Then something made the little shaft of moonlight in the ceiling flicker, and something bulky and solid hit the floor right in front of him and hissed.
The Rider’s eyes snapped open, all thought of projecting himself vanished.
He couldn’t see far in the gloom beyond the narrow slip of moonbeam, but he heard the angry hissing, and the telltale serpentine rattle.
It was only inches away.
He fought the urge to scramble away from it, to flee the circle.
A familiar chuckle drifted down. O’Doyle.
Then he saw it; something dark and long, uncoiling, rearing in the shadows at the edge of the moonlight.
A snake. All their earlier talk of rattlesnakes. O’Doyle had probably dropped it in.
Why this ploy? Would Adon really risk killing him?
O’Doyle had said a snakebit man would most assuredly lose consciousness…could Adon invade such a mind? No doubt he knew for certain. O’Doyle wouldn’t do this without strict orders. No, Adon was fulfilling two purposes. Get the information, and kill him in doing so. He would be bit, slip into a feverish dream wherein Adon could navigate all his secrets, and then in the morning they would find him dead and swollen, this snake warming itself beneath his cooling body.
Then above him, O’Doyle cursed and cried out briefly. There was a thud on the roof of the Dark Cell, and grit and sand tumbled down the hole, upsetting the agitated snake in front of him even more. The scraping and shuffling above continued, and then abruptly ceased.
The Rider moved his eyes from the snake to the hole above in brief confusion.
The light flickered again moments later.
Another snake dropped in.
Adon was taking no chances.
The hissing and rattling of the newcomer seemed to infuriate the first rattler all the more.
It moved closer, retreating from the other, right into his circle. The Rider and the snake saw each other at the same time, the rattler bearing its dripping fangs, its forked tongue slipping in and out, tasting his fear in the air, and perhaps the blood running from his wounds.
The Rider knew if he made any sudden movement or retreated from the circle the coiling rattlers would very likely launch themselves at him. In his condition, there wasn’t any chance he would be faster than a striking snake.
He sat as still as he could, sweat mixing with his blood.
The second rattler crossed the shaft of light. It had strange markings on its beaded back. They struck the Rider as familiar somehow, but he couldn’t place the pattern.
The first snake turned at the movement of its cousin, just as the second snake’s head shot forward, jaws open. But the newcomer did not direct its attack at the Rider. Instead it swiftly intercepted the dangerous predecessor. Its fangs plunged into the top of the other reptile’s head. The body of the unfortunate creature jumped and undulated, beating across the Rider’s knee, but the second snake remained clamped down, and even wrapped its length around the body of its struggling victim to quell its throes.
The Rider watched in mute fascination as the first snake shuddered and succumbed to the other’s venom. Then the lower jaw of its assassin dropped down, impossibly wide, and gathered the flat head of the first into itself. Incredibly, in a matter of moments, the second had totally consumed the first.
When it had finished, the snake’s gold eyes regarded him. Then it slithered off to a dark corner. As it passed through the moonlight once more, the Rider saw the strange dark patterns on its yellowish body again. He shuddered, for he realized the mottled shapes were Hebrew letters.
Taken together, along the length of the snake, they spelled out the phrase;
“To the extent of God, let these things come to pass.”
The same acrostic phrase etched into the wood of the Rod of Aaron. A name of God.
Of course. His pain wracked brain had been too slow to make the connection, even as the miraculous event happened before his very eyes.
Hadn’t the Rod of Aaron devoured the transformed staffs of Jannes and Jambres, Pharoah’s sorcerers?
That meant that Kabede, the damned fool, had come. He was somewhere close by. The Rider cursed himself. He should have known better than to think Dick could keep Kabede away when he left them for Yuma.
If Kabede was here, the scroll was with him.
If Adon got the scroll, whatever its purpose was would be fulfilled. There might be no stopping the Hour of Incursion if that happened.
So it couldn’t happen.
Damn Kabede for his puppy dog loyalty! And damn Dick Belden for not being able to keep the man away. Everything was at stake now.
What could he do to drive them away? Even now they were plotting some ridiculous escape attempt to free him.
He had to escape first.
But how?
O’Doyle…O’Doyle had put the first snake in here with him. Adon was expecting him to slip into unconsciousness any moment under the influence of the venom. He planned to invade his dying mind. Even now he was very likely preparing to leave Laird’s body and come to him, if he was not patiently awaiting his arrival in the world of dreams already.
The Rod of Aaron. Transformed into a snake, it had killed O’Doyle above and slithered into the hole to save him. That was the commotion he’d heard on the roof. How long before someone noticed his corpse? Perhaps O’Doyle wasn’t dead. Perhaps he’d slipped into the same fever sleep intended for the Rider.
When his dying presence entered the world of dreams instead of the Rider’s, Adon would immediately know what was going on.
And what about Kabede? Was he inside the prison walls? Was he even now just outside the Dark Cell, waiting in the shadows of the yard? How could he have gotten in past the guards?
The Rider went to the corner of the cell on his hands and knees, listening for the snake.
Then to his surprise, something slid over his hand, something cold and leathery.
The snake had come to him.
He carried it back to the protective circle and draped in his lap. He didn’t know how to change it back into the staff. He tried touching the markings, saying the words there, but nothing happened. The snake simply hung in his lap, heavy with its meal, tongue flicking.
He waited a moment, listening. Was he imagining he heard ragged breathing up above him?
He closed his eyes and breathed, slipping into the Yenne Velt.
“Rider!”
It was Kabede. Or rather, his astral form sitting on his haunches before him, shimmering.
“What are you doing here, you fool?” the Rider hissed.
“I sent the Rod to you. Take it up and use it to open the door and escape,” said Kabede, pointing to the iron door. “Dick and I are waiting at the base of the hill, very close by. We have a raft. We can be down the river in minutes.”
“That’s no good. The Quechans, the guards.”
“I’ll worry about them,” said Kabede. “Let’s go.”
“Wait! Adon’s here.”
Kabede paused.
“Adon?”
“Yes. We can’t leave. I’ve got to face him.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re weak now. We’ve got to go and get the scroll.”
“Get it? Don’t you have it?”
“I left it with Spates for safekeeping,” said Kabede.
Then the Rider stared.
“With Spates? You’ve never even met Spates.”
“If you trust him, then I trust him,” said Kabede. “Come now. Return to your body and use the staff to open the door.”
“I don’t know how to change it back,” said the Rider, looking down at his body. But there was no snake in his lap. Now the Rod of Aaron lay there.
“Let’s go,” Kabede urged.
“Wait…”
“No time. We’ll be discovered. I’ll go outside and possess a guard to escort you out.”
“Kabede,” said the Rider tentatively, concentrating.
“What?”
&nbs
p; “Why did you leave Spates all alone with the scroll? He’s in serious danger now that Adon knows his name.”
Kabede frowned, then smiled and shook his head.
“It’s alright, Rider. I left my brother Abatte to watch him.”
“Your brother Abatte died in Egypt, opposing the Corvée on the Suez Canal.”
Kabede’s expression fell slack, his eyes narrowed.
“Did he?”
Then he solidified before the Rider’s eyes. All the brilliant hues of the Yenne Velt ran, even Kabede’s own skin pigment fled. The world melted and bent into a patchwork, crazy universe of blacks, whites, and grays, the Dark Cell and the ground falling away, the prison breaking, crumbling apart and floating into a dizzying gulf of murky images and notions. Metaphors and concepts drifted in and out of focus as though rising and falling just beneath the surface of a boiling stew. It was totally disorienting.
This was a realm of impressions. The collective whimsies of dreaming humanity, too numerous and fleeting for the Rider to even process. He saw flashes of strangers and their lives, glimpses of situations both absurd and horrifying, all rushing about in an inextricable tangle at the speed of human thought, in the span of a falling eyelid or a darting look, brushing each other and yet never colliding, like bats screeching about an immense dark cave. It was too maddening to try to follow for long, and so he concentrated on Adon, suspended before him, arms folded disapprovingly, still wearing Kabede’s clothes, or rather, the Rider saw, a second hand representation of them. Adon had never seen Kabede with his own eyes. He had constructed this facsimile from the impressions of the Rider’s own mind. But as the Rider looked at his costume and began to pick out the little inconsistencies, they corrected themselves. The curve of his shofar. The color of his belt. The details of his dagger. Was Adon correcting these, or was the Rider? It was difficult to tell.
“Tricky, Rider,” said Adon, resuming the face of Laird.
He spread out his arms.
“Yes. This is the world of dreams. You and I stand apart, as observers. Not an easy thing to maintain. And there are the collected dreams of all of humanity. I’m surprised you haven’t lost your mind already.”
The Rider shut his eyes and balled his fists.
“No use trying to awaken. You’ve been drugged.”
“That smell in the office,” the Rider said.
“Levonah and Liao, a drug distilled from the Black Lotus. You wouldn’t know it. The frankincense was to mask its scent. You know, in the old days, frankincense was burned in the Temple, but it was also used to sedate those condemned to die.”
“Then the snake wasn’t real?”
“I’m afraid the first snake was. Reality sometimes bleeds through here, like when you hear another’s voice in your dream as they try to wake you. The drug took affect about the time you were drawing in the dirt. Right now,” he said, squinting, as if observing something far off, “it’s coiling beneath your head for warmth. When you awaken it will strike.”
“Then will I awaken?”
“When I’m finished with you,” said Adon. “Let’s start slowly, with your friend Kabede.”
Adon gestured out into the roiling gulf, and a portion of the swirling dream stuff immediately coalesced into the shape of Kabede.
The Rider tried to look away, but found he couldn’t.
Adon put his hands behind his back and studied the image.
“A Falashan Jew…” Adon murmured.
Behind Kabede, an entire world sprang up around him. Huts, and veldts, water buffalo. Not Ethiopia proper, but the Rider’s concept of Africa.
“There’s his village…his father, a painter. Alright. Yes. Big family…”
People sprung up around Kabede. His father painting a canvas. His mother…
The Rider tried to pull his way across the void to Adon. No matter how much effort he put forth, he only seemed to stay in place, as if he was trying to stroke against a powerful current, or navigate a great muddy pit.
“Don’t bother,” said Adon, glancing over his shoulder at the Rider. “You have no idea how to affect me on this plane. The laws of the Yenne Velt do not apply. You’re quite powerless.”
He turned back to the gulf of images as a group of faceless men in the same costume as Kabede began to appear.
“What’s this? Those deceitful Elders…so there is a surviving, hidden enclave. Well,” he said, smiling at the Rider, “we shall have to correct that oversight.”
Then a brilliant domed palace rose from the misty chaos, shining with heavenly brilliance, gilded with golden columns and carvings of joyous angels and sparrows. They had both seen it before in their Merkabah travels.
It was The Chamber of The Guf, a palatial columbarium in a precinct of the Seventh Heaven, wherein the souls of the unborn were stored. One sparkling sphere of light flitted from the dome, and they followed its descent into the still growing African village, into the womb of a woman in a sunlit field, stroking her swollen belly tenderly.
They saw the tiny human life inside, though from the perspective of the dreaming world the fetus was suddenly hundreds of feet tall. It revolved slowly in the amniotic fluids like a planetary system in the sea of space. Lailah, the tiny midwife angel with blurring hummingbird wings whispering the secrets of Paradise and the Torah in its otic pits as they began to bloom before their eyes into ears, like great shells carved by unseen currents. The baby formed at an accelerated rate, organs budding in bursts of color and form, nervous system sprouting like a branching tree, heart growing and pumping, tooth buds swelling in its widening mouth. It was like watching marble or clay melt into a statue without seeing the sculptor’s hand at work. Then, a baby with dark skin and head of black curling hair, turned on its head. The angel turned with it.
Lailah leaned forward then, to deliver the strike on the upper lip that would shock the tiny mind into forgetting the lessons. The angel turned, looking heavenward, then flitted away in distress, the task unfinished.
The baby moved, squeezing. The exertions of a woman, and then the little nasal cries, the flush of oxygen into the fledgling lungs, flooding the grey skin with the color of life.
“Incredible,” Adon murmured. “Incredible. The angel Lailah interrupted. He was born with all that knowledge. A tzadik. Surely, a true, living tzadik.”
The Rider shook his head. He was giving so much away, but here, Adon was his namesake. Lord and master. He had no experience with this. It was too wild, too free. He felt like a bushel of leaves, and Adon could shake him, turn him upside down and look at everything that fell out.
He had no anchor. No protection.
“Ah,” said Adon, concentrating. “Bal…Bala…Balankab. Very good, Rider. Now,” he said, as all the Rider knew of Kabede’s life flashed forward at blinding speed to their violent meeting in Escopeta.
“What about the scroll now, Rider?” Adon said casually. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I know it’s with Kabede. Where did you send him though?”
The image of Balankab was gone. The figure of Kabede turned, and was then walking with the Rod like a pilgrim along a lonely desert road. The boiling mist ahead of him broke into a town. Buildings rose from the dust, a street. People passed up and down the thoroughfare. Tombstone as he’d last laid eyes upon it, years ago.
“I’ve been to this place,” Adon said to himself. “Where? Where?”
The Rider tried to stop from thinking, but his mind automatically filled in the gaps. The saloons, the corrals, a photography studio. He had been through Tombstone years ago. It was impossible that he remembered every detail. But Adon said he’d been there too, and he realized then this was a shared memory. What the Rider didn’t remember, Adon could fill in.
Then a single figure came marching down the street. A woman.
God, thought the Rider. God, no!
Her gait, her dark hair. She was not yet fully formed, but he knew it was Sadie. Josephine Marcus, the Jewish woman
from Tip Top. She had said she was relocating to Tombstone. Trusting this, he had told Spates to mail the translation of Sheardown’s correspondence to her. Why had he unwittingly endangered her? Now, Adon would know of her too.
“Who’s this?” Adon said, pointing to the approaching woman.
“No,” shouted the Rider.
Then, as if someone had whispered it in his ear, the angel’s words came back to him.
The answer to a question he had never asked.
The Thunder of God.
Say it in your dreams, she’d said.
“In my dreams,” he murmured, feeling his soul swell and rise.
“What?” Adon snapped.
He had been turned away from the Throne of the Lord by Metatron. Else he might’ve recognized her, standing there at the left before Gabriel himself, presiding over his twelve ministers.
She had given him the name of the Baal ha-Cholem who interpreted the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar for Daniel, and the dreams of Pharaoh for Joseph. The Sar ha-Cholem, who by her own admission, had sent Kabede to him.
Her own name. His guardian angel. The Sar ha-Cholem. The Angel of Dreams.
Every blade of grass has its own angel who compels it to grow, said the Midrash.
Often he had thought of this. There were angelic names on all of his talismans, calling upon the various celestial wardens to watch over him according to their specialties. There was an angel who could turn aside the attacks of serpents. An angel of snow. An angel of hail.
Adon might be formidable here, but the Angel of Dreams was the true lord of this dizzying realm.
He could call on her. Just as Reverend Lessmoor had called on The Lord of Thunderstorms, he could call on the Thunder of God.
Now.
“Ragshiel,” said the Rider, concentrating wholly upon that name. It echoed in the wintery silence.
Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel Page 35
