by M. J. Rose
“You’ll never use that,” he smirked, nodding toward the pistol in her hand. “You could betray me, yes, that much is clear. But kill me? I don’t think so.”
If Caspar were there he’d knock this man off his steed and beat him to the ground to protect her. How wonderful it would be to have her husband back and to have him take care of her again but that was a lost dream now. The night before, the Tsar had informed her that Caspar was, indeed, sadly, dead. The story that he was alive somewhere in the Himalayas had been a fabrication contrived by Archer Wells to induce her to steal the flute and the memory song and sell them to him. It had been an elaborate ruse, right from the beginning.
“There are spies everywhere, Archer,” Margaux said. “Remember? You told me that. Well, the Tsar has his spies too and he found out about your lies. You’re not going to get the flute, no matter what you threaten me with.”
The Tsar wouldn’t be getting the flute, either. Margaux wasn’t selling it to anyone anymore. She was determined to deliver the gaming box—complete with its clues—to Antonie Brentano as Beethoven had asked.
Her husband had died finding this ancient talisman. Danger surrounded it as this night was proving. She wouldn’t allow it to bring anyone else to harm. That would not be Caspar’s legacy. So help her God.
With the flute up to his lips, Sebastian played the deceptively simple notes, and as the brittle and sublime sound pervaded the hall and saturated Meer’s mind, pandemonium broke out around her.
Screaming and crying, not understanding the terrible images, smells, sights and sounds overwhelming them, one person after another was affected. Meer tried to stay in the present but kept slipping back, back to the forest, sitting atop her horse, the rain beating down on her. Her hand no longer shook. She held the pistol steady, pointed it at Archer, and tensed her trigger finger.
Chapter 96
Thursday, May 1st—8:12 p.m.
Tom Paxton stood in front of the monitors, not consciously paying attention to the music. He was about to ask Bill Vine about how the underground effort was going, when he suddenly felt as if the air was pressing down on him. A terrible pressure behind his eyes forced them closed. The images he was envisioning made no sense.
While his soldiers set fire to the village, William Moore entered the hut. Inhaling a stink that permeated the small room, a stink that was ripe with sweat and warm, fresh blood, he choked back bile. Two pairs of eyes were staring at him from under the table in the corner of the shack; a woman and a small boy who cowered and whimpered. A half-dozen apples knocked over in the melee were strewn at their feet, red like blood against the gray stones. The fire in the grate smoldered. The room would soon grow cold as the winter winds blew through the thin walls, but the woman and the boy wouldn’t care, they wouldn’t even know; Moore wouldn’t be leaving them alive. The boy was too small to be of any use and the woman would only be trouble but first…he’d been fighting this war for King Henry IV for a long time and hadn’t had a woman in weeks.
Ripping off her pathetic shift, he was disappointed by the small, flat breasts and the pale nipples. He wanted handfuls of flesh and rosy red buds to squeeze, not this meager offering. Her fingernails raking his cheek were more surprising than painful. Not many women fought back, and he laughed.
The boy was crying loudly so Moore kicked him, sending him sprawling. Despite fear of reprisals, the woman shouted at him to stop, not to hurt her son. He slapped her hard across the face, leaving a red welt, which excited him. An instant later wet spittle landed on his chin. He would fuck her and strangle her at the same time just for that, and made a move to mount her when the acrid and harsh smoke from outside caused him to start coughing. Cursing, Moore ran out of the hut, abandoning the woman and the child, not looking back.
Outside, his soldiers were setting fire to more huts and laughing as men, women and children, chickens, dogs, horses and pigs ran from the flames. A crippled woman grabbed hold of Moore’s arm and screamed, “Save her, save her!” pointing to a young child crawling out of one of the huts as fiery beams came crashing down around her. The life of one child was of no importance to him. They had to take this town and move on to the next. Casualties were expected. He tried to deflect the woman but she wouldn’t give up. She clung to his leg, trying to force him to help. “Save her.”
William Moore laughed, kicked her off and moved on.
“Tom? Tom? Something’s happening!” Kerri shook Paxton. Trying to get him to focus on her. To answer her. But his eyes were fixed on some distant point. He clearly didn’t hear what she was saying or feel her fingers digging into his flesh.
Chapter 97
Thursday, May 1st—8:13 p.m.
In the audience, Annabelle Strauss climbed wildly onto her seat and stood up. “Help me!” she shrieked as she waved her arms above her head. Beside her, the mayor attempted to calm her but she reacted as if he were a stranger instead of her husband.
Gerta Osborne, the elderly opera singer sitting on the other side of the aisle, stared up at the concert hall’s domed ceiling, pointing to something or someone only she could see and screaming that it was coming “too fast…too fast…too fast.”
Stan Miller stumbled through the row of other audience members, tripping on their legs as if he were blind. They cried out—fended him off—but couldn’t stop him; he was desperate to get away from whatever was chasing him, even if it was only in his imagination.
On the stage, the conductor rolled on the floor, reaching out into the air where there was nothing to hold on to.
The principal violinist used his instrument to swat at his own arms, chest and face as if he were being eaten alive by a swarm of insects.
The female harpist, head in her hands, heaved with deep, wrenching sobs.
Erika Alderman was riveted to her seat, watching the audience members disassembling around her. She knew exactly what was happening. She was close enough to the stage to see her fellow Society member. Sebastian was playing the memory flute, and its tones were sending most of the audience into paroxysms of painful memories. She turned to tell Fremont, to share the amazing news that her hypothesis about binaural beats was being demonstrated all around them, but he wasn’t in his seat anymore. In the confusion, she hadn’t even noticed he’d gotten up. Where could he have gone? Had he been affected? She should go look for him but didn’t want to leave the performance and miss witnessing any of the living proof that was establishing her theory.
Another audience member observed the melee, also immune to the music. Malachai Samuels’ mind flooded with astonishment. Why did Sebastian have the flute? How had he learned the music? Had Meer figured it out? And more important, why was he doing this? Amazed by what was occurring, he studied people in the audience as they moved from the present to the past, unprepared for their journeys or their destinations. Finally, he stood. Whatever else happened, he had to be there when Sebastian finished his song, to get the flute.
As he worked his way to the front of the auditorium he saw Meer trying to do the same an aisle away. The two of them were the only ones not moving en masse toward the exit.
Meer didn’t even notice the people in her way; it was the onslaught of her own devastating memories that was making it so hard for her to move faster. Trying desperately to hold on to the present, she felt the last vestiges of it dissolve around her, melting in the sounds Sebastian blew through the flute.
Margaux forbade her hand to shake as she kept the pistol pointed at Archer.
Unafraid of her, so sure that she wouldn’t have the nerve to use the gun, he ignored her and nudged his horse closer and closer until he was near enough to reach out for the straps holding the gaming box to her saddle.
“No!” she cried out, pulling on the reins and backing her horse away.
“You stupid fool. Don’t you understand what a mess you’ve made? A mess I have to clean up. I know the box has clues in it. Give it to me and I’ll still pay you what I promised. If you don’t, I won’t hesitate to us
e this.” He brandished his pistol. “How’s that for incentive?”
In the hall, Malachai felt panic escalating around him. Fear, hysteria and hallucinations immobilized everyone, making it impossible for them to perform simple equations. Stay? Go? Run? Where? Drop to the ground? Go forward? Even those, like him, who weren’t affected, weren’t sure what to do; the terror was too pervasive. As he kept moving steadily forward through the chaos, he saw the wild fear in people’s eyes and heard their unholy cries as the song played on. But absolutely nothing happened to him.
The surging crowd pulled Meer back to the present again. She was caught up in the maelstrom of people shoving each other as they tried to escape, not understanding what she understood: that as long as they could hear the music, the pain and the memories would continue to bombard them, that even out in the lobby the assault would persist. Each brittle high note after another propelled them all deeper and deeper into netherworlds where the light was hundreds or thousands of years old.
Chapter 98
Thursday, May 1st—8:15 p.m.
The air moved in waves around him, its current trying to drag David away from where he was and what he had to do. From one moment to the next, he existed in two alternate realities. Trying to secure a place in either, he was lost between them. What was happening?
He needed to set off the Semtex now but something was wrong with his coordination and his vision. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but the sound that wrapped around his head and pulled so tightly he felt as if his brains were being squeezed out through his ears and nose and eyes.
Was this some new technology Paxton had created to drive rats like him out of the tunnels? Except as terrifying as the sound was, it was also beautiful. As frightening as it was, it was also tempting. He needed to attach the last wire to the battery pack and then press the det cap but he had to stop…no, he had to listen…he couldn’t protect himself…the music was seducing him…drawing him into its circle.
Chapter 99
Indus Valley, India—2120 B.C.E.
Without a moon, the terrain was treacherous but Devadas had no choice. He had to travel during the night in order to reach his destination in time. Tradition required that all sacrifices be made at sunrise. So in just a few hours, Sunil would lay his daughter Ohana upon the stone altar and with great ceremony slit her throat from one side to the other, giving his virgin daughter up to the gods.
As if the gods wanted human sacrifice.
For the rest of the night, as he trudged through the countryside, Devadas tried to come up with an argument to talk Sunil out of his plan. Searching for any line of reasoning that might change the mind of a man so mired in superstition and the old ways. Why would Sunil listen to him? As one of the village’s seven holy men, Ohana’s father thought Devadas and his brother, Rasul, were heretics.
But when they played certain songs on the instruments they crafted, the listeners were healed and soothed. The tones from their flutes and drums did ease complaints like sleeplessness, pain and nervousness. If their own father hadn’t been one of the holy men, the two brothers might have been run out of the village. Instead a small cult had formed around them while rumors about their practices raged. Radical thinking and alternative forms of healing were suspect; the brothers were too controversial for their elders.
But since what they offered helped even if it put them in danger, they’d decided to live with the risk. It was worth the threats to see the look of suffering fade from a woman’s eyes, or feel a child’s forehead cool. Even when Devadas’s wife and her family ostracized him, forcing him from their home, giving him the ultimatum that he’d lose his own children if he didn’t forsake his healing practices, he couldn’t.
Sunil must have seen him approaching from inside the house because he cut him off on the road. “What business have you coming here?” he snarled.
“I request some time to speak with you.”
“You don’t speak. You blaspheme. And I’m busy. I have preparations to make.”
A faint glow of light materialized on the lowest part of the horizon. Devadas estimated that the ritual practice would begin in less than two hours. Staring beyond Sunil at the family domicile, he imagined Ohana asleep on a rush mat in the room she shared with her two sisters.
Rasul had begged Devadas not to make this trip, but he was determined to save his lover. No matter what happened, he owed it to Ohana for what he had taken from her, even if she’d given it willingly.
They had met innocently. Devadas’s wife had thrown him out and he had been living on his own at the workshop he shared with Rasul for over a year when Ohana had come to him for help with terrible headaches she suffered.
She came back five times. On the sixth, after he’d soothed her pain with the music, he offered her a cup of tea. They talked as they drank and he came to realize her pain was related to her fears about her upcoming arranged marriage with a man who was off at sea. All young girls were betrothed to men their fathers chose for them but Ohana was rebellious; she didn’t want to wed a stranger. Devadas understood—he and his brother didn’t agree with the old superstitions either.
As the sun set, they discussed what they each believed. Her mind was so keen and her curiosity was so honest, he was drawn to her. Too drawn to her.
Their dangerous affair had started that day and had been conducted in the shadows. More than once, he’d tried to end it but she’d changed his mind, telling him it would end soon enough when the man she was to wed returned from his voyage.
Then a month ago her intended had drowned, and Sunil read the tragedy as a sign his daughter was destined to be the village’s annual barbaric solstice sacrifice.
Did Ohana even know what today was to bring? Was she sleeping peacefully or staring out the window at this moonless sky imagining her death? The thought chilled his heart.
“Please, indulge me just for a few moments, Sunil.” Devadas made a great effort to be humble, knowing it was his only chance.
“If you want to walk with me, then fine. I have to collect wood,” Ohana’s father said as he took off toward the riverbank and the grove of sacred ashoka trees that stood by the shore, tall and straight like sentinels. Walking beside the elder, Devadas helped Sunil pick up the twigs and branches he’d need later to burn at the altar. Although it was dark, the melon-colored flowers on the trees glowed as brightly as if they had their own internal light and the air was so heavily scented with their perfume, Devadas felt nauseated. It was said that if you washed the flowers in water and then drank it, you’d be protected from grief. All healers kept jugs of it at the ready.
“Are you still planning on giving your daughter to the gods this sunrise?” he finally asked.
“What business is that of yours? You, whose very name means ‘servant of the gods,’ dare to question me on a holy day?”
In a few hours, hundreds of people would be coming from far away for the ceremonial welcoming of the new season, but no one was out yet. Devadas knew it was still safe to speak without being overheard.
“I came here to tell you that if you offer Ohana to the gods you’ll be insulting them and they will visit their wrath on you and our village.” The words were like salt in his mouth but Devadas knew this was the only chance he had to change Ohana’s fate.
“And why is that?” The elder man sneered.
“Because the gods require a virgin.”
The older man straightened up. His face was set in cold fury. “What are you saying?”
“Ohana isn’t a virgin.”
“How dare you?”
“I’m telling you what I know as the truth.”
Sunil stood as immovable as the mountains on the horizon. “How do you know such a thing?”
“Because I’m the man who has been with her,” Devadas whispered, feeling ashamed, not for what he had done with Ohana but for sullying those precious moments by talking about them now using ordinary words.
Water lapped gently on the shore of the Gange
s. A single bird flapped its wings as it flew overhead. A dog, in the distance, barked a steady warning.
“My daughter…” Every one of Sunil’s words was an effort, each threatening to explode in his mouth. He swallowed and began again. “My daughter has been promised to another man since she was a child…” He paused, thinking, trying to process the new information. “My daughter was promised to another man and you took her? You, who have a young wife and children of your own?”
How could he defend his actions? Even being exiled from his wife’s home, Devadas was still married. How could he explain what it was like to be with Ohana? How he’d felt as if his very soul had been waiting for her from the very beginning of its first incarnation. He could see in the man’s eyes that he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do. Sunil believed him. Ohana’s life would be spared.
The blow took him by surprise. Sunil was older but had rage on his side. The rock hit Devadas on the side of his head and he went down. Lying on the ground, looking up at the furious man towering above him, Devadas was sure he could take him but a lifetime of instinct kept him from striking out at Sunil. It was in those few moments, while Devadas made the effort to overcome the lessons that he’d been taught—to respect his elders even if he didn’t agree with them—that Ohana’s father brought the heavy stone down on his head again and Devadas, drifting in and out of consciousness, lost his chance to defend himself.
Unable to move or see through the blood filling his eyes, Devadas sensed this was his end. Here, on the road in the early dawn hours, he was going to die. Through the pain he thought he saw Ohana. Or was he just wishing he could see her? He wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to cry, that he’d done this gladly. Given her his life and his love. Nothing hurt him anymore. He’d stopped feeling the rock even as Sunil hit him over and over, venting his rage. All the pain was gone. In its place was the great golden sense that he was saving someone’s life. There was nothing more he could offer up. He’d been given a chance to make this sacrifice—maybe had lived expressly so he could die now and save her life. Everyone had a purpose. Understanding that purpose was a gift and he took it with him as he left this life and went into the darkness where the past and the future merged in another dimension.
