A Lower Deep - A Self Novel About 3300 wds (21 page)

"This absurd dream of yours isn't glorious."

He didn't hear me. His askew smile widened as he drank in the atmosphere. Swirls of remnant energy circled above us and spilled on him. "This beautiful site is known throughout the world as the place where Christ pondered his fate before the soldiers dragged him off to be executed. Do you think he kneeled there?" Jebediah pointed in one direction, then another. "Staring toward that hill? Or that promontory? Can you guess what happened in that spot centuries before Jesus stepped foot here?"

I could guess. Holy sites were usually built upon the unholy. He couldn't help feeding off the errant majiks of the land, and motes of black energy bubbled from his eyes. I didn't need to suck the marrow of massacre to know this had once been a place of child sacrifices.

I said, "Do you think a history of barbarism gives you the right to forfeit others?"

"Everyone is free to leave whenever they wish. Even you."

"If only that were true."

"It is, and always has been. We're all here of our own accord. I'm not to blame for the fate of others."

"Is that what you tell yourself when you think of Aaron?" I asked.

It stopped him cold, and the funnels of eddying power dissipated. I was glad that he cared enough to show some grief. He dropped his chin and stared thoughtfully at the ground for a minute. "I had nothing to do with that."

"Uriel's here and stands with you."

"He is my brother, after all."

"Yes, and also the murderer of your brother. You've done a hell of a job looking out for them."

That got to him. He whirled on me, the web of veins in his neck bulging. It was good to see that he could still feel so strongly about matters of family. He closed in. "They made their own choice to enter that damnable monastery. Uriel suffers for his sins, and his guilt has driven him into near-catalepsy. They each did what they believed had to be done, no different from me! Who are you to judge?"

His scars were nearly pressed against my own face as he shouted. I'd had enough of his rationalization and grabbed him by the collar. My grin was nearly as ugly as his.

The black energy encircled my eyes too, and the air burned with the stink of ozone. Sparks skittered along my new fingernails, and a hideous bark of laughter escaped me. "I watched you cut Bridgett's throat."

"She was nothing to you!"

"You refused to let my father find peace in death and turned him into a caricature just to mock me." The rage kept surging, and a voice said,
That's it, that's it, release it all, let it go, this will be wonderful
. It wasn't Self provoking me—the voice was my own. "You set the Fetch on me and forced me to play along in your plans. You dangled my love for my lady and let the temptation drive me half mad into your trap. All of your followers lie cold in the ground, even that rag tag bunch of bitter teenagers back there. They're already dead, Jebediah, or don't you know that?"

"They do what they will!"

"Your egomania has brought you against the design of heaven, in a belief that you might raise the messiah for your own ends. You damn fool, you aren't innocent, Jebediah."

I raised my glowing fist and thought that all my pain would end now if I murdered him here without a regret.

"But you are?" he asked. And as he said it he grasped me by the back of the neck, drew me to him, and kissed me.

Perhaps all the DeLancres, even the witch killers, were equally audacious, and called to them others who were just as impudent and reckless. He shrugged, let me loose with a small and pleased laugh, and started walking off. If I'd had my athame with me I might have stuck it in his back right then, or perhaps I'd have only heard my rage, nagging me on. I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him to face me again.

"Don't make me kill you, Jebediah. For Christ's sake—"

"Yes," he nodded. "For the sake of Christ, of course. And the world. Can't you feel the culmination of God's will approaching?"

"That's your problem. You separate large incidents from the small. Find God in the whisper."

"Like you have? You rail against him even now in your heart, for stealing your precious love. You hate and seethe with an intensity I've never seen before, and you do it under the auspices of serenity. It's sad, really."

We had walked to the limestone ridge and stared down at the narrow KidronValley.

"Why did you send Griffin against me?" I said.

"I didn't. He forgave you for murdering him, as I recall. I don't have the finesse to manipulate a soul as insane as that."

I believed him. "Give up this notion of resurrecting Christ."

"Can you give up your heart's desire?"

"No, not even when you turn it against me, but you're not—"

"So be it."

There was no wind.

Chapter Sixteen

V
iolence had flared in the OldCity again. On the West Bank two Israeli soldiers had been shot, and in response several Palestinians were wounded at the Haram during a protest. There was a good deal of rock throwing and the Israelis claimed to have used rubber-coated steel pellets to disperse the crowd, but now four Palestinians were dead. Delicate peace talks had begun to break down in the wake of the latest bloodshed.

Nip sat waiting atop the Wailing Wall.

He moaned while the Jews prayed forty feet below him, writing out pleas and placing them in the cracks of the stone. Here, at least, they were all believers, though some men cursed God as they always would. I was surprised by the amount of noise and activity in the square, a vast rumble of voices and music and shouting.

Nip gave another great heaving sigh that blew knots of gray fur before his quivering nose and sent slips of paper whipping across the tiled plaza. His meaty pink paws clamped on his knees as he turned to stare down at me. I kept hoping that the spirit of Abbot John would join us. I thought I could raise him if I needed to, just so I could ask him about those dreams concerning the archangel Michael.

But I was a little afraid that after leaving the mountAbbot John's sanity had also left him, returning him to the days when he twisted the heads off dogs and raped old women in their nursing home beds. Somewhere along the line my dad's own finite rationality had been given up to him, and I dreaded what might happen if I brought it back into the world.

I gestured for Nip to come down off the wall, but he merely gazed at me. He kept lamenting and held both hands out like a child wanting to be picked up.

What's he doing?

Might be nothing. Whining is his whole gig.

Get up there and find out.

Self shot me a glare and said,
What the hell am I? A capuchin monkey? I'll fall off and break my ass!

I took him by the neck and lifted him to the stone where the essence of God supposedly still resided. I held him to the rifts in the stone like the Jews holding their written prayers. Self hissed at me.
You've got to learn how to handle these aggressive tendencies
. I shoved and he started to scale the wall.

His claws left fresh holes in the ancient rock, as if he were purposefully scratching at the face of God. The noise escalated in the square. Everyone could feel the blasphemy occurring even if they couldn't see it, and they talked louder and read faster and sang with a note of hysteria. Rabbis glowered at me, the outsider standing alone before the Wailing Wall, neither kneeling nor weeping nor taking photos. Dust and pebbles scattered down around my feet as Self continued to climb.

When he got to the top he sat beside Nip and put his arm around the masterless familiar. Nip slumped into wild sobbing as Self patted his back. He might mourn Uriel's treachery forever. Without his other half, Nip must have felt as empty and disconcerted as Jebediah felt without Peck in the Crown. Self pressed his face close to Nip's, and I couldn't be sure if they were speaking at all.

A hand reached out of the crowd and touched my shoulder. I spun to my left, ready for an assault from one of Jebediah's new coven members. I backed away and whispered a Mesopotamian spell, the syllables coming so easily in this land of ruthless and relentless warriors. My ears rang as Nip continued his keening moans. Hassidim pressed around, their bearded faces and muttering voices boxing me in. None of Jebediah's mad children were here, and so far as I could tell, none of the dead had come to attack. My fists began to throb with the need to kill.

At the last moment I saw the cloudy dark eyes and lengthy black hair held back in a shawl. I had to bite down hard to keep from saying the slaying curse already poised on my tongue.

It was the woman from the Chapel of the Nailed. She too had been crying. I could see that the sudden and terribly heightened sensitivity had affected her as well as everyone else in the square. A gold cross around her neck flickered in the sunlight. Hassidim scowled. She grimaced as the din increased, and though she didn't want to get too near me she was forced to so we could hear each other.

My chest tightened. This wasn't an accidental encounter. Coincidence didn't exist anymore.

Even as a Christian she'd undoubtedly visited the TempleMount before, but it was clear she didn't enjoy being in the square, so close to the Western Wall. This was not the place for her to pray. In a city that still had quarters and remained ghettoized, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher belonged to the Christians and the TempleMount to the Jews and the Haram to the Muslims. People died for crossing lines in the sand. It was one of the reasons why these people would never have peace.

She struggled with her decision to speak to me. Slips of paper floated down and brushed her cheek. She kept looking from side to side as if she might break into a run. I felt the same way.

She didn't want to be here, and when she peered up at me from beneath the shawl I knew she was thinking the same thing I was—that our meeting in the chapel hadn't been a fluke. Finally she said, as if still not quite believing, "My father. He told me he knows you."

"I don't know anyone in Israel."

Frustration skewered her features, and I thought she might burst into tears or give me a roundhouse to the jaw. Either was understandable, considering the situation. She looked up, wondering why the papers were falling around us.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

She frowned, thinking about it. "He told me you would be here."

In that moment she was so beautiful that I almost felt happy in a way I hadn't for ten years. I couldn't control myself and watched as I took her shawl in my hand and pulled it from her head. Her rich black hair loosened and slipped over her shoulders. Her eyes widened and so did mine. I couldn't believe I'd done that.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It's all right." She took my arm again, squeezed once, and let go, just as she had done in the church. "My father wishes to talk to you. Please come to see him. He needs you."

"Who is your father?"

"His name is Joseph Shiya. I am Bethany. He's—"

I nodded. "Dying."

Her father was on his deathbed, and the summons of the dying held great authority and command. Her entreaty had a potency with repercussions, just as my oath on MountArmon had.

"Yes," she said. "He is."

Again she swept aside her hair in that same gesture that made me think of Danielle. It struck such a resonant chord in me that I felt a painful heat rear in my gut. She stared at me with a puzzled expression.

I looked up and saw that Self and Nip were gone. I scanned the plaza and the Hassidim had turned back to their prayers, the near-frenzy broken.

"It's all right," I told her. "I'll come with you."

"I'm not sure that I want you to."

"I don't blame you."

"He will not even see a priest. I don't know who you are, or why he needs you so desperately."

"I'm not certain either, but your father is dying and he has something to say."

"That's true." Her gaze filled with a swarm of confusion. They were the eyes of my mother. "Please, follow. This way."

We walked through the city, down along David Street to the Christian quarter. A couple of times I spotted Self following at a distance, weaving into alleys and shop doorways. He wasn't quite hiding but he refused to come any closer. Nip was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if this was a new game or ploy of some kind, and I didn't know what to make of it.

Bethany Shiya lived near the Jaffa Gate. The sun was setting by the time we arrived, and my raw skin had started to cool. Shadows lengthened across the wall, scrambling along the stone. I looked at the road heading toward Jaffa, leading on to the Mediterranean, and I thought of the entire world beyond. Bethany took my hand and led me on.

She ushered me up a series of steps and into her home, and I knew who her father was even before I walked into the bedroom to see him sprawled shivering beneath several blankets.

I wasn't alarmed by the pattern these circumstances had taken, but I didn't find any comfort in them either. I had told Jebediah that you could not separate large events from the small, but I found myself trying to tug at this tapestry of misfortune and miracles and hold the detached threads.