by Mark Teppo
"Don't make this metaphysical," I said, realizing that sentiment applied to my line of thinking as well. Keep it concrete. "I'm talking about the very specific mechanics of shaping events and people to your ends. You're just like Philippe: whispering what we want to hear; suggesting what we already know, but can't bring ourselves to want. The only difference between you two is that he was better at it than you. Even with your special glasses."
Husserl laughed. "Better than me? You think my actions are driven by jealousy, by some vague psychological need?"
"Are they?"
"Why do you think Philippe and I are at odds? How do you know this course of events isn't something that we planned together?"
"You—" And I stopped. Wouldn't that make sense? Wouldn't that explain why Philippe hadn't killed him. What about the others? Cristobel had accepted his sacrifice eagerly; and Antoine, burned by my actions in Ravensdale, had suffered that pain in order to receive his reward. Why couldn't Husserl's actions be considered in the same light? Who was to say that they weren't all so aware of the big picture that a sacrifice of the flesh was but a minor token if it moved the plan forward. Hadn't Husserl done exactly that when he had called me at the Archives, ostensibly from Tevvys' phone? He had claimed to have done so at my request, but I didn't know that Moreau had delivered that message any more than I knew how Husserl had gotten my phone number. What had that conversation accomplished? He had told me I was a singularity, a point beyond which no future was certain, and that realization had unlocked an awareness of the Hierarch's grand plan. He had moved Philippe's design forward in a manner that suggested he was aware of some of the details of that vision.
But this was the lie he wanted me to believe. A twist of logic that seemed so obvious and so natural, but when I looked at it more closely, it fell apart. So Husserl was privy to Philippe's plan, and Philippe knew that Husserl knew. But that didn't tell me who was ultimately playing whom. Husserl had as much opportunity—if not more—than any of the Architects. If he could read the future, then I would have been disappointed if he hadn't been able to anticipate what was coming. It would be easy to claim ownership of the plan now as I was the only one who could readily contradict him. Control didn't mean compliance or agreement. It simply meant knowledge.
Those who understand the big picture get to fine-tune the small details. One of the truisms of the Watchers. If you Know, you can act. If Husserl Knew, then why couldn't this all be an act? A misdirection for my benefit?
Which circled us back to the basic question: Why?
I put my hands flat against the floor, and the Chorus remarked on the rhythm of ley energy storming beneath me. Like the vibrations from the DJ's record, back at Batofar. A subsonic vibration, a confusion of echoes. In my own head, the same sort of mixture—too many histories, too many divergent desires. It became difficult to parse the "why?" out of the noise.
"Why did you call me when I was at the Archives?"
Stalling. Trying to think. Trying to put more of the pieces together.
"I've already told you."
"I don't believe it was just to tell me that I was the axis around which all of this turned. I would have figured that out eventually. You forced the issue, and you revealed yourself. I didn't know your involvement prior to that call. Why did you give away that advantage?"
"It confuses you, doesn't it? That we might not be enemies. That we might be working toward the same goal."
"What goal? Coronation?"
"It is the inevitable outcome of this course. A new Hierarch will be Crowned."
"And you think I should be showing more enthusiasm about giving you that opportunity."
"I know you will."
I shifted my weight forward and Husserl didn't seem bothered by the shift in my position. I considered the distance between us, and the obstacles: Antoine, Henri, the blood, Charles . . .
"Where's Marielle?" I realized.
He smiled, a motion made all the more sinister by the fact that no lines developed on his face. He really did have the skin of an infant. "That's a better question."
I repeated it.
Husserl inhaled deeply, like a hound scenting the approach of rain. "I won't try to convince you that she came willingly, because you won't believe me, so I will say that she is in my care, and will remain so until Coronation. At which time, I will put a knife into her chest and cut her heart out."
Her heart.
On the floor beside me, the tarot card twitched, the wet smear of ink and blood solidifying into a concrete picture. Hearing some echo in Husserl's words, I listened to the Chorus for a moment as I watched the picture on the card become clear. A woman holding up a cup, and rising out of the frame, only his crossed feet and the wide pole upon which he was crucified visible, was the Martyr. It was identical to the watercolor I had seen at the Chapel of Glass, though a close-up detail. The crucified man's flaming heart wasn't visible. But the cup was.
Philippe's spirit giving me a nudge, trying to bridge a gap and make a connection. Drink from this vessel. The Ace of Cups; I had drawn it on the chart of the Architects, an unconscious doodle while Vivienne had been mesmerizing me. Words and tongues; tell me what ails you? Earlier, at Batofar, I had sipped from a cup Marielle had given me containing a concoction that had driven out the poison in my system. But was that all it had done? Had it created some other connection?
Her hips moving, inviting me to try again. In the alcove on Batofar, the physical connection. I had been caught up in the moment, in the sensation of being alive and whole again, and I hadn't been paying close enough attention. Keys and locks. Opening doors and crossing thresholds; connections made across disparate spaces. Marielle hadn't been fucking me. She had been trying to extract something from me during the sex. She had tried to break open some mystery hidden within my heart. What I say and what I mean are never the same.
What had she tried to take?
"You won't harm her," I said.
His smile remained. "You are guessing, calling my bluff."
"No, I know you're lying."
"And how do you know that?"
"Because if you wanted to kill her, you'd have done so already."
He nodded. "Yes, in much the same way I would have cut your throat while you were busy dreaming that petty little dream of yours if that is what I had wanted."
"Yes."
"Very good. You are learning to think." He leaned on his cane, the light flashing on his glasses. "If I haven't killed you, then I must want something."
"I'm guessing you do. Why don't you tell me?"
"The Spear, M. Markham. It and the Holy Grail are required for the Coronation ceremony."
I glanced at the solid floor, and then at the circular indentation left by my fist. "Ah," I said, getting it. "And I suppose she is the carrot by which you will entice me to retrieve the Spear for you."
"Precisely. The sisters of the Archives will only release the Grail when the Spear has been retrieved."
The ground trembled. It felt almost like an aftershock of an earthquake, the faint vibration that seemed like nothing more than the sort of rumble caused by a heavy truck downshifting on the road outside, but as we were far from any major roadway, that was hardly the case. Something else had shifted.
"The Coronation was supposed to have taken place at dawn this morning," Husserl said, seemingly indifferent to the tremor. "The first day of spring. But that was not to be, it would seem. The sun is already in the sky, and the Land is troubled by the lack of a Hierarch. We will have one more chance tomorrow to greet the sun."
The ground trembled again, more obviously this time, and I scrambled to my feet.
"What's going on?" I demanded.
"The Architect Spiertz." Husserl tapped his cane against the floor. "He, too, wants the Spear."
The Chorus tried to get a reading, but couldn't sense anything through the crawling web of etheric energy in the rock. "Where is he?" I asked, even though I had a bad feeling about the answer.
"Underground," Husserl said. "Though I believe he is trying to break out."
XXV
The next tremor was strong enough to make me stumble, and I lurched against the nearby wall for support. By the time I recovered, Husserl had retreated from the room. It was a good idea; Chapelle Notre-Dame-sous-Terre was directly under the nave of the main cathedral. There was a lot of masonry overhead that I wasn't too sure was built to withstand a major earthquake. It would pancake this chamber should it all come down. As I passed the mess of Henri's body, the Chorus registered a stuttering rhythm in Antoine's chest.
I considered not stopping for a second. Keep on going. Follow Husserl. Get the fuck out of this deathtrap before the ceiling comes down. Before whatever is down in the grotto gets out.
Antoine moaned as he rolled onto his back, ribbons of magick suddenly erupting out of his body and wrapping themselves around his severed arm. He gradually focused on his surroundings and moved further away from the sticky puddle around Henri's decapitated body. Chiding myself for the decision, I helped him across the floor until he could lean against the wall.
"Quite the mess," he whispered. His hair was stiff and a large bloodstain covered the right side of his head and neck.
"Effective, though," I said. "We won; they didn't."
He surveyed his arm, a rueful expression tightening his mouth. "At what cost?" he muttered. The tightness held as his magick grew sharper and more focused, binding off his arm. When I had cut off his hand with the sword, I had only taken a little bit above the wrist, but now everything below his elbow was gone. Prior to the whiteout of the ley storm, he had managed to seal the wound with a blocking spell that had held during his unconsciousness, but now he was building a better solution. It was fascinating to watch him work as I had never been very good at healing magick. Chorus-sight revealed a profusion of etheric strands weaving about his stump. When I was flush with soul energy, I could undo massive trauma, but this fine detail work was the sort of skill I hadn't learned yet.
However, there were other pressing matters at hand. "We can't stay here," I said, tearing myself away from his work.
He grimaced as my words interrupted his concentration. A strand of magick whipped back like a wild tentacle and he neatly severed it near the central mass of squirming lines with a thought. It flew away, disintegrating into ambient dust.
"It's Spiertz," I said.
More strands broke free, and with a shudder, Antoine aborted his spell, holding all the strands in place. He squinted at me, licking his dry lips as he tried to focus on my words. "What?"
"Spiertz," I repeated. "He's still alive. Apparently."
Antoine stared at me dumbly. "That is not possible," he said slowly. "I killed him." He looked past me, turning his attention to the chapel. "Down in the grotto beneath the altar," he continued. "He attacked me as I was retrieving the Spear."
Down in the grotto.
"Where did you kill him?" I asked, wanting to be sure. Wanting to hear him say it again.
"Down there," Antoine said, his eyes darkening as he looked at me again. Wondering why I was so dense. Why I didn't know what he was talking about.
I spelled it out for him. "What happened to his body?" I asked.
Pain crossed his face, and he put his left hand over the end of his stump. His magick wavered, and I noticed he wasn't wearing the signet ring.
"It exploded," he said. "When I stabbed him with the Spear. Some sort of . . . " He trailed off, lost in memory that seemed to be getting away from him.
A soul lock. "Yeah," I said. "I know what it was."
My body clenched, the Chorus reacting to a psychic detonation below us. The ground shook at nearly the same instant, and a shower of dust cascaded from the ceiling. Something fell over nearby with a loud crash. Antoine was on his feet instantly, an instinctive reaction kicking in and driving him upright. Wincing at the pain still rattling around my skull, I stood up too. Grabbing his good arm, I hauled him toward the door.
"You can tell me the story in a little while," I said. "But we can't stay underground."
Antoine's silver cap was still in the floor, the Chorus reminded me, as was the Spear. We would be leaving both behind.
Later, I thought. We can't stay.
The rock moaned beneath us as we fled from the chapel.
I got the story out of Antoine in fits and spurts, as if the telling of it revealed some secret shame he was loath to give life to by sharing. We hurried through the maze of vaults and hallways, working upward toward the top floor of the Merveille where the rectory and the cloister lay, where we'd be able to stand on the western porch of the church and have nothing over our heads.
He had been at Batofar, watching Marielle and me, and after she had given me the potion and we had lost ourselves on the dance floor, he had left. He knew of the relationship between the ring and the key and had driven out to Mont-Saint-Michel to retrieve the Spear. It had been simple enough to slip into the chapel undetected—and he had even set up a spell surrounding the Chapelle Notre-Dame-sous-Terre to keep any wondering priests at bay—and he had invoked the power of the key, unlocking the grotto. It had been filled with water—how full? I had interrupted to ask; a little more than half, he thought—and the Spear was imbedded in the chest of the statue. When he had pulled the Spear out, the water had started to drain.
When he made his way out of the hole, Spiertz had been waiting for him.
I didn't get the sense that Antoine had been surprised by the ambush; in fact, I suspect he knew the Architect was lying in wait for him. What Antoine didn't say, but which came across clearly enough in his tone, was how Spiertz had bested him magickally. Spiertz had dropped the hammer on Antoine fairly hard, and Antoine had been forced to retreat to the grotto. Spiertz had come after him, and tapping the energy in the surrounding rock more readily, Spiertz had been nearly impervious to any of Antoine's attacks.
Nearly.
One chink in the armor is all it ever takes. One missing link. One crack in an otherwise unblemished surface. Antoine had found that crack and had driven the Spear into it.
"He laughed," Antoine said, holding his stump and leaning against the wall of the last stairway. "He thanked me for setting him free, and then he exploded." He shook his head. "It was like the whole world was running away from me, my flesh included. Everything was blown back—quickly—and I barely managed to hang on to my sanity as his—what did you call it?—his soul lock detonated."
Spiertz was the one who had been bound to the strike team at the Chapel of Glass. It had been a geomantic spell after all. Sometimes the obvious choice is the right one. He had bound a lock to his soul too, though what he used as an energy source was unknown. The gunmen had been tied to him, and the fury of their detonation was linked to Spiertz's Will. What had he used to power his own soul lock?
And why had he thanked Antoine?
We staggered out into the open air. The sky was patchy with clouds, and the morning light colored them rose and gold. Any other morning, I would have stopped to admire the view to the west—the aquamarine and indigo texture of the ocean, the glittering play of sunlight along the curve of the waves as they approached the French coast—but this morning, there were other concerns.
The tremors were coming more quickly now, like rapidly approaching thunder, and each impact rattled the island. Distantly, we heard the sound of security alarms and the occasional scream. The thick silence that had cloaked the island had been shattered by the ley storm, and in the aftermath of the tsunami, the world was waking up again. Waking up into a geological nightmare.
Antoine squinted up at the spires of the cathedral. The gold angel of Michael atop the tallest spire appeared to be on fire, but it was only a trick of the light. "I killed his flesh," he said. "When I split his heart with the Spear, I only killed his flesh. His soul was still intact."
I nodded. "Accepting for a minute that Husserl isn't lying to me, that would seem to be the case," I said, recalling the crawl
ing paranoia I had felt in the grotto. The sensation that someone had been there with us. Someone who I hadn't been able to perceive. But the Chorus should have been able to spot him. Bereft of body, his soul should have stood out—even against the furious static of the walls. So where had he been?
In the statue, Cristobel suggested. He turned the grotto into a focus. The soul lock was a way to cause a radical influx of potential energy. He hid at the nexus of the power and waited for the wave to come back.
It made sense. If we hadn't shown up, the grotto would have stayed open and the energy would have more readily flowed into the chamber below. Without Philippe's wards in place, the whole pit was nothing more than a reservoir waiting to be filled.
Spiertz had thanked Antoine, and I finally realized why. Physical death had enabled the Mason to become something else. Something not bound by the flesh. Something . . .
" . . . elemental," I whispered.
I became aware of a resonance that wasn't coming from the ground beneath us, but a vibration in the air around us. The storm had passed, but the atmospheric pressure remained.
"He's part of the Land now," I said. "Becoming one with Mont Tombe."
"Is that all?" Antoine asked, as if it was nothing more than a minor detail.
"So why does he need the Spear?"
Antoine sighed, and his shoulders hunched unconsciously, tightening in anticipation of an oncoming blow. I felt it too. "I guess we can ask him," he said.
The western façade of the church exploded.
XXVI
I got in front of Antoine, and the peacock shield of the Chorus flinched like a hundred eyes blinking in shock as masonry and granite hurled across the open expanse of the porch. The eruption was mainly directed upward, the result of a massive object throwing itself toward the sky, but there were still quite a few pieces that came straight at us. A cloud of grit billowed out from the broken church as one of the alcoves collapsed, and it was several long moments before we could see clearly.
