Thunder rolled, but there was no threat in it.
“And now?” Faustus said.
“Now?” said the Rider. He reached into the collar of his coat and pulled the amulet Faustus had given him from his neck. He let it fall in the road, then tugged his animal’s bit. “Goodbye, old man.”
He walked off without another glance back.
Belden fell in behind, touching his hat brim to the old peddler before nudging his horse’s flanks with his boot heels.
Kabede held the old man’s look and walked behind with the staff. Belden looked over his shoulder.
The old man sat atop the dead man’s horse for some time, watching them go.
It was raining by the time he climbed into the seat of the vardo and took the reins of the camel train.
Episode Eleven - The Mules of the Mazzikim
The Rider walked the stark desert road locals called The Devil’s Highway alone, leaning toward the setting sun that was his destination. The onager fought him the entire way, the guiding tether taut between them.
No amount of cajoling or pleading or even outright force seemed to enamor the usually facile and obedient animal to the journey. He supposed it was a further portent that he should reconsider his destination. That was what Kabede would have said.
Kabede.
By now, he and Dick Belden should have reached Tombstone. If Professor Spates had come through, they had the translations of the Sheardown Papers by now. Perhaps they knew the importance of the scroll he had taken from Adon’s disciple. Perhaps, as Kabede had suggested, the Rod of Aaron could lead them to Adon as it had led him to the Rider when he had been imperiled in the hidden Apache stronghold of Pa-Gotzin-Kay.
He couldn’t afford to think about these things anymore.
The Rider was tired. Tired of causing the deaths of friends, tired of chasing down Adon, tired of not knowing whether the fight he had been fighting so long mattered to HaShem. If it did, why hadn’t the Lord intervened in all this yet? Was it all some game to Him?
So, he had given the scroll to Kabede, told him to go to Tombstone.
It had all begun with talk over a campfire in Mexico a few days after they’d parted company with Faustus Montague. Dick Belden asked what their next move was.
“I’m going to Yuma,” the Rider answered, only a little less surprised than Belden that he’d said it.
“Yuma? What’s in Yuma?” Belden asked.
“Nothing,” Kabede said, sighing and not looking at the Rider. “Nothing that concerns us or our mission.”
“It concerns me.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Kabede warned, looking at him at last.
“Whoa, what’s all this?” Belden asked, feeling the tension.
“Someone helped me once,” said the Rider. “Now she’s in trouble.”
Belden’s expression brightened.
“She?”
“She’s a spy,” Kabede said, staring at the Rider.
“A spy, huh?” Belden echoed, leaning in, intrigued.
“And a demon,” said Kabede.
Belden’s smile failed and he looked askance at the Rider.
“Nevertheless,” said the Rider, “she helped me and she’s being punished for it.”
“So said Lucifer.”
“Lucifer?” Belden repeated, smirking nervously. “You don’t mean the Lucifer?”
“There’s no reason to think it was a lie,” said the Rider.
“This is not part of our task,” Kabede said, rubbing his eyes. “We should leave her to her own.”
“I won’t do that.”
Kabede laid the Rod of Aaron across his knees, as if he would beat this notion out of the Rider.
“It is obviously a trap,” he said. “If we go we will only be killed.”
“Then you’d better take the scroll with you,” the Rider said, unstrapping the case from his shoulder and holding it out.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the scroll’s more important than me.”
Kabede frowned heavily and took the case, tying it to his own back.
The Rider sighed inwardly. He was glad to be rid of the thing.
“You’re a fool if you let yourself be taken in by this shikseh, knowing what she is,” said Kabede.
“I’m not being taken in,” said the Rider, though he knew deep down it was partially a lie. Even in the midst of their hardest tribulations he had still managed to think of Nehema at least once a day. Dying in the desert, pursued by the walking dead, he had seen her face in the moon. The confrontation with Misquamacus and his gods had distracted him, but on the quiet rainy road out of Mexico thoughts of her had swiftly returned.
What could he do? It was true she was a succubus, and that as such she could not be trusted. But the talisman she had given him had been the only thing that had preserved his life from her mother Lilith’s servants. Lucifer had said she was his spy, but he refused to lift a finger to help her now that her duplicity had been discovered. He knew only that she was in Yuma, and she was being punished. That was enough. He couldn’t go on until he knew he had done something to help her.
He knew that Kabede would not deign to help, just as he had come to know something else.
It was not the Rider’s destiny to stop Adon and the Great Old Ones.
How had he ever thought he could? It would take a true tzadik, one of the righteous thirty six hidden saints to block the Outer Gods from entering this world. An angel from another universe had already failed in the task and been corrupted. Secret mystic orders had been wholly annihilated trying to prevent it. He himself had fumbled through it unwittingly for so many years, and still he knew no more about what they planned than he had two years ago.
How had his personal quest for revenge suddenly come to encompass the saving of Creation anyway? It had never been his intent. He’d only wanted vindication, to clear his own name with the Order. But the Order was gone now. Why couldn’t he just let the indignation of Adon’s personal betrayal go? Perhaps this was why his life had been so hard—he had spent it in a selfish pursuit of vengeance, and then tried to stuff himself into an ill-suited task. And who had paid for his mistakes? An orphaned boy, some innocent freighters, Piishi…
Now, his life was nearing its end. Kabede wanted to save him. Kabede wanted to find a minyan of Jews and a Torah, do a re-naming ceremony.
But Kabede had more important things to do.
Because Kabede was a tzadik. And not just by some wishful ceremonial title of the Sons of the Essenes. He was truly righteous; a saint. Hidden, unknown, even to himself.
The Rider had been sure at Pa-Gotzin Kay when, through Piishi’s eyes, he had seen him accompanied by the Gans, Apache mountain spirits that neither Kabede nor Faustus Montague had apparently perceived. Piishi had told him they were only visible to Apache, but the Rider suspected that had he been wearing his mystic Solomonic lenses and looked upon the Gans, he would have seen avenging angels, much like the ones the Lord had sent to smash Hayim Cardin’s Molech cult in Little Jerusalem, outside Delirium Tremens.
If angels came to Kabede’s aid unbidden, then surely he must be one of the chosen of the Lord.
He had entrusted his suspicion to Belden, the only man besides Kabede whom he trusted. He’d told him everything the night he’d decided to depart, as Kabede slept.
“Are you sure about this?” Belden asked, as the Rider packed his things.
“Yes. I’ll need you to go with Kabede. He doesn’t know the way to Tombstone, and the scroll is more important to all this than I am. I’ll meet you both there.”
This was a lie of course. He had no intention of going to Tombstone. He suspected he wouldn’t even live past rescuing Nehema, if he succeeded in that at all. Mazzamauriello and the shedim, and maybe Lilith herself, were most likely waiting for him there. Besides, the two of them would compliment each other. Dick Belden could protect the Ethiopian from the profane wiles of Tombstone—if he could manage not to be swept up in them himself—and
Kabede could handle any supernatural menace that came their way. He had initially thought he might be able to teach Kabede something, but the young man instinctively knew more than he ever would. His faith was stronger. He was the one for this fight. The Rider was sure the Sixteen Sided Sword of the Almighty Faustus had mentioned would come to him too, when the time was right.
“He’s more important than me,” the Rider said to Belden, watching Kabede sleep. “I don’t think he even knows it yet.”
“What d’you mean?”
“We have a thing called a tzadik. It’s a saint. A righteous individual. There are said to be thirty-six of them in the world at a time. The tzadikim nistarim: the hidden saints. Even they don’t know what they are. They can do miraculous things, and as long as they survive, the world can’t end. I think Kabede is a tzadik. I think he was sent here to stop Adon and the Great Old Ones.”
“You know,” said Belden, “that staff he carries? I can’t pick it up.”
The Rider’s eyes widened. Another sign of what he had come to believe. He had heard tell that only Moses had been able to take the staff from Midian, and it had been the scepter of the Hebrew Kings ever after. Perhaps only one chosen to bear the Rod could do so. Perhaps, only a tzadik. But hadn’t Kabede told him a Christian had once carried it as well, and Egyptian wizards? Hadn’t he himself briefly wielded it against a horde of ruhin? Maybe only someone steeped in the mysteries then. Who better to bear it now than a young man born with all the knowledge of Heaven? What better champion could there be?
“These tzadiks,” Belden said.
“Tzadikim.”
“Is there any other way of telling one? I mean, anything weird?”
“Like what?”
“Like…maybe no head on their shadow?”
The Rider stared blankly. He knew what Belden was getting at.
“It’s not me, Dick,” he said. “I’m no saint.”
“I know that,” Belden snickered.
“I mean it. That headless shadow means I’m cursed. I’m doomed to die by September of this year. I don’t want to hear any arguments,” he said quickly, when Belden started to speak. “Kabede knows about it. He thinks there’s a way to stop it in Tombstone. If there is, fine. Either way, he’s got to get there safely and meet with Professor Spates.”
“I’ll do my best,” Belden said. “But, if he finds something, some way to stop what’s happening to you. I better see you there, demonpuncher.”
“You will. I promise.”
“You be careful, partner. Be smart.”
The Rider nodded, and handed over the Henry rifle he had engraved with Solomonic symbols and the Elder Sign.
“Take this. You’re a better rifle shot than me anyway.”
Belden took it and clasped the Rider’s hand.
“Thank you, my friend.”
He was about to part when Belden drew him in for a strong embrace and clapped his shoulder.
“Hey, Joe,” Belden said thoughtfully in his ear. “You ever heard the one about the dog that got its tail cut off crossin’ the railroad tracks?”
The Rider said nothing.
“Train rolled over the tip of his tail, sliced it clean off. The dog turned around to look at it, and the train knocked his head off.”
“And?”
Belden grinned and patted his shoulder once more.
“Don’t go gettin’ your head knocked off over a piece of tail.”
Then the Rider walked off into the night, dragging the protesting onager behind him.
Now here he was, the trusty old animal still contending against him, even after doubling, tripling the time it took to get here, to the junction of the sea green Gila River and the silvery Colorado. To the west lay California, only a few hours away, and beyond that, San Francisco and the sea. Home wasn’t close, per se, but he fancied it was. He fought the urge to just keep going until he reached the ocean and felt its cold salt water lap at his ankles while his toes sank in the wet sand of his boyhood. Just to see the ocean again, to smell it, and hear a seagull scream…
But of course, he wasn’t going home.
On the north end of the river there stood a treeless hill that looked to have been partially built by untold generations of red ants, for they were so thick on the ground in places they could be seen from horseback. The road winding uphill emptied in the crumbling adobe ruins of an old Spanish mission, which had been commandeered by the Army and now flew an American flag bleached pink, white and purple in the sun. Men moved slowly on the hill, sweating in their blue wool sack coats.
The bottom land above which Fort Yuma rose like a rural baron’s tumbledown castle was carpeted with arrow-weeds and mesquite. Sparrows flitted from the river, carrying precious water back to their little nests in a few dry boned willows standing here and there between the stagnant sloughs and lagoons. The Rider spied a long-eared jackrabbit partaking from one of the shallow puddles, warily rising to his muscled haunches now and then to keep a black bead eye out for weasels or coyotes.
Two long-legged cranes waded amid the reeds on the right bank of the river, darting their scissor bills beneath the surface now and then.
On the other side of the river, a second hill overlooked the confluence, and sitting atop it was a jumble of stone buildings and a high plank wall, which was slowly being replaced by thick adobe. There was a lot of construction going on there, and the workers, he saw, wore the stripy overalls of convicts. That was the new Territorial Prison then, which he had once read about.
There was a ferry, but the big flat raft was tied off, the owners absent, a sign on the adobe cabin reading: ‘Be Back Later.’
A pivoting railroad bridge was the only other way across, and the Rider saw that there was no sign of an engine, so he began the slow toil of dragging the onager across, stumbling now and then over the ties.
It was dry here, and the sun was hot, filling the river with bright fire.
Midway across the bridge he saw a ghostly figure sitting under a sheet of clinging off-white muslin. A pair of skinny brown legs protruded from under the sheet, gnarled feet dangling over the side of the bridge. A fishing pole stuck out too, and a line trailed in the water below.
As the Rider approached, the phantasm turned its head to watch him struggle across. In the time it took the Rider to reach him, the figure laid aside its pole, stood, and pulled off the sheet, revealing a bone thin Kwtsan Indian in a patched Army jacket and no pants to speak of. His face was caked with dried, cracked mud. He looked like a terra cotta statue come to life.
How the Rider knew the Indian was a Kwtsan, he wasn’t exactly sure, though he suspected. Ever since he had possessed the body of Piishi, his late Apache friend (Dine, he thought, correcting himself, as Apache was not the term Piishi’s people used to describe themselves. More correctly, Piishi had been one of the Chi’hine band of the Chircahua Dine), he had found a good deal of foreign knowledge peppered among his own. He had knowledge of Indian traditions and tribes he hadn’t before. He knew certain survival tricks, like keeping a pebble in the jaw to stimulate the salivary glands when water was scarce, or how to obscure one’s trail, or, what a Kwtsan was, in this instance. He attributed it to having possessed Piishi for such an inordinate amount of time, or perhaps from having only vacated his physical form at the moment of death. They had shared knowledge during their time together, certainly. Piishi had used the Rider’s knowledge to destroy himself and drive back one of the Great Old Ones, in fact. Apparently some of Piishi’s knowledge had remained.
“Buenas dias,” the Rider said when he finally reached him.
“Hola,” said the Indian.
“Pescado…” the Rider said, motioning to the river, but he couldn’t think of the word for ‘biting,’ so he just said, “biting?” Inexplicably, Spanish either hadn’t been among Piishi’s assets, or it just hadn’t stuck.
The Kwtsan shook his head.
“No pescado. Tortuga o serpientes.”
The Rider nodded as if
he understood.
“I wonder,” the Rider began, “could you tell me…ah, donde esta ‘Lady Pleasant?’”
“La Lady Pleasant?” the Indian repeated, looking slightly confused. “Si…La Lady Pleasant fue el nombre del barco del Capitán Haddox. Ella destruido por Ogeden’s Landing.” He pointed upriver, and made a waving gesture, as if it was somewhere out of sight down there.
“Ogden’s Landing?” the Rider repeated, that being the only thing he’d gotten from the Indian’s reply. He looked off downriver.
“Sí, hace cuatro años.”
“Cuatro años?”
“Si.”
“How far away is that? Ogden’s Landing? Donde esta?”
The Indian chewed his chapped lower lip for a minute, then pointed upriver again.
“Tal vez diez millas hasta el Gila,” he said.
The Rider stared past the Indian’s hand and smiled patiently.
“Alright. Gracias.”
“De nada,” the Indian said. Then, as if he had forgotten something important, he quickly patted down his tunic, reached inside, and produced something and held it out. It looked like a knot of greasy black and gray hair sprouting from a dollar-sized scrap of dry parchment.
“¡Señor, Este es el cuero cabelludo del famoso asesino, Glanton. Mi padre lo tomó a sí mismo en este mismo lugar. ¿Quieres comprarlo?”
It seemed the Indian was trying to sell it to him. The Rider shook his head.
“No, no. Gracias.”
The Indian shrugged and replaced the thing in his coat. Then he lowered the muslin sheet to the river down below, pulled it up sopping, put it back over his head, and sat back down to fish for whatever.
The Rider kept going across the bridge. He had no idea where Ogden’s Landing was, or on what bank of the river it lay. It was a boat landing, sure, but how far upriver was it? He had to find an English speaker, and he didn’t fancy dragging the unusually hesitant animal up the hill to the fort.
Yuma was the largest town he’d visited in some time. The houses and shops were entirely adobe and they cast the only meager shade there was. It was so dry it seemed his joints creaked when he walked. His hope of finding an English speaker began to dwindle as it seemed the town was entirely populated by Mexicans, but the name of the newspaper, The Arizona Sentinel, gave him hope. He pulled the onager to the hitching post out front of it.
Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel Page 24
