Veil of the Goddess
Page 19
"Ivy. The police are beating the pilgrims. They'll be on us soon. You must come out now.” Father Galen's voice sounded desperate.
Ivy took the veil, then hobbled back to where the Cross sill penetrated the ancient blue walls.
"Hand it to me,” Galen urged. His face and hands shimmered through the barrier and she guessed he was holding onto the Cross section.
"I'll hide it."
That sort of made sense. Ivy passed the veil to the waiting priest.
As he touched it, his face lit. “Oh, holy."
Before she could react, say anything, his hands and face disappeared—followed by the Cross. She made a grab for it, held onto it briefly, but her loss of blood had made her too weak. The crossbeam was jerked out of her hands, and it disappeared beyond the misty blue wall.
"Wait. Father Galen!” Didn't he realize she needed the cross to exit this dimension? Then, with horrific certainty, she realized he did.
He'd done this to her on purpose. Worse, he'd deliberately sent Zack and Cejno to their deaths.
Ivy was trapped in the other world—a world without food, without any contact to her everyday Earth.
Without Zack.
Chapter 14
Trapped.
She should have recognized the fanatical look on Father Galen's face. She should never have handed over what he clearly saw as a symbol of rightful Greek ownership of this ancient city.
Recriminations didn't help, though.
Ivy fought the urge to surrender, to sink to the ground and let the power of the invisible church creep over her, subsume her into its embrace and make her a part of something that had endured for hundreds of years while the city outside, the ordinary world of man, hurried by.
But surrender, even surrender to a force that seemed benevolent and loving, wasn't in her. Growing up in the shadows of old Appalachian coalmines, Ivy had learned to fight before she'd attended kindergarten. She wasn't going to stop fighting just because she was locked inside a prison whose walls were not stone or iron, but hundreds of years of faith and prayer.
She closed her eyes and made herself remember exactly where the Cross had penetrated the church wall. Surely some residual weakness would remain.
It made sense, but if there was any breach, Ivy couldn't feel it and certainly couldn't push her way past.
"Think, Ivy,” she murmured to herself. “You're a woman. That means you get to outsmart problems rather than bull through them."
One thing the National Guard taught was that the obvious solution was generally the right solution. And the obvious way to get out of a church was to use the doors.
The doors in the little temple in the middle of this larger church had opened easily enough. Would the larger doors on the outside of the church?
She limped over, inspected the latch, threw it, and then opened the doors.
Sunlight flooded in. “A lot of worry for nothing."
The first step was easy. The second step was harder. The third was impossible. The blue glow gave, but like elastic, the harder she pulled against it, the more firmly it pulled her back in.
With her wounded leg, Ivy wasn't up for tug-o-war. She went back into the church and sat on the base of one of the tall Doric pillars that supported the imposing dome overhead.
The talent the Cross had given her really was amazing, she mused. Archeologists and historians would probably pay big bucks to learn about the various layers of the old church—and to get a second look at a building that had been destroyed when Columbus was still wearing short-pants.
She got a start when a Turkish policeman, nightstick in hand, burst through the blue haze of the Church's walls and stepped directly toward her.
"I was just resting,” she said in English. “I got a little overwhelmed by all of the things to see in your city."
He ignored her.
"Interesting,” she breathed.
The policeman looked around. Some part of him must have sensed that something wasn't right, the type of feeling Ivy's grandmother had claimed was someone “walking over your grave.” Then he shook his head and walked on, his feet sometimes sinking beneath the stone floors of the church and sometimes floating a few inches above it.
Ivy hobbled after him, then reached her hand to touch him.
Her hand and arm passed right through him.
Okay, she really was on a different plane or dimension. That made as much sense as anything. The question was, if she stayed close to him, overlapped with him, would she be able to follow him out of the church and back into the world of the mundane?
She didn't have a lot of other thoughts and this one seemed worth a try.
She stepped even closer, until their torsos actually overlapped.
The cop yanked out his handgun and spun around. Clearly he'd sensed more than a vague feeling. Equally clearly, he couldn't see anything because he growled what could only be a Turkish curse, shoved his handgun back in its holster, and strode from the church like a man who wants to get away from a graveyard but doesn't want anyone to know he's frightened.
Ivy's bum leg made it hard for her to keep up, but she forced down the pain and stumbled after him—and slammed into the stone wall of the church as the cop walked straight through it without even noticing it was there.
"Oh, hell,” she moaned. “I am so dead."
* * * *
Cejno and Zack used the cover of thousands of pilgrims to stay down, get away from the rampaging cops, and finally duck into the massive Istanbul Bazaar.
Cejno insisted on paying as they both bought a change of clothing—Cejno unzipping the Telekom coveralls he'd worn to put on a western-cut shirt and cowboy hat and Zack a pair of tan slacks and a shirt that looked like it had already seen more than one owner but was at least clean.
Strengthened by a package of dried apricots, Zack was ready to get back to work.
"Where do you think Galen would take Ivy?” he asked.
"Father Galen is not the kind who is easily dissuaded,” Zack said. “I think we should find the parade and assume ourselves into it."
It took Zack a second to figure out what Cejno meant, but it was as good a plan as any. The parade had been scheduled to end outside the Hagia Sophia, so they could go there.
At least the Turkish police and Foundation agents would have to be careful there in an area where a thousand videocameras would be filming at any given moment. The Turkish police might not like Greek pilgrims, but they wouldn't want to spoil their city's appeal as a tourist destination by slaughtering a bunch of them either.
"Right. Let's go."
Pilgrims filled the square in front of the Hagia Sophia and a determined line of cops guarded the cathedral's enormous doors, presumably to prevent any attempt by the Archbishop to reclaim the ancient structure as the center of his see. That really would create a riot in this ninety-nine percent Moslem nation.
As the Patriarch led the assembled pilgrims in prayer, Zack and Cejno pushed their way to the front, ignoring angry murmurs and excited hand-gestures from those they disturbed.
"He is saying they have found something wonderful, a true miracle,” Cejno whispered. Apparently the kid spoke Greek as well as Turkish, Kurdish, and English. Zack felt like a provincial American.
"The Cross?"
"Perhaps. That doesn't feel—ah—"
The ‘ah’ was because Father Galen appeared from somewhere behind the Patriarch with a heavy relic box in his arms.
"It's got to be the veil,” Cejno announced unnecessarily as the Patriarch lifted the box's lid and raised a long strip of fabric into the air.
The hush from the crowd wasn't that of reverence, but of question. They'd come all this way to see some old piece of fabric? Clearly they'd been expecting something more dramatic. The head of John the Baptist, maybe, or the crown of thorns.
But when the Patriarch announced that they had rediscovered the very veil of the Virgin Mary, protected all these years from looters and invaders, the crowd went wild.
Zack couldn't disagree with that. But he was getting an increasingly uneasy feeling. Father Galen had at least implied that he had given up on his quest for the veil and that he would take Ivy for help. If he'd been lying about one, he might have been lying about the other as well. Either way, where was Ivy?
He shoved his way through the increasingly dense crowd that gathered to get a closer look at one of the most holy relics of Christianity.
The relic was odd, he thought. Sure it would have been strange if Mary had crosses on her veil. For one thing, the Cross hadn't been adopted as the symbol of the religion until long after Mary's ascension into heaven, and Mary was often associated with stars. But he would have expected six-pointed stars of David rather than the eight-pointed stars actually embroidered into the veil.
Also, while medieval paintings might portray Mary as a Queen, crowned and sceptered, she was still the carpenter's wife, carpenter's mother, wasn't she? So, where had the gold and jewels come from?
"Pretty nice,” Cejno said. “The sainted mother of the Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, is well respected in the Koran."
From what Zack could see of the Patriarch's face, he had some of the same questions Zack did. Of course, the answer was probably that the simple garment of a carpenter's wife had been decorated and made more ornate over the centuries it had been a worshipped object. Six-sided stars of David would not have been used because of the antipathy that had existed between the Christian and Jewish faiths in the middle ages. The five-sided star had sometimes been associated with magic and paganism. He couldn't remember anything about an eight-sided star. Could they have picked that to avoid confusion?
The crowd thinned out as Zack headed for Father Galen rather than for the relic itself.
"Where the hell is Ivy?” he asked without preamble.
Father Galen jumped. “Ah, Zack. I thought you were going into hiding."
"And I thought you had given up finding the veil. I guess we were both wrong. Now, do you want to answer my question, or should I just tear that answer out of you?"
"Saint Ivy was transformed into the heavenly domain,” Galen reported with a solemn face. “I witnessed this myself."
"She's dead?” He was glad he wasn't armed because he would have been tempted to start shooting.
"I did not say that. She passed beyond the veil of the mundane, was translated into the separate world of the holy."
"Translation, you left her in the grotto?"
"She was badly injured, Zack. To bring her back to this world of suffering would be no kindness."
"I'm not interested in kindness. In fact, I'm thinking of ripping your throat out. So, why don't you tell me where you've hidden the Cross and I'll go fetch Ivy?"
"Alas, she took the Cross with her. She handed me the veil, then pulled the Cross after her."
Zack considered. He knew the priest was lying. He also knew that Father Galen was safe now, surrounded as they were by thousands of pilgrims who were aching for a fight and would be just as happy to turn on a western Catholic as they would on a Turkish Moslem.
"I'm going to get her out,” he said. “And when I come back, I'm going to collect the veil. So, if you're lying, you'd better start running."
"But...” Father Galen sputtered for words. “But I'm a priest."
"You're also a hashish-smoking weirdo. I'd trust your Patriarch, but I'd only trust you about as far as I could throw you.” Considering the bulk of the priest, that wouldn't be far. Still, he was ready to try.
"Will we be able to get in without the Cross?” Cejno asked as Zack turned on his heel and shoved his way away from the Hagia Sophia and toward the grotto where Father Galen had abandoned Ivy."
"If Father Galen wasn't lying, she'll have the Cross with her,” he said.
"Of course Father Galen was lying. Didn't you see the way his eyes flickered?"
Zack had missed that. “I'll tear him apart later."
"He means well,” Cejno said. “But his vision is small. He wants Greeks to return to Constantinople. Nothing seems more important to him."
"If the Foundation gets the Cross and veil, who lives in Istanbul is way down our list of worries."
"For us, yes. I think Father Galen would turn the rest of the world over to Shaitan himself if doing so would return Constantinople to Orthodox rule."
"If we can't save Ivy, he just might have turned the world over to Shaitan."
* * * *
After her failed attempt to follow the policeman, Ivy rested, letting the blue power of the otherworldly church soak into her tired and injured body, trying to stay calm.
Surely Father Galen would return. Although he was absorbed in his belief, he wasn't a cruel man, and he was a priest.
Instead, as the pilgrims left, Foundation Agents, easily visible by their black suits and the red glow of religious fervor that surrounded them, trickled back into the area of the old church.
Several wandered through the territory of the church, but Ivy was careful not to repeat the experiment she'd tried with the policeman. The policeman had sensed something. She suspected that the Foundation agents would know exactly what they felt—and have weapons that could reach across the barriers that kept her enclosed and made her invisible to ordinary sight.
Although she couldn't make herself touch them, she did hobble toward the nearest one—and then froze when he reacted.
She'd been trained in firearms when she'd gone through basic in the National Guard, and she'd brushed up a lot when she'd gotten word her unit was being shipped to Iraq, but not even her drill inspector moved as quickly or made the gun as much a part of his body as did the agent.
His lips moved as he shouted something out to his fellow agents and they started to converge. One of them reached into his ubiquitous black briefcase and a chill ran down Ivy's back.
Before the Agent withdrew his crucifix, though, the whole group cocked their heads. Several pulled out cells, and started listening.
She strained her ears and could almost make out the words. Although she had no skill at lip-reading, she thought she recognized the shape of the words veil and Cross.
Abruptly the entire group of agents took off running in the direction of the Hagia Sophia.
Being abandoned had never felt better.
Ivy leaned against the insubstantial wall and closed her eyes. Impossible though it seemed, her leg was healing. Either the Cross, which she knew Zack would have put her on, or the power of this ancient and long-vanished church, was accelerating nature's healing power. The matter needed to replace the big hunk of her leg the Foundation Agents had blown away seemed to be coming from other parts of her body. After a few months of Iraqi heat, she'd already been too skinny. Now, she felt emaciated.
Starving to death in this peaceful prison was starting to seem more likely than dying of blood loss and shock.
That wasn't an improvement.
She closed her eyes to rest for a few minutes, and to think about what she could do next.
She didn't even notice Cejno and Zack when they first entered the grotto.
Their conversation barely seeped through the dimensional barrier. Their bodies were insubstantial shadows rather than complete people.
When Zack called her name, though, his meaning penetrated where sound alone could not.
She stumbled to her feet. “I'm here, Zack. Did you bring the Cross?"
He cocked his head as if he'd almost heard her.
She ran to him, threw her arms around him—and watched as they passed through his body without any resistance whatsoever.
"I'm here,” she repeated, shouting this time with her lips only inches from his ear—inches and a million miles.
He brushed at his ear as if pawing away a mosquito.
"Damn it, Zack. Get the Cr
oss. You know that's the only way to get through the barrier."
* * * *
"We must go back and get the Cross,” Cejno announced. “If she is here, she is beyond the sight of the merely human."
"I don't know how to use the Cross,” Zack said. “It's part of Ivy's talent, something she was given when the Cross brought her back."
"Then you must kill me and put me on the Cross. When I am healed, I too may be able to see between our world and the world of Allah.” The young man looked horribly pale, but wonderfully brave.
Zack shuddered. “The Cross didn't help much when Ivy got shot. It's too big a risk."
If anyone was going to lay down his life on a long-shot to save Ivy, it was going to be him, not the Kurdish teen who'd already gone way beyond the bounds of hospitality and kindness. “Not that I wouldn't try something if we actually had the Cross."
"I can speak to the imam. The Moslems could riot for real rather than for play."
Zack shook his head firmly. He hadn't quite bought into Ivy's theory that the Foundation was seeking the relics that could provoke a war between the faiths, but he wasn't going to risk launching one himself. Especially with no certainty that it would help Ivy.
"Give me a second, will you?"
It was strange that Ivy, with her casual attitude toward religion, had been tagged as the saint, while he, who had always been devout, was nothing more than her sidekick. But that didn't make his faith any less genuine. He knelt and prayed.
Lord, help me find Ivy now. I need her and the world needs her.
It would have been a good time for a divine revelation. Unfortunately, no trumpets blared, no deep voice thundered instructions, no bushes burned. A bug kept buzzing in his ears, distracting him from his prayer, but he waved it away and really tried to concentrate.
None of it did any good.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to Cejno. “All right, let's go beat up on Father Galen."
"I can offer him more Hashish."
"I thought you were out."
Cejno shrugged. “I did not tell the priest the complete truth when he demanded more. His greed is too vast."
Zack felt a strange shape in his pocket and absently pulled out the St. Christopher medal he'd stuffed there the day he and Ivy had first fought their way free of the Iraqi insurgents. Since then, he'd transferred it from pocket to pocket whenever he'd managed a change of clothing. The modern Catholic Church had stripped St. Christopher of his Saint's Day and relegated him to a sort of ambiguous status, but more traditional Catholics like Zack's mother still swore by the giant's protective power.