Sanctus s-1

by Simon Toyne

  The light of God, sealed up in darkness.

  He reached out a hand to touch her face, then a noise by the altar made them all spin round.

  The Abbot had shifted position. They each watched as his head lolled heavily on his shoulders, turning towards them until his eyes stared straight at Athanasius. The flambeau lay where he had dropped it, smouldering against his cassock and shrouding him with smoke. ‘Why?’ he asked, a look of confusion and disappointment on his face. ‘Why have you betrayed me? Why have you betrayed your God?’

  Athanasius looked up at the savage opening of the Tau and the wrist manacles dangling at the end of the crosspieces.

  Not a mountain sanctified, but a prison cursed.

  He looked back at the girl, her slender neck now completely healed, her endless green eyes burning with life.

  ‘I have not betrayed my God,’ he said, smiling down at the miraculous woman. ‘I have saved Her.’

  Chapter 145

  Distant sounds began to penetrate the woolly numbness of Arkadian’s head: muffled shouts from urgent voices; the squeak of rubber soles on hard floors. He tried and failed to open his eyes, the lids too heavy to shift, so he lay there and listened, letting his senses warm up while the dull ache in his chest and shoulder blossomed into pain.

  He took a deep breath and concentrated all his energy on opening his eyes. His lids parted for a split second, then he screwed them back shut.

  It was bright: painfully bright. A negative image of what he had seen was now seared on his retina: a chequerboard outline of a suspended ceiling; a rail over to one side with a curtain hanging from it. He realized he was in a hospital.

  Then he remembered why.

  He lurched forward, trying to sit up, but a firm hand held him down. ‘Whoa there. .’ a male voice said. ‘You’re OK; I’m just checking your wound. What happened to you?’

  Arkadian struggled to remember. Rolled a dry tongue round his mouth. ‘Shot,’ he said eventually.

  ‘That’s for sure.’

  ‘No.’ Arkadian shook his head and instantly regretted it. Took more breaths until the bed stopped lurching beneath him. ‘Was given a shot of. . something. . Don’t know what. .’

  ‘OK. We’ll run some bloods; we might have to sedate you again before fixing you up.’

  ‘No!’ Arkadian shook his head again, the spinning less severe this time. ‘Need to call in.’ He forced his eyes back open, squinting against the glare of the emergency room. ‘Need to warn them.’

  The curtain swished open and a short, compact woman in a white coat marched in and grabbed a clipboard from the end of the trolley. ‘Sleeping beauty awakes,’ she said, the fringe of her ash blonde hair falling round her face as she read the paramedic’s notes. A badge pinned to her pocket identified her as Dr Kulin. She looked up at the wound. ‘How is it?’

  ‘Clean,’ the nurse said. ‘Still wet, but nothing major was hit. Bullet passed right through.’

  ‘Good.’ She dropped the notes back into their holder. ‘Pressure dress it and move him out. We’re going to need this space any second.’

  ‘Why?’ Arkadian asked.

  She looked puzzled. ‘Why do we need to pressure dress it? Because you’ve been shot and you’re still bleeding.’

  ‘No, why do you need the space?’

  Dr Kulin glanced down at the badge tucked into Arkadian’s belt by the paramedics. It was standard procedure. That way, when casualties from both sides of any violent encounter ended up in the same hospital, the good guys got seen to first.

  ‘There’s been an explosion. We’ve got numerous incoming. And from what I’ve heard of their injuries, Inspector, they’ll all outrank your gunshot wound.’

  ‘Where?’ Arkadian already knew the answer.

  A commotion outside snatched the doctor’s attention. ‘By the old town wall,’ she said, jerking back the curtain. ‘Close to the Citadel.’

  Arkadian caught a glimpse of a trolley rolling quickly past. On it was a man, drenched in blood, dressed exactly like the one he’d examined in the morgue two days previously.

  Arkadian closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of blood and disinfectant. He suddenly felt more tired than he had ever done. Whatever he’d hoped to prevent had already happened. He wished to God he could speak to his wife and listen to her soft voice rather than the chaos unfolding around him. He wanted to tell her he loved her, and hear her say the same. He wanted to tell her that he was OK, that she shouldn’t worry and that he’d be coming home soon. Then he thought of Liv Adamsen, and Gabriel, and the woman in the warehouse — and wondered if any of them were still alive.

  Chapter 146

  Dr Kulin followed the first trolley into an examination space and stopped short. She had covered the emergency room for upwards of ten years, but never seen anything like this. The man’s torso was covered in cuts, straight and deliberate, steadily leaking blood on to the bunched green material of the cassock that had been hastily cut away. There was so much blood he looked as though he’d been dipped in it.

  She turned to the paramedic who’d wheeled him in. ‘I thought it was an explosion?’

  ‘It was. Knocked a hole through the base of the mountain. This guy came from inside the Citadel.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘Dragged him out myself.’

  She reached down tentatively and shone a pen-light into the monk’s eye. ‘Hello. Can you hear me?’ His head lolled from side to side, making the deep cut around his neck open and close obscenely, as if it was breathing. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

  He whispered something but she didn’t catch it. She leaned closer, felt his breath on her ear as he whispered again, something that sounded like EgoSanctus. . The poor man was clearly delirious.

  ‘Did you do anything to stop the bleeding?’ she said, straightening up.

  ‘Pressure packs and a plasma drip to keep him hydrated. He just won’t stop.’

  ‘BP?’

  ‘Sixty-two over forty, and falling.’

  Not dangerously low, but near enough.

  The heart monitor beeped as a nurse stuck electrodes to his chest. It also sounded way too slow. Dr Kulin looked at the wounds again. There was no sign of clotting. Maybe he was a haemophiliac. The clamour of fresh arrivals forced a decision. ‘Five hundred IU of prothrombin and twenty mills of Vitamin K. And type him fast so we can transfuse. He’s going to bleed out if we don’t hurry.’

  She headed back through the curtain and out into the main corridor. Three more monks rolled past at speed, heading to the far end of the ward, each losing astonishing amounts of blood from wounds identical to the ones she’d just seen.

  ‘Where do you want this one?’ The paramedic’s voice snapped her back to attention. She looked down and was relieved to see it did not contain a monk. ‘Right here,’ she said, pointing to one side of the corridor; the examination booths were filling up fast and this one didn’t appear to be haemorrhaging. The paramedic steered the trolley to one side and stamped on the wheel brake.

  ‘What’s the story here?’ Dr Kulin asked, easing open the cracked, blackened visor of the motorcycle helmet and shining a light into the woman’s right eye.

  ‘Found her in the tunnel,’ the paramedic said. ‘Vitals are strong but she was unconscious when we found her and stayed that way on the ride over.’

  Dr Kulin switched her penlight to the left eye. It dilated slightly less than the right. She turned to a nurse. ‘Straight to X-ray,’ she said. ‘Possible skull fracture. Don’t remove the helmet until we know what we’re dealing with.’

  The nurse grabbed a porter and was already moving the trolley away when the entrance doors burst open and two more blood-soaked monks were wheeled in: same wounds; same massive blood loss.

  What the hell was going on?

  She followed the first into a cubicle, did a quick assessment then administered the same dose of coagulating compound. She heard another doctor hollering for five litres of O-positive from dow
n the hall. She moved to the next cubicle in a daze, battering aside the curtain as she went. Beyond it lay another surprise. Another monk, only this one wasn’t bleeding; he was standing beside a trolley, arguing with a nurse, and holding a young woman in his arms.

  ‘I’m not leaving her,’ he said.

  He had a large amount of blood on his cassock, though not nearly as much as the others. The girl on the trolley was drenched, the soak pattern suggesting massive neck trauma. Dr Kulin stepped forward and pushed down the neck of her T-shirt. The skin beneath was stained crimson, but she could see no sign of any cuts. ‘Delivery notes?’ she asked, searching for the source of the bleeding.

  ‘Vitals low but steady,’ the nurse said. ‘Blood Pressure eighty over fifty.’

  Dr Kulin frowned. It was low enough to indicate major blood loss, but she just couldn’t find the source. Maybe the blood belonged to someone else. ‘Keep her on a drip and monitor the BP.’ She smiled at the girl, seeing her properly for the first time. ‘Other than that, you seem fine.’ She was momentarily transfixed by the almost unearthly brightness of the green eyes that stared back at her, then got a grip on herself and switched her attention to the monk.

  He pulled his arm away. ‘I’m OK, really. .’

  ‘Well, you won’t mind me looking then.’ She parted the bloody, shredded sleeve of his cassock to peer at the red smeared flesh beneath. The source of his bleeding was immediately apparent, a nasty deep gash right across his wrist that had obviously been quite deep. It looked a good few days old, judging by the extent of the healing, yet the blood was fresh. ‘What happened?’ Dr Kulin asked.

  ‘It got knocked about a bit,’ he said. ‘I’ll live. But, please. Has a woman been brought in? Looks about forty. Black hair, five six?’

  Dr Kulin thought of the woman in the motorcycle helmet. ‘She’s gone to X-ray.’ The high-pitched sound of a cardiac alarm sounded somewhere behind her. ‘She’s been knocked about a bit too. But don’t worry: I think she’ll be fine.’

  Chapter 147

  Liv heard the squeak of shoes amongst the cacophony as the doctor and nurse hurried away. She also heard a thousand other sounds.

  Since Gabriel had carried her out of the Citadel, every colour, every sound and smell called to her like living things, as if she was experiencing everything for the first time.

  As they had emerged into the night from the endless, smoke-filled tunnel, and Gabriel had laid her gently down on a stretcher, she had looked up and glimpsed the new moon hanging in the sky. She’d cried when she’d seen it; it was so beautiful and fragile — and free. Yet her tears carried something other than this brimming joy; they also stung with loss. She had sought her brother, and, though the memory of exactly what she had discovered in the mountain chamber evaded her, she knew it was over, and that Samuel was gone.

  Now she was in this bright and clamorous place — so familiar and yet so strange. She could hear the sound of death in the erratic breathing of the men lying around her, and the drip of their blood.

  She felt Gabriel’s arms close around her, sensing her distress, and the citrus smell of him engulfed her, pushing aside the antiseptic taint of the emergency room and the metallic tang of blood and fear. She closed her eyes and sank into it, focusing only on him, and the sound of his heart thundering in his chest, rolling across the landscape of other sounds until all she could hear was its comforting beat. It was a heart that beat just for her, and tears rose fresh again, for this was as beautiful as the moon had seemed.

  Then another sound crept in, low and insistent, crawling at the periphery of her consciousness.

  She opened her eyes.

  A bunch of lilacs, still wrapped in cellophane, lay on a narrow shelf, amongst the thermometer holders and plug sockets, a forgotten gift for a previous occupant. Lilacs. . the state flower of New Jersey. Liv thought of home, and the life she had been living just a few days ago, and how strange that seemed to her now. The sound returned and her eye caught movement amongst the petals. A bee crawled out from the velvet depths of one blossom, hovered for a moment then disappeared into another.

  ‘What happened in there?’ Gabriel said, his voice vibrating through her body where it pressed against his.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, marvelling at the sound of her own voice. She held his question in her head, focusing on it until another memory fluttered past, fragmented and incomplete. She remembered her fear in the darkness, the tapering dagger, and her revulsion at its intended purpose. She remembered the green eyes that had stared into the depths of her soul, and divined her essential purpose. And as this memory flitted past it brought something else, whispering through the blood of the man who held her, shushing in her ear and soothing with its sound, just as the strength in his arms made her safe.

  Ku. . Shi. . kaamm. .

  The whisper spread through her, giving birth to other ancient words that flowed and pulsed with Gabriel’s heartbeat.

  KuShikaaM. .

  Clavis. .

  Namzaqu. .

  KuShikaaM. .

  Clavis. .

  Namzaqu. .

  And though she could not name the languages from which the words came, she understood them all, as if born with their knowledge, as if each was a fundamental part of her.

  She held Gabriel more tightly as the sounds filled her head, shutting out even the beating of his heart. They clustered together, forming an image in her mind, an image which finally showed Liv who she was, and what she was.

  ‘KuShikaaM. .’ the Sacrament had called her.

  KuShikaaM. .

  The Key. .

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: fbd-5fe622-0a10-7b4c-f4a7-389c-0c39-12e0a9

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 06.05.2012

  Created using: calibre 0.8.50, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.3 software

  Document authors :

  Unknown

  About

  This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.

  (This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)

  Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.

  (Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)

  http://www.fb2epub.net

  https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/