Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (24 page)

“These?”
said Don Amadeo. “These are my charges.
Men who, in my folly,
I led to a shared death, and who have sought release from their unholy state
for nearly two hundred years.
I squandered my family’s wealth and lost
my lands in foolish business ventures, you see, and so I came to New Spain
seeking to redeem myself. But this was a young man’s adventure, and I had
passed my prime. I followed Coronado north, up the river the Indians called the
Nexpa to these lands in search of the fabled golden city of Cibola reported by
Friar Marcos. When Coronado was wounded, I went with de Cardenas in search of
the Tusayans, and I bloodied my hands at Tiguex when that villain Viegas raped
a Tiwa woman and went unpunished.”

The
Rider looked to Chaksusa, and around at the expectant spirits.

“How
did you meet your end?”

“After
Coronado followed the Turk up to Quivira and found nothing, he tricked the
majority of the nobles into signing a petition to return to New Spain, so as to
absolve
himself
of negligence. I was not one of the
ones who signed. My Moors and I had not come for the blood of poor Indians. We
had come for gold, and so we were understandably bitter on the road back to
Mexico City. I blame my own greed for what befell us.

“We
had four friars with us on the expedition. One, Padilla, had stayed behind in
Quivira to preach to the Indians there. Among the others there was a man who
claimed the title of friar yet was not recognized by the other monks. He was a
hunchback named Mauricio, and claimed to have accompanied Estavanico years
before and learned from the Zuni Indians of a fabulous underground treasure
trove where the elusive native gold we had so long sought had been cached upon
sight of our expedition. He said it was beneath the ruins of Chichilticale, the
old Red House fortress that borders the desert.

“I
did not fully trust this Friar Mauricio, but he had with him a pair of old
Querechos from the
north country
who corroborated his
story. Friar Marcos had warned me that Mauricio was not a man of God, and had
used the women that the Indians had given to Estavanico…harshly. Yet we were
going home empty handed, and along the trail we found many young noblemen who
had spent the winter garrisoned along the supply route. These hated Coronado
and had won neither glory nor gold. Mauricio had
a certain
…intensity
to him. He whipped these young men into
a lather
,
filling their ears with talk of gold, and so they came to me, asking me to lead
them. They didn’t want to share the wealth with Coronado or the crown, you see.
We broke off from the main expedition somewhere south of Cibola, and I led
twenty caballeros and these you see around you off in search of this treasure
beneath Red House.

“Friar
Mauricio was our guide, and we all thought him half-mad. There was talk that he
had been tortured by the Zuni and found wandering in the desert. Knowing this,
I think I made allowances for him, pitying his condition. He preached to those
who would listen in the evenings, squatting in his dark robe among a circle of
rapt listeners, gesturing wildly when he spoke of angels and hell. I think he
fancied himself some desert prophet out of the Bible. One of the Indian
converts came to me and told me he spoke blasphemies against Christ to the
other nobles, but when I questioned him and his growing congregation, they
denied this.

“Yet
night after night it seemed that our camp grew further divided between the
nobles and some of their slaves who followed Mauricio and his Querechos, and my
Moors and Papago bearers. The Indians brought me a strange knife with a handle
of lightning-struck wood, which they said was magic and was the only thing that
would slay Mauricio. By the time we reached these mountains, even the Moors entreated
me to kill him, citing some supernatural dread. I berated them openly, but
secretly I had come to fear his influence. I was certain that if I killed the
mad monk his followers would rise up against us, and I did not want to command
slaves against my own countrymen in the desert.” Here the ghost paused,
wrinkling his face as if to spit.

“My own countrymen!
Had I known then what was to come, I
should have been honored to command a cavalry of blind lepers mounted on goats
in tin pot armor against that bastard Mauricio.”

He
sighed, looking apologetically at the other spirits before turning back to the
Rider.

“But
I did not.

“We
reached the base of these mountains, where Red House lies upon a clear rise, in
the shade of the highlands. It was an ancient fort, built by ancestors of the
Aztecs. Nothing more than a jumble of worn away walls, shards of pottery and
old copper arrow points. It was dark that day,” he said, his eyes wandering.
“The sky was
very
clouded.

“I
remember the trees, because I could not understand the sight of them, black as
if they had burned, dead and bare of leaf, so close to the walls when we had
been by there the year before and seen no such foliage. The horses shied, and
so we dismounted and led them on foot. Mauricio suggested we secure them to the
trees, and then he would show us where to dig.

“When
we approached the grove…” he paused. “I can only say that we were seized.
First the horses.
The trees bent double, in a way I knew no
tree could bend. I remember the sound…like the creaking of a ship’s spars, the
groaning of the masts in a storm at sea. The horses became entangled, some with
their riders still in the saddle, and were drawn into the sky when the trunks
straightened. The Papagos too were snatched up in this way, and men and animals
hung from the boughs. I fell from my saddle, and had my sword and pistol in
hand, yet I could only watch while the trees shook as if in a high wind, and
the horses and the men screamed, the Moors begging to God as they were torn to
pieces by the tree limbs themselves. Their blood rained down on me, and coursed
down the tree trunks. The bark seemed to drink it.

“Not
all of the party was so treated. Some of the Indians and a few of the Moors did
not fight and so were spared, bound up in the branches like fireflies lightly
held in a child’s fist.

“And
of course, Mauricio and the Querechos and the young nobles who followed him.
None of them were even touched.

“I
rose and tried to fight. I hacked at the nearest tree with my sword, fired into
the trunk, and Mother of God
have
mercy, I believe
that it shivered in pain. One of its heavy branches swung down and struck me
flat. Then the Querechos were upon me, and though I killed one outright with my
heavy pistol and ran the other through, the second brought his hatchet down on
my helm, and I was knocked senseless. I wish I had died then, but God was
punishing an old man’s folly, and I remained alive to watch what came next.

“Mauricio
ordered
myself
and my men bound up. He commanded the
very trees. They lowered their limbs and allowed the renegade caballeros and
Indians to tie the men with chords. They made a pair of Indians bear me up
between them.”

The
eyes of the old conquistador grew ever more distant, and at that point, he
seemed a long way off.

“We
were taken inside the walls of Red House, and by a means which I cannot now
tell,
Mauricio led us down some hidden passage that went
into the heart of the mountain, below the foundation. Inside was a chamber not
of gold, but red stone, decorated with blasphemous images such as I cannot even
now recall clearly…I saw my men killed…in terrible ways…and then…I’m sorry. Of
my death…that is all I remember.”

“A
moment,” excused the radiant form of Chaksusa. To the Rider, he said, “If you
will permit me, I can channel Don Amadeo’s final moments to you directly,
enabling you to see for yourself what is too difficult for his soul to
remember.”

The
Rider hesitated, still not entirely believing or trusting. This Chaksusa was
asking him to effectively lower his mystic defenses to an unknown entity.

“I
understand your trepidation,” said Chaksusa. “But it will be invaluable to your
mission.”

“What
mission?”

“To destroy the plans of Mauricio.
To
destroy Mauricio himself.”

The
Rider was baffled.

“But
these things occurred over two hundred years ago by this spirit’s own
admission!”

“Yes,”
said Chaksusa. “But Mauricio lives on. I can show you why.”

The
Rider was in unknown territory, but he had always been curious. It had been his
scholarly nature that attracted the Sons of the Essenes to him.

On
his fifth birthday, after being taken to the cheder wrapped in a prayer shawl
by his father, his first teacher, a gentle eyed melamed named Mayer had shown
him a piece of paper with the Hebrew letters on it, and placed a candy on each
letter. For every letter he correctly recited, he was allowed to take the candy
from that letter and eat it.

“This,”
Mayer had told him, “is to teach you the sweetness of knowledge.”

That
simple, childish lesson, a bribe to some of the boys, had impressed him
greatly. He had sought to taste that sweetness all his life. His desire to
learn had been the reason he had been plucked from yeshiva by the Sons of the
Essenes at an early age to study the ancient mystic doctrines. It had been the
reason Adon had so easily taught him forbidden practices. If he had not
postponed his instruction to fight in the war, it may well have led him to
commit the same atrocities. He would never know for certain. Now, it led him to
do what his teachers would have called unthinkable.

“You
have my permission.”

Chaksusa nodded, and interposed himself
between the ancient spirit and the avatar of the Rider. He touched one long
finger to the bridge of Amadeo’s nose, between his eyes, and the other on the
Rider’s. With a gentle push, he sunk his etheric finger into the corresponding
foreheads of both figures simultaneously.

It
was an overwhelming feeling, the alien sensation of seeing the world through
another man’s eyes. He was instantly immersed in another soul’s experience,
flooded with impressions both physical and emotional. There was fear and panic
of oncoming death, but the Rider knew better than to dread these things, and so
imposed his will, forcing those obfuscating impulses to the edges of his own
consciousness where they gnawed like rowdy dogs at a gate. Free of this, he was
open to the world around him.

He
saw a dark blue boiling sky flecked with lightning and rolling black clouds,
receding into the distance as he was borne by two plodding, half naked figures
(Indians whom he recognized as being the physical forms of two of the spirits
congregated about the fire) down a rough, dark stair. They held him with care,
but he was burdensome on the incline, and each step jarred him. He was aware of
a dull, blinding physical pain, but it was not really his own, and so it shared
a place with the emotions he forced aside.

The
passage descended to a large, low chamber dug from the red rock, and here the
air was cooler and faintly rank, the light strangely blue.

The
Rider was unable to move, being laid low by the same wounds that incapacitated
Amadeo, but he could perceive everything clearly in his field of vision, which
being free of the distractions of fear and pain, was considerable.

He
was part of a train of men being herded like cattle by the sharp swords of a
contingent of young Spaniards in armor like Amadeo’s. They were grimly silent
except to occasionally urge their charges forward with a clipped curse in
Castilian (which he found he could fluently understand). As they reached the
edge of the room, the prisoners were stopped, and forced to crowd together in
the narrow hall, with armed men behind and in front of them.

At
the head of the train a stooped, wild-haired figure in a dark monk’s robe
shuffled along the edges of the room, bearing a torch which he used to light a
series of old sconces set into the rock walls. These quickly exposed the simple
chamber, casting it in orange, yet not entirely routing the faint blue light.

Three small alcoves cut into the back wall of
the room housed hand-carved statues of the same red stone that composed the
structure. At the foot of each statue was a red stone bowl. The carvings
depicted some sort of pagan deities the Rider was not familiar with. One of the
idols immediately struck a familiar cord. On the far left, it was a rearing
serpentine figure with a humanoid upper
body,
its
muscular arms crossed before it, holding a sword and some sort of baton of
office, vaguely Egyptian. A flat, cobra like head topped its sloping shoulders,
its jaw open in a silent hiss, fangs bared. Clearly, it was not unlike the
creatures they had encountered in the dark on the mountain trail.

The
right hand figure was a stylized three-headed goat on its hind legs; one
foreleg stretched upward, the other down. It was a variation on the hand
gesture of Baphomet, a goat-headed humanoid image thought by some to have been
the heretical deity of the Knights Templar. However the Rider suspected from
his own studies that it was actually a bizarre dysphemism spread by the
Catholic Church to obfuscate the formerly Christian Templars adoption of Muslim
beliefs (‘Baphomet’ was similar to the Old French ‘Mahomet,’ a corruption of
‘Muhammad’). It was an expected result of their long service in foreign lands
during the Crusades.