Four Dominions

by Eric Van Lustbader

  In almost the same moment, the combined cold fire of Bravo and Emma reached the Seraph. His shriek almost burst their eardrums. Whipping around, he tried to attack them, but he was already encased in the occult flames.

  His eyes blazed; his lips drew back over fangs seeming to disintegrate behind the wall of blue-green fire. Leviathan screamed something at them they could not hear. Then he turned and ran. They pursued him, but by the time they reached the chamber of invisible rustling grass he was nowhere to be seen. At least a dozen corridors branched off from this space, making it impossible for them to follow. Nevertheless, they spent the next hour going from corridor to corridor.

  “Quite possibly he’s returned to the Underworld,” Emma said when they made their way back to the massive chamber.

  “That’s what I’d do if I were him,” Bravo replied.

  “Thank God you’re not.”

  “Thank God neither of us is.”

  *

  “OF COURSE you can trust her,” Emma said. “Lilith helped me kill Obarton.”

  Bravo stared at her in disbelief. “Obarton’s dead?”

  “That’s right. And so are the Knights.”

  Bravo leaned back against the wall of the small chamber to which he and Emma had returned from their fruitless search. “How is that possible?”

  “I invaded their servers, broke through every layer of firewall,” Lilith said.

  “We have all the Knights’ secrets,” Emma added. She had studiously avoided the cracked shell of what had once been Beleth. When it had appeared as if summoned out of her own head, she had been shocked at what it really looked like. For the life of her she could not put the voice, let alone the personality, to the monstrous being that had flung itself onto Leviathan’s back. But how could she not look? How could she be horrified by its physicality? It had sacrificed itself to save her and Lilith. Was there any more human impulse than that? Who knew what lurked in the heart of darkness? “They’ve all been downloaded to our SSD drives.”

  Lilith looked from Emma to Bravo. “To be honest, we don’t have all their secrets. Their Reliquary is here.”

  “Here? You mean down here in the Hollow Lands?”

  “The coordinates Obarton gave us under duress led us here. Where we’re standing is just a bit off.”

  Bravo frowned. “But the laws of our world don’t apply to the Hollow Lands. His coordinates are useless here.”

  “He’s right,” Ayla said. “Obarton lied to you.”

  “No.” Emma shook her head. “I’m convinced he was telling the truth.”

  “Then we need to go back up,” Lilith said.

  “The sea cave!” Emma cried. “The Reliquary must be somewhere along its length.”

  She was the last one out of the chamber. For a moment, she stood in the doorway; then she knelt down, drew one curved claw from the husk that had been Beleth. It had been the one sunk deepest in Leviathan’s back, the only solid piece of the Power left. She hefted it in her palm, closed her fingers around it, then stepped out of the chamber. Lilith was watching her but said nothing as they joined the others on their journey up to the surface of the earth.

  *

  THEY FOUND it eventually, two-thirds of the way back up the sea cave toward the Arwad beach. It turned out that Obarton’s coordinates were precise. Lilith, standing under one of the holes in the rock, had just enough signal in her mobile to guide them to the precise location.

  “I don’t know how I missed it on the way down,” she said. “In my extreme agitation I must have misread the numbers.”

  “Lucky for us,” Ayla told her, and Lilith smiled.

  A section of the rock wall on their right had been jackhammered out, its replacement almost identical to the original. By borrowing Lilith’s phone and using its built-in LED light at a raking angle, Bravo discovered the almost invisible seams that ran around the four sides of the panel.

  Running his fingertips over the fake rock face, Bravo came across a machine-made indentation just below an outcropping, which, under the insistence of his forefinger, lifted up. They were looking at a small rectangular metal and plastic pad, on which were ten square buttons: 1–9 and 0.

  “Let me,” Lilith said. “There are certain master algorithms the Knights use. They translate into five numbered sequences.”

  The fourth one proved the charm. They heard a metallic click and Bravo pushed the door inward. The Reliquary was small, no larger than a walk-in closet. Not so surprising since it was the Gnostic Observatines who collected ancient artifacts, not the Knights. Apart from one painting, its walls were bare; no attempt had been made to soften the roughhewn rock. An old-fashioned kerosene lamp stood in one corner. Bravo fetched it, lighting up the Reliquary. In the center of the space was a vitrine on a plinth, protecting, so the plaque read, the mummified heart of Saint Clement, shriveled, floating in a glass jar of what might be formaldehyde. Just in front was what looked to be the forefinger bones of the saint.

  “That’s it?” Lilith looked around, clearly disappointed. “This is what all the secrecy was about? A damn bone and a heart?”

  No, she wasn’t disappointed, Bravo saw now. She was angry.

  “Well, that’s it then,” Ayla said. “Not every adventure ends in an important discovery.”

  “Fine,” Lilith said. “I for one have had my fill of being underground. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m in need of some fresh air to breathe.”

  Lilith stormed out, Ayla right behind her. Emma was about to follow them when she turned back. Bravo had lifted the lantern to head height.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “This painting.” Bravo moved closer to it, raising the lantern a bit higher the better to illuminate the painting. “Look, here.” He pointed. “The paint is peeling off.”

  “It’s no wonder,” Emma said, “in all this damp.”

  Bravo peeled off a strip of paint.

  Emma came to stand beside him. “It looks like there’s another painting underneath.”

  Bravo was busy stripping off more paint. Emma was right. The years of damp had gotten between the layers so that the top layer, which was thick, almost like impasto, easily separated from what was underneath. “Not just another painting,” he said. “It’s the Last Supper.”

  “But that’s impossible. Michelangelo’s—”

  “No. Look closely.”

  “The light is the same.”

  “Yes, but the figures are more primitively rendered. I’m betting this predates the one Michelangelo painted.” He peered ever more closely. “In fact, it might even be the study from which he took his cues.”

  “Why is it here in the Knights’ Reliquary?”

  “Excellent question.” Bravo handed Emma the lantern so he could take the painting off the wall. “We’ll take it back to our lab where we can study it using the latest equipment. I want to verify its age, for one thing. For another, I want to find out why it was so important to the Knights of St. Clement.”

  “It may be nothing at all,” Emma said with a wry smile. “Just a piece of decoration to keep St. Clement company through the ages.”

  Bravo returned her smile. “On the other hand, Ayla might have spoken too soon.” He extinguished the lantern and they emerged into the sea cave where the others were waiting. “This adventure might have ended with an important discovery after all.”

  Epilogue

  “IN THE END, BELETH WAS NO COWARD,” EMMA SAID, HER ARM around Lilith’s waist. The moon hung high in the sky, illuminating the water, the way ahead.

  “Odd to say, but I miss him. I can’t help thinking of Beleth as a him.”

  “I think he did, as well, in the end.”

  “We changed him, didn’t we.”

  Emma nodded. “Perhaps we did.” She opened her hand, revealing Beleth’s claw.

  “A souvenir?” Lilith asked in that bantering way of hers.

  “If ‘souvenir’ means ‘a remembrance,’ then yes. But this is something
far more to me.” She was silent for a moment, then closed her fingers over it, feeling its smoothness, its weight. A part of him, still. A relic. “Maybe we were only facilitators. It seems to me that we triggered something deep inside him.”

  Lilith sighed, feeling her lover’s warmth. Something she knew she never could get enough of now. “Perhaps you’re right.”

  The four of them were on the hydrofoil Lilith and Emma had hired, racing back to Cyprus. Behind them, a hazy glow through the night in the backwash, lay the curved stone arms of Arwad. None of them were sorry to leave the island behind.

  Emma was sitting between Lilith and a dozing Bravo. Ayla stood a little apart, staring off at a flock of cormorants, circling what must be some large sea creature, bloated with the gases only death builds up.

  Lilith’s face clouded over as she lowered her voice. “Do you think your brother will accept me?”

  Emma smiled. “Once you know him better you’ll never ask that question again.”

  “Well, I mean you three are family.”

  Emma took Lilith’s hands in hers, twined their fingers. “You’re my family, too, Lilith. Till death us do part.”

  Lilith’s lips quivered. “My God, how I do love you.”

  Their kiss was long and intimate and tender.

  *

  FOR MUCH of the time as they had made their way up from the Hollow Lands the four of them had talked nonstop, catching one another up, laughing in relief. They could be forgiven if their laughter was more raucous and lasted longer than was necessary. They had escaped death with their selves intact. Bravo felt as if he had been through a meat grinder, wanted nothing more than to lie on a beach somewhere, drinking and eating and, most important, sleeping. He felt as if he could sleep for a month. For the moment, at least, the war to come was far from his mind. It had to be for him to regain his equilibrium and keep his sanity. In the back of his mind he knew that though they had won a great battle, they had gained only a brief respite. Even now, the enemy was regrouping, considering alternate strategies, planning the final strike that would send them headlong into the world of humans, and thence to Heaven’s gates.

  Now, however, as so often happens at the end of a long, exhausting journey, they were talked out. There was nothing important left to communicate. They had withdrawn into themselves, to lick their wounds and to heal. They slipped into a kind of daze; one another’s silent presence was sufficient.

  After a time, Emma disengaged herself from Lilith, who had fallen asleep. Bravo, his doze so light that he had awakened with the slightest movement, watched her speak to Ayla for several moments before moving on to the bow. He waited some time, then followed her.

  Lilith, awakened by Bravo’s absence, longed to be with Emma, but she understood the need of the siblings to be together after such a grueling time apart. She was glad of it, happy that they had such a close relationship. She wished she were close to her sister, but she preferred not to think about Molly. To clear her mind, she rose, went to stand beside Ayla, felt at once the other woman’s prickliness, her sense of distrust.

  “Where does your allegiance lie?” Ayla said without preamble.

  It was rude, but Lilith couldn’t blame her. She had been the enemy. Now she wasn’t. But how could Ayla be sure? “I hacked into the Knights’ database and sent a copy to the Gnostic Observatines.”

  Ayla appeared unmoved. “You should have cleaned them out while you were at it, wiped the damn database clean.”

  “And start a hot war between the Knights and the GOs with Bravo missing? Does that make sense to you?”

  Ayla grunted, as much of an admission as Lilith was likely to get.

  “Answer my question, please.”

  “My allegiance is to Emma,” Lilith said. She meant it; it felt good to say to someone else what had been in her heart for some time. “Now and forever.”

  Ayla seemed to consider this as she watched the cormorants silently wheeling. At length, she looked away from them and sighed. “A love like that does not come along every day.”

  What an astonishing thing to say, Lilith thought. Not a twinge of jealousy or envy, just a statement of fact. She was so grateful she felt tears sting her eyes, before the wind carried them away. Everyone was vulnerable tonight. All at once, she felt a great love for this family. Not only for Emma but for Bravo and, yes, this thorny woman standing beside her, as well. And she was astonished anew at the realization that all of her tough stance, her iron will, her constant fighting and scheming to get ahead in a man’s world, was in the service of finding a place for herself. Even as a child, she had been an outcast, an outsider. She had never really had a home and a family, a place where she fit in. She did now.

  *

  EMMA DID not turn when Bravo came up beside her. Her elbows were on the railing; the wind pulled her hair back from her face.

  “About Lilith...” She turned to him. “She’s very special.”

  “I believe you.”

  “I wouldn’t have made it all the way to Arwad without her.”

  Bravo touched her shoulder. “Emma, you don’t need my blessing.”

  “Need has nothing to do with it.”

  He nodded. “I know. I misspoke.”

  “But I do want you to like her.”

  Bravo’s heart melted. Why, he wondered, did it take a near-death experience for him to realize how precious she was to him? “I don’t even know her.” He stroked her arm, lightly. “But once I do I have no doubt I will.”

  Her face clouded over. “How d’you know that?”

  “You’ve always been a great judge of character.”

  That brought a smile to her face. “This is very important to me.”

  “Nothing could be more apparent, I assure you.”

  Her neck and cheeks began to color.

  “So, Lilith aside, how are you doing?” he said softly. “Really.”

  She shrugged. “I wish I knew. This thing... Chynna mating with—”

  “I meant you. Inside you. With all that’s happened.”

  “I feel as if I’ve been hollowed out.”

  “Does that mean you miss Beleth?”

  She gave him a sideways look. “It might sound strange, but I guess I do, in a way.”

  “It is strange.”

  “He changed.”

  “Emma, evil doesn’t change. It’s monolithic in its thinking.”

  “Then Beleth wasn’t evil.” She saw his expression. “You don’t believe me.”

  “I want to, Emma, but it’s not easy.”

  “You have to trust me.”

  “I do. You know I do.” He shook his head. “What you’ve gone through—”

  “We’ve both come back from...” She shuddered.

  “The important thing is we stopped Leviathan from transforming you. Let’s celebrate that victory.”

  She laughed bitterly. “You go ahead and celebrate. As for me... I so don’t want to be who I am.”

  “Emma.”

  “I mean this family—our history.” She shuddered. “Dad trained you from the time you were ten, Bravo. But I was left behind.”

  “Protected.”

  “Call it what you will. The fact remains I’m not built for this. I mean, I almost destroyed you.”

  “And were almost destroyed yourself.” He gave her a bleak smile. “I don’t think any human being is built for this, no matter the family history. But you’re here now, with me.”

  “I survived.”

  “You did far more than that. You fought like a warrior.” He took her hand. “Emma, believe it or not, what we’ve just gone through has made us stronger.”

  “Then why do I feel as weak and vulnerable as a day-old kitten?”

  “Tell me, what are you doing now?”

  Emma looked down at her hands, which seemed to be working independently of her mind. She had Beleth’s claw in one hand. With the other she was scraping a small hole near the top with a small bronze-bladed knife she had picked up be
fore they had left the interrogation chamber.

  “Huh. I’m going to buy a thin gold chain when we get to Cyprus, hang this around my neck.”

  Bravo nodded. “That claw is proof, Emma, of who and what you are, no matter what you say to the contrary. You’re exhausted; I get it. We all are. But tomorrow or the next day I promise you’ll be able to appreciate the knowledge we’ve gained. That knowledge is what makes us stronger.”

  “Bravo, we’re not even Shaws. Shaw is a name Chynna made up.”

  “So we’re Safita, Ahirom.”

  “And Sikar.”

  He looked at her levelly. “You once asked me who we were. Now you know. But we also know that we’re more than brother and sister. We’re two parts of a whole. I will teach you everything I was taught.” He smiled as he looked deep into her eyes, her soul. “Together, we’ll explore the hidden places inside ourselves.”

  “What if we don’t like what we find?”

  “Either way, we’ll both be stronger. Conrad somehow foresaw this outcome; Leviathan didn’t. The bargain he made brought him pain, but it’s given us our only chance to prevail in the war that’s to come.”

  “The war?”

  “What we’ve been part of is just the first battle.” Bravo squeezed her hand. “The war itself is still ahead of us.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Emma breathed. “Let there be fire!” And opened her palm to the blue-green fire, cold as midnight in deepest winter.

  *

  THE MOON, bone white and beautiful, had risen, hanging like a paper lantern in the sky, so close that Haya could almost reach out and touch it.

  “It’s time,” her mother said. “Are you ready?”

  Haya nodded as her mother bundled her into a black cotton jacket, then slipped on a quilted coat, also dyed black. Hand in hand, mother and daughter stepped off the porch of their house, picked their way down to the shingle, where a small sailboat was waiting for them. Haya was lifted in; then her mother unwound the lines, pushed the boat out into the shallows, kept its momentum going until she was waist-deep before springing lithely aboard. She rowed a bit, then shipped the oars when deeper water opened up.