by Rob Swigart
Here it was quieter. She lived in this small square room with walls of stone that sweated cold. The sounds from the other cells, coughs and whistling, were muted. The Sisters disliked noise. The drab dress scratched her skin and made her itch. In jail the food was better, and it was warmer, too. She had two blankets then. Here she had one that fell off her bed onto the floor and she had to pick it up again, difficult with her belly getting in the way.
She had come here from jail, a fugitive memory recaptured. She glowed with the pleasure of remembering. Two men who never smiled had brought her here in a huge automobile and left her at the door, and Sister Mary Lamiana led her to this cell and left, locking the door behind her.
This meant they thought she was still bad. She only did what came to her in that moment, taking the knife from the table and going to her father standing there with his heavy shoulders hunched forward, his big hands still wrapped around her mother’s neck. Something had gone wrong with her: she had suddenly sagged, her head tilted to one side.
She remembered now how much she hated this man, his hot breath on her neck since she was small, her mother’s bruises. No wonder she couldn’t remember childhood.
She had lived here a long time, a gray shape in a gray world, dragging heavy feet along the corridors, always alone. People asked angry questions. It was better not to speak.
Father Colmillo was so kind at first. And oh, yes, his unfamiliar smell of antiseptic alcohol, flowers, incense, and shoe polish. She became used to it.
Then he frightened her with his black bag and sharp silver instruments. “Don’t be afraid, Celia,” he said, and the fear turned her to stone.
He told her she was wicked and she believed him. She had come from jail, which meant she was wicked, though until this moment she could not remember why. There were rough concrete walls and a narrow cot and other women talking at her. They spoke so fast and ugly she couldn’t hear them well. They were bad, too. It didn’t matter: she had two blankets.
Now her belly ached and she couldn’t eat; the food kept coming back up into her throat.
That didn’t matter either, because something important was going to happen, and soon. After that she would be free to speak.
Miraculous Child
When the leather-covered door at the back of the Agronatur foyer sighed shut, Lisa and Steve found themselves in a corridor the same blue as the ceiling of the entry and the bus. Deep pile carpet cushioned their steps. The blank walls, indirect lighting, and the dark, monotonous color blurred distinctions, softened angles. They might have been in the depths of the ocean.
Isaak’s tread was deliberate, even processional. All the effusive enthusiasm of his greeting stayed on the other side of the door.
Lisa weighed the complex emotions rippling through her. Curiosity was there, of course, and just beneath, an anticipation that tightened with each step.
Her lack of fear was strange considering where they were. Something was going to happen, yet whatever it was, it would not harm them. Her concern faded, though the absence of threat was puzzling.
She set her questions aside.
The closing of that leather-covered door had marked entry into a new realm. All pretense of agricultural commerce was gone. Here was exalted solemnity. They were approaching the inner sanctum of a temple complex.
The chanting of a congregation of countless voices was again rising from the earth below. Where the people had come from she couldn’t say. The parking lot was empty, but the voices were innumerable, immediate, and live; united, focused, and intent. She understood that when they were at last in the presence of that buzzing chorus, they would be witnesses, not participants.
That might change, but for now they were safe. She squeezed Steve’s arm. He nodded.
They passed into an antechamber. The blue continued on the ceiling, but the walls were the color of sand, desert dry, summer hot, a shock after the deep blue of the corridor.
More shocking than the walls, though, was the tile floor, glistening the crimson of freshly spilled blood.
A tightly focused spotlight illuminated a large painting set on an easel in the middle of the room.
Isaak stepped to one side. “This is what you seek.”
The reverent hush of his voice was appropriate: Miraculous Child was a breathtaking example of late Medieval art. Color leaped from the surface: the blue of the mother’s robes; the silver moonlight on her head vibrating with unearthly life; a new moon of the child’s cheek and forehead.
Lisa approached the painting with narrowed eyes, her brow furrowed in concentration. “No signature,” she commented. “Artist unknown, as Bruno said.”
As in the parchment drawing, the bearded old man behind the mother and child held a dagger over the newborn. His left hand gripped an undulating staff topped by a serpent’s head. The staff quivered with restrained life.
His colors were more muted than the mother and child, but he was a dark threat hovering over them. Yet he wasn’t looking at them, he was staring out of the shadows directly at Lisa and Steve, as if they were of more concern to him than the innocents under his knife.
Rock, scattered trees, and filtered moonlight filled the background, but something imbued those rocks and trees with a presence. They were not what they seemed.
Steve said, “Something about the background. What is it?”
Isaak, one hand protectively touching the edge of the painting, watched them closely.
“Let your eyes go out of focus,” Lisa instructed. She pointed. “Here, great coils, a shifting pale side, you can almost hear it moving. Once you’ve seen it you cannot unsee. The rocks are scales; glints of orange in the eyes; and this patch of exposed soil, a tongue. You can see it dominates everything: first Abraham, then the mother and child.”
After a moment he grunted. “I see it, a serpent.”
“Not a serpent,” Isaak interjected, his tone hushed. “The Serpent. The Divine Mother.”
Lisa saw no guile or deceit in his eyes. He was a true believer of a different breed from Nizam al-Muriq or Ibrahim, a disciple, a priest, not a warrior. “Muššatur,” she said.
He tipped his head, yes.
“Why show us?” Steve asked. “We’re not part of your cult.”
A flicker of surprise crossed Isaak’s face. “Cult? You are mistaken, but no matter. You asked after it this morning at the Mevlid-I Halil.” He paused. “The Teacher told us you were coming, that you would speak his name at the door. He told me to bring you to this room, to see. He said it was important that you see.”
A first tentative chill of foreboding rippled down the back of Lisa’s neck.
Aftermath
Frédo had fired this gun only once before, during the confrontation at Alamut, and that time he had missed. He was nervous and inexperienced and a lousy shot, but this time his aim was good enough. Even as his arm was flying up with the recoil, the surprise on Nizam al-Muriq’s face warmed him. His grin was wild and slightly demented.
The force of the bullet spun al-Muriq completely around. He maintained his balance, but he reached reflexively toward the bloom of liquid on his black robe just above the crimson sash. At the end of his spin he caught himself and dropped his hand to his side. His body shivered once, like a dog shaking off water, and became absolutely still. Except for the wet stain glistening like a smear of oil on his left side, he was as calm and motionless as if his little pirouette never happened.
“That was not a good thing to do,” he said mildly.
Usem stared in horror, for what he saw looming over him was not a man, but a gnome, grotesquely ugly, twisted, and somehow, despite this preternatural calm, diminished.
“Not a good thing to do?” Frédo repeated, genuinely puzzled.
“I’m a man of God. You should not attack a man of God.”
“Man of God?” Frédo muttered through clenched teeth. “Usem is a man of God. You are not a man of God.”
“I’m sorry?”
Frédo’s voice rose. “He’s a
Jesuit! His faith is real. You’re a fake Maronite!”
Usem looked at Frédo and saw a stranger, a man with a gun. He wanted to protest, to confess the frailty of his own faith, but slumped back, overcome by horror.
A smile stretched tight and thin over Nizam’s lips. “Who decides which of us is a true man of God? You? I see you have no faith. Perhaps this plump couple here, or the old man you defend with such spirit? They know nothing of God. After all, your God, the God of Abraham, the God of Jesus, is a newcomer. There are far greater things in this world. You are all ignorant, lost in the darkness.”
Blood dripped slowly from the lower edge of his sash. Usem couldn’t tear his eyes away from a crimson spot growing drop by drop on the pale oak parquet. It was the same crimson as Nizam’s sash.
Waiting for the next drop to fall was agony, and he turned away.
Ted cleared his throat. “You’re bleeding.”
“Not surprising, under the circumstances,” Nizam said. “It will stop. The tablet.”
Frédo still gripped the revolver. The smell of cordite, familiar from the afternoon at the house at Monceau, was disturbing here. He placed the gun on the table and unclenched his hand. He felt something very much like disappointment. Why hadn’t the man fallen? He should be lying dead, or at the very least, screaming in pain, yet his expression had not changed. He acted as if someone else’s blood dripped onto the floor.
“No tablet,” Ted told him. “As you well know since you have searched the apartment. As we said, Dr. Emmer took it with her. You should go to a hospital.”
“Yes,” Marianne added. “A hospital. It would be inconvenient for you to die here.”
Nizam al-Muriq, called the Teacher, Teacher, or sometimes The Gnome, leader of the organization known in this age as the Ophis Sophia, trembled inwardly with a fury he had not known in decades. Frustration, he told himself. Patience. He had come for peaceful negotiation, and that scrawny, thin-haired, watery-eyed, sallow-skinned unbelieving nitwit had shot him. If he left now, he would leave with empty hands.
But if he stayed much longer, he might well never leave. He could feel strength slipping away, drop by drop. He pressed his lips together. What would the Divine Mother say if she saw him now? He drew a long breath. “Ophis Sophia is truth,” he said slowly. “Study and revelation lead us to the tablet, and the tablet leads us here. This is our heritage and our legacy. For centuries we worked to illuminate the true origins, the lifespring of humanity.”
“Millennia,” Usem said.
“Excuse me?”
“Not centuries. Ophis Sophia isn’t the first name. Ĝeštug muššatur, that’s the real one, isn’t it, the first name? The wisdom of the serpent has existed for millennia.”
Nizam’s knees trembled under a sudden onslaught of elation. “Those words are in the tablet?” He controlled his voice with effort. “Ĝeštug muššatur?”
Usem nodded. “They are.”
Nizam released a sigh and his face softened. “We waited so long,” he said, speaking to himself alone. “Now is truly the time.”
“So your cult is old,” Frédo said. “So what? Lots of things are old. Beer, for instance, or bread.”
Nizam seemed to awaken. “Cult is such an ugly word, an old and inadequate one,” he protested. “We speak for the Divine Mother, have always spoken for Her. Soon, she returns mankind to beginnings. First beginnings, long before the tablet.”
Frédo scoffed, “Really? After all this time you really have nothing to show except, oh, I don’t know, blood and snakes.”
Nizam was aggrieved. “You greatly misunderstand us. Violence is sometimes necessary. The universe itself is violent; it was born and expands and changes in violence. Stars explode, the earth heaves, breathing fire and death. The predator kills to eat, the prey flees to survive. Attack and defense, deception and evasion, life, death, rebirth, always. When threatened, we attack, like the viper. We, Ophis Sophia, Ĝeštug muššatur, protect ourselves in order to protect the Divine Mother.”
“Who,” Ted asked, “is this Mother you keep referencing. We’d like very much to know, wouldn’t we, Mrs. Maintenon?”
“Indeed we would,” Marianne said, looking brightly at the wounded man.
Nizam’s smile widened, showing the edges of his teeth. “You will know soon enough,” he said. “Soon enough. Everyone will know. Her time returns.”
The silence that greeted these words lingered. Then Nizam stirred. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I will leave you.”
Stifling his pain he gave a stiff bow and retreated, leaving the others around the dining table staring after him until the door closed and he was gone, empty-handed.
Frédo pushed the gun on the table toward Ted. “Please do something with it,” he said softly. “I never want to see it again.”
The Ušumgal
Isaak ushered them through double doors behind the painting and down a short hall to a broad open space. The chanting began once more, growing louder as they descended the wide spiral staircase at the far end. It was painted a dark midnight blue and lit by small flickering lamps at brief intervals.
The three of them came out onto a gallery overlooking a vast hall. Here only the high ceiling was blue. Dozens of torches flared around whitewashed walls, sending up wisps of smoke that stacked in sluggish sheets against the ceiling, darkening it further.
“This room must run the length of the building,” Lisa observed.
Steve shook his head: he couldn’t hear over the chanting.
The congregants, all men, wore nothing but wide white pants. Their naked torsos glistened, as if oiled. They faced a dais at one end.
It didn’t take long for Lisa to realize they were chanting the same words over and over:
Zurrugu zurrugu kili zurrugu kiri kirip kisu
huppani huppu suppani supu
kirišti libi kirištila libi kilalibi
pišpiš tišanziš tišanziš šuanziš anziš
“What are they saying?” she shouted in Isaak’s ear.
“I’m forbidden to say; you are a woman, and not an initiate. The words are very old, very powerful.”
“They are hypnotic,” she admitted.
Their host leaned on the balustrade to watch. The dais at the front of the room was bare, backed by a thick curtain. Aside from a low black altar of polished stone in the middle, the dais was empty.
Steve’s phone vibrated. He glanced at the screen, tapped Lisa and showed her the message before putting the phone away.
“Usem’s translation?” she murmured. “Not a good time.”
“Zurrugu zurrugu kili zurrugu,” the men were chanting. “Kili zurrugu kiri kirip kisu.” Two drummers had slipped onto the dais and, seated cross-legged with broad, shallow drums, pulsed a soft bass beat under the chant: Zu-boom-ru-boom…
As if a breeze had blown over a field of wheat the mass of men, now glistening with sweat and oil, began to sway, their eyes closed.
The pace picked up, the chant was faster, the drums louder, over and over, the same syllables, zurrugu zurrugu.
Lisa joined Isaak at the railing. The swaying bodies had become a heterogeneous blend of sizes and colors. She squinted to shut out their individuality, and saw that the skin colors were arranged in a subtle, repeating series of pale lozenges outlined with black and brown, a net that repeated, like the chant, the length of the room.
She floated down into the rhythm of the drums, oppressed by the hot, close air of the vast chamber, the relentless beat. Her senses slowed; thoughts drifted away, mingling, evaporating. The hot smells of flame and sweat, the pulsing beat, that hypnotic pattern of swaying heads and shoulders, tugged at her. It would be so easy to drift into that moving body, to let go, to take her place among those magnificent bodies….
Intersecting circles rippled through the mass, from the back and sides of the room to the foot of the dais and back. They ricocheted off the sides and, when they encountered others, sent them off on tangents where they collided again or di
ed away.
From her vantage point the pattern was complex, abstract, and highly choreographed. She wondered vaguely who could have planned and carried out such a thing. The organizational skill to produce a ceremony of this complexity with a group this size was impressive. Ophis Sophia was no small cult; here was a secret army of fit, highly disciplined warriors.
Memory jarred her. She knew where she had seen this before: a spillway pond one spring afternoon, walking with Raimond Foix along the Bièvre amid lush greenery. He had asked her what she saw on the water.
And she then remembered the date: March 19. Today’s date.
The hair stood away from the nape of her neck. He had known she would come to this day! He was the real Pythos, the real seer. She was just a woman from Chicago who suffered from fugue states, a fraud, a pretender. Nobody.
She felt the chill of fear— she didn’t belong. This wasn’t some random encounter or abstract fulcrum in the flow of time: this was the terror of the uncanny.
Then Isaak’s words flooded back: You are a woman, and not an initiate. She allowed her fear to give way to anger and pushed away from the railing.
Steve touched her arm, his mouth moving. Are you all right?
The chanting and the movement stopped abruptly, and a thick silence seemed to echo through the room like an afterthought.
She nodded. The spell was broken. She anticipated what was to happen with curiosity, not fear. It was enough knowing Raimond Foix had foreseen this moment and had, in his way, prepared her.
The motion below continued with the soft rustling of feet and bodies and the men’s white, wide-legged pants whispering against others, as of a single massive inhuman creature slithering over dry stone.
The drums began a slow pulse, one side of the dais speaking to the other, and gradually the movement slowed and came to a stop.
Two lines of men emerged from the back of the room and filed up both sides. Each man carried a jar in his hands. When there was a man at every row, they handed their jars to the first person. Their movements were slow, deliberate, and ceremonial.
