The Rider remembered Rabbi Levi and his strawberries again, expounding upon finding worth in the material world in the middle of a field with students gathered around him who sweated in their black hats and rekel coats. How he had gone on about his freshly picked strawberries, describing the warmth of them in the sun, the satisfactory snap as they were twisted from the vine, the sweetness of them as they burst on the tongue. At the time it had made them roll their eyes.
But the Lord’s order, whatever its purpose, was like a strawberry. Life was sweet. So, too, was death and the continued existence this cosmic order perpetuated.
The Rider would continue to fight to maintain that order for as long as he lived. Because it was what he been made for, and because it was better than the alternative.
Adon said the triumph of Chaos was inevitable.
Perhaps.
It would not come in the Rider’s lifetime, however long that might be. He would throw himself into that doorway before he let the Old Ones in.
That was a pleasing sentiment, but for the moment he was freezing in an open cage in the desert with a fortress slowly growing up all around him. He had abandoned his friends. They had no idea where he was. He had certainly not made any allies among the convicts, having attacked a likeable and apparently innocent man on his first day.
There was still Adon. What was his plan?
To clear the way. Always, to clear the way.
And the Rider was in the way.
There was no doubt in his mind that Adon meant to kill him at last. But first, he would do all he could to learn where Kabede and the scroll was.
Then the notion came to him that Adon needn’t ask him a thing.
He jumped down off the cot and shoved his arm through the opening at the bottom, pulling as much dirt as he could inside.
In the morning, two guards stood outside the Rider’s cage looking down at him from beneath the shade of their hats.
“What in the hell do you make of all that chicken scratching?”
“I expect this one’s meant for the crazy hole.”
“Hell he’s only been here a few days. Never seen a man go crazy that fast.”
“Yeah, well, never say never.”
The Rider huddled in the center of the cage. He had spent the rest of the night scooping dirt in, covering the iron bands beneath him until he had fashioned a dirt floor (and inadvertently, scooped out a shallow moat around his cage). Then he had scratched a protective seal on the whole floor.
His unbroken fingertips were raw, filthy, and bleeding.
Adon was apparently able to not only possess people almost at will, he could do it indefinitely. How could he hope to fight him?
Even his ethereal self couldn’t pass the seal scratched on the ground, though. He had been used to relying on his talismans for that kind of protection, and realizing he didn’t have them any more, he had thrown himself into a panic of work. He was exhausted, but he was safe. Luckily Adon hadn’t tried to possess him.
The work details began to funnel past, and the convicts stared at him like he was a rare bird, or a sideshow oddity. He saw his old cellmates go past. Jethro Auspitz, black and blue, his inflamed lips scabbed over, lingered on him as he shuffled past to the mess hall.
The Rider watched him.
“I’m sorry,” he called through the bars.
Jethro Auspitz watched him over his shoulder as he was lost in the line of men.
The other Incorrigibles were fed, tin plates of beans and bread and dippers of water slid through a little door at the bottom of their cages.
But when the workers came to the Rider, they returned to the mess hall.
The rest of the prisoners went to their respective jobs, and soon the Rider could hear the ringing of the picks and the deep voices of the work song cadences.
No one came for him or fed him.
The sun rose high, and by noon the night’s cold seemed like a pleasant dream. He put the blanket over his cot and crawled beneath it to escape the sun, and was nearly stung by a scorpion who had taken up residence there sometime in the night. He kicked it outside.
The armed guard walking up and down the length of the cages watched the entire ordeal with a smile. Then, when the Rider went to crawl back under the cot, the guard blew a whistle hanging around his neck and forbade the Rider from it with the angle of his rifle and a simple shake of his head.
So, the Rider put the blanket over his head like a Bedouin and sweated in the stifling heat.
The other Incorrigibles paced in their cages, cursing the heat and the guards until they were hoarse. One man passed out. The guards threw water on him until he got up again, but did not remove him.
The Rider sat on the ground and closed his eyes. It was too hot to doze, but he was exhausted. His heavy eyelids closed, but he jumped awake again and again. The skin on the backs of his hands and neck began to blister and crack.
He asked for water, but none came.
When he saw this, the Incorrigible on the end cursed the guard again and told him to bring the Rider water.
The guard told him to shut up.
“The hell did you do to deserve this, mister?” the convict called to him.
“Shut up,” said the guard again.
No one else spoke to him the rest of the day.
As the blazing blue sky turned red, the work details began to return. The convicts stared at him as before, but now he read pity and horror in their eyes. They glanced at each other, at the guards.
The Rider’s lips were cracked, and the sun blisters had spread to his face. He could feel them. His nostrils were packed with bloody mucous and dust and his clothes had soaked through with sweat and then dried to salty stiffness.
He spied Jaimenacho and Tolliver, but this time he didn’t see Jethro.
Night fell, and then he was freezing again.
He tucked his arms into his shirt and folded his hands between his legs. His belly growled and he stuck a button from his shirt into his mouth to try and tempt some saliva out. He started to doze a few times, but his shivering body jolted him awake every time, his mind’s eye conjuring a vision of Adon lunging at him.
The third time this happened his door clanked open and someone really was reaching for him.
It was Croc O’Doyle.
What time of the night was it? He didn’t know, but stumbling across the moonlit yard, he found himself suddenly propped in the chair in Adon’s office once again.
“You haven’t slept,” said Adon, from where he sat on the edge of the desk, once O’Doyle was outside.
“I’ve been too anxious. Looking forward to our next meeting,” the Rider mumbled almost drunkenly, rubbing his numb hands together. “I’ve missed you.”
“You look exhausted.”
The Rider only raised his eyebrows in answer.
“The other night, that blow to the head O’Doyle gave you. It knocked you senseless. How are you feeling now?”
“Why all this concern?”
“I’m going to ask you some questions now, Rider,” said Adon. “I want to be sure you have the clarity of mind to answer me correctly.” He stopped himself and stared at the floor behind the Rider. A faint smile slowly appeared on his face.
“Your shadow has no head.”
“Ask your questions,” the Rider said.
“You’re doomed, Rider,” Adon said. “What happened to you, I wonder?” Then a light came into his eyes. He had always been exceedingly clever. “You’ve no name. Of course! That’s why the spells haven’t worked, why Lilith’s children have lost their power over you. But with no name at all, you’re not in The Book of Life. How did you manage that?”
“Ask!” the Rider shouted.
“You know what I’m going to ask already.”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“I don’t want to bore you, so why don’t I ask you this. I’ve told you what you’re opposing. Why don’t you join me?”
“Now you’re wasting
both our time.”
“I had to try.”
“I know.”
“The scroll you took from Amos Sheardown.”
“Finally.”
“It wasn’t on your person,” Adon went on, getting up and going behind the desk. When he moved, the Rider saw there was a stack of items piled on the desk. “You didn’t have an animal with you when you were taken. You didn’t rent a room or a stall in the livery.”
The Rider saw his pistol belt then, with the butt of his golden Volcanic jutting out of the pile, and the handle of the cold iron Bowie with which he’d dispatched Nehema. There was also a cigar box filled with his talismans.
Adon opened a drawer of the desk and with one violent sweep, sent the pile crashing down into the drawer. He kicked it shut.
“It’s with the black man Kabede now, isn’t it?”
The Rider said nothing.
“Who is he?”
Nothing.
“He has abilities like those that were taught to the Sons of the Essenes,” Adon went on. “But all of them are dead. Did you teach him?”
The Rider stared at him. Then he didn’t know about the Falashans. Good.
“Did he have something to do with the loss of your name?”
He didn’t know about the Order’s Book of Life either.
“He bears the Rod of Aaron. Not just anybody can do that.”
“No,” the Rider said. “Not just anybody.”
“Where did you find him?”
Adon was scared of Kabede. As well he should be. Adon had likely murdered the entire Order to eliminate the Tzadikim Nistarim, the 36 Hidden Saints who it was said kept the universe from being destroyed so long as they lived. But he had to know by now that the title tzadik was just that in the Order. A title. An honorific the Elders of the Council of Yahad used. Who the true tzadikim were no one knew. Maybe the Elders had taken the title not out of respect to tradition, but as a way to divert attention from the true tzadikim. He supposed he would never know,. but the fact that Kabede had brought forth the Rod of Aaron, that he could wield it, there was a good chance he was a true tzadik.
“Where is he, Rider?” Adon repeated.
“You won’t have to look for him,” the Rider said. “He’ll find you soon enough.”
Adon slammed his hand flat on the desk.
“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this, Rider,” he said, stalking to the door of the office.
“No you weren’t,” said the Rider, yawning.
O’Doyle’s heavy boots stomped inside, and Adon closed the door behind him. He felt the big man tromp across the floor, felt his steps in the creaking boards beneath his shoes. He could smell him, could hear his breath when he stopped to stand behind him.
“I believe this prisoner knows the whereabouts of a wanted criminal, O’Doyle,” Adon said, in Laird’s easy drawl.
Both of them were behind him now.
“I have questioned him about the matter, but he’s proved damned obstinate. Maybe you can extract something from him where I have failed.”
Suddenly he was airborne. The chair legs swept out from underneath him and he hung suspended on his side in the air for an instant before he crashed down hard to the floor. Without warning, and his hands bound behind his back, he hadn’t had the chance to stop himself, and he crashed full on his side, shoulder, and face.
O’Doyle hoisted him up by his shirt front and without pause, threw his left fist, followed immediately by his left elbow, into the Rider’s face. No sooner would his head rock back and rebound then the fist would be there to catch him again. He quickly lost count of the blows.
Then O’Doyle’s knuckles came down and smashed against his nose, sending a ringing, staggering pain soaring up his sinuses and forcing involuntary tears from his eyes.
The big guard released him and he fell on his back, the shackles digging into his spine and wrists.
Hot blood poured over his face, and threatened to fill his gasping mouth. He spluttered, the rusty taste on his lips. The pain came in waves. His eyes were swollen to slits.
“No head on your shadow. You’re going to die, Rider. Perhaps you think that because you’re dying, it doesn’t matter what happens to you. Alright,” said Adon. “That was only a nose. Imagine the fingers, or the toes. The knees. The elbows. Imagine losing an eye or an ear. Now tell me. Where is Kabede?”
The Rider shook his head.
“Who is Spates?” Adon nearly shouted.
That gave the Rider pause. How could Adon possibly know about Spates? Had he somehow been caught? Had the colleague Spates had taken the letters between Sheardown and Adon to been a part of the conspiracy? Betrayed them all?
But no…if he had, Adon wouldn’t bother asking who he was.
He took too long to give even a noncommittal answer.
O’Doyle’s boot lashed out and bit into the Rider’s side. He heard and felt the snap of his rib buckling and doubled over, groaning and gulping air.
Then he was drawn out of the fetal position, stretched agonizingly aright. He thought he would pass out, when a blast of cool water broke against his face. He found himself lapping at the bloody water with his dry tongue, even the pain of his nose and side forgotten for the moment.
He was dropped to the floor, and fell hard on his posterior, his back sliding down the front of Adon’s desk. The pain in his side flared again and he flopped forward, but the hard bottom of O’Doyle’s boot pressed against the middle of his chest and held him up.
“There’s no escape from here,” Adon said, going to the bronze incense burner on the desk. He stood over it as he spoke, his back to the Rider. “Even if you could summon the strength to run, there is only the desert. And if you managed to get out of sight, LaChappa and the Quechans would be on you in no time.” He struck a match then, and the aromatic smell of frankincense filled the room. Adon turned, smiling. “Have you seen him hanging about? We keep him and his warriors on retainer here. No one’s ever escaped them. They choose to live in this desert. Imagine that. A people who choose to live in this. And not with modern amenities, I mean in little earthen huts. Sucking pebbles and squatting in the sand. Making pets of scorpions and snakes.”
Adon watched the incense smoke curl up from the burner and fanned it lightly with one hand.
“You catch snakes here all the time, don’t you, Croc?”
“Yessir,” said O’Doyle, smiling down at the Rider from behind a wet handkerchief he had pressed to his face. “Rattlesnakes. They’re natural killers. One bite and they pump you fulla poison. Time goes on, the pain just gets worse and worse. By the end of six or seven hours, men scream like little children in their sleep.”
The Rider glared at O’Doyle.
“He’s not going to talk,” Adon said, taking up the incense burner and going to the window and opening it. “Take him back to the Dark Cell.”
He took the lid off and dumped the incense out the window.
O’Doyle put down his foot and dragged the Rider across the floor.
Adon nodded to him as he bumped over the threshold.
“Pleasant dreams, Rider.”
As O’Doyle walked him through the dark prison yard, Adon’s parting words rang over and over in his pain-befuddled mind.
Pleasant dreams.
All he wanted now was the peace of sleep. But as he was flung into the pitch black cave of the Dark Cell and the door slammed shut behind him, he began to wonder.
How did Adon know Spates’ name and not who he was?
Pleasant dreams. Pleasant dreams.
He had been so concerned with the Rider’s lack of sleep on the night previous, at the state of his mind after the drubbing O’Doyle had given him.
When he had fallen unconscious, he had thought about Kabede. Wondered if he had heard…from Spates.
All the times he had snapped awake last night, he had imagined Adon (as Laird) springing at him.
What if it hadn’t been imagined?
Adon had said he
had spread the word of the Great Old Ones through dreams and dissemination.
Through dreams.
He said he had moved among humanity through something he called the world of dreams.
He knew that during sleep, men’s souls could drift from their bodies, and that succubi and demons could move through dreams and affect them. Was this one of the skills Adon had learned in Sheol? Perhaps from Nyarlathotep or Lilith? Was there a world wholly consisting of dreams and could Adon traverse it? He thought of Faustus’ words about individual men creating universes themselves. What if this dream world were somehow the connected unconsciousness of all sleepers, generated by them, populated by their dreams and nightmares?
Was Adon attempting to invade his dreams and take the knowledge he needed from the Rider’s mind?
“Pleasant dreams,” he had said. No, he had insisted.
The Rider sat up, blinking his swollen eyes. He had no tefillin to pray with, as he usually did, no chumash to read the Psalms of the Kerias Shema She’al Hamita, as was his usual nighttime protective ritual. He had been so lax in that as of late. He did recite the Shema Y’srael.
“Hear O Israel. The Lord is our God. The Lord is one.”
Perhaps the clubbing he had sustained that first day had put him in a dreamless, heavy sleep. Not the state Adon required to rifle through his mind.
Prior to falling asleep the second time, he had thought of Kabede and Spates. In that short time Adon had been able to discern their names but not who they were. Kabede at least, Adon could surmise was the black man that had faced his turncoat riders at Camp Eckfeldt. But Spates was entirely unknown to him.
The only possible was he could have learned his name was that he plucked it from the Rider’s sleeping mind.
Then Adon wanted him to sleep even more than he wanted to sleep himself.
His heavy, swollen lids fluttered.
But no, no sleep.
He busied himself with the protective sigil on the floor. It was blind work, and he worried it was inaccurate, but when he was finished, he sat in the center of it and let his eyes close.
It was difficult to concentrate through the exhausting pain and he feared he would pass out, but he began his meditative breathing, began to slip his physical form. If Adon sought his body now, he would not find him in it. In the Yenne Velt, perhaps he could be safe for a little while. But of course, without his wards and his mystic weapons, he would also be defenseless once discovered. Adon was the man who had taught him everything he knew about the Yenne Velt. He would be deadly there. The Rider had no choice but to remain close to his body and dive back into it should Adon attack.
Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel Page 34
