The Book of Q (28 page)

Undaunted, he retraced his steps. When he reached the stairs for a second time, he planted himself against the rock and closed his eyes. The need for a little guidance. Where would they have hidden it? The silence brought him back to the notes.
It’s a game for them
, he thought as he stared down at the pages.
So how would they hide the “knowledge”?
For want of anything better to do, he counted out the Syriac letters.
Thirty-five
. No luck there; the cells had stopped at twenty-two. Evidently, the Manichaeans hadn’t placed much stock in numerology.
Look at the words. It has to be in the words
. He continued to stare at the phrase. “Those who enter may see the light.”
The light
. He knew it was no
metaphor for them, no spiritual allusion, but something tangible, real. Up to this point, he’d assumed “the light” had referred to the parchment. That was real. Enter and find it. Clearly, that wasn’t the case.
So what down here contains the light?
He began to wonder if he’d somehow missed a tray of melons along the way.

Frustration began to set in. He tilted his head back against the wall, eyes lost to the void in front of him. For nearly a minute, he stood there, thoughts of the notes slowly supplanted by an uneasy appreciation for the space around him—cold, slick walls, lifeless cells, all part of an ancient cavern left to its own decay, desolate in its entirety. What he had seen only moments before as a piece to the puzzle now took on a far more unsettling reality, one separated from any other living soul by a maze of alleys and walls and streams. Urged on by the profound isolation of the place, those images began to fly through his head in a dizzying array, so overwhelming that he began to lose all hope of retracing his steps. The pounding in his chest accelerated. Instinct snapped his head to the right, the lamp with it, a need to know that the other corridor remained empty. All that stared back was a swirl of dusty air clinging to the lantern light. Beyond it, pure darkness, childhood fears crowding in, lungs tightening, an overpowering desire for light,
real
light, to relieve him of his self-conjured frenzy.

Fighting it, he suddenly experienced a moment of perfect clarity.

“Those who enter may see the light.”
The light
.

In that instant, he knew exactly what the phrase meant. The guidance he had sought. It didn’t refer to the parchment; it referred to light itself.
Actual
light, to erase the darkness and dispel the fears. Light in its most tangible form, even for a Manichaean.

All he needed to do was find its source.

His heart slowed, the air once again breathable, the glint of possibility holding his panic at bay. Thinking back on the last fifteen minutes, he knew the source wasn’t in any of the cells; he’d searched them too well to have missed something that obvious.

Or had he? It suddenly struck him that perhaps the light he was looking for needed complete darkness to make itself known. Any sort of shading would only undermine a Manichaean design, light and darkness understood as polar absolutes. The lantern he had brought with him had marred that purity.

In an act of Manichaean faith, he opened the glass and blew out the flame.

It took him several minutes to accustom his eyes. Oddly enough, he began to feel a kind of comfort within the pitch-black, his body somehow less delimited, unobtrusive, more a part of the rock than an affront to it. No longer defined by the ring of light cast from his lamp, he could almost fade into the darkness, safe in its embrace—a growing respect for the Manichaeans’ subtle affinity for the two realms.

When the first hint of light did appear, he thought his eyes were
playing
tricks on him, not for the light itself, but for its location. Thin lines of white slowly formed along the ceilings of both corridors, threadlike streaks at perfect intervals, as if a hundred spiders had decided to weave one strand each of silk. Impossible to make out above the garish yellow of the lantern, they now glimmered pristine against a blackened
backdrop
. He moved out toward the first, brushing his fingers along the ceiling, the strip of light matching the topography of his hand. Cupping his fingers toward the side wall, he expected to catch the light in his palm. Instead, the beam disappeared. Only then did he see the light shining on his knuckles. Amazed, he turned toward the solid rock courtyard. The light was coming from in there.

At once, he began to trace his fingers along the topmost edge of the courtyard stone, only to find a pattern of tiny holes hidden within. Each time he covered one, another strand of web disappeared, reborn with the removal of his finger. He’d paid no attention to the giant hunk of rock situated at the center of the four corridors; now, he ignored all else. He lit the lantern and began to examine the fissured stone. Drawing up to within a few inches of the first hole, he discovered something far more provocative.

Etched into the wall was a disjointed collection of Greek letters, most of which lay hidden under a healthy layer of dust. Sweeping the grit away, he saw they combined to form a block of writing; on closer
inspection
, a verse from the Bible. Ephesians. The armor of God. Like the steps he had discovered in the monastery’s outer wall, the letters here had been carved with such ingenuity that they virtually blended into the contours of the rock. His adrenaline started to rise. A few feet down, another verse. This one Old Testament. So it went, around all four sides, no sign, however, of the simple invitation from Luke.

When he realized how stupid he had been, he nearly smacked himself on the head. Of course the verse from Luke wouldn’t simply be waiting for him. It, too, would be hidden in the text. Taking his lead from the “Perfect Light,” he scanned each of the verses again, this time searching
for an acrostic. At the far end of the second wall, he came upon the letters hidden within a passage from Revelation, the irony not lost on him. Once more, he read the inscription from bottom to top:

He pulled back and surveyed the area around the verse. The rock face resembled a tiny mountain range, the cracks in the wall like rivers and streamlets crisscrossing its terrain. Lifting the lantern in a wide arc, he tried to locate some hint of a door in the fissures, but to no avail.
No way through, no way over
. A none-too-distant echo. With little else to go on, he ran his fingers along the lettering, unsure of what exactly it was he hoped to find. He took particular care with the word
light
, pressing against each of its letters as if one of them might miraculously propel him through the solid wall.

He wasn’t far off when, pushing at the last, he felt something give way, the miniature ς burrowing deeper into the rock. A moment later, he heard the sound of releasing, an entire section of wall moving perhaps an inch backward, guided by some unseen hinge. Stepping back, he watched as a seemingly unconnected series of cracks—oddly etched beams—joined together to create the outline of a door. A remarkable piece of engineering. Muscling his shoulder into the rock, he pushed his way through.

The sudden spray of light from within—a milky white radiance far purer than anything he had expected—forced him to wince. It seemed to emanate from the walls, an undulating mass of flawlessly smooth stone. Directly in front of him, six steps led down to the floor, which reflected an equal luster, no less luminous than the arched ceiling above, the overall effect that of a cube of light dug deep into the rock. He made his way down, sliding his fingers along a nearby ridge of wall—cold, wet, tacky to the touch. It gave the impression of something primeval, as if it had been culled from the very soul of the mountain. Even when he noticed the real source of light—a group of torches placed at the far end of the sanctum—he continued to marvel at the stone’s effect. That the flames implied a recent visit from someone other than himself didn’t deter him. Instead, he concentrated on the torches, too dim to be producing the kind of light enveloping the space. Somehow, the walls, the floor, the ceiling were absorbing the torchlight and throwing it back with an added vibrancy.

Even from behind the six tapestries that hung along the four walls.

Putting the geological mystery to the side for the moment, Pearse drew up to the tapestry nearest him. Considerably faded—early medieval, his best guess—it appeared to depict the Ascension of Christ: a lamb asleep in the lower right-hand corner, angels flanking Him on both sides, more of the heavenly host above. Christ blessed them all as He rose, clouds parting before Him, His face and torso far rounder than one might have expected. More curious, He wore the robes of an Old Testament mystic, a book covered with astrological symbols clutched in His right hand.

At first, Pearse attributed the idiosyncrasies to a Byzantine style, but the longer he stared, the more he realized how much of the scene felt incongruous, the usual cast of characters somehow miscast—the Virgin Mother nowhere in sight, the apostles conspicuously absent. Even the way the light radiated from Christ seemed skewed.

It slowly dawned on him why. This was no Ascension, but a Heavenly Ascent. No Christ, but a Manichaean prophet. Enoch, as Pearse now recalled his Apocrypha. Who else would be holding the
Book of Celestial Physics?
He glanced around the chamber. Each of the tapestries wove a similar story of a Seth or an Enosh, the figures virtually indistinguishable from one another. Only one of them stood out—the largest, hung along the back wall, depicting a man twice the size of the rest. Miniature versions of the other prophets stood within his open palms, their tiny auras subsumed within his own brilliance.

Mani, the Paraclete, larger than life.

From his vaunted perch, the Great Prophet stared down on the chamber, gnosis issuing from his every pore in a stream of letters and symbols woven into the cloth, the focus of his attention a raised platform at the center of the room. His gaze seemed to indicate its special importance. Pearse followed Mani’s cue and moved toward it.

A series of wooden sculptures, each no more than two feet tall, surrounded the four sides of the pulpit—Byzantine figures carved in narrow ridges, maroon and aqua pigments peeling from their faces and hands. They looked like typical Eastern icons, eyes peering up at the tapestries, each of the little men in a classic pose of humble piety. And yet, there were subtle differences among them—a hand gesture, the tilt of a head—enough to draw Pearse closer. As he moved from one to the next, he realized how much they varied, each one with its own specific identifying mark: an olive branch clasped to the breast, a garland rung
about a shaven head, a tiny book held in the right hand.
A book?
At once, he turned back to the tapestries, instantly aware of the connection. Each of the sculptures represented one of the figures on the walls. Like Saint Jerome with his lion, or Saint Catherine with her wheel, the Manichaean prophets defined themselves by their own artistic props.

But whereas six of them hung from above, the grouping around the platform numbered seven. Pearse quickly matched statues with tapestries, the odd one out all too obvious when he finally came to it. Its short hair and lack of a beard had confused him at first. Only when he looked more closely did he see the tiny indentations at the center of each palm. Jesus as prophet. Jesus as one more in a long line leading to Mani. Why He had been denied His Heavenly Ascent remained a mystery. Perhaps to confirm Mani’s elevated position. Pearse had no answer. What he did have, though, was far more exhilarating.

Compared to the others in the chamber, Jesus remained earthbound, static.
Unmoved
.

Pearse needed only to help him “take wing.”

He placed the lantern on the platform and knelt by the figure. Its robes draped to the ground, a hint of sandal peeking out, enough to reveal a rusted nail driven through the arch. At first, Pearse thought it was merely decorative, a symbol of Christ’s final agonies; bending closer in, he realized it was actually bolting the statue to the stone below. He glanced at the other figures; each was managing with a single brace attached to the platform behind. Jesus alone required a separate means of mooring.

Pearse dropped to his chest and began to examine the few inches between the back of the figure and the pulpit. This time, he could find no release mechanism. Pulling himself to his knees, he placed his hands around the statue’s waist and gently tried to lift it. The wood groaned from the mild exertion, the stone below shifting ever so slightly. A hint of movement. More than that, he watched as a powder puff of dust rose from behind the robes as he released, caught in an unseen stream of light. He inched over to the side and lifted again, this time his eyes fixed on the stone.
There
. A thin shadow along the back edge seemed to deepen as he pulled, another crack of light. The stone was rising. More dust as he let go. He tried it several times, but the bolt refused to give way, no more than half an inch before it locked the stone in place. He needed something to wedge into the gap, something to force the stone up from below.