How the Stars did Fall (11 page)

“Do you know who I am?” she asked.

“Daughter of the chief of the Ohlone,” Faraday said.

“Yes. My name is Moon,” she replied. “And do you know who it was that came here every day to watch you work?”

“The old fella?”

“Yes. His name is Xingu. And he saved your life.”

“How’d he do that?”

“I told you the penalty for the trespass of Oushanis was death. Yet here you stand.”

“And he did that?”

“He did. He believes you are innocent of the charges and my father believes in Xingu.”

“Then why am I not free?”

“Because there are others who do not believe in Xingu and they would see you stoned to death. There has been much talk while you toiled in this place. Xingu intervenes for you even among those who wish you dead. But he has not had much success.”

“So what, then? You’ve come to give me good news or bad?”

“I don’t know. I only know that Xingu wishes to speak with you. Alone.” Moon stopped talking for a moment, taking that time to look around and make sure the wrong people were not observing their conversation. Satisfied, she addressed Faraday: “Come. We must go to him now.”

She moved with impressive speed given how skinny she was, and her long dress did not appear to encumber her in the slightest. Faraday struggled to keep up. Within a few minutes, he realized they were moving in the exact same direction as he had moved in his vision. And by the end of their trek, to his complete stupefaction, they stood over the path he had seen. The vision was real. The chief’s daughter noticed his thoughtful expression and his hesitance at the downward path.

“Do you fear something? I am not lying to you. We are almost to Xingu. Come.”

Faraday followed, the need for total concentration while descending the mountain overshadowing his thoughts about his vision and what it meant. The chief’s daughter stopped about halfway down the mountain, where a short path led not down but to a cave hidden in the folds of rock such that it could not be seen by anyone save those standing right in front of it. In that cave, they found the elder Indian sitting cross-legged upon the cool rock. The circular walls of the cave held lit torches set next to each other in intervals. The cave was not large, yet the light struggled to illumine the space, giving the Indian in the center a ghostly quality, as if he were engulfed by a flickering shadow, some ethereal presence lingering close to him.

“Here he is,” Moon said to Xingu.

The elder Indian opened his eyes slowly as if he had been awakened from a deep slumber, his consciousness taking a few extra seconds to process its return to the waking body.

“Hello?” Faraday said. But Xingu did not answer.

Then Xingu took a deep breath and spoke.

“Thank you, Moon. You may go now, before someone notices your absence,” Xingu said. As Moon receded from the cave, Faraday waded farther into it, approaching Xingu warily, as if he were before some new kind of man whose ways were foreign and whose predilections could easily conflict with Faraday’s own. Up close, the elder looked different. His skin was wrinkled and leathery, but behind it lay taut muscle and thick veins, and Faraday thought the old Indian must be strong as a mule.

Without speaking, Xingu took up a torch and started down a stairway that had been hiding behind an opening in the wall. Faraday considered his options for a moment, then followed.

At its end, the stairway opened into a much wider cave, so wide the torch could barely dent the thick blackness that hung above and around them. But the old Indian continued on with no fear, and every few feet he passed a torch hung onto the wall as it had been in the smaller cave and lit it, keeping on and on until they had circumambulated the whole chamber. With all of those torches lit, Faraday got a much clearer sense of the size of the cave and remarked to Xingu how extraordinary the underground structure was, but Xingu shushed him.

“Wait a moment,” Xingu said.

The moment passed and the sound of a thousand rusty gears erupted from all around them as if the whole cave were mechanical in nature. And the rocks did move. In the ceiling a new light appeared in a gap, and with every second more, the gap grew larger and larger until a hole had formed above them, and through it the sun shone fierce as ever, illuminating every inch of the cave its rays could reach. Then the sound stopped.

“No white man has ever seen this place,” Xingu said.

“It is extraordinary. Did the Ohlone build it?”

“Oh no. This place is much older than the Ohlone. In fact, they have only occupied this mesa for a hundred and twenty or so years. Before that, the mesa had been uninhabited for somewhere between five hundred and a thousand years.”

“And before that?”

“It was home to a variety of different tribes for varying lengths of time.”

“Then who built it?”

“An ancient race long since vanished.”

“Why did they vanish?”

“The records do not say.”

After he had said that, Xingu walked to the center of the cave. A great chasm opened up there with a narrow stairway carved into the side of the rock. Faraday felt ill just thinking about walking those steps, yet while Xingu stood on the edge of the precipice, with the sun bathing him, he looked not like an old Indian of that country but perhaps one of the legendary figures of those vanished tribes, an effigy of an earlier race of men holding in his hand the empyreal flame with which the world of men had been wrought. Faraday considered asking Xingu if he was a descendant of those peoples but thought better of it. He took a moment to look again at the cave. Like the belly of a giant whale, the space stretched out and out. All along the walls of the structure, holes had been dug out. Entrances to other caves guarded by crudely fashioned gates.

“Did people once live here?” Faraday asked.

Xingu did not answer. Instead, he began descending the very steps Faraday had been dreading. Down into the chasm he went.

“Hey, come back here,” Faraday said. “Where are you going? What is the purpose of this? Some elaborate sacrificial ceremony? Tell me what your intentions are or I will go no further.”

That last bit made Xingu stop in his tracks and come back up until he could see Faraday.

“It is easier if I show you. Come down with me. See what exists down below—then I will answer all your questions. I mean you no harm. If I did, you would be dead.”

Convinced, Faraday took to the steps right behind Xingu, hugging the rock wall as much as he could, trying not to look down the chasm. They went down some twenty feet and, finding an opening in the wall, crossed into yet another cave, this one much smaller than the first, the ceiling barely high enough for the pair of them to walk upright. There were no torches inside this cave, so Xingu held the one he had in his hand close to the wall and told Faraday to note it. Painted on there were primitive drawings, figures of buffalo and horses and deer. As Xingu moved, more drawings were revealed and further ahead a section appeared that had no paint on it. Instead, symbols had been sculpted in relief, but Faraday knew not what they meant. But that was not what Xingu wished to show him, for they moved past these symbols and stopped in front of a wide tapestry that had been hung from the rock. The tapestry had been painted on, and the painting was much more complex than anything else in the cave, the techniques seemingly modern. But what startled Faraday the most was not the incredible realism of the work, nor its incongruity, but the event it depicted. There, in full color, Faraday saw a ring of tall stones set in a circle in the middle of a forest, and within the circle was a man, white and lightly bearded, possessing upon his forehead a third eye, open and glaring. Above this man, above the stones and the forest, a thousand falling stars crisscrossed the night sky, their trails like long tails of brilliant white light.

Chapter Nine

All Daniel’s striving and banging upon the coffin and yelling and commanding that he be set free accomplished nothing. It left him exhausted and out of breath, his heart filled with hate. He dropped the little bottle, vowing to himself that he would not take his own life. Would not give them the satisfaction. The hours went by like days. He lay there in total blackness with only his thoughts to keep him occupied. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Eventually he felt a desire to urinate. He held it in for a while, until it began to sting, and then he let himself go, filling up the coffin with the stench of his own waste. This release relaxed him somewhat and he soon fell asleep despite his best efforts to stay awake.

When he awoke gasping for air, his head was filled with the images of the dreams he had just had. But they were fleeting and in a matter of seconds he could remember barely any of it. Only one scene stayed with him, and he held on to it by playing it over and over again in his mind. He strides into a meandering forest, sheaths of light cutting through the foliage, not a breeze blowing. No sound in the air but that of his own steps on the soil. There are seven different trails ahead and Daniel stands at that crossroads, hesitant. Then someone appears next to him and this person points to one of the pathways. Daniel decides to heed the stranger and sets out down that path, and before long he can see lights in the distance and people dancing and he is sure his mother is there. Even though he never met her he is sure she is there. He increases his pace but the party remains the same distance away. He walks and walks and even breaks out into a run, but he comes no closer to the party. So he stops and sits down. The stranger sits next to him.

The man’s face is blurred. He speaks without a voice.

“The forest is treacherous. It speaks, yet we cannot hear it. If you’ll walk the path, then walk it. In every movement a choice is made.”

The scene ended there. Now being stuck in that box began to weigh on Daniel. Panic showed its ugly feet at the edges of his consciousness. Again he pushed at the wood above and kicked at it, the leeway insufficient for him to affect the integrity of the coffin. His thoughts raced. He thought of his brother and his father. Felt a deep guilt for betraying Faraday’s trust. Then he banished those thoughts from his mind. If it was his time, he would go without regret. And he remembered the times as a boy he had wished he had never been born. Facing death, he bitterly admitted to himself that those had been lies. He wanted to live. More than anything, he wanted to live.

He lay there with his eyes closed, breathing in as deep as he could. After careful consideration, he came to a conclusion. He could not save himself from the box. His only hope was to survive inside it as long as he could on the chance someone would come and free him. With this in mind, Daniel let himself relax, pushing away all vestiges of panic. His thoughts became clearer. He could not tell for sure how many hours he had been inside but he reckoned breathing should have become a whole lot harder by now. With his fingers he felt out the sides and the bottom of the coffin, and right at the very edge of his reach he felt two little holes in the wood on either side. As soon as he made this discovery a wave of euphoria and relief passed over him. He was never meant to die in there. It must be a test, he concluded. So he waited and before long he had fallen back into slumber.

He still slept when the coffin was wrenched open, the cracking wood waking him. The Good Man bent down and helped Daniel up and out of the coffin. Mr. Collins was there and Adler, too, his red robe accented by threads of gold all along its edges, little sigils engraved upon the cloth. And to Daniel’s surprise, it was Adler who commanded the room, for the other two looked to him for the next step as if his approval were required.

“Let him enter. He has made his choice,” Adler said before turning to Daniel. “Arise, Daniel, and come with us. You must come before him who directs us.”

A servant brought Daniel water and bread and a white robe to replace his soiled clothes. Then they moved back into the room with the veil. All of the furniture had been removed, leaving only a throne-like chair sitting in the center of a circular sigil that had been drawn on the floor. Men stood at the perimeter of that circle already, all of them in the same white robes Daniel wore. Adler sat at the throne, while Daniel stood next to the Good Man, completing the circle.

“Pillars and Arks, I, the Throne, declare this session open,” Adler said. “Quongoron will record our activity. First, a new Pillar has been erected. Come forward, Pillar.”

Daniel stepped into the circle. At once, all of the other men saluted him by raising their arms to their necks and thrice making a slashing motion.

“Do any Pillars or Arks intend to petition the Throne? Speak now or keep your peace until the next session.”

No one said anything.

“Very well. Quelos, will you serve as material basis tonight?”

“I will, my Throne.”

With that, Adler got up from the chair. Quelos, to Daniel’s surprise, was the Good Man. He wore a black robe and, stepping forward, he took Adler’s place on the chair. And Adler chanted in Latin, words of power and summoning, and as he spoke, the Good Man seemed afflicted by something as his body contorted this way and that. When Adler finished, the Good Man ceased his movement and stood up tall, his chin angled upward, full of aggression and temerity, and he held out his arm, palm down, like a saluting centurion of ancient Rome.

“A spirit of strife has entered our circle,” Adler said. “Are you Quirinus, our Lord and Patron?”

“I am.”

“Will you speak to us of things hidden and secret?”

“I will, soon. But first, I see a new face among my priesthood.”

“He has passed the trial, Lord. His name is Daniel.”

“I know him. I have seen him in the battlefield. Look at me, child. Do you bind yourself to this priesthood and swear never to divulge the secrets of our order, nor its practice, nor its theory, nor any material fact revealed to you personally or as part of this lodge, under penalty of being gored by a spear and left to bleed out in a desert?”

“I do so swear,” Daniel said.

“Then henceforth you shall be called Quirondoga. Stand with the others so that I may speak to you as one, my beloved priesthood. For I found each one of you long ago when you were only thoughtless specters roaming the shores of Lethe. Now here you are: self-begot and set on the upward path. Ask and you will have the answer. Seek and you will find power and divinity and a plot in the realms of the Father to call your own. I promise you, we shall reign together as gods one day. My only charge is that, when the time comes, you do not drink of that river of forgetfulness and prefer instead the refreshment of Mnemosyne. Then Charon himself will usher you into the deeper circles where the Lord of All holds court.”