"Nor should you," I heard a voice from the other side of the crystal room call.
Raziel turned, and my point of view followed along behind.
On the far side of the room, standing against the burning wall, was another messenger. At first I thought it was Sammael, come again to tempt Raziel to the revolt, but then I realized that this was another, kinder messenger. This was Thelesis, who had dominion over Free Will.
"What would you of me, O Messenger of Free Will?" asked Raziel, crossing the room to where the other stood.
"You have made a decision, and it is my purview to oversee it," answered Thelesis.
"Am I to be punished?" asked Raziel. "Are you to report my misdeed to the hosts, and witness to the Almighty of my transgression? For choosing a course counter to the will of our Lord?"
"Hardly, Beloved Messenger of Mysteries," answered Thelesis. "I have come to join you." A slight smile played on the messenger's face, the most beautiful and perfect expression I had ever seen.
Looking on the two together, I understood why Thelesis had come, and what need Raziel would have for the Messenger of Free Will. If any who dwelt in the Crystal City would agree with Raziel's view of the divine plan, I realized, it would be Thelesis. Free will, in Raziel's view, would become in the World a lie, a sham, a pretense for the celestial chess game that would play itself out between the armies of the Name and the armies of the Adversary. The two powers would vie for the attention and loyalties of the creatures of the World, and in doing so would deny them the true freedom to choose their fate. Coerced one way or another, through plans they would never glimpse or guess at, the creatures of the World would be little more than pawns in the game of forces beyond their reach. In Raziel's eyes, the risk that they would never know the love of the Almighty was too great. The rules of the game would have to be changed. And for that, Raziel would need the help of just one other messenger. Raziel would need the help of Free Will.
Raziel smiled in return and took Thelesis's hand in a firm grip.
"Then let us leave," said Raziel, stepping forward. "Let us leave the hosts and the city and the coming war behind and find our way somewhere beyond the schemes of the Name."
"Let us leave," agreed Thelesis.
The messengers drew closer together, rising slightly in the air. They turned slightly, hand in hand, and vanished from sight without a sound.
Blink.
Blink again, and the messengers were floating in a formless void, hands still clasped together.
The void was Kaos.
Kaos, the primordial absence of life, of heat, of light, against which the city of crystal hung like a diamond against black velvet. It was empty and vast, and it was the new home of Raziel and Thelesis.
The two messengers, hanging motionless in the void, waited for the war to begin. From their vantage point they could look upon the home of the messengers, where even now I could see flashes of light spearing out into the darkness. The revolt had begun, Sammael leading the revolutionary faction in its charge. The Name's forces, led by the Messenger of the Name, Michael, would be repelling the attack, taking heavy casualties, but in the end driving Sammael and the others from the Crystal City.
From far across the void, Raziel and Thelesis saw their sibling messengers falling, pouring like a cascade of burning stars from the city of crystal out into the darkness. Forever they seemed to fall, through the timeless void, until they reached at last the place appointed for them, the dark mirror of the Crystal City: the Grave.
The Two, Raziel and Thelesis, watched all of this without comment, neither wanting to be the first to speak. In silence they watched the revolt, the progress of the war, the losers' fall and their inevitable end. Not until it was done, and the city of crystal returned to normal, the dark valleys of the Grave finding their final shape, did Raziel speak.
"The war is through," the Messenger of Secrets said. "Now the game has begun."
The two messengers turned their faces away from the Name, and for the first time cast their gazes upon the World, hovering in the Void.
From their vantage point, the whole of the World could be seen at once, both physically and temporally – the full reach of the universe, galaxies without number and distances stretching out so far they bent back upon themselves. And not just Space, but Time, a function of the World which Raziel and Thelesis had never before experienced, was also laid out for them. The two messengers could see all of the ever-branching paths, from the whitehot beginnings with the first cries of the World's birth to the final frigid echoes of its death rattle.
Taken as a whole, it looked like nothing so much as a brilliant glass globe in which swirled figures of light and shadow that danced faster than the eye could imagine. The patterns changed as I watched, again and again, but one theme was constant throughout. The images spiraled, always spiraling, like planets in their orbits, turning in their course as worlds were born and died, as whole epochs of civilization waxed and waned.
Seeing this, and all that would happen, Raziel knew it had done right. In the Crystal City, the messengers, their faces turned always to their creator, even when away doing Its work, were denied Its vision, and so to them the plan remained ineffable. To the Messengers of Mysteries and of Free Will, though, it was all very plain; they saw the scheme, and what they had to do.
Better to understand the World, and to be accustomed to the pitch and yaw of Space and Time, to Gravity and the other Laws, the Two created for themselves another world, set off in the void, as identical to the real world as they could make it. It was the same as the World, in more ways that not, but it was empty of life; of the trackless, almost infinite expanses of their boundless reality; only that part in which Raziel or Thelesis moved knew life.
And I watched as they introduced into their notional realm, this Otherworld, the same Laws that govern the World, or rather that the World itself lays down. There, in their Otherworld, feeling gravity's pull and the seconds swirling past, the Two waited and watched the World.
Denied the panoramic view of the far void, they saw history now as it happened. The Earth cooled, its waters collected into seas and oceans, the hot belly belching up mountains. They watched the first life emerge, tentatively, testing the World as a child tests the water in a spring lake with a toe. They watched life develop and grow, taking on the many guises they had glimpsed from the void.
They were, of course, still much as the messengers in the Crystal City, since even the ravages of time and space can do little to the Children of the Name. They were without distinguishing features and without sex, each looking enough like the other that they could have been a mirror's image. As life progressed, they watched.
Wanting to grow closer to life, to gain understanding through imitation, they mimicked the habits of the living creatures. Swimming in nutrient soups in their world's oceans, drawing in sustenance through their extremities; gliding along by waving the cilia they grew, groping for light and warmth.
As life developed, their interest grew, and so more closely did they imitate. Using teeth to chew and hands to grasp and feet for walking rather than just perching. When the pongoids first appeared, the hairy apes so close in appearance to the messengers themselves and yet still rougher, harsher, they decided to take a final step. Seeing how life continued, and recreated itself, they chose sex for themselves. After that thought, there stood on that empty world not two identical messengers, but a man and a woman, as similar as brother and sister.
Raziel turned to Thelesis and took her hand in his. He led her through the forests of their Otherworld, to the valley they had chosen to be their home.
They discovered passion then, the hot, involved intimacy that two sexed creatures can know, and they learned something else. Love.
In the Crystal City the messengers love each other as a matter of course, but only through their love for the Name, seeing in each other an aspect and reflection of their creator. But the two messengers on their little world learned a different love,
less perfect, more mutable, the love for another in and of themselves. In that moment, if not before, they became truly flawed, no longer perfect, as much living creatures as immortal celestials. In time their love bore fruit and, with the tender aid of Raziel, Thelesis brought forth the first of their children. A daughter, whom they named Anael, after their love.
The hairy apes of the World grew, becoming more like the messengers with each passing generation, until at last the Name took one among them and placed him in a secret place. In that garden paradise, the Name taught him to speak and to reason, named him man, and put the garden into his care.
In time, the man Adam grew lonely. A wife was given to him, and together the man and the woman lived in harmony in the garden.
From the Otherworld, Raziel and Thelesis watched, as their daughter grew tall and strong beside them.
Blink.
The images flying past slowed, and I came again to my self. It took me some time to remember myself, so lost in the pageant had I become. It was the voice of Free Will who woke me to myself again, sounding from the Otherworld.
"It ends soon," Thelesis said to her husband Raziel. Their daughter was nearby, engrossed in the epic struggles of an ant colony fighting to extend their empire nearby. Anael could understand the speech of the ants, barking orders back and forth between them; she could understand the speech of all the living creatures Raziel had brought from the World to their home for her to study.
"Yes," answered Raziel at last, turning to his wife. He had been lost in watching his daughter at play, as much engrossed in his study of her as she had been in hers of the ants. The messengers had not known children in the Crystal City, each of them born fully formed and prefect at the merest thought from the Name. A child was a mystery, even to him.
"Then it will be time for you to act?" Thelesis asked, lowering her eyes slightly at her husband.
"As we have planned," Raziel answered, his tone betraying his fears. "They will be tested, first one and then the other, with the trials of Free Will. If they act as the Name expects, they will find themselves driven from their home, and driven from the sheltering arms of their god."
"And made prey for the temptations of the Adversary," Thelesis added.
"Just so," agreed Raziel.
Thelesis stood and walked to her husband's side.
"Is your own little act of creation complete?" she asked, her tone gentle. "Have you completed the gift?"
Raziel lowered his eyes. "Yes, though it threatened to drain the life from me. It is done, and ready for its purpose, should the need arise. Should the man and the woman be driven from the garden and out into the world."
"They will," answered Thelesis confidently, a slight smile on her lips. "It is a question of Free Will, after all."
I blinked, and time passed again.
Raziel and Thelesis stood together now, looking upon the World. Anael was a short distance off, in a heated discussion with a lion. A lamb stood nervously a short distance away, keeping its eyes on the lion and Anael both. The daughter of the Two looked older now, more like her mother than before, but with something of her father's severity around her eyes. She was not alone now, either, it seemed, as I could see three infants of close ages, all boys, crawling around and between their parents' feet.
"Now," said Raziel, his expression grave, "it comes."
"I told you so," replied Thelesis, threading her arm under his.
From the Otherworld, the Two could see the man and the woman, finally tested by free will, ejected from the garden. They had made their choice, and the consequences were theirs to live with from that day onwards.
The garden was closed to them as they exited, the entrance guarded by the flaming sword of a messenger from Crystal City until it could be sealed off to the outside world forever.
"They are Sammael's now," Raziel said. "They are the Adversary's."
"Or the Name's," reminded Thelesis, "should they be coerced to It."
"Either way," answered Raziel, "they will not be free. Not truly, until they can make their choices of their own volition, temptation or divine intervention aside."
"Agreed," said Thelesis. "So you will be going, then? To bring your gift to them?"
Raziel nodded, silent, and held his wife closer to him.
I watched as Raziel moved away, stopping to rest a hand on the shoulder of his daughter, who paused briefly in her discussion with the lion. He continued on to a pillar of carved stone. From a cavity cut in one side, he drew out a small wrapped object the size of his open palm, holding it delicately.
Raziel whispered a word I couldn't make out, and a glittering sphere appeared in the air in front of him. It stood taller than Raziel himself, though not by much, and looked like a shining globe filled with stars. Turning to look one last time at his wife and children, and clutching the wrapped object to his chest, he stepped into the sphere and was gone.
I wanted to know where Raziel had gone. My perspective followed.
Raziel sat on an outcropping of rock on the side of a large mountain, the sky a brilliant blue overhead, the sun warming his skin. He sat casually on the rock, back against the rising mountain, looking out over the plains below. The wrapped object rested on one outstretched hand, held before him, as though offering it to someone.
I wondered who. And then I knew.
This mountain, which later generations would name Horeb, stood on the World, the original of which the Otherworld was the duplicate. Raziel had come here from his home across the void to bring a gift to the living creatures, to deliver them from the games of Celestial Chessmen.
A man appeared on the mountainside before Raziel, scuffed and bruised from his climb. Not a man, I realized looking upon him, but The man.
"You called me," the man said, and I could understand every word. He found his footing on the sliding gravel of the mountain, and stood proudly facing messenger.
"I did," Raziel answered, smiling. "I come to offer you a choice, O Man."
The man shifted warily, casting a glance back down the mountain to the plains below, where his wife was busy looking after their two infant sons. He knew all about choices, and about their consequences. They were far, far away from the garden now.
"I have come to make a gift of knowledge," Raziel added, and Adam stiffened still.
"There is work to be done," the man replied, beginning to turn. "I have had enough of knowledge, enough to last a long life."
"Wait a moment," Raziel answered, beginning to unwrap the object. "This knowledge is a tool, not a test, and can be used or discarded at your whim."
The man narrowed his eyes.
"Who are you?" he asked. "An agent of our Lord? Or another aspect of the Tempter in the garden? Which direction do you drive me with your intrigues, to Heaven or to Hell?"
"Neither," Raziel answered, smiling, and held forth his gift.
It was a silver disk, mirror-bright, bearing on it an image of the World as seen from the void beyond, spiraling like a living thing beneath the metallic sheen. I found I could not direct my attention away from it.
"This is a key to hidden mysteries," Raziel explained, turning the disk in his hands, "opening doors to secrets undreamt. Into this emblem have I put a portion of myself, a fragment of my being and wisdom containing the sum of all that I have seen and learned. In it, you will find the answers to every question you could ever conceive of asking, the history of your world from beginning to end, from first light of dawn till the final crack of doom. If you take it from my hands and use it all the days of your life, you will be a free creature, able to ferret out deception and coercion and face the world with eyes open. Never again will you and yours be pawns in the games and tests of the Name or the Tempter, driven towards either the Crystal City or the Grave. You will have the heavier burden of choosing your own road, and living with the consequences."
The man walked slowly forward, his eyes locked on the silver disk in the messenger's hands.
"This is a trick," the
man said, but he didn't believe it.
"It is not a trick," Raziel answered. "It is a choice."
The man looked from the silver disk, to the messenger Raziel, to the disk and back again.
"To live free," the man said, "would be a good thing." He smiled, a little sadly, and took the disk from the messenger's hands.
Raziel smiled, but as I watched the image of the messenger and the first man on the mountain side wavered, slightly at first and then spinning and rippling with greater and greater speed. I felt dizzy and lost as the world in front of me became a roiling spiral of motion and light.
And the world opened up, and the spiral swallowed me whole.
And the spiral swallowed me…
And the spiral…
And…
I was back on the featureless white plain, and when I reached up to rub my eyes cartoonishly was surprised to find I had hands again. Hands to rub with, and eyes to rub. I patted myself down and was satisfied everything seemed to be in order.
Book of Secrets Page 24
