Four Dominions

by Eric Van Lustbader

  *

  CONRAD LED the way, cradling his mother against his breast. Even so, he ran as fast as he could, scarcely aware of her weight.

  Once you enter the Hollow Lands you can never escape, Phenex had told him. We’ll see about that, he thought.

  Right behind came W. B. Yeats, gingerly holding the transmogrified artifact at arm’s length, as if it were a poisonous adder. Because it had poisoned Diantha, just like an adder.

  Up they went, up, up, up, ascending the steepest part of the tunnel and then increasing their pace as the slope began to flatten out. How much time elapsed until they burst forth into the colossal chamber where Typhos still crouched on his plinth it was impossible to say. Time had slipped away like a thief into the shadows.

  “What to do now?” Yeats said, trembling. Clearly, his agitation had hit a high point.

  “Mother?” Conrad kissed her cold, clammy forehead. “Mother, we’re here.”

  She opened her eyes, the lids gluey as if with long sleep, or unfathomable disease.

  “I am standing beside Typhos.”

  The emerald of her eyes was long gone, replaced by irises the color of ash. The terrible dread that had taken hold of Conrad tightened its grip on his heart, turning his soul black. Was this Gideon’s revenge from beyond death?

  “Put me up.” Diantha’s voice was a reedy whisper, a shadow of itself.

  Conrad, bewildered, said, “Put you up where?”

  For a long time his mother did not speak. Her breathing was short, sharp, terribly labored.

  “Mother...”

  “At Typhos’s left foot.”

  Not understanding, but obeying her nonetheless, he clambered up the corner of the plinth, set her down precisely where she had indicated.

  “Step back,” she whispered. Her eyes were mere slits. “Conny, get off...”

  “I’m not going to leave you.”

  “You must. Please.”

  “No. Whatever is going to happen I will be right here at your side.”

  “Then you won’t be able to catch me, Conny. You must catch me.”

  The magic, he thought, of Phoenician sorcery, which was completely beyond him.

  He heard Yeats calling from below. “Conrad, come down. Let what will happen, happen!”

  And still Conrad did not move. “What does your Farsight tell you, WBY?”

  “I cannot!” Yeats cried, anguished. “In this I must disappoint you, my friend. Down here I can see nothing. The future is a blank slate.”

  “Conny, there is no time left.”

  “Mother.” He placed a hand on her cheek.

  “Conny...”

  The pleading in his mother’s voice, a tone he had never before heard from her, made him back away, descend to the ground to stand beside WBY, who wrapped his arm around his shoulders.

  “Courage, my friend. Have faith in God’s beneficent plan.”

  He heard it then, the odd, alien syllables of Phoenician he had heard, only once or twice before, coming from his mother’s mouth. Now they filled the chamber, echoing on and on, building in volume, quickening in cadence, until...

  The veins along Typhos’s muscular flanks began to pulse as if they were filled with blood. The great Sphinx moved his head first. He looked down at Diantha with what Conrad later recognized as sorrow and pity.

  Then he raised his left leg and, before Conrad could even utter a sound, brought the taloned paw down onto Diantha’s head.

  Conrad cried out in shock, revulsion, and a grief beyond anything he had ever known before. He was about to launch himself up onto the plinth to do battle with Typhos when the Sphinx lifted his paw and Diantha’s headless body rolled away, off the corner of the plinth, into her son’s waiting arms.

  34

  Mediterranean, off the Coast of Malta: Present Day

  NIGHT HAD COME AND THE SEA HAD MELLOWED. THE INCESSANT chop that had accompanied the sun’s sudden slide into oblivion had vanished with the light. The gulls were safely perched in their rookeries, sliding into their own form of oblivion.

  Bravo lay on the slimy deck while, above him, Ismail doled out orders to his cadre. From what Bravo could make out through the red haze of agony, Ismail was clearly in no hurry to leave this position. He seemed convinced there was a reason Bravo had rowed out here. Two of his men were scanning the horizon for any sign of a boat or a ship Ismail suspected had been sent to rendezvous with his prisoner. Bravo didn’t blame him; it was the logical assumption to make. Why else would Bravo be out here alone in a rowboat, a craft ill suited to take on a sea voyage?

  “So, Shaw infidel.” Ismail turned from his cadre, squatted down beside Bravo. “Who are you waiting for?”

  “God,” Bravo said, “or the devil.” He tried to turn his head without causing himself undue pain. “Maybe both.”

  “Listen to this,” Ismail hissed through the gap in his front teeth. “Listen to the infidel.” He kicked the rood beyond the reach of Bravo’s outstretched hand. “What use have you for a talisman of your false God. Lā ʾilāha ʾillā-llāh. Muḥammadur-rasūlu-llāh.” There is no god but God. Muhammad is the messenger of God.

  As if they were attached to someone else’s arm Bravo’s fingers scrabbled for the rood, its bronze coating fractured.

  “You’re right, Ismail. There is only one God. But he goes by many names. I know you believe in Jesus as prophet.”

  “Yes. Jesus was a prophet, as was Moses, and the Prophet Mohammed, who spoke the holy words of Allah to the faithful.” He poked Bravo in the ribs. “And four centuries after the rise of Islam, your pope, Christ’s disciple, declared holy war on us. You brought the Crusades—war, torture, pestilence, death—to our land, and, really, you have never left.”

  “That was wrong,” Bravo said. “The Crusades were a grievous mistake.”

  “What?” Ismail cocked his head. “What is that?”

  “The West misunderstood Islam then. It misunderstands Islam now.”

  Ismail, dismayed, sat back on his hams. “What kind of infidel are you?”

  “I’m a man,” Bravo said. “This is one man speaking to another man. There is nothing more here than that.”

  Ismail rocked back and forth, as if he were praying. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I can hardly blame you.”

  For long moments, then, there was nothing but the gentle rocking of the speedboat. Without taking his eyes off Bravo, Ismail called, “Anything?”

  “Nothing,” came the reply from both lookouts. Their faces were lit by the cockpit lights. “Not a boat or a ship to be seen.”

  “So. Tell me why you’re here,” Ismail said softly. “If you do, if you tell me the truth, I’ll consider letting you go.”

  Bravo knew Ismail wasn’t going to let him go, no matter what he told him. He sat up slowly and painfully. “There’s no point,” he said. “You can no longer recognize the truth when you hear it.”

  Ismail rubbed his thick beard. “Umm, in this instance I believe you’re right. I can’t recall the last time an infidel told me the truth.”

  “But I know the last time a Muslim told me the truth.”

  As Bravo had surmised, Ismail seemed intrigued. “And when was that?”

  “Not too long ago, in Istanbul, I was traveling with a Muslim woman.”

  “Huh, already blasphemous.” Ismail gestured. “But go on. From this beginning the blasphemies can only multiply fast as rabbits.”

  “This woman was very beautiful,” Bravo continued. “All the Western men looked at her longingly when they passed her by.”

  “Utterly despicable. The behavior of rabid street curs that need to be put down.”

  He saw Ayla’s fingers grasp the far side gunwale of the rowboat. “She ignored them.”

  “As she should.”

  “Until she didn’t.”

  Ismail’s face grew dark. “What is your meaning?”

  “There was one man.” He saw the top of her head. “An American.”

  �
��Of course an American. Like you.”

  “Actually, I’m Phoenician.”

  Ismail laughed unpleasantly. “No one is fully Phoenician anymore. Even us Syrians who live on Arwad.” He laughed. “We’re not even fully Syrian, when you get right down to it. We’re polyglots, even the so-called Four Families. The Dutch came, Italians came, many others, European and Arab alike.”

  “That’s my lineage. Phoenician and British.”

  “Not English?”

  “My father’s family is Welsh. A very strange place, Wales. The Welsh have their own form of djinns.”

  “Bah! Tales of djinns are for children. There are no djinns.” With a look of disgust on his face, he gave a sideways glance at his man, who was still nursing his aching groin. “Continue with your story, Shaw infidel.”

  “This American was a pig.”

  Ayla, invisible in the dark, checked that the lookouts were turned away from her, rolled into the speedboat so deftly she caused barely a ripple in the water around the hull.

  “He made no secret of staring at her breasts and legs.”

  “Her fault entirely,” Ismail spit. “Had she properly covered her body there would have been nothing to see.”

  “She turned on her heel, went up to the American,” Bravo said, “and she slapped him hard across the face.”

  “Huh.” The look of disgust on Ismail’s face intensified. “A woman like that, she should be executed.” He looked hard at Bravo, then hauled him up to stand facing him, Bravo’s back to the rail.

  “But then the two spoke, one person to another, and an accommodation was agreed upon. Apologies—”

  “Why are you telling me this story, Shaw infidel? Do you wish to become my friend?”

  “I’d like for us to get to know each other better—as people, not ideologues.”

  That was when Ismail buried his fist in Bravo’s abdomen.

  “Fool!” he said. “Infidels aren’t people.” Then he kicked him hard in the chest.

  Bravo was pitched over the side, plunging into the ink-dark sea.

  35

  Red Sea, off the Coast of Eritrea: 1919

  HER BODY LAY IN STATE, WRAPPED TIGHTLY IN LAYERS OF gauze, then undyed muslin, and finally in shimmering silk of a purple obtained from murex shells, as was the custom of the Phoenicians. The large felucca and its crew of five was captained by a young woman named Tanis, who worked out of the Cairo section of the Gnostic Observatines. She was tan and very fit, with flashing green eyes and long black hair pulled back, against fashion, in a ponytail. Conrad had never seen a grown woman in a ponytail before. The curious style gave her a kind of mythical look, alien and alluring. He had not met her before, for which he was grateful. There were few people of his acquaintance he wanted to see in his current state.

  Out of necessity W. B. Yeats was one of them.

  “There is a feel to the air in the Levant,” he said.

  The great poet sat on a camp chair under a muslin shade that had been arranged by the crew, in the center of which was Diantha’s corpse.

  “Do you not feel it, my friend?” He glanced toward shore. “A certain softness, as if the great hand of time has worn down all sharp edges, all biting gusts.”

  “You should try crossing the Sahara,” Conrad said somewhat distractedly. “There you’ll find enough biting gusts to last several lifetimes.”

  “We’re not in the Sahara; we’re not in the past,” Yeats said as compassionately as he could. “We can only try to control the present.”

  Conrad, who had been staring off into a space of his own conjecture, turned to him, eyes clearing. “Of course, yes. The present.” He glanced at his mother’s wrapped body. He heard the voice of Phenex, one of the Four Thrones that had ever so briefly merged with him but had been thrown back to Hell by the power of the golden apple and the gold rood: Once you enter the Hollow Lands you can never escape.

  Then we’ll be prisoners together, he had replied, understanding nothing.

  He felt the shuddering inside himself again as Phenex cried, Disaster... catastrophe... there are no other words!...

  “There are no other words,” Conrad murmured now.

  “What?”

  “Disaster... catastrophe... my mother’s death...”

  “All that is behind us now, my friend.”

  Conrad shook his head. “But it isn’t. My mother spoke of the prophecy. It is clear now that I was prophesied to kill my father, kill a Nephilim.”

  “But surely, Conrad, that was a good thing, terrible though it might appear to an outsider. You and I know the truth. Your father was bound for evil, no mistaking his intent. You had to stop him. What other course could you have taken?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the hell of it.” Conrad put his head in his hands. “But I can’t help feeling that my mother’s death was too high a price to pay for stopping him. You saw the look of horror on her face when I told her I had killed Gideon. There must have been another way.”

  “If there ever was, you will never know it now.” He placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Possibly you were never meant to know.”

  Conrad’s head came up. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it was clear enough Diantha knew the answer, but she never told you, did she?”

  “How could she have anticipated this outcome?”

  “My dear good friend, how could she not?”

  “But you saw how frightened she was.”

  “I did indeed,” Yeats agreed. “But what, precisely, was she afraid of? Death?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. This is your province, my dear.” The great poet’s gaze penetrated the lenses of his spectacles to strike Conrad between the eyes.

  “No, not death. Never death. Not her.” Conrad’s mind raced backward to the moments before his mother’s death. Something was different about her. What was it?

  His mind kept turning away, turning away....

  What could be worse than death?

  His mind kept turning away....

  Disaster... catastrophe...

  He had assumed Phenex had foreseen Diantha’s death. But what if the Throne had foreseen something else?

  His mind kept turning away, turning away....

  Diantha’s eyes had changed, darkened. Something dreadful had begun to surface in their depths. Something she needed to forestall, to destroy before it came to full flower. Before it took her over.

  Disaster... catastrophe...

  That was what Phenex had seen; that was what he had meant.

  When he told all this to his friend, Yeats said, “But the problem is the artifact worked on your father. It drove the Throne out of his body. Correct me if I am wrong, but that was a good thing.”

  “No doubt.” Conrad rose, went over to where his mother lay, placed a hand on her stomach. It was a bit easier now to be close to her. Bad enough to hold your mother’s corpse, but to see her headless was stomach churning. When Yeats had followed him, he continued. “But my mother did not have a demon inside her, a Fallen, and I am guessing now, but I think the artifact had the opposite effect on her.”

  “You mean...”

  Conrad nodded. “It began to pull one of the Fallen out of Hell into her.”

  “It must have been a very powerful one.”

  “Perhaps,” Conrad said, “even Lucifer.”

  “God in Heaven!” Yeats whispered. “No wonder she was so terrified. No wonder she needed the Sphinx’s intercession.”

  And it was true, Conrad thought. It was the explanation that fit the circumstances perfectly. Diantha had been afraid of nothing, not even Gideon. But Lucifer...

  “At least it wasn’t Satan,” Yeats said. “I’ve been taught that Satan, Lucifer, and Beelzebub are three different Fallen. Isn’t that right?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Conrad said. “The names are all aspects of the same vile creature: Lucifer, the scholar; Satan, the iron
fist; Beelzebub, the trickster.”

  Yeats shuddered, placed his hand beside his friend’s. “No wonder... no wonder...”

  The captain approached them. She stood, almost at military attention, hands clasped loosely behind her back, waiting politely. Her head was slightly bowed, her eyes lowered, in deference to the deceased.

  She did not speak until Conrad, becoming aware of her presence, looked up. “Yes, Captain?”

  “We are nearing your mother’s final resting place, sir. Do you require more time?”

  Conrad took a deep breath, let it out. It seemed as if time was all he had now, and though his mother’s corpse would not decay as others would in the withering heat, he felt as if his mother, at least, had at last run out of it.

  “No, Captain. You may begin. Oh, and please don’t call me sir.”

  “If you won’t call me Captain.” Her eyes met his with a startling clarity of purpose. “I would be pleased if you called me Tanis.”

  And that was how Conrad Shaw met and fell in love with the woman who gave birth to his first child, and heir, Dexter, Bravo’s father. After Tanis’s death, he met Dilara, but that was many years later, when Conrad was an old man and far wiser.

  On this day, however, aboard the felucca, Conrad, Yeats, and Tanis attended to the controlled pyre that consumed the many layers of silk, muslin, gauze, and then the flesh and bone of Diantha Safita, never a Shaw by name but a major bulwark of their lineage in the difficult times to come.

  They stayed there, relighting the fire several times in order to reduce the bones to ash. When they had cooled sufficiently, Conrad cupped his palms, gathered the remains in a square of jute that Tanis handed him. The three crossed to the starboard side and, with the sun in their eyes, Conrad and Tanis intoned a prayer in Latin and Arabic. Conrad spoke the few phrases of Phoenician he knew and, on his mother’s ashes, swore to devote this life and the lives to come to avenging her death, continuing with what in hindsight he recognized as her fight against Lucifer.

  As Conrad scattered her ashes upon the Red Sea, Yeats recited for the first time what was destined to become his touchstone poem, “The Second Coming”: