Lightbreaker tcos-1

by Mark Teppo

  Who we are, in the end when our spirits are being judged and weighed, is a matter of the accreted substance of our choices. We chose the paths and those choices are inscribed in our minds. We may be able to hide our failures and missteps on the outside, but inside, we never forget.

  Our hands betray what we have done.

  I killed nine men yesterday. They weren't the first. In the last ten years, there had been blood and fire on my hands more than once. And yet, the apex of the Tree had never been closed to me. I was still in the Abyss, but I could yet see the other side. The light from the Tower still called to me.

  God never forgets. Nor do we. Is that the pure irony of our existence? We have to kill the Ego in order to touch the other side; we have to lose ourselves in order to ascend. That requires a death of the flesh. Why? Because it can't forget.

  Or is it just like Blake says: the "mind-forg'd manacle"? The prison built by the Demiurge and his archons, the black iron cage we trap ourselves with. The mind-thinking too much, thinking too often.

  I stepped toward the door, putting aside my racing thoughts, silencing the too-busy mind. Samael shifted his weight and shook his head. Flecks of ash drifted off the back of his open skull. "Not this time, pretty. The light is not for you."

  I looked up at the boiling sphere at the top of the building. It was perfectly round, a single furious dot. Ain Soph collapses into Ain. God expressing Himself in space so as to start creation. Thoth's Key had burned Portland in order to make a vacuum, a realm of darkness in which it would be the only light. Et tenebrae super faciem abyssi.

  "Nor for you either, Blind One." My hand drifted up to indicate the east. Devorah, on the riverbank, showing me her face as she looked toward that horizon. "What happens when the sun rises? Are you allowed to look upon the face of God?"

  He hissed at me, but didn't answer.

  "I was a child in the woods. I was afraid. Afraid of everything: what had happened to me, what I felt, what I thought came next. I was scared of dying. I was weak when you crawled out of the darkness, when you whispered in my ear. I wanted succor. I wanted to know that I was going to be okay." I shook my head. "I was too willing to believe your words, to accept what you told me. I should have put aside all those tiny fears and just asked you if I was going to live long enough to see the sun rise."

  I looked along the length of my arm, toward the coming sun. "Like now, you would have had no answer, and I would have known you then. I would have Seen you. True."

  Just a shadow. My own shadow.

  In my soul, I touched the Chorus and gave them a simple directive. They fought me but it was a hollow resistance. They knew I was their master. They knew they had to obey. They collapsed into a point, hidden in my chest. A mirror image of the sphere at the top of the Tower. Ain becomes Nia-Abyss becomes Eye.

  "Every day, I see the sun rise, Samael," I said. "Every day I look upon God and He doesn't burn me, He doesn't condemn me. Because, even as bloodied as I am, I am still His child. I still have His Spark in me."

  Samael shrieked, a grinding wail of fury that drowned out the question I had for him. He sprang forward-leaving the threshold-until less than an inch separated us. So close. His breath, dry and dead, on my face. His single white eye staring sightlessly through me.

  I didn't flinch, nor give ground. My exhalation-filled with the humming power of the engorged Chorus, the children of Samael I had made my own-left dew on his chin and cheeks. Julian's shell was so desiccated by Samael's Qliphotic presence it was unable to absorb moisture. Arid dust shaped into form by malevolent Will.

  Versus my body. Warm living flesh suffused with my light. Patchwork as it may be, it was still me.

  It always had been. It always would be.

  "You have no power," I whispered to the shadow heart of my soul. I was the Divine Spark-the Godhead-Samael was my khabit, my shadow-the Demiurge who thought the Universe was his. My prison was believing in him. "Not anymore."

  He smiled, his red tongue hanging between his burn-blackened lips. "Maybe not." He nodded past my shoulder. "But I have power over them."

  This was the signal the soul-dead had been waiting for. In a wave that was all pressure and no presence, they flooded over me. Their hands pulled at my hair, my flesh. Their cracked fingers tore at my skin, trying to rend my shell and reach the bright light of my soul.

  I detonated the Chorus, a localized thermobaric exaltation that cremated an open space around me. Everything became white ash, infused with light. The greedy soul-dead became albinos whose flesh flaked off dry bones which, in turn, became pale motes dancing in the air. The ground, wiped clean of soot; the nearby grass turned to translucent ice. The air snapped, a crackling expression of exothermic change.

  Samael staggered away from me, his face and hands rimed with twisted frost. His head tipped back and midnight-colored fluid drained from his open skull. The ichor steamed and sizzled as it splashed on the whitened pavement. He tried to stop me as I shouldered past toward the glowing center of the Tower, but his hands cracked as they touched my hot flesh. His fingers fell off like shards of ice, and the stumps of his arms banged my elbow and back like broken branches.

  I was bereft of the Chorus. I had detonated their captive light, emptied myself of their influence and outrage. Their explosive burst had destroyed the mob of Qliphotic shells attacking me, but there were still more of them. More empty shells inflamed with hunger.

  As the aftermath of the Chorus' immolation faded, another mob rushed across the plaza. But I was beyond their reach. They couldn't enter the wide beam of light within the shell of the Tower. I crossed into the light and gave myself up to its seductive gravity. My purified body ascending. A star, rising.

  XXXI

  At the top, the light was a physical presence, a globe wrapped around the peak of the building. I floated against it, the pliable surface dimpling at my touch. As more of my body touched the limpid film, the shell became sticky flypaper. I didn't struggle and the gravity within the membrane pulled me flat against the rounded shape. There was a brief sensation of pain-lightning stroking the plane of my skin-and then the world inverted.

  Inside, there was neither color nor tint-polar opposition to the gritty darkness of the dead city. Every surface was bleached white. There were no shadows, only dim lines that delineated edges and borders-variations on the play of light.

  The soot of the city no longer covered me. It had not come through the barrier. I could almost see the pale history of an outline beneath me, a fading print of my body done in static-charged ash and detritus. My skin was translucent, my blood a series of pale tributaries running through valleys and vales of colorless flesh. The stark tint of my bones was evident beneath the naked flesh. The blue and gray of my clothes had already lightened to the color of early dawn.

  As I walked toward the source of light, I became lighter still, my clothes vanishing into nothingness, my skin becoming rice paper wrapped around a clear gelatinous mass. My bones were hardened crystal, sculpted by an Old Master.

  My memory of the penthouse was a historical document of its presence. The obstructions of the furniture were gone. The trinity of Thoth figures no longer stood by the window, their metal frames had vanished. Only the mirrored facets of the sphere remained, a glittering diamond of light that was purer and brighter than all the surrounding white.

  Lying beneath the floating sphere as if asleep was a two-dimensional line drawing of Nicols, like an Impressionist caricature dashed off on a coffee house napkin. I bent over and tried to touch him and found he really was nothing more than a collection of a few strokes.

  "The memories fade until they are nothing but lines and shadows."

  I looked to the source of the voice. Bernard was the only color. His robe crawled with motion. The script-once black, now white-wriggled and squirmed with animate mysticism on a blue and sickly orange background. A silver halo lay low enough upon his head that it bisected the crown of his skull. His face was pale like the visage of a man
who has not been aboveground for a year, but it was still the color of flesh. Unlike the bleached translucence of my skin. The ruddy color of his neck looked like a birthmark or an allergic rash.

  He inclined his crowned head. "The walker between worlds. I thought you might be the one to return." His voice was quiet and sibilant, his throat still new. "Have you come to take Julian's place?"

  He looked through me, so easy to do in my current state. "Yes," Bernard continued, "before I did not understand the nature of the haze that hid you from view. It is gone now, but I think I know why it was there. From his reading of The Book of Thoth, Jabir Ibn Hayyan theorized that an alchemist could learn how to actively transform soul energy, that a living harvester was possible. That was his interpretation of Thoth's Master of the Mysteries-the one who understood how to use the Key. Am I right? That's what you are, isn't it?"

  Lightbreaker.

  "Oh, this petulant resistance of yours is frustrating. There is so much we could teach each other, Mr. Markham. I want to learn about your technique, about how you take a soul. It was Jabir's theory of soul transformation that pointed me toward the mystery of the mirror."

  "You know," I said, breaking my silence, "it probably wasn't an accident that The Book of Thoth was destroyed."

  "There is a reason for all obscuration, Mr. Markham. Our ignorance must be overcome, we must actively seek to remove the scales from our eyes. The Book wasn't destroyed. It was broken and scattered because it was meant to be found again, reassembled by someone worthy."

  "You?"

  "It is the crowning achievement of my life, putting together The Book of Thoth," Bernard admitted. "It began with Ficino-"

  "His book from the Sorbonne? The one the Watchers say doesn't exist."

  He shook his head. "The second part of Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae doesn't exist. But that's not what I found. A student of Ficino's wrote a tiny tract bridging the Theologia Platonica and Jabir's Kitab al-Zuhra. The document was a workbook essentially, a paper charting how his master encoded references to Jabir's work, how the Persian hid parts of TheBook of Thoth within the Kitab al-Zuhra." He laughed. "That was the first lie I told them. 'A lost Ficino.' Only Protector Briande saw through my eager bibliomania."

  "He sees a lot of things. I just left him on the far bank. With Pender. Who won't be joining us."

  "No? I thought not when you arrived. I am surprised the Protector didn't come in your stead."

  "Too busy Witnessing."

  "Really? So he does believe the Key will work."

  "Or not. He might just not want to be standing at ground zero when dawn arrives. He knows what the Key does, doesn't he? You went to him when you realized you needed a copy of the Kitab."

  "Not just the Kitab. There were so many hints strewn across the history of alchemy and Hermetic thought. Roger Bacon laid out the foundation of the mirror in his Opus Tertium-oh, how the Catholic Church wanted knowledge of that volume censored, but John Dee managed to find a copy. But it was in Bacon's Liber de Intellectu et Intelligibili where the alchemical formulas were hidden. And Llull's De Quinta Essentia held hints on how to preserve the energy once it had been extracted. A German writer named Monach wrote an epistle about the pros and cons of conquering nature. Most of it was a retread of Flamel's theories, but his work contained a passage about the conversion of the soul, which proved useful in the fabrication of the ritual that manifests the ibis-hounds. And, from the hounds, came an understanding of scale. How I might collect many."

  He sighed like a proud father. "So many pieces to put together, but I did it. I managed to decipher the clues left by our alchemical forefathers and build Thoth's Key." His hands came together, in an old comfortable way that spoke of his familiarity with lecturing. Of being in front of an audience. "Do you know what the hardest part was?"

  "Killing?"

  "It is a damnation of our souls, isn't it?" His forehead creased slightly, lines forming beneath the stars on his brow. "But it is my moral upbringing that gives me that guilt-a hard lesson scored into my flesh. We have to eat the energy of others in order to become closer to God. Isn't that right, Mr. Markham? This feasting means a dissolution of their self, a subjugation of their spirit beneath us. But God is everything, and do we not become everything by devouring others?"

  I didn't dignify the question with an answer. What was I going to tell him that he wasn't going to realize was a lie? And what would the truth give him-that I killed in order to make myself whole-wasn't that just the validation he wanted?

  "We are such a strange creation," he said when it was clear I wasn't going to say anything, "so fiercely independent-tiny islands, ferociously guarded-and yet we crave company. Is that not one of the funny little circumstances of being human? We are distinct personalities-unique patterns of light-and yet all we really want is to be with someone else. Our lovers, our families, the communities that welcome us, the embrace of the Divine. Do you think we'll ever consciously realize that all of this clinging to one another is just a manifestation of our fear that God doesn't love us, that He has abandoned us?"

  "Is that what you offered all of them? Companionship?"

  He shook his head. "No, Mr. Markham. I offered them something stronger."

  "And what is that?"

  "Unity. A purpose."

  "What? Death? Not a very grand purpose." I felt a tickle on the back of my neck, and I looked over my shoulder. I wasn't sure if it was an afterimage on my fading eyes from Bernard's robe or if there was indeed a fine line of orange light creasing the purity of this space. "Trismegistus believed that the evolution of the soul was an individual activity," I continued, "a deeply personal quest that required a soul to reason its way out of the cage of the flesh. Yes, sure, we all want to get back to God, but Trismegistus thought we needed to do it on our own. Not in a mass exodus like you've planned."

  "The trouble with Trismegistus, in the end," Bernard admitted, "is that his lessons in TheCorpus Hermeticum were of a solitary path. A solo voyage into the arms of the enlightenment."

  "So he made the Key because he got lonely. Being the only guy who knew the Way. Is that it?"

  "No, he realized the world was filled with too much flesh, too many distractions. Did he not argue that the only vice of the soul was ignorance? Did he not argue that the Reasoned Man has every right-no, a duty-to bring those who refuse Reason into the greater consciousness of God? Those whose minds are too weak and shallow, did he not believe they should be guided?" Bernard gestured at the pure light of Key behind me. "If all of those who have been harvested wanted nothing of God, if they were unwilling to partake of Reason and become enlightened on their own, then are they not failing to fulfill the very beauty of their existence? Is what we do evil if we bring them to fruition?"

  "I'm not willing to make that call."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it is playing at being God."

  "Exactly." He smiled as if he had just tricked me into a corner from which I could not escape.

  I sighed. "I should have put my hand in your brain instead of your throat. Not that you're getting any blood up there anymore."

  His cheek twitched. "Your interference-" his hands unconsciously moved toward his mottled throat "-forced me to engage the Key early, before all the energy it held was fully transformed. As a result, it was unable to completely fill itself."

  "And I'm real sorry to have fucked up your plans like that."

  He laughed, even though the action appeared to hurt his throat. "What do you think your language will gain you here, Mr. Markham? I am at the culmination of a life's work. Do you think your barbed comments will deter me from finishing this? Do you think your weak flesh can stop me?" He waved a hand at my body. "You're already fading. The Key is taking your soul by increments and you don't even know it."

  I smiled. "Oh, I'm fully aware of what it is doing."

  My body had become a frail phantom, a diaphanous veil barely containing the sparking surge of my spirit. Standing in the
presence of Thoth's Key was destroying my flesh. The mirror dissolved my skin so as to free my soul.

  That was the reason I was here, after all.

  My awareness seemed to shake him slightly, just a small tremor in his tongue as he wet his lips.

  A thin crease of orange light drew itself across his face, a widening gleam of warmth. His apprehension vanishing, Bernard looked toward the source of the glow. I didn't look behind me. I knew what he saw. That sweet hour of prime. Dawn.

  "Nunc," he said. "It is time. I am ready, Mr. Markham. I believe in what I am about to accomplish. What do you have to offer?"

  "An observation, I suppose," I said. "For a very long time, I believed in the Devil. I believed that, in illo tempore, I met him in the woods. And, actually, I believe I met him again a short while ago."

  "And now? This is the final moment of your existence, Mr. Markham. Is that all you believe? That you've seen the face of evil. Have you driven him out then? Is that the basis for your newfound religion?"

  "No, I believe he's part of me. Like God."

  Bernard smiled. "Ah, the old Hermetic truism. Do you feel His presence, then?" The band of light filled his eyes.

  "I don't have to 'feel' Him, Bernard. I am God."

  His attention snapped back to me, even though I was almost gone, almost invisible against the burning light.

  "Just like you, Bernard. Just like every soul you took last night. We are all God. Separate and distinct."

  "No," he said. "God has been hidden from us. We must free ourselves in order to perceive him."