go hungry."

  Char looked from Maribel to Durga to the ripped seam in her gown. This was not how she'd expected this evening to go. Jake was about to risk his life in a psychic shredder. And if he made it through that, he'd be off to have sacred sex with Faina.

  -o0o-

  Nothing. Silence. Longing. Emptiness. Sadness, sadness. Despair. The Empani's unending sorrow. Samael, Samael. Ugh.

  Nothing.

  Maribel, so beautiful. Maribel, and the universe.

  Jake, and then no Jake. A chasm of nothingness. A never-ending void.

  Silence.

  Music. Guitar music. A baritone, lovely, lovely. The sound vibrated over Durga and washed through her heart. Inhale. Exhale. The musician's voice.

  A kiss like lightning rips through the numbness

  Three seconds and counting, my whole life changes

  A kiss like lightning tears through this frozen

  Underground shelter

  I do believe I'm dreaming

  Feels like I'm dreaming

  Thank god I'm dreaming

  Under cover of darkness or in the glare of the morning light

  Will I ever fall into your arms in this life?

  Khai. Khai was singing to her, singing her back to him. From where? Where was she?

  A spider spins her mystery in silence

  Three minutes and counting, I am bound by her labor

  A spider spins and weaves

  A timeless, amoral endeavor

  I do believe I'm dying

  Feels like I'm dying

  Thank god I'm dying

  Under cover of darkness or in the glare of the morning light

  Do you think I might come to your arms in the next life?

  Khai, don't die! The scion of Luxor. Such beautiful eyebrows. The loneliness disappears when I see you.

  My guardian angel stands at the fountain

  A brush of her shoulder, and I remain human

  My guardian angel takes away all grieving contemplation

  I do believe it's raining

  Smells like it's raining

  Thank god it's raining

  Under cover of darkness or in the glare of the morning light

  I will never fall into your arms in this life, in this life, in this life.

  Yes, you will, Khai! You will fall into my arms. Fall now. Fall now.

  Durga opened her eyes. The window was open. It was early morning, first light. She could hear distant sounds of the bay, the seagulls and the surf. This was her turret room in the citadel. Allel, Jake's city. Oh, Jake…

  She never wanted to do that again. Never wanted to experience that emptiness, like looking off a cliff into a universe of nothing. What did it mean, really? Jake wasn't evil or bad, so lack of a soul didn't affect the person.

  It affected the world. The soul was necessary to existence itself. Asherah had said the material world needed more souls or everything would cease to exist.

  Durga didn't want to think that a soulless person was less than an ensouled person. She didn't want to think it. She didn't want it to be true.

  She turned away from that memory.

  A guitar leaned against the wall. Khai of Luxor was on his knees beside the bed, his head bent down. Her hand was grasped between his two hands. She pressed her fingers against his palm.

  "Praise Asherah, you've come back to me." A smile spread over his face. He radiated joy. His eyes were kind, concerned, and happy all at once. No harm could come to her as long as Khai was near.

  Please, Asherah, let Khai have a soul.

  He leaned forward, and his lips found hers.

  Get A Dog

  The first thing Char noticed was the rough weave of Jake's sheets, the weight of his blankets. They'd slept in his bed last night. Alice was in Char's suite.

  Alice was going to give ghosts a bad name, taking bubble baths and speaking in sentences. Well, two-word sentences. Yes, please. No, please. She was anxious for her bees, and Char had promised to take her to hydroponics to see them today.

  It was early. The sun was probably just peeking over the eastern forest. There had been rain all night, but at the moment a rosy-colored light filtered through the window. Char stretched and rolled over to kiss Jake good morning.

  Shib. He wasn't there.

  Her heart sank. "Jake?" No answer. No, cripes, no. She understood that he had a busy schedule today, what with learning how to get a soul and have sacred sex and all, but couldn't he have waited until the sun was truly up?

  She was being childish. Selfish. But she didn't care.

  She kicked her feet in the blankets and threw a private fit. "Jake!" It didn't change anything, but she felt a little better. She put on her robe and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

  Jake really deserved nicer quarters than these. He'd built a luxurious suite for her, trying to entice her to stay permanently. His bedroom contained the bed, a closet, and a writing desk with no sense of spaciousness. His bathroom was functional, and that was the best she could say about that. The antechamber was big enough for four people to meet without touching toes. No wonder he stayed in her rooms when she was at the settlement.

  Allel. The settlement was a city now. It had a name. Or it would. Sanguibahd would approve the city, no matter what happened with Jake. All gods. What a cosmic joke. A man builds a city from the ground up, names it for the gods, and it turns out he doesn't have a soul.

  Of course Jake would run the liminal gauntlet.

  Of course he would risk his life for the good of his city. His people.

  When Char first met Jake, he was a loner. Committed to no one but his sister Rani. Now he was committed to everyone. His happiness was second to the common good. Jake could live as a wildling in the forest and never think of souls again if it wasn't for Garrick. He would never let Garrick take possession of Allel.

  The old world Defenders of Gaia had been terrorists and mass murderers, but they were right about hating Garrick Corporation. Garrick had done more than any entity to bring on the cataclysm. Garrick squeezed all sweetness from the earth for profit and poured back filth and waste, poverty and despair. From what Char had seen of their prince, Garrick wasn't likely to do anything different as a city-state.

  She would never understand why Samael favored that city. It must have something to do with that mysterious ways thing.

  She returned to the bedroom. Instead of getting dressed, she threw off her robe and got back under the covers. She held Jake's pillow to her face to breathe in his scent. What if he did it today? What if he'd already gone to Lydia and was about to run the gauntlet? What if he had some kind of psychotic breakdown and never came back to her?

  Oh, Jake…how could you leave me without even saying goodbye?

  "Good morning!" He came through the door carrying a tray. He had on a green wrinkled long-sleeved hemp shirt and blue pajama bottoms and slippers. His hair stuck out in all directions.

  "Tell me no one saw you out there."

  He put the tray on the bed and stripped off his shirt and slippers. "I brought you some breakfast. I just saw Gordon. The bees are almost all in, about a hundred hives left to go."

  "Where did you go?" How could he be so normal, so cheerful?

&
nbsp; "Down to the kitchen to have them brew some coffee. I got it from Magda. I know you always give yours away." He climbed into the bed and gave her a kiss then poured two cups of hot black liquid. "You're not going to believe this." He picked up a small carafe and wiggled his eyebrows. "Wait for it." He poured the contents into the coffee.

  "Cream?" He was right. Char couldn't believe it. She had cream any time she liked in Corcovado, but never in the world. "How?"

  "A milk cow. Coronation gift from Spandau. They couldn't figure out a tactful way to take it back without calling me a soulless bastard. Which technically is accurate."

  Typical Jake. Making a joke out of a disaster.

  "You soulless bastard." She put her cup down. "You're about to do something that will most likely take you away from me forever. You could end up like Maribel and Durga. Worse. You have no experience with trance."

  "I'll have Lydia give me some pointers before the actual event."

  "There is some time then." It felt like a huge weight rolled off Char's shoulders.

  "A few days, maybe a week. Coming up from the kitchen, I met Luxor's guard captain. Khai has called together the city delegates present in the citadel to discuss Garrick's protest and the timing of the liminal gauntlet."

  "Luxor called the delegates together."

  "That Khai is impressive, yeah?" Jake poured himself another cup. "I need one of those second-in-command types. Gordon's performance lately has been promotion-worthy, don't you think?"

  "Sanguibahd was not invited."

  "Durga isn't able. Magda, my mother, has a conflict of interest. It makes sense that the cities should decide what to do."

  "The gods specifically denounced democratic rule, Jake."

  "A council of princes and poobahs isn't a democracy. Besides, when Durga is herself again, the little tyrant might overrule anything we decide."

  Char put their cups on the tray and moved it to the floor.

  "Jake, I understand why you have to run the gauntlet." She pushed him back against the pillows and straddled his hips. "I won't try to talk you out of it." She ran her fingers over his chest. "But I don't want to talk about cows or Spandau or Khai or Garrick or delegate councils." She leaned forward and grazed her nipples against his skin, moving up to kiss his earlobe. "This might be the last time we have an hour alone."