Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (5 page)

“What are they, devil worshipers?”

“Worse than devil worshipers.”

“Oh, come on,” Belden cracked. “What’s
worse than a devil worshiper?”

“What’s worse than the devil?” the
Rider said in answer.

“You tell me,” Belden said.

“I can’t, Dick,” the Rider said.

How to explain The Great Old Ones?
They were entirely outside of Belden’s experience. They were outside of the
Rider’s own. He couldn’t fathom them now, and he had encountered one
personally. Best to leave them out, best to concentrate on the here and how.

“Jesus,” said Belden, serious. “I
never heard you scared, Joe. Not like this.”

“I am. I am scared.”

“
Igzee’abaihier
is with us, Rider,” said Kabede. “Who can be against?”

“Is He? I wonder.”

“Where’d you ever pick him up?”
Belden interrupted.

“He picked me up.”

“It is nearly sundown,” said Kabede.
“Mr. Belden, I wonder, do you have any influence with the guard?”

“Let’s find out. Trooper Davies!”
Belden shouted.

“Yes sir!” came the reply beyond the
door, and immediately there was a fumbling as the guard threw up the heavy bar.

“I’d say so,” Belden said.

“I wonder if my green bag could be
brought to me,” Kabede said. “They may search it if they wish. There are no
weapons.”

The door swung open, and a youngish
private stood in the doorway, looking abashed at having just opened the
guardhouse door at the command of its occupant.

“Uh,” he began, “Sergeant, I already
got you a pair of pants. I don’t know as I—”

“It’s alright, Davies. I’m not gonna
ask you to let us out or pass me a file or anything. The man in the cell next
to me had a green bag on his person. Do me one last favor and bring it back
here.”

Davies shook his head. “I don’t
think I can do that, sir.”

“You can search it all you like.
Nothing in there but…” Belden trailed off.

“Candles,” said Kabede. “Some bread.
A tin of herring and a flask of wine.”

“There you go,” said Belden. “Come
on soldier, you can spare your sarge one last celebration before he’s booted
down the hill, can’t you?”

Kabede went to the bars and pressed
his face between them.

“You saw the knife I had on my belt?
You can have it if you bring me those things.”

Davies shuffled his feet a bit. “I’ll
see if I can get it.”

He didn’t look at them, but closed
the door and slid the bar back into place.

Belden sighed and settled back down.

“Where loyalty falters, common greed
prevails,” he said. “What do you need all that stuff for? I mean, if it’s a
candlelit dinner party you’re throwing me, I’m flattered, but they’ll come
around with better chow in a little while.”

“We are not permitted to eat
anything that isn’t
kosher,
” Kabede
explained.

“What say?”

“Conforming to Jewish dietary laws,”
the Rider said. Then, to Kabede, “When I was in the Army, sometimes I let some
of the commandments slip.”

“In addition, it will be
Sanba adma’I
in an hour,” Kabede
continued.

“The what?” said Belden.

“Sabbath,” said the Rider.

“Sabbath?” said Belden. “It’s
Friday.”

“Hebrew Sabbath is Friday evening
until Saturday evening,” the Rider explained.

“No shit,” said Belden. “So, will
you be holdin’ mass or something?”

“It is not usually permitted for a
dohone
to observe the
Sanba adma’I
,” Kabede said.

“A what?” The Rider and Belden said
together.

“A Christian,” Kabede said stiffly.

“Well, it doesn’t look like you have
much of a choice, bucko,” said Belden.

“No,” said Kabede. “I suppose not.”
He sighed. “The Lord will have to forgive us.”

“I’m sure He will,” said the Rider. “On
the Sabbath, Dick, we forgo all work, and emulate the world to come. A world of
peace and harmony.”

“I don’t know how long your peace
and harmony is going to last you if that bunch that’s after you is as close as
you say,” said Belden.

“They will not attack during
Sanba adma’I
,” Kabede said, not a trace
of doubt in his voice.

“Don’t be too sure,” said the Rider.
“If they’re animating the dead it’s not as if they’re
shomrei shabbos
. And their powers are outside anything you’ve ever
encountered.”

“The soul is doubled during
Sanba adma’I
,” said Kabede. “We are at
our strongest. They can’t possibly touch us.”

“Maybe not in the
Yenne Velt
, but what’s to stop the
creatures?” said the Rider. He paced the cell. “I don’t think these men will be
able to stop them. Not without help.”

“What kind of help?” Belden said. “How
do you kill them?”

“I don’t know.” The Rider rubbed his
eyes. “I think DeKorte ordered them to walk off that cliff just as a
demonstration. Several of them have grievous wounds from their deaths. If I
knew how they were made, that would be something, but I don’t even know what
kind of magic is keeping them up.”

“There is a tradition of animation
in the Golem ritual,” Kabede said. “Could it be something similar?”

“I don’t know. It could very well be
some kind of
kockeputzi
magic. Some
blending of our traditions with Outer God practices that we might not even know
about.”

“Outer what?”

“Not very easy to explain,” the
Rider said.

In a moment Davies was at the door
again, rattling it open. He had their dinner, some biscuits and gravy and a
bucket of water with a ladle. Tucked under his arm was Kabede’s green satchel.
His Oriental dagger was pushed through his belt.

“Who’s your relief, Davies?” Belden
asked, as Davies dished out his food.

“Corporal Armendariz.”

“See you in the morning.”

“Good night, Sarge,” said Davies.

He gave Kabede his bag, and looked
questioningly at Belden when Kabede and the Rider both refused their dinner.

“Pass it here, trooper. Take one
back to the barracks for yourself. For the trousers.”

“Thanks, Sarge,” he said around a
mouthful of biscuit. He gave the remainder over to Belden and left the bucket
and ladle there so the prisoners could pass it back and forth to each other
through the bars.

He closed the door and laid the big
bar in place. In a few moments a Mexican soldier appeared and after a brief,
low exchange, took Davies’ place outside.

Belden sat by eating his biscuits
and gravy as Kabede ladled water over his hands and passed the bucket and a
small candle with a single wood match across the floor to the Rider, who did
the same.

There was a smell of sulfur as
Kabede struck a match and lit the candle in his cell. The flickering attracted
Armendariz, whose brown, prodigiously mustached face immediately appeared in
the doorway.

“It’s alright, Telesforo,” Belden
said. “It’s Jewish Sunday.”

The Rider lit his own candle,
watching the flame dance and flicker on the wick.

Trooper Armendariz arched an eyebrow
as Kabede poured the wine into a plain wooden cup and he and the Rider both
sang the
Shalom Aleichem
to the
ministering angels.

Armendariz spat on the floor and
made a swift sign of the cross before he shut the door and threw down the bar
again.

On past Sabbaths, the Rider had
often worn his mystically embossed spectacles to see the effect. Every Sabbath
ritual summoned two observing entities, one an angelic being, the other one of
the Fallen, never the same. If the Lord’s angel was satisfied that the Sabbath
was being observed correctly, he would bless the home (or in this case, the
observers) and the evil angel would respond, ‘Amen.’ Conversely, if the Lord’s
angel was not satisfied, the evil angel would bid the next Sabbath to be
equally sour, and the good angel would respond, ‘Amen.’

It was a bit of cooperation the
Rider had seen so many times it had lost meaning to him, but now he realized
that it was an indication that all Lucifer had told him was true. The angels
and the demons walked together, and Satan was the custodian of man, appointed
by the Lord, jailer of a prison so terrible it was without reason. A prison
every human soul must pass through. Everyone he’d ever known in the war, his
parents, Gershom…It embittered his heart. He did not wear his lenses. He did
not care to see angels this night.

Kabede poured the wine into a plain
wooden cup and recited the evening
Kaddish
.

At the sound of the trickling,
Belden cleared his throat.

“Any chance I can get a snort of
that?” he asked.

Kabede said nothing.

“Please don’t, Dick,” the Rider
asked. “Think of it as the wine you would drink at your Eucharist.”

“Awright, awright.”

Kabede passed Belden the cup of wine
and a hunk of stale bread through the bars, and Belden dutifully handed it over
to the Rider. No braided
challah
bread had been prepared. They had to make due with hard biscuits made by
goy
hands. Would the Lord’s angel
withhold his blessing tonight, when they needed heavenly aide the most?

The Rider said the
kiddush,
drank, and washed his hands. He
spoke the
hamotzi
in unison with
Kabede, and they ate their bread silently.

As they ate, Kabede said, “Speak
your mind, Rider.”

The Rider spoke of his misgivings.

“I will confess my heart was
momentarily poisoned by the Adversary’s words, too,” Kabede admitted, after he’d
heard the Rider out. “I read of terrible things in the book he showed me. But
then I came to see that his complicity in
Igzee’abaihier
’s
plan is to be expected. For who can stand against the Lord?”

“The Outer Gods do,” the Rider said.

“But can they? Or are they but
another test which the soul of man must pass?”

“Don’t you get tired of being tested
all the time?”

“On the contrary. You forget I was
born with knowledge of the heavens. I have found very little to test my faith
in this life before now. These things terrify you. They terrify me too. But I
thank the Lord for them.”

“What?”

“I have felt my spirit grow fat and
complacent for many years, Rider. What is the crucible of material life to a
man who knows all that is to come? Life itself is almost meaningless when
compared with the continuance of the spirit. But now I see that
Igzee’abaihier
in His infinite wisdom,
has created things to test even me.”

“What if they weren’t created,
Kabede? What if like HaShem, they just are? What if they’re as strong as the
Lord?”

“I do not believe this,” said
Kabede. “If they were equal in strength, then HaShem is outnumbered. If He is
not greater, than logically he would’ve been defeated long ago. But even if
they were equal, then they are a power adverse to the one which I have chosen
to serve, and they must be stopped. These things seek to remake the world into
a place of apathy, wanton cruelty, and depravity. Their paradise is our hell.
Adon is an anti-messiah, who would drive us from the Lord and encase us in
selfishness and animal fear until we know nothing of the divine spark within
ourselves. He would make himself a deliverer of chaos, and I will do all I can
to oppose him. There is nothing more for me. What about you?”

The Rider considered this. Kabede’s
logic was irritatingly simple. All they had been taught…well, it might not be a
lie, but it had not been the whole truth. To Kabede, this only meant there was
more to learn, more to struggle against. It was different for the Rider. He had
been turned away from the Throne of God. A righteous man had told him once it
had been because of his doubt, when he had thought it was because of an
unworthiness brought about by Adon’s corruptive teachings. This had bolstered
him for a time. But doubt was still a part of him. For all his abilities, and
for all he knew and had come to know, his faith had been shaken once again by
the knowledge there was more. Had he grown complacent spiritually, as Kabede
had? Why could he not meet this new challenge in the same way?

“Whose side are you on, Rider?”
Kabede asked again.

“I know that I’m against Adon.”

“Whom does Adon serve?”

“The Great Old Ones,” he said. Or
perhaps himself. What
did
Adon stand
to gain from all this after all? Kabede had said Adon was actually Elisha ben
Abuyah, a nearly two thousand year old sage who had renounced God after
glimpsing some terrible truth in the Seventh Heaven. If this was true, what
could such a man want with these alien entities?

“Then you have your answer,” said Kabede.
“Stand against Adon and you stand against his masters, whoever or whatever they
may be. Even the
beinonum
choose a
side, whether they know it or not. Look at your American civil war.”