Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (31 page)

The
soul was the treasure of God. To the Great Old Ones, it was a trinket. They
were coming, and the old ways would be reinstated, and there would be no place
for God, or angels, or man.

He
did not know how he knew this. He did not know to whom or what the still,
insistent voice belonged. But it had been with him since Red House, and as much
as the dehydration, as much as the slow and strangling starvation, it was
killing him.

He
did not care. He was alone and terrified of the dark, but he saw no point in
living. The punishment of Adon, finding Nehema again, none of it meant anything
because none of it would last. Satisfaction, love, hate, it would all burn in
the furnace of the eons. He would be nothing.

His
faith was shattered.

Yes,
he had stood before the throne of God, yes he had seen His works, seen the
hekhalots and the holy Watchtowers in all their glory.

He
had seen Shub-Niggurath too, felt
Her
timeless
presence, a consciousness so old and so utterly devoid of humanity it was like
learning that all of the universe consisted of a soap bubble. He had not felt
anything so ancient in the upper reaches of heaven. Not the megalithic angel
Metatron,
and nothing that emanated from the Throne itself.
Worse, he had felt that
She
was not even the oldest of
Her kind. He remembered the statue of the black worm, the blind dragon-thing,
and Chaksusa’s admonitions about a nameless entity, something he would not
speak of.

Other universes.
Chaksusa had spoken of other universes, and
tried to assure him that these things were creations of God as well. But the
Rider didn’t feel that. Was it a lie? What was true? He didn’t know. He just
didn’t know.

He
wavered where he stood, feeling once more the unbearable weight of doom on his
shoulders. He tried to replace his pistol, but fumbled it on the lip of the
holster. It clattered to the floor. He leaned heavily on the table.

“We
must go,” said the black man before him, stooping to retrieve his pistol.

The
Rider had quite forgotten his rescuer.

“Who
are you?” the Rider managed, though in truth, he hardly cared.

“My
name is Kabede, Manasseh Maizel,” said the black man lowly. He touched a hand
to his chest and bowed slightly. “I am of the Balankab enclave.
A yored merkabah of The Sons of the Essenes, and keeper of the
Order’s Sefer ha-Chayyim.
I have come a long way to find you.”

But
the black man’s musical accent, is deep intonations, so like a song, drew the
Rider’s heavy eyelids closed, and he fell forward onto the table, not knowing
if he would ever understand what he had heard.

* * * *

When next he opened his eyes, he was
lying flat on his back in the shade of a tall desert cypress. It was coming on
towards evening, by the light in the sky. A melody was in his ears, resonant
and haunting. It seemed to float out across the barren, cracked earth to
meander among the boulders and the pitahaya. It took him back to his eastern
travels, reminded him of Ein Gedi and Jerusalem, and invariably of Nehema, as all
music somehow did now. From this thought he turned away.

The
man who saved him from the bounty hunters, the man who called himself Kabede,
sat in the dust a little ways off, blowing into a bamboo flute, his long dark
fingers rising and falling across the holes.

The
Rider’s sense of place was distorted again. Kabede was dressed in a
burnoose-like garment of clean white cotton with blue accents, and his feet
were encircled in sandals though he wore white socks against the chill of the
failing day. There was what looked like a shofar, a ceremonial ram’s horn
hanging from a string over his shoulder. He wore a white turban with a flat
gold disc that caught the sinking light over his forehead, and two long braids
tied off with blue and white beads hung over his eyebrows. He had a slightly
pointed beard (no mustache), and his features were wholly African, dark and
undiluted.

The
Rider blinked wearily as the man continued his piping, and a strange, but
welcome feeling was over him, one not unfamiliar but one he had long thought
lost. He felt satisfied. More, he did not thirst.

For
months he suffered through incurable pangs of hunger and unquenchable thirst.
Now he felt no tightness, no exhaustion, only a pleasant drowsiness.

He
found that he even had the strength to rise up on one elbow, and freeing his
bare arm from the warm blanket, he did so.

His
things were nearby. His rekel coat neatly folded, along with his tallit, white
shirt, and trousers. His wide brimmed hat was upon the pile, his gun belt and
weapons coiled beside. It looked as if his clothes had been cleaned and even
darned. Resting beside the pile was Sheardown’s leather case with the scroll.

The
scroll…Adon’s men wanted it.
Enough to blatantly post a
reward for it on a bill authorized by New Mexico’s governor.
Was this
man Kabede an agent of Adon? Had he contacted his fellows to come and retrieve
it? The poster had offered a greater reward for his capture than for his death.
Maybe Adon himself was coming.

The
one-eared onager stood nearby,
bare
of packsaddle and
hackamore, nibbling lazily at some brush with an unshorn gray ass at its side.
The Rider had never seen the animal tolerate the presence of another creature
for any length of time.

Kabede
finished his piping and sat regarding the setting sun.

He
swallowed, unused to the sensation of his own throat unless it was dry as
sandpaper.

“There
is no enclave at Balankab,” he said, surprised at the rough quality of his own
voice.
“Wherever that is.”

The
black man rose, and smiled a clean and winning grin. He was younger than the
Rider, but in his eyes, there was something venerable.

“It
is in Ethiopia, in Aksum,” he said. He threw the ends of his headdress over his
shoulder and drew open the wool shirt beneath, revealing a clutch of Solomonic
talismans much like the Rider’s own.

“Each
enclave of the Order is governed by a counsel of four tzadikim and there are
said to be thirty-six. Yet you know only of eight enclaves.” He spread his
hands.
“So what of the remaining four?”

“They
are hidden.”

“Yes.
The Nistarim.
We of the Balankab Enclave are the
Hidden, secret even from the rest of our brothers, entrusted with its treasures
and records. How else could I know your name, Manasseh Maizel?”

The
Rider managed a rueful smile.

“Look outside any marshal’s office from here to Santa Fe.”

“Yes,”
said Kabede, coming over to hunker down beside him. “You must tell me how that
came to be. I have come a long way to find you.”

“How
did you find me?”

“In
my travels, I slept upon the graves of many murdered men of our Order, and I
asked questions of the Sar-ha Cholem. And I consulted the Sefer Ha-Goralot.”

The
Rider stared. The Sar-ha Cholem was the angel the Merkabah Riders consulted in
the world of dreams. Sleeping on the graves of dead men was an old way of
communing with the departed spirits, who visited the sleeper under the watchful
eye of the Sar-ha Cholem. In this way, it was not considered necromantic
divination, which was forbidden. The Sefer Ha-Goralot was the Book of Oracles,
a divinatory text passed down by King David’s advisor Ahitophel.

Still,
who was this man really? His knowledge of the Order’s inner traditions was
considerable, but so was Adon’s. Certainly this man was no Jew. Why would Adon
send an African and tell him to claim he was of their Order? It didn’t make
sense.

He
stiffened, and the old aches returned. He sank back down a little.

“You’re
not a Jew.”

“I
am Beta Y’srael,” said Kabede patiently. “My people are the children of
Menelik, the son of King Solomon and Queen Mekeda.”

The
Rider smirked.

“Who
is Queen Mekeda?”

“The
Queen of Sheba,” Kabede said seriously.

“Ah,”
said the Rider. “You’re Falash Mura.” He had heard of these so-called
“Ethiopian Jews’ who claimed descent from Solomon and kept some similar
traditions but were entirely ignorant of most.

“No,
I told you, I am Beta Y’srael.”

The
Rider swallowed. The sensation was not entirely without discomfort. He
personally had little regard for the theory among some scholars that the
Falasha Mura
were
one of the lost tribes of Israel.
Arguing with the beliefs of a man who had apparently come to his aide and now
held him entirely at his mercy probably wasn’t prudent.

“How
did you join The Sons of the Essenes? There is no yeshiva in Ethiopia. Did you
go to Israel?”

“Mine
is a special case. I did not go seeking them. They came looking for me.
Just as they did you.”

“To Ethiopia?
And why would they do that?”

Kabede
leaned forward, and touched a finger to his lips. At first, the Rider thought
the man was shushing him, but he held the tip of his finger there, above his
upper lip and below his nose.

“Because
of this,” he said.

The
Rider narrowed his eyes. He didn’t understand what the man was getting at.
Apparently his incomprehension showed on his face.

“Surely
you know of the angel Lailah?” said Kabede.

The
Rider thought back to the name. It was a story told in the Talmud. At
conception, the soul of a child was said to be instructed in the knowledge of
the full breadth of the universe, including the Torah and the regions of
heaven. But prior to birth, the instructing angel, Lailah, touched the child’s
lip with one finger, causing it to forget everything. One’s learning then, was
not the attainment of new knowledge, but the act of remembering what had been
forgotten. It was just a little bit of nonsense to answer a child’s question
about the purpose of the philtrum, nothing more.

Except Kabede had no philtrum.
The infranasal depression was
non existent. He had only a smooth flat space above his upper lip where it
should have been.

Kabede
saw the flash of wonder that must have come to the Rider’s eyes, and he smiled.

“I
cannot say why the angel Lailah did not strike my lip, but I was born with all
the knowledge of heaven. I could recite the Holy Orit—what you call the
Torah—from the time I could speak. Even the Talmud, of which the Beta Y’srael
have
no knowledge, was known to me. My teacher came seeking
me. I do not know whether he dreamed me or what, but he inducted me into the
Order when I was six years old, and I became a yored merkabah when I was nine.”

A yored merkabah.
A yored merkabah was a Merkabah Rider who
had attained the throne of glory and sat in the presence of God. Something the
Rider himself, for all his accolades, had been unable to do.

“You
still do not believe me?” Kabede asked.

“I
don’t know what I believe,” he said tiredly,
laying
back down.

“I
will build a fire, we will eat, and you will tell me why.”

“I
can’t eat.”

“You
can. You have,” Kabede said. “We passed the Sanba adma’I together yesterday.
You had broth.”

The
Rider blinked.

“The Sabbath?”

Kabede
nodded.

“It’s
Sunday?”

“It
was Sunday,” Kabede said, glancing at the red sky and stooping to stack the dry
kindling.

That
meant he slept nearly two days.
But how?
The
fluttering in his ears was gone.

“I
haven’t been able to keep anything down in a month,” he whispered. “And I don’t
remember the last time I slept.”

“Yes
I know.
The ruahim.
They surround you at all times. I
think I can stop them. For now, the staff lets you sleep, and I can purify your
food and drink with it.”

It
was only then that the Rider was aware of the rod sticking out of the ground
behind his head where he lay. It was the one Kabede had used on the men at the
café. It appeared to be some kind of African prayer staff or ceremonial stick.
The wood was dark, perhaps almond, and the body of it was encircled with carved
Hebrew letters. The inscription read ‘To the extent of God, let these things
come to pass.’ The rod was capped by a good-sized knot that appeared to have
once been a carving of some kind of animal, but had been defaced until it was
nearly unrecognizable. The butt end was sharpened to a point.

“What
kind of magic is your staff?” the Rider asked warily.

“No
kind,” Kabede said.

He
had struck flint with his long, curved belt knife. He blew a fire to life, then
rose and went to the staff, his eyes beaming.

He
pulled it out of the ground and held it lightly in his hands, speaking
admiringly;