Come Armageddon

by Anne Perry

  It was Sadokhar who had provoked Tiyo-Mah to begin Armageddon before Asmodeus was ready, and she, and the Lords of Sin had yielded to the temptation. Now they were all destroyed, even Yaltabaoth, and the earth lay shattered around them. Unless she redeemed herself in his eyes, Asmodeus’ vengeance upon her for her disobedience would be terrible and endless. Perhaps killing Sadokhar would do that, but whether it did or not, before the end she would repay Sadokhar for his part.

  Screeching far back in her throat like an animal, she flew at him, fingers tearing at his face like claws, teeth bared and reaching for his throat.

  He flung her off easily and turned away, revolted, even now seeing only an old woman beyond her senses with hate. He turned to walk away, back to Tathea, thinking to protect her.

  Tiyo-Mah screamed at him in a language older than any he knew, older even than Shinabar; and the earth in front of him crumbled and fell inward, as if it were hollow beneath. He had to scramble to avoid pitching into the hole.

  Tathea ran towards him, trying to place herself between him and Tiyo-Mah, but Tiyo-Mah flung her arms sideways, crying again in her high-pitched screech. The earth was gouged out and Tathea found herself falling, sliding, bruised and battered with stones, landing hard at the bottom of a gaping pit.

  She clambered to her feet, desperate, crying out her own commands, ordering the soil and clay to part for her. How dare it obey the voice of evil?

  But the spirit of the earth had already fled and it was dead matter, driven by the power of hell which moved it, eluding her grasp, crumbling, reforming in front of her. She barely reached the tip of the crater, nails torn and skin bleeding, in time to see Tiyo-Mah trip Sadokhar in the long stems of the heather and leap on his fallen body. She snatched his sword from his side and raising it high in both hands, brought it down with all her strength to slash his throat.

  With crippling horror Tathea saw the blood pour in a scarlet tide. She fell to her knees on the grass. Was this how it would end, herself and Tiyo-Mah, locked together, fighting with nothing left to win or lose?

  Tiyo-Mah climbed off the corpse of Sadokhar awkwardly, and lurched towards Tathea, the dripping sword still in her hand.

  Tathea had no weapon close enough to reach. She had already fought a long and desperate battle and her strength was gone.

  Tiyo-Mah laughed, a completely human sound, and raised the sword. Then her face froze and her fingers let the blade slip uselessly to the earth.

  Tathea swung around slowly to see Asmodeus walking with his peculiar grace up the sward, a figure of terrifying defiance against the glare of the light. The horizon was lurid, burning yellow with sulphur, and there was a stench on the wind like nothing the world held.

  He stopped in front of Tiyo-Mah, and Tathea saw naked terror in the old woman, and the fear of hell in her eyes.

  “You disobeyed me.” Asmodeus said it softly, but his words shivered through the air and nothing else on earth or sky moved or made a sound. “Sadokhar was mine! And you would have taken Ta-Thea from me too! For that I have come to collect payment.”

  Tiyo-Mah stood motionless. She had denied God and there was nowhere to turn.

  Asmodeus lifted his hands, gently, as if he were to play an instrument of music, but what came from them was more terrible than death, it was the claim of damnation.

  In front of Tathea’s vision, Tiyo-Mah shrivelled up and her empty robes slid to the ground, clothing nothing but a tiny heap of black powder. The wind gusted with a smell foul enough to make the stomach retch, and the powder blew away. As it did so a shadow arose, and Tiyo-Mah’s spirit was carried up into the darkness of the moiling clouds above, and disappeared.

  Tathea ran across the grass and picked up the Book, holding it in her arms, and threw herself on to the earth.

  She heard Asmodeus’ voice close to her, every word sharp as daggers of ice.

  “See your world, Tathea,” he said softly. “See what you have done to it! Look at the City in the Centre of it all!”

  And before her closed eyes, burning into the vision of her soul she saw the City desolate, the bodies of its dead like an abattoir. And as she watched, the great cisterns exploded and poured water and filth and acid, engulfing the streets and spewing death till it covered everything in a vast stinking tide.

  “See Shinabar!” Asmodeus went on. “See the civilisation that man created out of the desert!”

  And into her mind intruded the endless wastes of sand, howling, scorching, devouring all life.

  Then he showed her the places closest to her heart, the wild beauty of the Eastern Shore slimed over and drowned in the mud of waves scoured from the depths of the sea and hurled with violence of primordial force to smash and obliterate even the very rocks of the land.

  Then he showed her Tyrn Vawr, forcing his will into her heart so she could not blind herself. The city she and Sadokhar had built crumbled on the ground. Thunder ripped around the horizon and gouts of scarlet flame shot into the air; building after building shattered. The land reeled and erupted fire. The earth shook, tearing itself apart. The sound was like a physical beating on the skin. Boulders flew thousands of feet into the air and columns of ash spewed across the sky.

  Lastly he showed her Hirioth, its trees burned and withered, branches like limbs in agony, its creatures mangled and broken, frozen in their last terror.

  “Behold your kingdom, Ta-Thea!” he said softly. “It’s all yours now. Taste it! Hold it! See what you have done!”

  She looked. In every direction there was convulsion and ruin, and thick darkness covered the face of the earth, and all life had perished. The sun was blotted out and the stars disappeared. There was neither day nor night.

  The cold became intense, and she huddled to the ground, clinging to the Book, insensible of time or space, only the chaos around her and the endless, everlasting death. She could see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing in the blinding impenetrable darkness. Even Asmodeus was silent.

  Then he was beside her again, his hand stretched out to touch her arm. She felt the hard keys of the world in his fingers.

  “Think what I could have done,” he whispered, his breath in her ear. “I would have saved them all! Not to glory, not to Godhood, but to safety: sweet, eternal safety! I told you in the beginning they were not worth your blood or your tears.” His voice went on, probing, hurting. “I told you they were ugly and shallow, and in the end they would betray all your dreams. But you wouldn’t listen. You wanted power and glory and the dominion of God! Well, this is what you have ... desolation! You are Empress of nothing!”

  She lifted her face and peered towards where he must be in the darkness beside her. “I didn’t want dominion!” she said with a passion of contempt. “I never wanted to rule! I wanted them to have the freedom to fulfil the measure of all they could be, everything they had the courage and the love to reach!”

  “Liar!” he hissed. “You wanted power ... like everyone! You are the same as I am ... cut from the same cloth! You wanted to be the one who saved the earth—well, look at it! Look at it, Tathea! This is your earth, your kingdom!”

  She heard his laughter in the dark, and it sliced through to the core of her. Could he be right? Was this the end of it all? Was this the eternal night from which there was no dawn, and she had brought it upon the earth?

  “Look at your dominion and your glory, Tathea!” he said again. “Even God Himself has abandoned you. He’s gone ... left it all ... and you!”

  In the agony of her soul she thought of love, and remembered it, remembered Ishrafeli, and Sadokhar and a hundred others, then all the passionate, yearning millions of humanity.

  She knew it with an absolute conviction. “They were not worthless!” she shouted at him in the dark. “They were good! They were brave and honest and generous of heart. They were wise and funny and kind! It was worth it! And I am not like you! I love ...” She faced the emptiness of the void around her, the crumbling ruin of the earth. “It has to be loved, all the achi
ng, terrible, soul-rending beauty of it, all the courage and pity and life. If God will not love it, then I will! I will love it for Him!”

  She felt the keys of the world slither from his hand beside her and fall to the ground. Frantically she bent and scrambled in the dark to find them, the Book under her other arm. There was nothing there, only ash and stones. She moved more widely, fingers clutching. Then she closed over them and lifted them up.

  “I will love the earth! Even like this!” she promised, all the passion of her life in the cry.

  On the far horizon a pinpoint of light appeared, and as she watched, it grew wider like the first rays of a tremendous daybreak whose shafts fell on the keys in her hand. Even as she looked in wonder, they lost their shape, shimmered and wavered in the brilliance, and became a crystal.

  The light spread across the arch of the horizon, pure and unblemished and then blazed over the sky in shining splendour. And in the crystal was reflected the endless majesty of the creation of God.

  Beside her Asmodeus threw back his head. A paroxysm of agony shook his body, gnashing, grinding his teeth. He screamed in a high, thin wail like all hope lost for eternity, and his body dissolved into a thing of mist and darkness. His feet lifted off the ground. He tried desperately to keep hold of it, flailing, grasping with his fingers, but it fell away and he was flung high into the air. His voice grew faint as he flew ever upward into the void, and the shadows beyond the light, until at last he ceased to be anything at all.

  Tathea stared at the earth before her, and saw in it a glory beyond dreaming, never to be lost again. It was filled with the trees and the grasses and the beasts which had made it beautiful, and the wild oceans that had given it breath. And she saw the faces of all she had loved from the beginning, restored to an everlasting life. They shone with a radiance of joy: Sadokhar, Sardriel and Elessar, Ardesir, Tornagrain and others from centuries gone, Sanobiel, Tugomir, Alexius, Eleni. And Maximian was there too, and Immerith of the Flamens. Not one was missing.

  Among them was a youth with dark, shining eyes and features so like her own it tore at her memory with a wrenching familiarity, wakening old love and old pain.

  Happiness lit inside her as he smiled back at her with the same dancing, burning recognition. Then she knew him! Habi! Her son whole and living again, restored unblemished of heart.

  But before them all was Ishrafeli, holding a small, black and white cat with a pointed face.

  But it was not yet to him she turned, it was to the One Who stepped forward and held out His hands towards her, and in His face was that everlasting love which she had sought from the beginning, the holiness which lights eternity.

  He smiled at her. “Tathea ...”

  “Father!” she whispered.

  He took her hands in His, holding them gently over the Golden Book. “You have walked the long path, and been willing to pick up My burden and bear it,” He said softly. “Welcome home, my Daughter, welcome home.”

  The Book

  CHILD OF GOD, IF your hands have unloosed the hasp of this Book, then the intent of your heart is at last unmarred by cloud of vanity or deceit.

  Know this, that in the beginning, through the dark reaches of infinity, was the law by which every intelligence has its being and fulfils the measure of its creation.

  When God was yet a man like yourself, with all your frailties, your needs and your ignorance, walking a perilous land as you do, even then was the law irrevocable.

  By obedience you may overcome all things, even the darkness within, which is the Great Enemy. The heart maybe softened by pain and by yearning until love turns towards all creatures and nothing is cast away, nothing defiled by cruelty or indifference. The mind may be enlightened by understanding gained little by little through trial and labour, and much hunger, to perform great works. Courage will lift the fallen, make bearable the ache of many wounds, and guide your feet on the path when your eyes no longer see the light.

  When your spirit is harrowed by despair and all else fails you, compassion will magnify your soul until no glory is impossible.

  By such a path did God ascend unto holiness.

  But the law is unalterable, and unto all, though the tears of heaven wash away the fixed and the moving stars for you, though God has shed His blood to lave you clean; each act without love, each indifference, each betrayal robs you of that which you might have been. Eternity looks on while you climb the ladder towards the light, but neither God nor devil takes you a step up or down, only your own act.

  If it were not so, where would be your greatness at the last? Would God rob you of your soul’s joy? Of that day when you stand before Him in eternal life and say not as a stranger but as a citizen, “I have walked the long path. I have conquered all things. Thou has opened the door for me and I have come home.”

  The conversation between Man of Holiness and Asmodeus, the Great Enemy:

  Asmodeus: I have seen the plan and it will fail because your commandments are impossible. You ask perfection, and it is beyond man even to dream of it. The void echoes with laughter that you mock him, and his arrogance that he could believe you. He cannot do it. From the beginning he will fail. He is blind, and his journey is futile.

  Man of Holiness: To be perfect is to do your best, without shadow of deceit or cowardice, without self-justification or dissembling. It is to strive with an honest mind and a pure heart, and an eye single to the love of good. It is not to climb without falling, but each time you fall, to rise again and continue the journey, no matter how hard it may be, discounting the bruises and the pain, the grief and the hope deferred. It is to face the light with courage, and never to deny it. It requires all that a man has, to the height and breadth and depth of his soul, but it does not require more. I give no commandments, except I make a way that they may be accomplished.

  Asmodeus: Man will not believe that! He is short-sighted and full of fears. He will drown in the enormity of it. If you were just, you would ask for less. You would make the path easier.

  Man of Holiness: Then he would not grow to the measure of his fullness, but be stunted and forever less than his spirit’s dream, a bird without wings, a song unsung. I know the joy and the pain of every step, as I know the scars of My own feet. He can do it, if he will.

  Asmodeus: That you did it is to him a sound without meaning, a burnt paper in the wind. That journey is not for him. He will burn his soul in the fire of it and then wander lost in the dark.

  Man of Holiness: He is My child. Where I have gone, he can follow, and My glory may become his. It is My purpose and My joy that in time beyond thought he may become even as I am, and together we shall walk the stars, and there shall be no end.

  Asmodeus: He is weak, and will despair at the first discouragement. But if you were to set lanterns to his path of rewards and punishments, then he would see the good from the evil, and his choices would be just.

  Man of Holiness: They would also be without virtue because he would do good for the reward it would bring him, not for the love of good, and eschew evil because it would hurt him, not because he understood its ugliness and his soul was sickened by it. The path of life would divide only the foolish from the clever, not the righteous from the wicked. At the end, when judgement dawns white in the everlasting day, we would see what a man has done, but not what he is. And before I give him his place in the houses of eternity it is not his acts in the noonday, nor in the secrecy of the night, that I must prove, but the desires of his soul, because that is what he will fulfil when he holds My power in his hands to create worlds and dominions and peoples without end.

  Asmodeus: He will never do that! The dream is a travesty! Give him knowledge, a sure path. He will never be god, but he will be saved from the darkness within him.

  Man of Holiness: If I save him from the darkness, then I also make the light impossible. An unknown path will test his faith. If he will begin, I shall be a guide to his feet. My arm will protect him and My spirit will go before him. As he seeks, I wil
l give him a gift, a portion at a time. I shall bless him and cause miracles in the bright wake of his belief in My word.

  Asmodeus: After! Cause them before, and you will create his belief!

  Man of Holiness: Miracles to the unbelieving create awe, and sometimes obedience, for a little space, then they are forgotten. They are reasoned away and man forgets Me, or else he becomes superstitious and seeks after signs to prove and to test Me. That is not faith, nor is it honour, nor yet love. It is not the courage to walk the untrodden path and face the terrors of the night, because his heart has heard My voice and will follow it for ever. If he will show that trust in Me, and live by every word of My mouth, then nothing within the law of heaven is impossible. No lovely or joyous thing is beyond My power or will to give him.

  Asmodeus: And beyond the laws of heaven? What then is outside your gift?

  Man of Holiness: Man of Holiness is My name. I am the Beginning and the End. I am God, not for My power or dominion, but because I have walked the long path and I have kept the law, which is from everlasting to everlasting. Were I to break it, creation would rise up in anger and dismay, and I should cease to be God. You think it is power. You have walked and talked with Me, watched My work, seen My face, as I have seen yours, and still you do not understand. It is love ... it has always been love.

  I will not rob man of his agency to choose for himself, as I have chosen in eternities past, what he will do and who he will become. Wickedness can never be joy. Even I cannot make it so.

  Asmodeus: He will not understand that, and if you tell him, he will not believe it. He is frail, selfish, racked with terrors and delusion, easily discouraged, deceived, and diverted by the moment. He cannot see further than a few days, a few years. He will always sacrifice the future for the present, the bliss of eternity for a little pleasure today. He is brief of remembrance and fragile of understanding. The weaknesses of the flesh afflict him, disease and weariness, appetites that ruin and make dark.