Heartland-The Second Book of the Codex of Souls (33 page)

My knuckles shrieked as I played unstoppable force to the mandala's immovable object. My bones were the most fragile object in the collision and some of them shattered.

Antoine thrust his silver arm below the rim of the pit, hauling Henri closer to the edge. Henri slipped across the floor, and his shoulder and head passed the plane of the pit's opening.

The key broke too, and the ward snapped back. The last thing I saw was Antoine, caught in the stone floor, and Henri, his body twitching, with nothing left above his clavicle; then the storm reached ground zero and everything went white as the world imploded.

 
" . . . down they fell,
Driven headlong from the pitch of Heaven, down
Into this deep, and in the general fall
I also; at which time this powerful key
Into my hand was given, with charge to keep
These gates forever shut, which none can pass
Without my opening."

– John Milton,
Paradise Lost

Once upon a time, in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, the sun god Ra was bitten by a serpent. Not the normal sort of serpent one finds in the garden, hidden among the trailing vines, but one with a malicious bite (a distant cousin to the sharp-toothed one who wound itself around the Tree in the Garden, in fact). When the serpent bites Ra, he is mystified as to why one of his creatures would wound him so. He kneels on the path and lifts up the tortured snake and asks,
Why do you inflict yourself upon me?

The answer is, of course, an allegorical riddle:
Because it is my nature
. The snake knows no other way. It is narrow and perfect in its focus, and there are no diversions or branches on the path it knows. Ouroboros, the great Norse serpent, is the symbol for the re-occurring nature of the cosmological cycle, and he is drawn biting his own tail. Why? Because it is his nature, too.

Ra does not understand the snake's answer and so falls ill. Enter Isis, Osiris' wife, who—let's be honest—is the archetypal symbol for the Great Healer. She did, after all, piece together all the pieces of Osiris' body after his brother Set dismembered him and cast the pieces to every corner of the known world. Isis comes to Ra's bed where he lies stricken, and asks,
What ails you, my King?

I have fallen ill,
Ra says,
but I do not know the cause of my sickness.

I can heal you, my Lord, but I ask a boon
.

What is it that you wish?
Ra replies.

I wish to know your secret name.

No man may know that secret,
he says.

Isis opens the drapes of the tent in which Ra lies and shows him the darkness and sickness that has come over the land as the poison has come over him. The land, locked in the shadow of a perpetual solar eclipse.

The Land languishes, my Lord, and with it, your people,
she says.
Do you not wish to save them?

This poison will pass,
Ra says,
I will be well again.

As you wish,
Isis demurs.

But he doesn't get better. The poison ruins his veins, causing him to weep internally, blood and pus flowing into his chest cavity. It ravages his lungs and he cannot breathe. It devours his stomach and he is assailed by an impossible hunger. It descends into his groin and he loses the power to create life.

Isis is summoned by her sister, Nuit, who is equally consumed with despair.
Heal him,
she begs Isis.
Bring him back.

Isis bends over the ruins of the god, who does not recognize her as the poison has blocked the path light follows from the eyes to the brain, and whispers into his ear.
I only ask a small thing, my lord. Just one tiny word.

Deep in his madness, some part of Ra hears her, and in the shrunken nut of all that remains of his glory, knows that, without Isis' aid, the light that is Ra will go out. He calls forth the only spark remaining in his heart and binds it to the last breath in his lungs. This chariot and cargo fly through the ravaged cavity of his chest, up through a hole in his throat and into his mouth. When it reaches his lips, the spark is transformed into a single word, and Isis, her ear next his lips, is the only one who hears it.

Empowered by the perfection of this word, made glorious by the presence of Ra's secret name, Isis opens her heart and releases her healing magic. Her love drives out the serpent's poison, and she builds him a new stomach, repositions his ribs, and even reaches down into his groin to warm the cold stone of his sex. She brings him back, and when he wakes, the sun is born again and the river flows once more. The Land continues on.

But she knows his secret name now. That can never be taken back.

As for who gave the serpent the secret of poison? Well, that detail may or may not be revealed by the storyteller. He may leave it up to the imagination of the audience, or he may dismiss all inquiries as to the identity of this miscreant.
It does not matter,
he may say.
The serpent is villain enough.
For many centuries, the initiates claimed it was Isis who gave the serpent its fangs.

I believe it was Ra himself.

When I opened my eyes, the light was all wrong, and I gradually realized it was soft and ambient and altogether normal. Daylight. I turned my head and discovered I was lying in bed. Next to Marielle.

I had been dreaming. A rocky spur, exposed by the wind from the vast sea of sand surrounding it, had wept water long enough for a verdant oasis to grow around this artesian upwelling. I had been sitting in the shade of palm trees, listening to Philippe tell stories. Cristobel and Lafoutain had been there too; all three were dressed in white—the reflective garb of desert nomads. Nearby, several camels had been contentedly chewing while Detective John Nicols—dressed in a similar fashion—fussed with the high saddles and bags.

I believe it was Ra
 . . .

Marielle stirred, and her leg moved against mine beneath the covers. A tiny smile creased her lips as she turned toward me. The comforter was bunched over her, and one of my feet stuck out on my side of the bed. The bed was like a European double, smaller than it should have been, and it was easy to spill over the edge. You also slept close. I moved my hand incrementally and my fingers brushed across her bare hip.

Close enough to touch.

She was as naked as I.

Orange and yellow was starting to bloom on the curtains, sunflowers of morning light. Dawn was less than an hour away; the light through the curtains over the French doors was no longer the monochromatic shadows of Nuit's palette. A long finger of darkness slowly retreated across the wall opposite the bed.

Marielle sighed, and her leg moved further across mine, rocking my hips toward her. My hand slid off her hip, my fingertips trailing across the slope of her stomach. Like running my hand across a warm stove, tingles of heat rose up to my knuckles, which didn't hurt.

Fumbling with the comforter, I extracted my right hand from the covers. My knuckles weren't bruised, and on my palm, there was a deep line that went all the way to the base of my thumb, a trinity of burn marks, and some striations that looked like the fading print of a typographer's stamp.
Half a word . . .
This was the room where Marielle and I had spent New Year's morning, but my hand bore incongruities, the marks of a different time. Last night—

No.
That
night. Not last night. The apartment in Montmartre had been five years ago. Last night I had been at the coast, in a stony chapel beneath Mont-Saint-Michel. Where I had killed men for their souls. Where the leys had come back in a tsunami-like rush of noise and energy.

Marielle's leg moved again, in a motion that wasn't unconscious. She was awake, watching me, rubbing the edge of her thigh against my leg. "Where are you?" she asked. Her voice had an oddly hollow ring, as if it was an echo.

"Right here," I said, closing my hand and sliding it back under the covers.

She flowed into my embrace, her mouth seeking mine. Breast and belly and hip followed, and we floated away beneath a sea of white damask as the morning bloomed outside. In our room outside of time, we found each other again.

Is it real?
I started to ask, but the words were lost in the sudden quickening of my pulse as her hand found my cock. She raised her head so I could kiss the hollow of her throat, so I could chase the line of her clavicle with my teeth. Her legs parted as she shifted her hips, my hand sliding under her. I pulled her closer, and she squeezed my shaft as I rubbed against the smoothness of her upper thigh.

Her arm around me, she held me close, astride the combination of her fist and my cock. My foot, caught in the sheet tucked around the base of the bed, thrashed and kicked free. Finding purchase on the edge of the bed, I pushed, extending my leg. She laughed as we burrowed further into the pillows.

I eased off, snatching her wrist and pulling her hand off me. Catching her arm between our bodies so she couldn't grab me again, I ground my hips against her, feeling her respond in kind. My cock slid between her legs, and she elevated her hips, inviting me to try again. I felt a tiny tremor run through her left leg as the joint at her hip popped, muscles both remembering and imagining another time and place. This time was easier, not so clandestine as the alcove on the boat, in not such an impromptu position. She rotated her pelvis, inviting me to find my way.

She bit my earlobe, exhaling heavily into my ear as I entered her.
Does it matter?
she moaned, fingers digging into my shoulders. What is real. What is not. It was like the childhood game of plucking petals off a flower. She loves me. She loves me not. She loves—riding a figure eight of motion, back and forth. From shadow to light and back again. From reality to unreality. From what could have been to what was. Back and forth, building speed. Building intensity with each shuddering passage through this central nexus of our cycle. She loves me;
is it real?
She loves me not;
this is how the world is made.

Tell me,
she whispered, and I can't answer for my mouth is pressed against her throat, bruising her with my teeth. Her legs wrapped around mine, holding me tight.
Tell me
—

A light exploded outside the room, the sun erupting into a super nova. Streaks flashed across the wall over the bed, and I reared up, throwing back the comforter. The curtain was flapping on its rod as the balcony door banged open. The sky was burning, a kaleidoscopic confusion of red and orange and black. A confusion of blood-tinged soap bubbles streamed into the room, obscuring the figure standing on the balcony. Outlined in fire.

Beneath me, Marielle shrieked, throwing her head back against the pillows. Her hands clawed at my chest, and her hips bucked savagely. A horrible void swam beneath her, and I was being bent at the middle, caught in the vortex. I tried to pull back, tried to stop from climaxing, but the greedy suction was too much. The pressure on my spine was too much.

For an instant, the room vanished, sucked into that void, and I hung over the Abyss, staring down at the lack of black fire where Choronzon dwelled. Hands held me back, even though my feet were slipping over the edge. Hands around my waist pulled at me, pulling me away from Choronzon's magnetic attraction. More hands followed as the slumbering Master of the Abyss started to wake. Someone grabbed my right hand, and their touch seared the three wounds on my palm. I pulled my gaze away from the fiery halo of the monster below and looked over my shoulder.

They were all there. Philippe, Cristobel, Lafoutain, and the rest. Pulling me back. John Nicols had my hand.
Not like this,
he said. His hand was burned black from where he had touched the theurgic mirror, black and so cold that his flesh burned against mine. I twisted around, grabbing his wrist with my other hand, and the Chorus cracked like a whip, pulling me free of the gravity well of the Abyss.

I fell off the bed, banging my shoulder hard against the wood floor. Sunlight danced on the polished wood, dazzling me. A line of bloody circles led back to the door, and as I managed to focus, more crimson bubbles floated down and popped. There were tarot cards scattered across the floor, spread out in a widening arc from me as if I had been holding them in my hands when I fell. I glanced down at my torso and found a number of them stuck to me like a half-hearted attempt at a loincloth.

On the bed, Marielle was still fucking me, though it was a younger man, an echo of a previous time. Laughing and shouting with delight, her legs wrapped around my waist, she was oblivious to the black shape riding my shoulders, its clawed feet digging into my back. It leered at her, panting with excitement, its one eye staring.

She doesn't see it. None of us could.

On the balcony, wearing a cloak of morning light, Antoine stood, watching. His silver hand was shaped like a bowl with a broken stem—a fragment of a cup—and he dipped a thin wand into the liquid it held. Missing a finger on his left hand, his motion was somewhat clumsy as he raised the wand to his lips and blew another stream of crimson bubbles. They floated into the room, and several popped against my chest, leaving red rings on the cards and my flesh.

"My
Qliphotic
shadow," I said as I walked out of the apartment, as I left sanctuary and stood, exposed, on the balcony with him. A distant noise, like the roaring, gnawing sound of a conflagration, vibrated through me, making my bones and teeth ache.

He nodded.
It was your wound that never healed. The pain which you refused to let go.

"I know. I needed an anchor. I needed some way to understand."

Samael looked at me as if he could see me, his single eye squinting against the light; he knew we were talking about him. One of his long-fingered hands snaked under the chin of the man on the bed, squeezing his throat, and I swallowed heavily. I tried to remember that moment from five years ago; part of me wanted to think that was the way it had happened. As I had neared climax, I had started to choke, and because I hadn't been able to see him either—not then—my brain was already willing to believe it had been Marielle's hands on my throat. She had choked me as I came—