Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel

by Edward M. Erdelac

  The same day, a little man from the Arizona Sentinel came to interview him, but he declined. Marshal Books told the reporter the name the Rider had given him and some details of the crime for which he would likely spend the rest of his life in the Territorial Prison up on the hill, then sent him away.

  Not two days later Books rapped on his cell bars in the early morning with a tin cup and slid an all-too familiar New Mexico Territorial wanted poster across the floor to him.

  The Rider didn’t have to look at it. He knew well what it said.

  “Looks like you left some minor details out of our initial interview, Mister Joe Lillard,” Books said, spitting on the floor. “Or is it Rider? Or Maizel? Either way, our Mister Bantas at the newspaper recollected your description.”

  There was a thousand dollar reward for his capture in New Mexico Territory. Books must have been kicking himself for not having collected it himself.

  “What happens now?” the Rider asked, sighing and rubbing his eyes.

  He had hoped to avoid drawing the attention of Adon and his Creed to this town. He was pretty sure that in luring him to Yuma, Lilith had acted of her own accord, probably at the behest of her shedim offspring. But he didn’t want Adon or the Creed here. The last time he had tangled with the turncoat Merkabah Riders, an entire town, a valley full of desert dwellers, and a garrison of soldiers had been killed. Every day he had asked Marshal Books when his trial was, and every day Books had assured him it was coming. The proceedings had been on hold in lieu of the circumstances, allowing the family time to mourn their dead before rounding everybody up in for his trial. He had grown more and more anxious over the appointed day. Now it didn’t matter anymore.

  “Now Judge Berry sends a wire to Santa Fe informing the governor’s office that we’ve got you. You’ll likely be extradited.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “What’re you in a hurry to get to?” Books asked. “Here you might’ve gotten to live the rest of your life on a rock pile. Back in New Mexico they’ll hang you for what you done.” He motioned to the paper. “Says there you swiped somethin’ off H.T. Magwood over in Cochise County.”

  “Do you know the man?” the Rider asked.

  “I know the name, and that he runs cattle in the San Pedro River Valley. We’ll be wiring him as well. I expect he’ll come to call on you before the week’s out.”

  Magwood. H.T. Magwood of Delirium Tremens. The man’s name was on the poster, offering an additional reward for the return of the ancient scroll the Rider had supposedly stolen from him. But the Rider had never met the man. He was an associate of Adon whoever he was, and apparently had connections in high places in the New Mexico territorial government. This was the first he’d heard Magwood was a cattleman.

  “You really kill all them fellas in New Mexico?” Books asked.

  “No,” said the Rider.

  “But you admit you killed the Haddox woman.”

  “Yes,” the Rider affirmed. “You saw me.”

  Books stared at the Rider and then returned to his office.

  The next day Books announced that a lady had come to see him.

  He had expected Lilith might make a play for him before the authorities locked him up somewhere she couldn’t easily get, or dropped him through a gallows’ door.

  But the lady Books ushered in was not the fire-scarred Queen of Demons, nor one of her three harridan daughters. The Rider was genuinely surprised to see who it was.

  She was a dainty, refined woman in fine light petticoats, a lace parasol over her shoulder, one small gloved hand poised on the calamander and ivory handle. Her skin was so pale, her neatly bound hair so frosty white, she seemed to glow in the dimness. A casual observer would have said it was just the afternoon sun coming in the door behind her.

  The Rider knew better.

  She was a malakh. An angel of the Lord. She had been his companion in his ascent through the holy hekhalots of Heaven, his spirit guide through the regions of Paradise. They had parted company at the foot of the Throne, when the terrible angel Metatron had cast his unworthy soul from the Presence. Then about two years ago she had appeared to him again in Delirium Tremens, during the affair where he’d smashed a Canaanite cult of Molech and first heard of the Hour of Incursion plot.

  He never learned her name.

  Marshal Books touched the brim of his hat and closed the door behind her. He never once looked directly at her.

  “Hello again, Rider,” she said, when the door to the outer office clanked shut.

  “Hello.”

  “You’re in a fix this time.”

  “It certainly appears so.” He stood and went to the bars. “I guess it would be too much to hope you’re here to spring me out of this calaboose.”

  She knitted her cornsilk eyebrows together.

  “Spring you?”

  “Break me out of jail.”

  “No, I’m afraid not. It was your own weakness which led you here. I cannot intervene.”

  “My weakness.” He shook his head. “I came here to save someone I thought was in trouble.”

  The angel looked at him sideways, a prim smile on her small lips.

  “You cannot lie to me, Rider. I know you too well.”

  The Rider looked away. It had only been half a lie. He knew he had done wrong in abandoning his purpose to see Nehema. But he really had been concerned about her. Hadn’t he?

  “Why are you here then?” he asked gruffly.

  “To comfort you, and to prepare you for what is to come.”

  “It’s about time,” the Rider smirked.

  “What do you mean?” she asked with apparent innocence.

  “I mean I could have used a little more preparation up to this point. A little more angelic comfort.”

  When she still seemed oblivious to his words, he got angry.

  “I was taught to see the Lord’s hand in the dew on the grass. But I haven’t seen green grass in many a year.”

  The angel raised her pale eyebrows.

  “Does this mean the Lord is not here? Even here?”

  “I want answers.”

  “I am not here to give answers.”

  “I want answers of the Lord.”

  “He will not give them.”

  “He had better,” the Rider nearly shouted.

  “Do you presume to make demands of the Lord?” she asked calmly in the face of his outrage.

  “Well, he’s made some pretty sizable demands of me,” he said, stalking about the cell.

  “And what have you done for Him?”

  “What have I…I’ve given up everything! I’ve been His Joshua. I’ve hunted down His enemies, destroyed them when I could. Alone. I’ve seen His enemies up close. His real enemies. Felt their power. Lost friends to it.”

  “Do you really believe that? That you have been alone?”

  “Oh, there’ve been men and women who’ve helped me…”

  “Men and women? And the Lord has not helped you? I have not helped you?”

  “You? I haven’t seen you in two years. And as to the Lord—”

  “Be careful, Rider,” she interrupted. “Do not think your Father does not listen. He hears you. When you hung upon the windmill in Polvo Arrido, who gave the boy the courage to return and cut you down? When Medgar Tooms and the dybbukim threatened you, and the old Reverend Lessmoor prayed to the Lord of The Thunderstorms, who answered with lightning? Did you forget it was the Sar ha-Cholem, an angel of the Lord, that sent Kabede to you? And who do you suppose gave Dick Belden the dream that helped you defeat the necromancer above the Valle del Torreon?

  “Could you have passed through hell itself, where no mortal soul may pass, without the protection of the Lord of Hosts? Do you think you have survived this long solely because of your own abilities? And if you do, where does your power come from? Is not every one of your amulets inscribed with the name of an angel? Did the names of the Lord not serve you against the Grigori Armoni and in the den of the
lilin? Did the angels themselves not fight for you at Pa-Gotzin-Kay? And did you not call on the Lord through His Psalm only days ago? You Israelites never change. Must the Lord clear every obstruction for you to earn your faith?”

  The Rider stood dumbfounded. She couldn’t have known about any of those things unless she or the Lord had been watching him.

  “Why didn’t you ever make yourself known?” he said miserably, a tremble of emotion in his voice.

  “Has the Lord not made Himself known to you since the beginning of time?”

  He had a thought then, and kicked off his boots, falling to his knees before her.

  “Are you…are you the Lord?”

  She giggled.

  “No, Rider. You would not come to Him. He will not come to you. But I have been with you. All the days of your life, though you knew me not.”

  No mere guide then. He felt a wetness on his cheek.

  “My malakh memuneh,” he said thickly. His deputy, his guardian angel. It made sense. She had come unbidden whenever he had explored Heaven as a novice. “Adon told me you were just a curious spirit, drawn to a mortal soul among the hekhalots.” A common occurrence, he had said.

  “Adon told you many things,” she said. “And he will tell you more yet. I was never perceptible by you until you set upon the Merkabah path. It is my task to bear witness to your life.”

  How had he never suspected? This was the angel who aided him when he served the Lord. She had seen him at his worst and at his best, and watched him break bread every Shabbat.

  “Soon you’ll be out of a job,” the Rider said.

  “It may be. You are entering a very dark place, Rider. You will not know truth from lies, friend from foe. And due to your own infidelity, you enter into this stripped of all your protection, all the power entrusted to you.”

  “I know it,” said the Rider, lowering his head. “Please, can’t you answer me anything?”

  The angel stared at him, then closed her eyes.

  Would she grant him this boon? He had to know what the Great Old Ones were. If HaShem, the Lord, or Shamblaparn as Faustus called Him, was greater, or where the Outer Gods fit in His plan.

  The angel opened her eyes.

  “I am not to answer the question which is now in your heart,” she said. “It is for you to ask and answer. I will give you an answer to a question you have never asked. The answer is The Thunder of God.”

  “The Thunder of God?” the Rider repeated.

  She smiled then, and the smile warmed him in spite of his predicament.

  “Remember it in your dreams.”

  The Rider nodded and bowed his head, though he didn’t understand.

  “Thank you.”

  He was startled from his obeisance by the opening of the door to the outer office.

  He looked up, and the angel, his angel, was gone.

  Books stood in the doorway, swinging the iron key ring on one finger, looking at him as if he had sprouted a tail.

  “Get up and put your boots on.”

  “Where did she go?”

  Books raised an eyebrow in answer.

  “The woman. My visitor.”

  “Wishful thinking, pard. You must’ve been dreamin.’ Last visitor you had was the scribbler from the Sentinel. Now get your boots on.”

  The Rider did as he was told.

  “Have the marshals from New Mexico come?”

  “You ain’t goin’ to New Mexico.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “Up to Prison Hill. The acting superintendant’s requested to see you. Told the judge he knows you.”

  “Who’s the acting superintendant?”

  Books drew his pistol and fit the key into the lock. “Don’t try anything,” he warned.

  The Rider raised his hands as Books swung open the squealing iron door and motioned for him to come out. He did, and Books closed a pair of shackles around his wrists behind his back, and shut the door again.

  “Fella named Laird,” Books said. “He’s fillin’ in for Captain Meder while he’s away.”

  The Rider blinked. Laird? Who was he? He’d never even heard the name. What possible interest could the man have in him?

  Books led him outside to a waiting prison wagon, the cage in the back of the crossed iron variety.

  A deputy sat waiting in the seat.

  Books opened the cage and deposited him inside, locking it. He passed the key to the deputy and went back into his office without another word.

  The deputy cracked the reins and the rocking cage wagon rumbled out of town.

  Those townspeople who paused to watch his passage fixed him with hard stares through the bars. He was a known killer. Most of the men in town had fought the fire that burned down the Haddox Woodyard, and those that hadn’t had spread word of him faster than that conflagration. No doubt when Bantas from the Sentinel had identified him as the same man wanted in New Mexico for destroying a watering hole and killing several men, his repugnance had increased considerably.

  The accusing stares followed him out of town, and a few kids pitched stones that bounced off the bars, or directed mucus-laden spit at him, which passed through and struck his cheeks. The Jew slurs came, of course, and he turned his thoughts from where he was.

  He reflected on the specific killing that had led him to his, that of Nehema. It did not burden his conscience particularly, as he knew she still existed in Hell, and that she would have driven her husband to evil eventually. He took comfort in that he had preserved the idyllic false image Harry Haddox had held of her. Better she be a martyr who broke his heart than a demon who hacked it in two.

  The wagon lurched up the gravel road ascending Prison Hill, and the Rider was pressed back against the barred doors of his cage.

  The prison was an imposing sight overlooking the rushes of the river below. Convicts in black and white striped clothes whittled away at the side of the hill with pick and shovel, chains clinking, freeing more clay from the ground to improve upon their durance. The walls were eight foot high and plank, but were slowly being replaced by a thick adobe wall eighteen feet tall. A tall, pagoda-like wooden guard tower sat over an old stone water tank, and uniformed guards with Winchesters propped on their hips overlooked the sullen work details as they clinked by in long drudging lines. In the shade of the wall, a number of lean looking, near-naked Indians in straw hats cradling rifles sat or dozed. Quechans.

  They passed a cemetery outside the east wall, the board grave markers jutting like a stubborn, hardscrabble crop from the dusty, stony ground.

  Winding up and around the main drive to the entrance, the wagon came at last to a halt, and a broad, unshaven guard in a yellow planter’s hat sweating in the intense heat of the day beneath his wool coat came over.

  “What say, deputy? Not much of a haul today,” said the guard.

  “Mister Laird asked special for this’n,” said the deputy, getting down from his seat and coming around to the back. “I’m to tell you he’s the one wanted in New Mexico. The one killed the Haddox woman.”

  “Ah,” said the guard. “Yeah I was told to expect this one.”

  The deputy opened the cage and stepped back to allow the Rider to disembark, which he did presently, the threat of the guard’s rifle imminent to discourage any notion of untoward behavior.

  There were a few silent moments while he was pulled and turned and pushed as the deputy and the guard swapped shackles, then the deputy bid farewell, got back in his wagon and rattled off down the hill.

  The guard led him into the prison yard by the crook of his elbow. He was an exceedingly ugly individual. Besides being disproportionately large, he had some kind of skin condition that had caused him to grow thick, powdery white calluses on his knuckles. There were similarly dry, unsightly patches on either side of his face as well, scabbed over many times until the skin there had a reptilian consistency.

  The place was shaping up to be a fortress. The walls and the thick Sallyport gate under constructio
n were progressing, and inside, like a keep, the squat stone brick prison block nestled like a bunker.

  A row of open air cages lay to the right of the main block, wherein a few haggard looking prisoners sulked in the pounding sun, and far along the back, the Rider noticed more cells and cave-like passages cut into the rock itself.

  They hung a left across the stone flags to a building marked Yard Office. The guard led the Rider inside, where a bespectacled man in a uniform sat at a plain wood counter. He looked up in surprise from a copy of a book he was reading, some trashy little dime novel with a two gun dandy on the cover.

  “Nobody told me we had new arrivals comin’ today,” the man said, almost by way of an excuse, putting away his book and rifling through the shelves beneath the counter.

  “Relax, Martins,” said the guard. “This is Mister Laird’s special guest. The one he told us about.”

  “Really?” said Martins, pausing in his search to stare at the Rider. “He don’t look like much.”

  “Wait’ll we’re done with him,” said the guard.

  Martins snickered appreciatively and produced a form of some kind and a stub of a pencil.

  “Name?”

  The Rider opened his mouth, but the guard spoke first.

  “Put down Michael Cashion.”

  Martins did, and the Rider looked at the guard. The guard returned the look impassively.

  “Problem with that, Cashion?”

  “That’s not my name.”

  “It’ll do till we give you another one.” He grinned, and gold teeth gleamed among the rest, which were yellow too, but from tobacco. “What’s his name, Martins?”

  “1748,” said Martins.

  “There you see?” said the guard. “You weren’t Cashion for long. Now you’re 1748. Don’t forget it.”

  Martins stood up and came around the corner with a tape measure. He stretched it from the Rider’s feet to his head and around his middle and jotted down some numbers on the card he was filling out.

  “Alright, 1748,” said the guard, when Martins was done. “Let’s go get you a clean shave and a bath, so you’re respectable when you go to see Mister Laird.”