Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (15 page)

Belden glanced at the Rider.

“Aliases,” the Rider said.

Belden nodded.

“Manasseh’s here,” said DeKorte, “his
was the Rider.”

“
Manasseh
?”
Belden repeated querulously, looking at the Rider again. In spite of
everything, his lip curled into a grin. “That’s your Christian-er, your given
name?”

The Rider shook his head.

“Yes. The Rider. The greatest
Merkabah Rider of the Sons of the Essenes,” DeKorte sneered. “Do you know the
origin of my name, Rider?”

Of course he did. But he said
nothing.

“Het Bot. The Bone.”

“The Bone?” Belden smirked. “I don’t
know which one’s worse, Manasseh or ‘The Bone.’”

DeKorte did not smile.

“Oh, wait.” Belden grinned after a
bit, meeting DeKorte’s stare unflinchingly. “Yes, I do.”

“You are useless here,
tatelah
,” DeKorte said, “so you may as
well make an appreciative audience. Interrupt again with your inanities and I’ll
order my friends to bite out your tongue. The Bone refers to the legend of the
luz.
The one indestructible,
incorruptible bone in the human body. When we die, all else crumbles to dust
but for our
luz
, and on the Day of
Judgment, the dew of resurrection will rain down from the Seventh Heaven of
Araboth, and the bodies of the dead will sprout from this anew. All the sins of
a man, all his deeds and failings, are written upon the
luz
.”

Then he did smile. He took from his
coat pocket something white and blocky, about the size of his palm, and held it
up. It was a human vertebra.

“This one had an interesting story
to tell, for instance. It told me of a young man’s trust, and a yearning for a
father he had never really known, but for a single memory; a memory of a
blessing, a dedication to God.”

The Rider’s eyes widened, and the
pit of his stomach yawned. His heart dropped deep down somewhere and was lost.
It couldn’t be.

“A dentist, I am told, may read the
eating habits of a dead man upon his teeth, whether he was a lover of tobacco
or not.” DeKorte turned the bone over in his hand, then held it to his ear. “This
bone tells me this boy did not touch strong drink. He did not cut his hair. He
believed himself a Samson, a modern day Nazirite.”

“
You
fucking bastard
!” the Rider spat, unable to control his outrage.

DeKorte smiled.

“He trusted you, Rider. Died
dreaming of a life of belonging. A life he saw with you. A new life with a new
father.”

The Rider’s fists bunched at his
sides and he trembled so hard where he stood that he fell against a grave
marker and went to his knees. His hat fell away, and he put his forehead to the
ground and pulled at his
payos
so
hard the pain squeezed the brimming tears from his eyes.

Belden stooped to help him up.

DeKorte pulled the spade out of the
dirt and drove it into the grave like a spear. They heard the crackle of
splintering coffin wood.

“What’s the matter?” Belden hissed. “That
grave…that’s the man they brought with them. The friend they buried.”

“No friend of ours,” DeKorte said
with mock innocence. “An old friend of the Rider’s. Say hello to my masterwork,
Rider. Say hello to
Gershom
.”

A huge, bulky form rose from the
grave, the broken boards of the shattered coffin sliding from its broad
shoulders.

The Rider began to wail, then to
snarl like a beast.

Alain Gans, Le Bouclier, last living
member of the Owernah Enclave, sighted another
goy
soldier, and with a gentle pull, blew his skull apart with a
.41 caliber bullet from his Guycot Rifle. He had lain aside his Remington after
the soldiers had taken cover in the stable, and gotten out the 80-shot chain
rifle to surprise them from his high position in the rocks. He was really no
great shot, but with the Vernier rear peep sight, and the Lyman and Beech front
sight he’d had fitted to the Guycot, he would have to have been blind to miss.
It was like shooting dumb animals. High among the rocks overlooking the post,
no one could even get to him. With his position and eighty rounds of ammunition
loaded, one man could hold off an army, which was what he was doing.

He toyed with them dispassionately
like a cat, blowing the limbs off the undead just to alleviate his own growing
boredom. He tittered to see the detached limbs spring and scurry up the screaming
men.

The
nègre
worried him though. Whatever weapon he was using to strike
the undead, it was putting them down, and according to Het Bot, that should not
have been possible. Who was he? He had thought to peer through the
Yenne Velt
to observe him, but then he
had taken cover inside the guardhouse.

Still, the situation was easily in
hand. By now Het Bot was giving the Rider his surprise, and soon they would be
picking the scroll from his corpse and taking them both to Adon. In a few mere
months, they would be masters of the earth.

Then he felt something.

LeBouclier, The Buckler, was the
name Gans had taken among the Sons of the Essenes. It was because he had always
shown a marked talent for protective magic. Of course, the Sons never called it
magic back then, but it was what it was. He had always been a cautious fellow.
His teachers had derided him some for it. A Merkabah Rider needed boldness too.
Of what use was constant preparation without venture?

So they had told him.

But they were dead.

Now, something crossed the seal he
had placed around himself, and was causing the ward on his chest to resonate.
He had never cared much for entering the
Yenne
Velt
, but he did so instantly, his body slumping over his rifle as his
astral form whirled and prepared to unload his mystic revolver on the threat,
whatever it was. Had the Rider somehow gotten past Het Bot and taken the fight
to him as he had with Lilith’s stupid
shedim
at Varruga Tanks?

It was not the Rider.

The black man with the staff stood before
him.

In the
Yenne Velt
, the staff was emitting a ghastly light. The shifting
colors were awesome, almost too much to look upon. So stunning to his etheric
eyes, he neglected to draw his mystic weapon, but actually threw up his arms in
a panic. The brilliance seemed to wither him. He felt his spirit shudder,
threatening to break apart, just as if he were a bumbling learner braving the
astral winds for the first time again.

“Alain Gans!” said a deep voice that
harrowed his soul. “I name you
moser
!”

With that last condemning word,
suddenly the blazing staff darted towards him, piercing his chest. His whole
form rippled, and he was knocked back into a dark corner of his subconscious,
like a prisoner cast into a deep well. Far above he could see, as if through a
pinprick, his own hands picking up his rifle, looking down on the embattled
soldiers, rising unsteadily, and picking his way through the rocks.

He was possessed.The goddamned
nègre
had penetrated all his wards and
possessed him.It was unthinkable.Even as his mind reeled in a deep psychic
shock, he was filled with indignation. No being on any plane had ever pierced
his defenses and actually
inhabited
him against his will.

He felt sick with rage.

Whatever the staff was, it had cut
through his barriers like a scythe through straw. To top it all off, the savage
had called him
by name
!

How could this be?

Perhaps he had been caught off
guard, but he would be damned if he would allow this insufferable black bastard
to go on wearing him like a coat.

He turned all his considerable
willpower towards regaining his body. Slowly he began to crawl up the dark hole
to the bright light of consciousness.

Then that damned
nègre
would pay…

“Go, Gershom,” said DeKorte. “Embrace
him.”

Belden backed away from the Rider as
he crouched in the dirt and roared through his clenched teeth like an animal.
He tore the lapel from his own coat in his rage, the tendons standing out like
organ pipes on his splayed hands.

The thing that stepped out of the
grave was mottled and bluish in color, the flesh bloated in death. The youthful
handsomeness was gone, the features distorted and repellant. A ragged black
hole stained with congealed blood showed in the side of his bullish neck. The
death wound the
shed
Mazzamauriello
had inflicted with his teeth. There were grave maggots dropping from his long,
knotted hair and tumbling down the sleeves of his filthy coat. Gone was the
benign look from the once striking eyes. One eye had been pushed, or had sunk,
back into the half exposed skull. The other was a milky, clouded color, dead
and white as smoke in glass. The blackened lips hung slack from yellowish
teeth.

The Rider knew it was not Gershom
Turiel staggering across the graveyard towards him, yet he was overcome by the
sight of this poor boy’s corpse in such a state. He knew this was only dead
flesh animated by the detestable bone conjurer, for that was what DeKorte was.
No longer a rider, no more a Son of the Essenes. A damned necromancer.

Still, all the guilt of Varruga
Tanks came back to him, personified in the heap of unnaturally moving rotten
meat that lurched towards him on a frame of brittle bones.

He felt the same despair he had felt
in the pit of
Sheol
, in the Adversary’s
drawing room at the sight of the endless Falls of the Damned. Somehow this was
worse.

This miraculous boy had died because
of him. Not content with his death, the Creed had taken out his
luz
bone, denying him the bodily
resurrection of the world to come. Further, DeKorte had taken what should have
lain honorably at rest and melted peacefully away to rejoin the earth and torn
it free, pumped its dry veins full of his stinking dark magic, and sent it
waddling off like a wind-up tin toy.

Belden raised his pistol again and
fired four shots into the advancing shape. The bullets punched into its barrel
chest and kicked dust and faint traces of smoky ether from its coat, but did
nothing to slow it.

When his hammer snapped down on an
empty chamber, Belden cursed and rushed at the thing.

It backhanded him with such force
that he broke the grave marker he crashed against. Belden lay stunned, rolling
slowly to his side.

The Rider felt tired beyond all
reason. His head sagged back on his shoulders. It was then he caught sight of
the three white stars twinkling far off in the night sky.

Havdala
was upon them. The end of the Sabbath.

He closed his eyes and prayed, the
Yiddish words of the
Got vun Avram
coming from his trembling in fitful bursts.

“
G-t
fin avrum in fin Yitskhok in fin Yankev, bahit dayn libe folk yisruel fin ale
bayzn in daynem loyb…”

Gradually, the rapid mantra of words
slowed along with his breathing, and the tremor in his limbs ceased. By the
time had finished the prayer, what had once been Gershom stood over him, so
close he could see the night crawlers wriggling in the skin of his ankles, just
above the lips of his dirty shoes. He could smell the sour earth and rot.

The thing stretched out its arms to
crush the Rider’s head between gigantic hands.

“Stop a moment,” said DeKorte.

Gershom ceased to move, his arms
akimbo, the massive hands open like some Christian icon.

“Give me the scroll freely, Rider,
or Gershom will pluck the
luz
from
your back and I’ll get it that way.”

“
Stop
calling it Gershom,” the Rider hissed. “It’s
not
Gershom.”

DeKorte shrugged.

“I need an answer.”

The Rider looked at Belden, his arms
shaking as he pushed himself up to one knee.

He looked straight ahead at the
thing before him. He would not look up at its face, but he saw, peeking below
the torn and mud stained shirt, the golden sash Gershom had worn during his
strongman performances.

He slowly unfastened the strap for
the scroll case on his back, and held it in his hands. He turned it over,
looking down at it lingeringly, before he leaned and tossed it past the silent
monolithic corpse. The hard leather case bumped end over end and rolled to a
stop at DeKorte’s feet.

DeKorte frowned and looked down at
the case.

He stooped and retrieved it, then
drew his own pistol, an engraved, nickel plated double action of some sort, and
popped the top off the tube.

He peered inside and his frown
deepened. He turned the case over, spilling its contents to the ground. A
small, ornate silver spice box the Rider filled with cloves for the end of
Sabbath, and his braided foot long blue and white
Havdala
candle.

He looked down at the two items for
a bit, then stared at the Rider, unamused.