Council of Peacocks (11 page)

“Hey, David.” Todd closed the file and stuck
out a hand to shake. David shook the offered hand and smiled back.
There was something honest in Todd’s eyes, like the comfort of a
pastor or a young doctor. “I was just reading some of my dreams to
Bethany. That’s one of the first things they’ll have you do in
Level One, keep a dream journal. As much as I love the kids, it’s
nice to have another adult here.”

“Don’t lie.” Bethany barely looked up from
her knitting. “You don’t love the kids and neither do I. Damn
little demons, if you ask me. Oh, don’t give me that look. You’ve
had the same thoughts yourself and you know it. All that power and
no emotion. I tell you, they’re not quite human.”

“Who amongst us is?” Wisdom smiled as he said
this. “I’ll leave David with you, Bethany. Do try and be nice.”

David watched as Wisdom marched away. Before
he left, Wisdom looked at his watch and mouthed something. David
wasn’t certain, but he could have sworn Wisdom said, “Almost
time.”

‘Almost time for what?’ he wondered.

Chapter Nine

Propates sat in his office holding an old
photograph in his right hand. It was faded and yellowed with age,
the edges worn from years of handling. It was Echo sitting on a
beach in Thailand. She wore a one-piece bathing suit – blue with
white polka dots – and an oversized, flopping sun hat. She was
smiling at the photographer – himself – while children played in
the waves behind her.

“Why did you go back to him?” He traced his
finger down Echo’s neck. “Things could have been so different.”

He looked at the image emblazoned on the wall
before him. It was a representation of Melek Taus: a large black
peacock in a circle of gold. Christians and Jews regarded Melek
Taus as Satan. The peacock represented pride, something the
monotheists saw as an opening to all sin. Propates, however, knew
it was simply a new version of an old power: Argus, a hundred-eyed,
all-seeing god who never slept. By learning the lessons of the
peacock, one could transcend humanity and become a God.

The phone rang.

“I’m busy,” he said. “Be quick.”

“Whatever you’re doing will wait.” The voice
on the phone was familiar but not instantly recognizable. “We have
an issue with the agent from away. Lucius and the others are
meeting in the Vulture Antechamber.”

“I’m heading there in a few minutes, anyway.”
Propates answered. “The shadows are not sitting well. The Orpheans
are about to make an appearance. Is this Otto?”

“Tsk. No. I’ll see you in a few,
Propates.”

The crass denial confirmed who the voice
belonged to, but the caller hung up before Propates could name him.
He pushed the button to open the elevator. The carriage was empty,
for which he was extremely thankful. The Council of Peacocks was
growing. Its membership was well into the tens of thousands now.
Members of the upper echelon had taken up residence here in
Thessaloniki; there were smaller outposts around the world. With
growth, however, came an abundance of administrative duties: papers
to sign, rewards and punishments to be meted out, initiations to
oversee. The business of trying to save the world from itself was
quickly becoming a real business.

“If I knew it was going to end up like this,”
he whispered to himself, “I wonder if I would have answered
Wisdom’s question differently.”

He closed his eyes and thought back to the
first time he'd met Echo and Wisdom.

***

In 51 AD, Propates was a sixteen-year-old
man living on a farm in the countryside not far from Rome. He’d
never been to the city, but he knew about it. Tax collectors and
bloodthirsty soldiers came from the city. What more did he need to
know? When he married his young wife, a fourteen-year-old beauty
named Olivia, his family built an addition onto the main house.
Olivia was pregnant with their first child. The oracle who lived
nearby said the child would be a boy. In retrospect, Propates
remembered the haunted expression on the oracle’s face as she told
their fortunes. She must have seen what was coming.

Early one summer evening, a nobleman and his
entourage passed by the farm. Like most nobles, they treated the
uneducated peasants as little more than worms. With the weight of
muscle and steel behind it, they had the right to take whatever
they wanted. In their philosophy, if you could not stop someone
from taking your possessions, you did not deserve to keep them. The
commander of the nobleman’s soldiers wanted Olivia. Propates stood
between his wife and the soldiers. He was beaten for his insolence.
While the commander raped his wife, Propates, bloodied and sore,
fed and watered the man’s horses.

After fifteen minutes, the commander
returned and forced Propates to smell his Roman fingers. Propates
cringed at the smell of his wife on the brute’s body. But he said
nothing. He did nothing. The commander laughed and offered Olivia
up to the rest of his men. Propates remembered the look on his
father’s face. ‘Get used to it.’

Later, after helping Olivia wash the blood
from her body, Propates snuck out of the house and into the
darkness of the fields. The open air was the only place large
enough for his fury. He knelt and pounded his fists into the damp
earth. His eyes burned with tears but he dared not scream. On the
way back to the house, he saw a woman. Her hair was long and
tightly curled, done up in the style fashionable amongst Roman
ladies of the time. In the moonlight the bared flesh of her arms
and neck appeared as cold and pale as bone. When he realized he was
staring at her, he forced his head down. If the lady complained to
the soldiers, if she told them he dared look upon her, they could
kill him. And then where would Olivia be?

“
Come here, boy.” The lady spoke, her
voice soft like the wind through the grass.

Fear froze him in place.

“
Don’t make me repeat myself,” she said.
Now there was definite laughter in the voice. Propates felt the
fury flush through his face. Who was she to call him boy? Even
though she looked like royalty, her soft, wrinkleless face marked
her as barely older than him.

“
Yes, mistress.” As Propates spoke, it
felt like he had pebbles in his throat. Each word was painful. He
walked closer to her, keeping his eyes to the ground.

“
This anger you’re feeling, boy, the rage
that’s welling up inside you…I’ve felt it. Oh, you can take that
sneer off your face. Believe me or don’t. Why should I care? I am
not really sure why I’m bothering with you at all. I just…I guess I
just had to talk to someone human, someone who still knows what
it’s like to feel pain, to watch everything you hold dear get
demolished in front of you at the whim of some monster.”

Propates looked up. His lips trembled.
“You’re rich and powerful,” he said. “A lady. You know nothing
about being poor and powerless.”

The woman stared over at him. For the first
time, their eyes connected. There was just as much venom in her
eyes as Propates felt inside himself. “I know more than you can
possibly imagine about being powerless. Your woman was raped. So
what? At least it wasn’t your mother. Or your father. At least you
didn’t have to watch it being done to them. Imagine that captain
forcing you to slit your brother’s throat then stand still as he
killed the rest of your family. Imagine…” Her shoulders slumped and
she shook her head. “Oh, why bother? Right now you feel like the
biggest victim in all of history. There, too, I’ve been. But you’re
not, boy. You’re not the biggest anything. You will rage, you will
die, and history will forget you.” Then she looked up to the sky, a
small smile on her lips. “But it won’t forget me.”

From behind Propates, a voice called out of
the dark. It boomed like thunder in the distance.

“
Andromeda? Where are you?”

The lady wiped under her eyes with her
fingertips and was silent for a moment. “I’m over here, Wisdom.”
When she spoke, all the venom was gone, replaced by a mix of
emotions Propates could not identify.

Behind him, Propates heard the jingle of
moving armor and the plodding of heavy footsteps. The sounds moved
toward him, but Propates did not turn around. He did not look up.
He held his breath and waited for the sword stroke. Then the steps
stopped. A firm, warm hand gripped his right shoulder, but he could
not see the man who touched him. A mix of sweat and sulfur filled
the air. Propates felt uncomfortably warm. The man behind him
radiated heat like a living fire.

“
What are you doing with the boy,
Andromeda?” The man’s voice no longer boomed like distant thunder.
It crackled like lightning.

“
Comforting him.”

Wisdom laughed. “Comforting? Seducing is
more likely. If you want him, take him. There’s no need to toy
with…”

“
Everything is a game to you, isn’t it?”
The venom was back in her voice.

“
Andromeda, everything
is
a game.
And not just for me. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you’ll
realize that. Nothing we do today affects the greater ripples of
time. These people fade and die so quickly. Why be concerned with
them at all? You have not been one of them for hundreds
of…”

“
Hush, Wisdom.” She stepped away from the
tree and approached Wisdom. Propates stood between them, wishing he
could fade into the shadows. The tension between them stung like
embers. “Never reveal a lady’s age. You should know
better.”

“
Humph. Do you want the boy or
not?”

Andromeda grabbed Propates by the chin and
forced his head up. She studied his eyes for a moment with a hard,
icy intensity. Then her expression softened and she took her hand
away. “No. He’s too soft and angry.”

The hand on Propates' shoulder gripped
tighter. “Soft and angry, you say. I can use that.”

Andromeda took at step back. “No, Wisdom.
Please, don’t….”

“
If you don’t want him for a toy,
Andromeda, I will take him. I haven’t converted anyone since I took
you. This melancholy you’re feeling, maybe it’s just loneliness.
Tell me, boy, what is your name?”

The hand on his shoulder spun him around and
forced him to his knees in one movement. For a moment, the pebbles
in Propates' throat seemed to clog up his entire voice. He looked
up at the dark-skinned man before him and screamed. It was not the
violence implied in the blood red flares of the cape or the highly
polished metal of his Roman soldier’s uniform. It was the
orange-glow in the man’s eyes, a glow that came from some internal
flame.

“
I said, tell me your name!”

As Propates watched, the orange glow faded
and died. The only light now came from the moon above. Propates
fought past the pebbles in his throat and the fear clouding his
head.

“
I’m called Propates, lord.”

Wisdom smiled and rested a heavily calloused
hand on Propates' unwashed hair. “A fine name. An auspicious name.
Tell me, Propates, would you like to live forever?”

Wisdom tore the thinly woven tunic from
Propates. He placed a warm hand on the sixteen-year-old’s trembling
chest. In a flash, Propates sensed the pain and screamed. Wisdom’s
hand crackled and burst into flame. With inhuman speed and
strength, he pushed Propates down onto his back and started
chanting. Only later did Propates realize the words were Arabic; at
the time, he only recognized them as magic.

Fire thrust from Wisdom's flesh, inserting
its heat into every cell of Propates' body. As it pulsated through
his quivering body, his marrow superheated, turning to plasma. His
blood flash-boiled, turned to red vapor and hissed out from every
orifice in his body. Only a force coming up from the earth, a
shadowy darkness, cooled his body enough to keep bones and flesh
intact. It was the worst pain he had ever felt in his life.

He spent nearly a month fading in and out of
fever dreams. He was only dimly conscious of the outside world, but
he remembered leaving the farm. He knew Wisdom left a sack of
currency at the farm, payment to father for a son. He felt more
than saw Andromeda come to sit with him. She came often. Propates
knew she cried over him and held his hand. But mostly he was only
aware of the dreams.

The place he dreamt of was nowhere on Earth.
It was a red city with no sun. Pillars of orange and black shot up
from the scorched, blackened earth to a crimson sky. He wandered
through buildings as massive as mountains, filled with ephemeral
creatures whose translucent bodies were constructed of living
flame. In the distance, giant birds flew over a range of mountains
composed entirely of glistening emeralds. Later he was in the
presence of a man emerging from a pool of lava. Neither the flame
nor the heat seemed to touch him. The man’s face flickered,
sometimes visible, other times not; but Propates knew the man was
Wisdom. In the dream Wisdom grabbed him by the hand and led him
into the pool of lava. As he sunk below the molten matter, Propates
clearly heard Wisdom’s voice say: “Welcome to Djinnistan.”

Propates woke with a start, just managing to
keep the scream in his throat. Andromeda was beside him, reading
silently from a scroll. She was dressed in a fluid, graceful gown
that was dyed deep purple. Her hair was down, flowing over her
shoulders like water frozen in place.

“
What did he do to me?” Propates forgot
himself for a moment. He reached over and gripped Andromeda’s hand,
a presumption that previously would have scared him into paralysis.
“What is he? What have I become?”

Andromeda put the scroll down and leaned
over him. With a gentle hand, she pushed a lock of sweat-damp hair
away from his forehead and out of his eyes.

“
What has he done?” she repeated. “He’s
freed you and he’s damned you. He’s damned both of us. As to what
he is, I don’t really know. I’ve been alive a long time now, a very
long time, and I’ve never met anyone like him. Sometimes he talks
of his home, of the place he came from. He calls it the Kaz but
I’ve never heard of such a place. Have you?”