King of Shards

by Matthew Kressel

  “You forget,” Caleb said. “We carry the Horn of Azazel. Do you know how much power it holds?”

  Rana seemed dwarfed by the throng, uncertain in her new role as demon ally. Daniel was surprised and disappointed with her. Hours ago she had tried to kill Caleb. Now she wanted to build a universe with him? What had happened down in the Abyssal? Was she under a compulsion, or did she really believe this was the best path? Either way, he still had to snatch the Horn from her.

  “We outnumber you ten thousand to one,” said Mashit.

  “You’d kill us easily,” Caleb said, “but not before the Horn destroyed half your Legion, and you as well.”

  “Then let us end this peaceably.”

  “The time for peace is long gone.”

  Mashit ran a finger down the edge of a facet on her belt, up and down, as if it were a knife blade. “Perhaps we can come to an arrangement,” she said.

  Caleb approached Mashit, unblinking, his eyes bloodshot. “Why should you care if I create a new universe? Why pursue me across this barren world? You can have Sheol and the throne of Abbadon. I don’t care about that anymore. Sheol has forsaken me, and so I have forsaken it. Leave the Pillar with me and go build your happy kingdom.”

  “He is coming with me,” she said. “Isn’t that right, Danny?”

  A crystalline sound suddenly rang through the air, a loud wind chime of glass parts. Rebekah reached between her breasts and pulled out a silver pocket watch that dangled from a chain about her neck. She pressed the clasp, and the face popped open. A clockwork mechanism blossomed in the air, a huge flower of gears and light. The spinning movement hovered above the case, flashing as the gears ticked quickly forward. Seven luminous hands marked the time, racing wildly.

  “It’s almost time,” she said. “Sunil Pranadchandr will be cleaved from the Earth in moments. Af will carry him across the Great Deep to Sheol, and the Earth will crumble.” She snapped the watch closed and the gears of light dripped away. “Daniel, it’s time for you to choose. Come with me to Sheol, and we’ll do what we’ve always done together, help the suffering. But this time without human limitations. All the resources in the Cosmos will be ours.”

  “No,” said Caleb. “You’ll be her slave, and when she grows bored with you—and she will—she’ll crush you. If you come with me, Daniel, you won’t need to heal the suffering anymore. We will dwell in a world without suffering of any kind. All your loved ones can come too. And all the people on Earth, all those who suffer in the Shards, will be welcome. You know in your heart my solution is the best, Daniel.”

  Caleb shouted at the Legion, “And what do you lot wish for, my demons? You’ve lived so long as husks, do you even know what you lack? Suffering has been your most intimate friend. But in our new world, all suffering shall be forgotten.”

  He turned to the men standing on the Tree of Life. “Priests of the Quog Bedu, your centuries of wandering, waiting for redemption, ends today. Daniel, Rana, and I are the redeemers you have been praying for. And my Mikulalim servants, so faithful and true, you will shed your morbid curse and live as whole men, released from my yoke. Hear me, Legion of the First, army of Sheol, let us perform the spell. All may come with us, if you so choose.” He turned to Mashit. “Everyone else can rot in Sheol.”

  Mashit grabbed Daniel’s forearm. Her hand was hot, and her sharp nails dug into his skin. “Danny is coming with me!”

  Caleb grabbed Daniel’s other arm. “Bitch, he’s coming with me!”

  “Let the Pillar decide,” Rana said. Her voice was small, but it silenced everyone. “Let Daniel choose.”

  The Legion stilled their breaths. The air itself seemed to await his answer. Daniel thought he heard dew dripping down the mountains, miles away.

  He said nothing for a long moment. Everyone stared at him, human, cursed man, Gu and demon. Finally he took a deep breath and said, “You both want to make things better for others, and I see great hope in that. But you’ve trampled on everyone who has stood in your path. If you had come to me and asked, ‘Will you help us make a better world?” I would have said ‘yes’ without hesitation. But look at how much death follows in your wakes. Where is your empathy? Where are your hearts?” He pulled free of their hands. “I’m sorry, but I choose neither.”

  The sun breached the mountain peak, and a wave of light raced across the yellow sands. The air cracked with a thunderclap so loud it sounded as if the mountain had split and fallen asunder. At the zenith, a light brighter than the rising sun shone down, and from its center, long fingers of light reached outward.

  Daniel suddenly longed for something missing he could not fully comprehend, the wound of an ineffable loss, a hole never to be filled. He had felt this when the fragments had fallen from the sky. But another Lamed Vavnik had not been killed this time. Sunil Pranadchandr had been cleaved from Earth like a gem from stone and was now on his way down to Sheol.

  Globules of light formed in the sky, as if he were traveling through a dense cluster of stars. The size of grapefruits and basketballs, they birthed solar systems of smaller globules. As Mashit looked up at the sky her belt flashed beams of yellow light into the throng.

  Another crack split the air. He thought it might have shattered his eardrums. But it was only the extreme heightening of his senses. The sounds of fleas leaping from one fur-backed demon to another thundered in his ears. A drop of sweat fell from a demon’s nose to crash onto the sand louder than colliding trains. Each sound was intense, personal, terrifying.

  Screeches and wails tore the air, as if a trillion people were crying. At the zenith, the fingers of light had formed a spiral. It quickly widened, spreading to fill half the sky, and the million stars and their solar systems rained down.

  The globs of light stuck to sand and skin like viscous drops of oil. One marble-sized sphere touched Daniel’s arm and his heart expanded with a delicious, unutterable joy.

  He was nine, awake early on Saturday morning. He snuck through the house, past his sleeping parents, and ran outside. The robins sang morning hymns. The wind was sleeping in. He sat on the grass and peered at a purple hyacinth, trembling awake from its winter slumber. The sweet scent of cut grass filled the air. The sun was warm, and his heart was full. This was what paradise was like.

  All the demons turned their mouths to the sky to drink in the rain. As they swallowed the golden balls the demons grew.

  Caleb tore off his robe. Naked, blood spilled from his belly. But as he expanded his bandages tore off. His wound shrunk quickly and vanished. The blood flaked away. His two legs split into four. His head split too, and split again, so that he soon had four heads, one of an ox, one of a ram, one of a goat, and one of a man. This last still bore Caleb’s face. Black wings, slick and rubbery, sprouted from his spine. All his mouths screamed.

  Waves of joy washed through Daniel. Joy and memories. Mommy wrapping him in warm blankets to set him down for bed. Daddy gazing down into Daniel’s crib. A wall of fire, ancient holy words drawn in flames, his parents standing beyond, holding hands, gazing at him. A dream, or perhaps a memory.

  The Horn! he thought. I have to get the Horn!

  Rana had fallen to her knees, spasming in seizures. The Horn of Azazel lay beside her, flashing colors as it soaked up the glowing rain. The Bedu sobbed and the Mikulalim moaned.

  Havig’s body swelled, and his hollow eyes filled with vitreous fluid. His muscles grew thick and strong. He was no longer a corpse, but a man. He laughed hysterically as his Mikulalim brothers changed too.

  Daniel watched his own body grow strong again too. Azazel’s curse held no sway against this rain. The sky split open as if it were made of glass. Girders of white light shined through the jagged cracks. Plants sprung up where the bright rays touched the ground. A hundred species of cacti sprouted from the yellow sands, hurtling through years of growth in seconds. Their sharp spines wiggled in small spirals as they turned toward the sky.

  The cracks in the dome widened. The girders of light grew br
ighter. Trees sprouted where the light touched the ground, from seedlings to adults in seconds. Japanese maples and tulip poplars and patchwork sycamores rose from the dust. The light itself was the seed.

  The leafy canopy spread over their heads, shading the ground from the sky.

  A blue cornflower blossomed fifty feet wide and spat a mist of pollen that spun through the air like a flock of turning birds. On the edge of the Abyssal, beyond the tangle of plants, moss grew in florescent green clumps. A million tiny white flowers opened on it in grotesque waves.

  The Horn! Daniel thought. Where is the Horn?

  A throng of tall, thin people climbed over the Abyssal edge, singing as they tasted the rain. A cloud floated across the Abyssal, and a joy of rainbows made love in the shifting light.

  I have to do something! Daniel thought. Remember! Remember!

  He was a spermatozoon, flagellating through warm liquid, hungering with his entire being for the privilege of joining with the egg. He merged with it, in love, a wedding of chemical customs and genetic rituals. He danced to molecular music, joying out cells by the billions, manifesting love into human form.

  And he was a human baby thrust out into the world of light and pain, and he was the baby grown into an adult woman, and he was her baby, and her baby’s baby, and so on, for countless generations. And he was the cries of all newborns, and the joy of all mothers. He twirled in dervishes with the spirals of DNA, and he raced photons down to lower atomic orbits, where even at the quantum level the quarks were making love.

  Daniel opened his eyes. He was on his knees, convulsing. Demons danced all around him, as a hundred thousand plants reached for the sky.

  He wanted to drown in this blissful rain. But the Earth was crumbling. He blinked, and behind his lids every atom exulted with life.

  Mashit spread her arms wide as she grew. Her belt snapped off with a spark and impaled a tree. Her two legs became four, and her head split twice into four heads, one of a goat, a pig, a scorpion, and a woman. She spread large black wings behind her.

  All the demons were changing.

  Caleb’s wings grew translucent, shining like glass. His four heads merged into a single head again. It had Caleb’s face, though younger and rounder. A cherub. His body was man again, but three times his normal size. He had lost his sexual organ. There was only smooth skin. His body was hairless except for long white strands raining from his head. He floated off the ground, arching his back, his hair hanging to his ankles.

  Mashit underwent an identical change. She was a beautiful androgyne with a child’s face, her hair raven black. Mashit and Caleb shuddered as they met gazes. Rays of white light shot from their eyes and mouths, connecting them with tunnels of light. Pulled by a great force, they sped toward each other. The air hummed a high-pitched note, a glass bell struck by the hand of God. Their clear wings flapped like newly emerged butterflies drying in the sun.

  Two more androgynes floated from the throng, beams of light bridging their faces. They drifted between Caleb and Mashit, forming a foursome. Their beams of light made a cross, like the spokes of a wheel, and the four demons spun about its axis.

  This quartering happened throughout the Legion. In a choreographed dance, thousands of androgynes coalesced into four-member troupes. They spun, their eyes and mouths connected with columns of light. All of them turning, wheels within wheels, like Ezekiel’s divine vision.

  I must get the Horn! Daniel thought. I must get to Rana!

  She turned to face him, as if anticipating his gaze. Her face exploded with light as blue as an autumn sky, and he realized that he was emitting light too. It connected them, and as her light shined into his mind he felt himself filled with her memories.

  They floated above the ground and drifted toward each other. Daniel was Rana, drawing a woman’s face on the floor of a stone house with a piece of charcoal. Mama’s face.

  Oh, Mama, how I miss you!

  Mama and Papa, their skin shaved like wood in the courtyard behind the house.

  Both dead because of me!

  Rana’s thoughts poured into him, and his into her.

  Daniel, a boy, eating dinner in the back yard with Mommy and Daddy, a bumblebee buzzing past, legs heavy with pollen.

  What a stupendous little creature! Rana thought.

  Rana, on top of the DanBaer, Papa showing her the proper way to hold a chisel. But she knows already. She has a mason’s instinct. “Time is the greatest of all masons,” Papa says. “She lifts mountains and grinds them to dust, and the strongest men and the richest kings always succumb to her hand.”

  Oh, Papa!

  Danny, in bed as the house erupts in flames. Gram bursting through the doorway like a demon herself to carry him to safety. Gram, starting a prayer she will never finish, “Shma yisroayl, adonai elo—”

  Little Liu—Goddess!—Little Bean, her eyes glistering brown gems. Her giggle!

  Daniel, in the palanquin as Marul freezes time to show him the secret of the six names and the spell to get Daniel home before she vanishes forever.

  “Marul!” Rana screamed. “How could I forget Marul?” A life of memories, washed away! Rana devoured his memories of her. All those histories she had carved into the palanquin walls, turned to dust.

  Marul sold out the Cosmos, Daniel thought. And I wanted her to die for it.

  She was my only true friend, Rana thought. But she lied to me and betrayed us all.

  I must get the Horn, Daniel thought. And get back to Earth.

  But we can make a new world, Rana thought. Without suffering.

  Zimri and Elyam, bound together with tendons of light, drifted between Rana and Daniel. The four spun slowly clockwise.

  And the four became Rana as she lay with Caleb and they were the bliss of orgasm as he released himself into her.

  I have no words! thought Elyam. Is this love or blasphemy?

  Is there a difference? thought Zimri.

  Elyam, standing over the body of his infant son, Ruach, dead of malnutrition. Another famine to devastate the Bedu, the fourth in five years. Elyam had been faithful, devout! What did poor Ruach do to deserve this fate?

  Zimri, watching his mother die from dehydration, wishing there was something he could do, crying out to Mollai for help. Hearing only the desert wind.

  Rana, in her bed on a moonless night, realizing that if she stayed in Azru she would never be anything other than a slave to King Jallifex.

  Zimri, vowing never to marry, never to love, for love never lasted. Zimri, mourning a boy he had loved and made love to, once, who was killed by marauders for a silver necklace.

  For a drop of silver, Zimri thought, I lost the only one I ever loved.

  I never knew, Elyam thought, what you felt for him.

  I had forgotten, Zimri thought, what Mother looked like.

  Daniel, letting his father wrap phylacteries around his forearm one sunny morning. Daniel, embarrassed after prayers, running off to play. Daniel, watching his father pray every morning, alone, wrapped in leather, until his death.

  Daniel, beside Gram, chanting the Mourners Kaddish over his parents’ graves.

  Daniel, thinking of the homeless huddled on street corners, begging for money, food, anything to lessen their suffering. Millions walking past in their rich clothes and expensive jewelry heading back to their warm homes, ignoring those who slept in the gutter, even cursing them for their debased state, as if it was their fault.

  Rana, building a copper bust of Mollai for Mama. Mama, just this once, happy with Rana’s art. Rana hoping Mama would be happy forever.

  Daniel, in Gram’s front yard, the summer after the fire. Gram, uncovered, her face like a monster as she sits beside him. “Did you know,” says Gram, “that beside every blade of grass is an angel that whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’”

  Daniel, imagining his parents as small angels, whispering to all the blades of grass in his yard, in every yard, in all the world.

  But the angels do not whisper here, Elyam thou
ght.

  We are given only half of what we need to live, thought Zimri.

  Less, thought Rana.

  It’s not fair, thought Daniel. You shouldn’t have to suffer like this.

  Even Earth suffers, thought Zimri. You cannot escape despair. The Cosmos is rife with it.

  What can we do? Elyam thought.

  Make a new world, thought Rana. And they all saw a pearlescent sun, golden fields of wheat, warm rains, and peace, peace, peace everywhere. Rana’s perfect dream.

  As one they thought, This could work! We could really make a better world!

  But what happens to this world? Zimri thought. And all its people?

  And Earth? Daniel thought. And its billions?

  We would be no better than the Creator, Elyam thought.

  Who smashes her creations because they’re imperfect, Zimri thought.

  A mediocre artist abandons her works, Rana thought, because she sees her own imperfections reflected in them. But a great artist knows that all art is perfect, even with its flaws, from the child’s scribble to the adept’s masterpiece. All is precious.

  If we let the Shards die we are no better than the Creator, Elyam thought.

  We must be better than God, Daniel thought.

  We must do better than God, they all thought.

  We shall be the ones to rebuild the ancient ruins, thought Elyam.

  And restore the foundations laid long ago, thought Zimri.

  We will provide what God has not provided, thought Daniel.

  We have to get Daniel home.

  The light that bound them broke, and they fell to the ground. Rana picked up the Horn of Azazel, which had grown along with the demons to be nearly as tall as her.

  The globules of ecstasy rained down upon them as he and Rana ran over to the spinning foursome of Ahazia, Dnoma, Krieg and Lamu. He pulled them apart. Full of life, reborn, young again, they were barely recognizable as the people he had known. They rubbed their faces, bewildered, as he shouted, “The spell!”

  He shouted until they understood. They took their positions at the Tree of Life. Ivy had grown around the circles in sculpted curves. Burdock and clover blanketed the ground inside the sephirot, forming perfect circles. In each sephirah grew a rose bush in riotous bloom, each bush birthing flowers in a different hue of the rainbow.