Heartland-The Second Book of the Codex of Souls

by Mark Teppo

  The dust comes upon us when there is no water, when we have lost ourselves in a desert of our own creation. Jesus wandered in the wilderness for forty days, according to the stories, where he was tempted by the Devil. All the temptations pursuant to the flesh. Not the Will. Not the spark. The Devil showed Jesus the desiccated flesh of the world, all the grains of sand running through his fingers, and said: This is all that you are, and all that you will be; why will you not take water from me and make clay from this dust?

  I am not a Creator, Jesus said to the Devil. I am a Witness to creation.

  The Chorus, emboldened by my focus, sparked through the lock of the door, and it swung open with a groan of ancient hinges. The spark of light fell into the room beyond, revealing the detritus of forgotten maintenance equipment.

  A subbasement of Tour Montparnasse.

  I gave the Chorus a new directive, and they flew out of my head, silver streamers penetrating the walls. Find a working elevator.

  I needed to go back to the Archives.

  I pushed the zero on the elevator keypad, and kept pushing it until the internal speaker in the car crackled to life.

  "Why are you here?" Vivienne asked.

  The same question again. The ritual started anew.

  I held up the Hanged Man card so that the security camera could see it.

  She didn't answer, but the light turned green on the keypad and the elevator started to ascend.

  I reviewed the five cards as the elevator ascended, going over the interpretation one last time. Making sure I was ready to accept it. The Chorus started to boil in my head, the spirits of the Architects growing agitated as they became aware of my decision. I held them all down with a clamp of my Will. I had controlled worse in my head for a lot longer. They were smarter than me, assuredly, but I was their master now. They bound themselves to me with their choice, and now they would be bound by mine.

  They had thought I would have been more malleable, more pliable, especially after losing the Qliphotic influence. I would have been bereft of purpose, of direction. I would have been eager to be given new orders. I should have been an easy tool to manipulate.

  The elevator sang its arrival.

  The wall of the Archives was translucent, shot through with silver threads, and beyond the barrier, Vivienne and Nuriye waited. Behind them, hidden in the shadows like the faded drawings on old temple walls, were other figures, the other archivists. The other daughters. My heart ran a little faster at the sight of them. They knew something was going to happen; they were hanging on the cusp of possibility. Like Crowley's Moon. That moment prior to transformation. All is possible; nothing is true. What comes next is not preordained, not scripted, not anticipated. What happens is the result of what is said and done in the next few moments.

  You See it, Michael, it becomes so; that is the key to the ego of the Moon.

  I approached the border between the external world and the secretum sanctorum of the Archives. I approached the threshold that separated the Grail Castle from the mundane world, that separated the daughters of Mnemosyne from the sons of Light.

  "The Hanged Man," I said, showing them the card. "He's the Fisher King. The wounded magus who is the representative of the Land. Is that his role?"

  After a moment of silence, Vivienne responded. "He is the spirit of the Land." Her voice carried the gravitas of ritual.

  What happens next is all that mattered. What will be done will be done.

  Juggling the cards, I showed her the Emperor. "And his role?"

  "He is the guardian of the Land."

  "They are the same, aren't they? Right now, it is the Hanged Man who is waiting to be recognized. He cannot become the Emperor until he is healed. That's what the Grail is for, isn't it? Every year, the Hierarch must renew his promise to the Land with the Grail. Every year, during the winter, he becomes the Hanged Man, and on the first day of spring, he is resurrected and reborn as the Emperor."

  She nodded.

  I dropped those cards, and held up the Knight of Cups. After a second, I reversed him. "You let me fall, because I didn't understand my role." When she didn't say anything, I shrugged. "It's all right. I get it. We're all trapped in our own cycles." Nuriye stirred at my words, glancing at Vivienne.

  "Does she know?" I asked.

  "Do I know what?" Nuriye inquired.

  "The price exacted from your sister for your freedom." I paused. "Or is that a promise of freedom?" She didn't answer. "It hasn't happened yet, has it?" I asked. "You still need to be good in order to get your reward, don't you? Which one is it? Husserl or Antoine?"

  Vivienne laughed. "You still don't understand, do you?"

  I glanced at the Knight. "I guess I don't." I dropped him, and showed her the Ten of Cups. "Family," I said, and her face hardened.

  Then again, maybe I do.

  I dropped the Ten, and watched it flutter to the floor. I had one card left. One intuitive leap to make.

  "I want to make a deal," I said.

  "A deal?" Vivienne was incredulous. This wasn't part of the ritual. "What do you have to offer? It's over, M. Markham. The Crown has been given and received."

  I glanced at the other women watching. "Has it?" I asked. The Chorus touched the ley and rebounded from the throbbing tension in the etheric channel. Blockage. The whole world outside was waiting, still caught on the cusp between night and day.

  Antoine and I hadn't gotten the Spear until after dawn, and as a result, the Coronation hadn't happened. Nor had Antoine been able to accomplish it with the Grail after I had gotten it from Vivienne. We were all still waiting for the right time. The right moment.

  "They're still waiting," I said. "Still waiting for dawn. That sounds to me like there is still time. Time enough to hear what I have to offer."

  She scoffed. "You have nothing to offer. The outcome of the Coronation has already been Seen. What can you do to change that?"

  "That's a very good question," I said. "I seem to remember you saying how you hated unanswerable questions. This time, though, I do know the answer to your question. In fact, let's not bother with that one, since I know the answer. Let's ask a different one instead." I nodded at the others. "Do you speak for all of them, when I ask you, Chief Librarian of the Imprisoned Sisters, would you rather wait until dawn to find out if the promises made to you are going to be kept, or would you rather make your own choice? Would you rather find your own path to freedom?"

  Her mouth opened and closed several times before words came out. "You're a lunatic," she said. "Your mind has been shattered. You have lost too much blood, and don't have enough sense to die."

  "Probably," I said as I held up the last card. "But I've got one card left."

  "The Valet of Cups? What can that possibly signify?"

  I spelled it out for her. "I have the spirit of the Hierarch in my head. A lot of his arcane knowledge, too. I was supposed to pass on what is in my head to whoever was Crowned. You can have all of it instead, in exchange for some assistance."

  Vivienne was too stunned to say anything, and I heard a buzz of voices from the other sisters. Before Vivienne could tell them to be quiet, or even find her voice to admonish them, Nuriye spoke the all-important words. The ones that told me the answer to my question.

  "What sort of assistance?"

  "I need to crash the party. Before dawn."

  "That answer is a non-answer. You must offer us some specifics if we are to properly judge the value of what you offer."

  I went down the list. "I need a flight circle. From the roof of this building. Targeted to the roof wherever they are doing the ceremony." I laughed. "I only made Journeyman, remember. I don't even know where the ritual takes place."

  "Sacré-Cœur," Nuriye said. "On the hill."

  Of course. I should have known. It was in the background during my visitation to the apartment where Marielle and I had spent New Year's Day. The vision that was both memory and precognition, brought on by the etheric storm at Mont-Saint-Michel.


  Vivienne whirled on the other woman, who stood her ground. "What?" she said with a shrug. "In the shape he is in? He wouldn't make it past the first rank. Telling him gives him nothing of value." Nuriye raised her eyebrow at me. "But the flight circle is a matter of conveyance, a way of easing your journey. Hardly a worthy trade for the Hierarch's knowledge."

  "True," I admitted.

  "If you only made Journeyman, I doubt you have the skill to inscribe one properly; plus, you need someone to anchor it for you, to keep the target aligned."

  "Yes," I said, pretending that I knew the details of how the circle worked. It coincided with my plan anyway.

  "But how do you suggest we help you with that? We cannot leave the Archives." Even as she asked the question, I could tell Nuriye got it. She knew what I was suggesting.

  "I guess I'd have to give you the tools to let yourselves out, wouldn't I?"

  Nuriye laughed as Vivienne's face grew dark with anger. "You go too far—" she started, but Nuriye cut her off with a stroke of her hand.

  "I want to hear what he has to say, sister. He did not come back from the hole the Protector threw him into just to toy with us." She directed her attention at me. "But tread carefully, solute frater. We are not caged animals. You cannot taunt us with impunity. Speak your offer plainly."

  "I'll give you what I have in my head in exchange for whatever aid I need, and I acknowledge that part of that assistance will require you to be freed from your duties as keepers of the Archives."

  "You can't release us," Vivienne ground out. "Only the Hierarch can do that. And until one is Crowned, there is no one who can release—"

  "Not even your father?" I interrupted. The Hierarch may have been the one who could bring down the wards that kept them here, but I was willing to bet that Lafoutain—as Preceptor in charge of the Archives—knew as much as any man could about how the wards were maintained.

  Her face went rigid, a mask of frozen emotion. I had just stabbed her, and she was trying to not show how deeply my jab had gone.

  "I need to get to the Coronation," I said, listing the items on my fingers. "I need to get past the host of Watchers that are, obviously, standing guard to keep soluti fratres such as myself out."

  "True," Nuriye acknowledged. "That's two." She noticed that I was holding the Valet of Cups with two fingers. With two raised, there was one left. "What's the last thing?"

  "A pair of swords," I said.

  "Swords?" she echoed.

  I nodded. "All things must end the way they began. This started with a duel under the bridge five years ago. A duel over a woman. It's going to end the same way."

  "A list of three," Nuriye said, with a curt nod. "In exchange for the knowledge of the Hierarch." She glanced at Vivienne and then at the other sisters. "We will have to consider your offer. It is a dangerous thing you ask of us, freedom or no." She returned her gaze to me. "I am not so stupid to think that the only thing you want is revenge against your rival. If we were to provide you access to the Coronation, we would be acting in opposition to the entire rank. We must consider whether the knowledge of one man is worth the wrath of all his brothers."

  "I said that I would give you everything in my head," I said. "I've got more than one Architect up there. The Hierarch, the Visionary, and—" I looked at Vivienne. "—your father."

  It was more than she deserved for what she had done to me, but I was past that now. My terms. Not hers. Not Philippe's. Not Marielle's. This is what I offer you. This is how we embrace the future.

  "There is no need to consider this offer. I accept these terms, and the responsibility that comes with them," she said, and her voice broke.

  The wall came down.

  XXXIV

  It turned out to be more than three things, in the end. Nuriye let it slide. The daughters of Mnemosyne were still getting a deal. In addition to the circle and the swords, I also asked for a corner in which to lie down for a few hours, some medical attention, and a new hand. Antoine was the better swordsman, and even though he was down a hand too, he had had five years to learn how to fight left-handed. If there was going to be a handicap, I wanted it to be in my favor.

  I begged off on the transfer of the Architects for a few hours too, even though they were howling in my head. A slender daughter named Lusina brought me to one of the outer offices, and had me lie down on the leather couch in the room. With the lights off in the room, I concentrated on my breathing while she pushed and pulled ley energy through me, knitting bone and repairing flesh. She managed to apply a web of scabrous tissue to cover the wound made by the Spear, and although she couldn't do anything for my missing hand, she accelerated growth in the stump until it was a knot of scar tissue. Good enough.

  Finally, she laid her hands on my forehead, quelling the restlessness in the Chorus, and for a little while, I slept.

  When I woke, the sky was still dark, occluded with thick clouds. The Chorus, somewhat resigned to the fate in store for certain of their members, responded to my commands. They touched the ley, and felt the swollen frustration of the Akashic Weave. Dawn was only a few hours away, but you'd never know from the ambient light in the sky. The clouds were too thick, there was rain in the air, and the atmosphere around Paris was turgid with denial. The sun was going to break through the cloud cover when it rose, and if there wasn't a proper representative waiting to receive the blessing of the Land, the Weave was going to tear, and the grid was going to feel it. The psychic quake that had hit Mont-Saint-Michel was going to seem like hitting a bump in the road with your car in comparison.

  The Watchers were going to be there. No question about that. Getting in on the party was going to be the best trick of my life.

  The door to the room opened and Nuriye came in, carrying two wooden cases. She put one down on the floor beside the couch and set the other one on the seat next to me.

  "Did you sleep?" she asked.

  "Some," I replied. "Enough, I suppose."

  A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Never enough, is it?"

  I shook my head.

  "Vivienne is almost ready for you," she said. "But first, let us deal with your hand." She opened the latch on the case and lifted the lid.

  The gauntlet lay in a velvet-lined casing. It was Renaissance-era, mid-sixteenth century, Italian by the looks of it. Two cuffs, six plates to the knuckle-plate, and the finger sleeves were solid pieces out to rounded caps. Silver and gold pieces, hand-etched with astrological symbols. The real surprise was the palm. Most gauntlets are metal overlays to leather gloves, attached via leather loops or ties to a pair of thin gloves. This pair had a hinged piece of silver that covered the palm as well, a piece that was covered with chiromantic markings.

  "What is this?" I asked Nuriye. I caught sight of a tiny sigil in the bottom corner of the palm plate. It was the artisan mark of a well-known Italian armorer. "Caremolo Modrone?"

  She nodded. "One of a kind. Built for a client who was fascinated by John ab Indagine's Introductiones Apotelesmaticae. The sixteenth-century bible on palm reading."

  She picked up Cristobel's rosary from where Lusina had left it beside the couch as I had dropped off to sleep, and stroked the ball with two fingers while whispering to it. It quivered in her hand, but didn't trigger; she carefully fed it through the cuff of the gauntlet until it rested on the inside of the silver palm. She said one more word and the metal tines sprang out of the sphere, and with a metallic ring, the newly formed crucifix anchored itself inside the glove.

  More words flowed from her lips and the Chorus tingled as they felt her magick. She stroked the beaded tail of the rosary, and violet light limned the black beads. When she wrapped the strand of beads around the cuff of the gauntlet, they stuck to the silver and gold plates. The whole hand started to shimmer with a violet light, and when she ran out of beads, she slipped the cuff over my newly healed stump. Wrapping her hands around both the cuff and my wrist, she squeezed, and the thousand pinpricks of her magick intensified for a
moment and then vanished.

  "Try it," she said as she removed her hands.

  With some effort, I could make the hand open and close.

  "You won't be doing needlepoint or brain surgery," she said. "But you can hold a sword." She smiled. "Or make a fist and hit someone."

  "That'll do just fine."

  "I thought it might." She patted the other case on the floor. "Speaking of swords . . . "

  "Have I mentioned how much I'm enjoying working with you instead of against you?" I asked.

  Nuriye cocked her head to the side as she turned the sword case around and flicked open the latches. "Don't get too comfortable," she warned.

  Like the gauntlet, the swords lay on velvet-wrapped cushions. They were beautiful blades, and my heart leaped into my mouth at the sight of them.

  I stammered something incoherent, possibly something about not being worthy of the blades, and Nuriye laughed. "You're not," she said, "Which is why I expect you to bring them back."

  That made me blush, that vote of confidence. It was the nicest thing someone had said to me in some time. Funny how that sort of thing can spin your world so readily.

  "Thanks," I said.

  Nuriye nodded and shut the case. "Thank you, Lightbreaker. Your curse is about to become a gift to others. That may be the finest choice you ever make." She bowed her head, and the Chorus—for once—was completely silent.

  The tiny room that had held the Grail seemed darker and smaller without the presence of the Cup, but there was a fine radiance gleaming from the portraits on the wall. Each of the figures was outlined in a luminescent halo, a dusty glow like the sort of iridescence found on fungal growths in deep caves.

  Vivienne had changed into ceremonial robes, a simple frock of white and silver that left her arms bare. Her hair was down, cascading like a river of gold down her back, and on the inside of either arm were tattoos of stars. Constellations of her own invention, star charts for realms fixed in her imagination.

  She stood next to the basin, and it was filled with something other than water now. Shiny, and less fluid than water, but not as stiff as Jell-O. "Aqua vitae," she said as I peered at the surface of the liquid.