Heartland tcos-2

by Mark Teppo

  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."

  "Sacre-C?ur," 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.

  "Really?"

  She favored me with the sort of smile a patient parent gives their underperforming child.

  "Right," I said, straightening up. I rested my hands-both of them-on the rim of the basin. "Are you ready to do this?"

  Her smile faltered slightly, and she swallowed. "Yes."

  Vivienne was going to take all three spirits from me. There were a number of ways this exchange could go horribly wrong, not the least of which was me accidentally breaking her spirit. But Vivienne had argued if anyone was going to be put at risk, it was going to be her. And only her. She would take all three, and if she det
ermined that she could pass them on to other daughters, she would consider it.

  I hadn't mentioned that I doubted they would stay very long. I had a feeling the construction of the Chorus was what had enabled the Architects to stick around. Without that web, they would fade into the subconscious of whomever held them. Whether or not Vivienne kept what knowledge they still had was up to her. And them, I suppose.

  I couldn't quite tell, but I had the feeling that Philippe wasn't as pissed about this as I had thought he would be. Lafoutain welcomed the transfer, and the impression I got from Cristobel was that the arrangement was more than satisfactory. Philippe was, I think, still reserving judgment. On both me and his fellow Architects.

  Or not. For all I knew, we were still unwinding along the path he had laid out for us. I didn't know anymore, and I think-more than anything-that was all he had wanted from me. All his obfuscation had only been intended to keep me from doing what I thought he wanted me to do. You will be your own agent; that is all you will ever be.

  Sometimes, what he said is what he meant. Which only makes everything he says that much more convoluted.

  Vivienne put her hands on the edge of the basin as well, and stood there expectantly, waiting for something to happen. I took a few slow breaths-in through the nose, out through my mouth-until she caught the hint and started to mirror me. Once we synced up with the breathing, I began to slow them down, making each exhalation last a little longer; and with each inhalation, I took in a little more of the light in the room. Each time, a little more of her innocence died; each time, we got closer and closer to the ragged edge of the Abyss.

  With each cycle, I broke a little more of her mental defenses down, and the change was so gradual, so incremental, that by the time she realized the Chorus was in her head-what I know, I pass to you; what you know, passes to me; Father, daughter, Holy Spirit; let these secrets be revealed-we were already done.