A soft clump sounded from far below. Ashley sucked in a breath and shot to her feet. Another clump. Louder. Who could it be? No one else was supposed to be there.
It didn’t sound like footsteps, just single thumps, like someone beating a drum every few seconds. But they were definitely getting closer.
She swallowed, but the lump in her tight throat wouldn’t go away. Should she call out? Might it be Sapphira coming back to find her? Why would she make such a strange noise?
She licked her lips and tried to speak, but only a rasping whisper came out. “Hello?” She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hello down there.” Her stronger voice echoed, calling back to her three times before fading away.
“Is somebody down there?”
Clump … clump.
Ashley picked up her lantern and bag and took a step back, rising one stair.
Clump … clump.
She took two more steps, then turned around and tiptoed up as fast as she could. A friend would have answered. A friend would have cried out with joy. This was no friend. She could feel it—a stalker, a hound of hell coming to drag her back to the realm of abandoned hope.
She tripped and banged her knee. The lantern clattered against the stone, breaking the glass, but the wick stayed lit.
Jerking up the lantern, she ran as fast as she could, not caring how loudly her shoes slapped the stone or how desperately her labored breaths echoed down to whoever or whatever followed her. But how long could she run? Her legs ached. Her heart thumped in her throat. Her lungs were about to explode. And she still had thousands of steps to go!
Chapter 13
Elam crested a bare hill and turned in a slow circle. Nothing but gorgeous greenery and dazzling flowers as far as the eye could see. He glanced at Dikaios, who was munching a mouthful of grass.
“There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go,” Elam said. “Should I just stay here and wait for something to happen?”
Dikaios swallowed. “Why do you ask me? I am no authority on what humans who seek Heaven’s altar should do.”
“But you have seen others. Maybe a white-haired girl and a smaller girl who was probably being carried?”
The horse shuddered his mane. “Carried by Joseph the grail-keeper?”
“You did see them! How did they get to the altar?”
Dikaios lowered his head and gathered another mouthful of grass. He took his time chewing, glancing up at Elam every few seconds. He grabbed another bite, and chewed, still peering up.
Elam scanned every horizon with his enhanced vision before turning back to Dikaios. He watched the horse’s eyes dart between him and the ground. Would this strange animal ever answer his question?
Finally, Dikaios raised his head again. “You are indeed unusual. That is certain.”
Elam averted his eyes. “I’m sorry. I hope my staring didn’t offend you.”
“There is no need to apologize. I was not speaking about your ocular focus.”
Elam sighed and spread out his hands. “The two girls are very precious to me, so I’m hoping to find them and bring them back to the world of the living. Merlin the prophet gave me this task, so I have to succeed.”
“Is that so?” the horse asked with a casual air. “Why?”
“Which are you asking about—why they are precious, or why I have to succeed?”
“Either one. It matters little.” Dikaios reached for another mouthful of grass.
Elam raised two fingers. “I will answer the second, because the first needs no answer. Merlin gave me this mission, and his word is good enough for me, even if I don’t understand the purpose. If it’s important to him, it’s important, period.”
Dikaios nodded. When his mouth cleared of grass, he replied. “Then I suppose you will learn the purpose when you finish your journey.”
“I’m not sure of that, either. I just need to listen and obey.”
Dikaios drew close and sniffed Elam’s face. “Most unusual,” he said, drawing back again. “Most, most unusual.”
Elam again stared at the horse. Obviously he wasn’t going to get a straight answer. He strolled down the slope, heading toward another stand of trees in the distance. As the sound of soft hoof steps followed, he smiled. “Still coming with me?” he called back.
“You intrigue me. I must learn more.”
Elam slowed to let the plodding horse catch up. “I get the impression that you have already learned a lot about humans, otherwise you wouldn’t find me so unusual. There would be no one to compare me to.”
“A wise deduction.” Dikaios now walked at his side. “I have seen many humans tread the fine grasses of the Bridgelands. Some still wander here searching for the altar and its scarlet key, even after centuries of futility.”
Elam’s gaze darted from side to side. “Are any close by?”
“I do not keep track of their comings and goings. I merely see them in passing as they peer under the same stone for the tenth time, or come out of a cave they searched the day before and the day before that.”
“What are they looking for?”
“A clue, perhaps a riddle or a poem that will allow them to deduce the way to the everlasting. They analyze, they pick apart, some even speak the Scriptures, quoting every verse from memory as they sermonize from one end of this sanctuary to the other, yet they never seem to learn the heart of the very words they chant.”
Elam slowed and walked closer to the horse. “And what is that heart?”
Dikaios halted. “Why do you ask this question? You have already given me its answer.”
“I did?” Elam stopped at the horse’s side and looked around. Something felt different … very different. It wasn’t a physical change, more like a spiritual shift. Everything had felt peaceful and at rest, but now a sense of anxiety crept into his mind. A shadow approached, a shadow of mind and soul. He scanned the trees, now only a dozen or so paces away.
Dikaios’s voice became low and serious. “You are troubled, Elam.”
“I sense something … something familiar that brings back bad memories. I hear a voice, a song … sad and forlorn.”
“Does it frighten you?”
“I’m not sure.” Elam stood as quietly as he could. “I think tension is a better word … a curious tension.”
The gentle sound of weeping drifted from the trees, a whimpering sort of humming, soft and feminine, yet filled with the lyrics of poetic verse.
Elam tiptoed toward the woods. As he drew close, the words became clear—a melancholy song warbled in a lovely contralto.
My heart is ice, my prayers are cold,
I’ve lived too long, I’m tired and old.
My sins, their scarlet threads I’ve weaved,
A gown of mourning I’ve received.
O who will wash the stains I bear
The harlot’s mark of sin I wear?
Exposed and shorn of all I prized,
And now I beg for mercy’s eyes.
As the last sighing note carried across the stillness, Elam took another step closer to the woods and whispered to Dikaios. “I recognize that voice.”
“Interesting,” Dikaios said. “I have grazed this area a thousand times and not heard it before.”
Elam’s tone grew cold. “I have heard it too many times. She was one of my torturers centuries ago. She used to come to the brick kilns and tempt me to go to her chamber with her, but when I refused, she would have me stretched out and beaten with thorn bushes. She would laugh at my torment, but whenever Morgan, her mistress, came by, she would sneak away and avoid her wrath. I saw her and Morgan together many years after her tortures, but she pretended she didn’t know who I was.”
“Such a wicked seductress!” Dikaios said. “Certainly this sadistic harlot deserves death, does she not?”
“No doubt she does.” Elam listened to the words again as the singer repeated each line. He stepped back toward Dikaios. “Why would a seductress be here? Glewlwyd told me there was evil here, but I didn’t expect to see her.”
“You will learn to expect the unexpected.” Dikaios pawed the ground. “This is a bridge between two everlasting lands, Hades and Heaven, a courtyard where special concourse takes place. Even Lucifer himself once traversed this field when he and the sons of God were summoned to present themselves before the Lord. It could be that she has been brought here for a purpose that you know nothing about.”
The song repeated, piercing Elam’s heart. Every phrase was so sad and lovely, filled with remorse and dampened with bitter tears. Yet, could this be the prophesied enemy? Surely she could easily be the one who would lust after his fruit, a bat in voluptuous disguise ready to drink his life’s blood.
“I’m going to find out for sure.” Elam called into the woods. “Who is there?”
At first, a soft gasp drifted from the trees, then a timid voice. “I am called Naamah.”
Elam took yet another step closer. “Naamah, the seducer of men and minion of Morgan Le Faye?”
The voice drifted again from the dark woods, wounded and forlorn. “I am no longer in her service. If you know of my past harlotries, please have mercy on me.”
Setting his feet, Elam cleared his throat. “Come out, Naamah. If you have any weapons, drop them first.”
“I cannot come out. Not only do I have no weapons, my clothing is shredded and does little to cover me, so it would be shameful for me to show myself.”
Elam squinted at the tree line. A young woman peeked out from behind a trunk, her hair draping a bare shoulder. Her face suddenly turned pale, and she hid herself again. “Elam!” she cried. “Go away from me! I am a sinful woman who deserves nothing from you but death.”
Elam’s heart melted. The fear in her eyes was more real than any he had ever seen. Switching to the most soothing tone he could muster, he called again. “Come out, Naamah. You have nothing to be afraid of.” He took off his cloak and held it in front as he walked toward her tree, watching the ground at his feet. “Let me know when I’m close enough. Then, please cover yourself with my cloak.”
After a few more steps, her soft voice came to his ears. “You are close enough.”
Elam turned his head and locked his gaze on Dikaios. The horse eyed him back, as if probing his mind for a thought.
As the cloak pulled away from his hands, Elam kept his eyes on Dikaios and spoke in the same soothing tone. “Let me know when you’re covered so we can talk face-to-face.”
After several seconds, she spoke quietly. “I am covered.”
Turning back toward her, Elam saw the familiar face from the magnetite mines, the place of his childhood slavery. Still petite and beautiful, yet with streaming tears marring her lovely face, Naamah stood before him, her arms crossed in front of her as she shivered. She had gathered the cloak’s long cape, passed it between her legs, and tied it at her hip. Her legs showed from the knee down along with a dangling black shred from her dress underneath.
Seeing her, Elam’s bitter memories of her cruelty quickly fled from his mind. “Why are you here?” he asked.
Backing away a step, Naamah replied, her words punctuated with sobs. “It … It is all such a mystery. I remember … getting stabbed in my guise as Constance in Dragons’ Rest. I remember bleeding … bleeding all over the street. … Everything went dark, and someone picked me up off the ground.”
She sniffed hard, and her voice settled. “Then I was clothed in my old black dress, and I walked through a dark tunnel for hours and hours, maybe even more than a day. A voice kept echoing in the tunnel. It said, ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here’ over and over again. That’s when I knew I must have died. After a while, I saw Morgan walking next to me, but she couldn’t hear me no matter how loud I cried out to her. I screamed, ‘You lied to me! You promised me eternal life! You lied to me!’ But she just kept walking. I wanted to grab her throat and strangle her, but for some reason, I couldn’t reach out at all. I just had to walk on and on.
“Finally, we came to the end of the tunnel where an angel sat at a huge table. He had four faces and four wings, and when he stared at me, it felt like his gaze burned into my mind and read every thought inside. He spoke to Morgan first. He said, ‘You cannot go to Hades, for you have become the mistress of that place and have the power to conquer and subdue it once again. You will go directly to the great judgment seat where your sentence will be delivered and the manner of your final death revealed.’
“Morgan never even flinched. She didn’t cry or beg for mercy. She just stared defiantly without a word. Then, another angel wrapped a heavy chain around her and dragged her away.”
Naamah lowered herself to the ground and sat cross-legged on the grass, tucking the cloak around her legs. While Dikaios grazed nearby, Elam sat at her side, leaning close. “So, what happened to you?”
“The angel pointed at a page in a huge book that sat on a table and said, ‘You have followed an unusual path and arrived here without dying.’
“Of course, I was shocked. ‘I died twice,’ I told him, ‘at least it seemed that way. The first time, Morgan pushed me out of the ark and made me a wraith, then someone stabbed me with a staurolite blade, which can even kill a wraith, and that’s how I came to be here.’
“He stared at his book long and hard, as if he were reading my life’s history. ‘No,’ he finally said, ‘you were merely translated without dying. The staurolite blade can, indeed, kill a wraith, but Lilith never had the power to raise a soul from the dead or transform you into a wraith. Her master, the father of lies, deceived her and did not tell her that God is the one who transformed you, but into a being of a higher order than a wraith. Lilith was jealous of your lack of need of regeneration and invented the lie that her continual deterioration was due to her union with a Watcher, when the truth is that you retained a real, living human spirit that kept you whole.’
“Again, I was shocked. I could only blurt out, ‘But why?’
“He said, ‘It seems that God has another purpose for you. You have, however, used your God-given gifts of beauty and song for wanton pleasure and seduction, so God has pronounced his judgment, as he did against Israel by the mouth of Ezekiel. Therefore, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord. Because your lewdness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered through your harlotries with your lovers and with all your detestable idols, behold, I shall gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, even all those whom you loved and
all those whom you hated and expose you to them. They will strip you of your clothing and will leave you naked and bare. Behold, I will bring your conduct down on your own head, so that you will not again commit this lewdness on top of all your other
abominations.’
“I wept bitterly and cried out, ‘Is there no mercy? It is true; I have been deceived by Lilith, the ancient witch. And, yes, I willingly accepted her offer of eternal life and beauty, but I was a foolish sheep led to slaughter. Will God have mercy on this wretched soul?’
“Then the angel’s face began to glow, and he said, ‘The Lord has heard your cry, and like Israel, he will establish a covenant with you, and you shall know that he is the Lord, in order that you may remember and be ashamed, and never open your mouth in perverted song because of your humiliation, when he has forgiven you for all that you have done. You will wander in the Bridgelands until someone comes who takes pity on you and covers your nakedness. He will have the fruit of righteousness within him, and the blood of eternal life runs through his veins. If you want to prove your repentance, then serve him in righteousness for as long as he has need of your wisdom, and he will offer you the life you seek.’
“‘But I have no wisdom,’ I said to him. ‘I am a harlot, as you have rightfully proclaimed, so what good would I be to such a man?’
“Then he said, ‘I will teach you what you need to know.’
“After his teaching, the angel took me to this forest and left me here alone. I have since spent many nights waiting for deliverance, yet the men who have come by have only offered to expose me further, attacking me and tearing my clothes, but they were struck blind and wandered away before they could do me more harm.”