Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (34 page)

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The
Rider prayed in the early morning with Kabede. Though he wore his phylacteries
and Kabede did not, and though the Falasha’s words were in Ge’ez and not
Hebrew, the Rider felt a warm rush of nostalgia, like clean clothes or his
mother’s home cooked hamin, or the smell of old paper in the yeshiva, and the
melting wax of the shamash candle. He heard in the beautiful intonations the
sound of his father’s fiddle sawing out a lively mazurka, so loud and fast it
seemed to spiral up to heaven and move the feet of the angels. He had not
worshiped side by side with another in long, lonely years. The sensation was
warm and too big for his heart to contain. It spilled out in his eyes, and when
he removed the tefillin and set them back in their case, he had to dry his
cheeks with his sleeve.

Kabede
saddled his burro, and the Rider did the same. The two said nothing as they
worked, then Kabede said;

“You
will keep those heathen accoutrements about you?”

The
Rider sighed. It was an old argument.

“Yes.
They’ve served me in the past.”

“Have
they? Or have you served them?”

The
Rider’s coat was open, and Kabede could see the forty-four Solomonic talismans
he wore, along with the various non-Jewish wards.

He
reached out and touched the circular svastika medallion.

“This
one, is it not a pagan symbol of sun worshipers?”

“Well,
it’s an old symbol,” the Rider began defensively. This was the first talisman
of questionable origin Adon had ever made for him. “The Hindu
revere
it as a symbol of the evolution and involution of the
universe. But it has appeared in many different cultures. This one is from the
Parashat Eliezer. If you look closely, it’s composed of the Aleph and Resh, and
the words emanating from it are Aramaic. It’s a meditation tool, nothing more.”
It was the same argument Adon had made him, he realized. It had come out of him
automatically, as if the man was speaking with the Rider’s tongue, reaching out
from the past.

“And this one?”
Kabede said, touching a pendant inset with
golden Arabic script. “This is not Hebrew.”

“The
Ayat al-Kursi,” the Rider said, “is a prayer in praise of God.”

“Which god?”
Kabede asked dubiously.

“Allah,
who is HaShem,” the Rider answered. It was the first completely non-Judaic
talisman Adon had given him. He remembered his master reciting the Arabic
inflections word for word. It came back to him like a schoolyard rhyme:

“In
the name of Allah

Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

Allah!

There
is no god but
He
, the Living,

the
Self-subsisting, Eternal....”

He
felt like Adon now, and Kabede was in his place. Was he corrupting the man? No,
he knew this was a divinely inspired ward. He had used it to expel a possessing
demon from the body of a young boy in Arabia years ago. The villagers had not
understood English or Hebrew, and the prayer of the Ayat al-Kursi had done the
job.

Kabede
touched then the Abbada Ke Dabra, a triangular Abrasax stone the Rider wore. It
was the last talisman Adon had given him before he abruptly left for the war.
It had been after he had been turned aside by Metatron, and when the
disapproval of the other Sons of the Essenes had been at its highest.

It
was an inverted triangle, with the seemingly barbaric phrase Abbada Ke Dabra at
the top. The word was repeated below, the last letter missing, and repeated all
the way to the bottom, always subtracting the last letter until only ‘A’
remained.

Adon
told him the phrase was a corruption of Ahbra Kedahbra, the Aramaic for ‘I will
create as I speak,’ but this had not seemed right to the Rider. He said it was
a way to diminish the power of a demon of negative influence by giving it a
name and then breaking it down to nothing. The reverse side of the amulet
depicted a strange, chimerical winged figure with a serpentine, tentacled body
and…

The
Rider took the talisman from around his neck and peered closely at the figure.
He now knew why the vaguely draconic statue of in the chamber beneath Red House
seemed familiar to him. A crude depiction of it, grinning, brandishing its
flail and shield appeared on the back of this, the last gift his teacher had
ever given him. He wrinkled his face in disgust and flung it far away from him
into the desert.

What
would have become of him had he not gone off to war? Adon would have poisoned
him further. He might’ve been wearing amulets dedicated to The Dark Mother and
the Black Goat. His Volcanic pistol might have been inscribed with the same
blasphemous images he had seen on Sheardown’s gun. He might’ve stood by as Adon
slaughtered the other Sons. He might’ve joined in himself.

Kabede
nodded approvingly.

The
Rider shook his head.

“You
want to go to hell with me?” he snickered.

“I
would have no other at my side.”

The
Rider buttoned his coat.

“And the others?”
Kabede said sharply.

“The
others I will keep,” he said. He had used the other talismans Adon had given
him for good, and the rest had been gifts, like Misquamacus’ horse fetish, and
the red coral amulet a kindly fisherman had given him in Italy. He would not
dishonor the memory of the givers.

“Can
you tell which of those are of God and which are of man…or worse?”

“I
have to have faith that I can,” the Rider shrugged.

“We
will see if you are right,” Kabede said. “Come.”

He
led the Rider and the animals to the precipice where he sat piping the other
day. In the morning light the Rider looked down upon a stark desert valley,
perhaps a hundred miles to the far side, where
blue mountains
rose like frozen waves in the hazy distance. The rocky, dry shrub covered land
here gave way to a white barrenness, so empty it looked like a master painter
had run a wet rag across a
landscape,
furiously
blurring some area he had perceived to be less than his intent in a tantrum of
creative frustration.

Yet
on the blasted plain below there rose unsteadily a single, ruinous beige stone
tower. It was what the Rider once heard called a torreón, a defensive turret
perhaps thirty feet high with an open roof such as the Spanish once built in
the center of their villages to fortify themselves against native attacks. This
one was unusually tall compared to others he had seen, but just as thick.

The
Rider squinted against the rising sun, shading his eyes with both hands.

“What
is that?”

“Three gates.
One in the valley of Hinnom, one in the sea,”
and he stretched the staff over the valley below to encompass the torreón, “and
one in the desert.”

“Here?”

“It
rises in any desert where men look for it,” said Kabede.
“The
Tower of Pandæmonium.”

Pandæmonium.
The Adversary’s palace.
The capitol of Gehenna.
The Rider had seen it from
afar through his mystic lenses, but he never thought (or much hoped) he would
get any closer.

“We
must go inside to enter the gate,” Kabede said, and started down, tugging his
donkey behind.

The
Rider hung back, staring at the torreón. To his surprise, the raggedy onager
walked ahead of him unbidden and pulled him along.

It
was a difficult descent, and the Rider stumbled often. Kabede never helped him
when he fell, but stood and waited patiently for him to rise again. He was
still very weak and his legs moved automatically, almost of their own volition.
When they at last reached the valley floor an hour later, he was spent, but
Kabede said nothing, and continued on toward the dark torreón.

It
neared noon when they finally crossed the desert to the turret, and the sun was
near its summit, uncharacteristically hot and unforgiving for so late in the
year. It seemed to sit on the top of the tower like a thing on an ancient
pedestal, a blazing deity descended upon the Earth, emanating heat and blinding
glory.

Up
close, the torreón looked like any other, its adobe brickwork molten and
scoured by untold years of blowing sand and hammering sun. There was a thick,
rotten wood door with bands of rusted iron at its base, surprisingly strong
despite its decrepit appearance.

Kabede
hitched his burro to a saguaro here. He held the animal’s head in his hands and
stared at it for a moment, as if inspecting it. Then he swiftly jabbed his
right index finger into its right eye and subsequently poked his own eye with
the same finger. The animal shook its head and reared back hee-hawing. Kabede
held his palm over his own offended eye, tears spilling down his cheek.

“What’d
you do that for?” the Rider asked.

“I
have no Solomonic lenses, Rider,” Kabede explained. “This is the way I was
taught to see the invisible, as our brother beasts do.”

He
reached into the animal’s pack and produced a carrot, which the burro gobbled
up gladly, quickly forgetting its master’s offense.

Kabede
scratched its long ear.

“He
hates it when I do that, though.”

He
closed his eyes for a moment, then slid his hand over his unmolested eye and
opened the tearing one. It was red and irritated, and he blinked several times
and looked all around. Immediately his face wrinkled.

“We
are surrounded by demons.
Ruahim.
Almost
enough to fill the valley.”

“I
know. But I can’t see them,” said the Rider.

“Put
on your lenses anyway,” Kabede advised. “We should be ready for anything.”

The
Rider fished out his spectacles and set them on his nose. The plain was empty
but for a few swirling eddies of dust—the only hint that something else lurked
out there. The turret itself, black in the Yenne Velt, did seem to emanate an
odd red aura, menacing. It smelled of the infernal, a stench like burning chalk
and hair. And the heat, he realized, came from it also, like a stove in a cold
room. The tower warmed the whole valley. But the heat was not pleasant. Here up
close, it was stifling. Perhaps it sustained the patch of desert that
surrounded it, and choked away every living thing to the feet of the bordering
hills.

The
tower looked to be abandoned, so the Rider was surprised when Kabede rapped on
the old door with the head of the staff, and his skin rose into bumps when he
heard a shuffling from behind as something came to answer.

The
old door swung open in jerks, the hinges stiff with age, its path blocked by
rubble which the figure on the other side of the door kicked aside.

The
man who stood before them looked like a lean old hermit, unwashed, gray hair matted,
a pointed, yellowing beard and drooping mustaches. He looked Spanish, with
rich, sun baked skin, his dark eyes peering out from the shadow of a ragged
straw hat. He gave the impression of an old bandit, in threadbare peon’s
cottons and a dusty black sheep’s skin vest. He was barefoot, and a curved
saber hung at his side, such as the Rider had sometimes seen in the East. The
pommel was tarnished, but highly engraved, bearing a jeweled peacock motif. The
Rider saw an old muzzle-loading rifle leaning against the unadorned wall.

The
hermit looked from one to the other.

“We
would have words with the turnkey,” Kabede told the old man evenly.

“You
would do well to speak of your betters in more respectful terms, chango,” the
hermit rasped.

His
bony hand went to the hilt of the sword at his side, and the Rider touched his
pistol.

“Step
aside,” Kabede commanded, holding the rod in front of him like a king’s staff
of office.

The
hermit frowned and backed into the turret to admit them.

The
inner court of the turret was like a great well, with three tiers of ledges
running the circumference. There were rifle slots situated all around the
bottom two tiers, and rickety ladders of wood and rope that led from the ground
to the first ledge, and the second ledge to the third, so they could be kicked
away in the event the turret was penetrated.

It
was quite hot in the center. The sun shone straight down, offering no shade for
the hour of noon. The hermit kept a simple pallet at one end, with a cooking
fire and old kettle.

The
hermit pushed the door shut behind them and threw down a heavy bar.

“He’s
human,” the Rider whispered to Kabede. The lenses showed the old man had no
mystical attributes whatsoever.

“Yes.
He’s one of the Order of the Peacock Angel,” said Kabede. “He guards the
physical aspect of this gate.”

“The
Peacock Angel?” the Rider asked.

“The
Lord Lucifer,” said the hermit, folding his arms.

The
Rider was taken aback.