Heartland

IX

A montage of memories flickered, a greatest hits collection: David Cristobel as a young man, standing beside the raised canvas of a boxing ring, intently watching a pair of fighters, soaking up every jab and swing; Cristobel, sun-browned and glistening with sweat, breaking up stumps with an ax; behind him, the brick farmhouse and a river I knew to be the Aude; in the ring, in a different time and place, fighting a lean Filipino man; the glowing heat of the hot shop furnace, rods of colored glass jutting from its mouth.

I lay in a field of glass, silver light caught in the fragments. I lay on this glassine ocean, a sea that chimed as I moved. There were no stars overhead, and the air was heavy and musty, filled with a fetid dryness. The sort of dead atmosphere found underground.

Memories of Cristobel's life continued to flicker past like images projected on clouds scuttling across a black sky: the gilded ostentation of Versailles; a chandelier, glistening with emerald drops of frozen light; a ladder, collapsing, and the chandelier falling; an explosion of green fire, a coal lodged in the left eye socket. I felt sympathetic pain, as if a poker had been shoved into my brain.

I blinked, unable to move any other part of my body-caught in some sort of sleep paralysis. I blinked again, and again, and kept on doing so until the green fire winked out, its light draining away into the churning depths of the Chorus.

I could hear him praying, as if he were kneeling beside me. His voice gave me strength, enough to break the lassitude holding me down, and I sat up slowly. Shards of glass fell from my limbs, tinkling into the surrounding sea.

Father Cristobel floated on the glittering surface. His rosary was looped around his fingers, the silver and black cross glittering with spectral light. His eyes were closed, and he was intently reciting an old Latin prayer. The whisper of his words had no echo, as if we were lost in a place that had no horizon.

The Chorus moved slowly, turning like frozen gears, and eventually they generated a spark. This tiny spark escaped my mouth as I sighed, and it floated up, casting its glow across the floating surface of the ocean.

Underground. Not on a sea. Walls of ragged, unfinished stone. A hard floor covered with sand and glass. The subbasement beneath the chapel. I hadn't fallen all that far, regardless of the prior, endless sensation I had experienced.

I sent the light higher, trying to find the hole through which I had dropped, and found a ragged tear in the ceiling plugged by wood and a long piece of glass. The Christ figure had come off the wall, smashing the altar and sealing the hole. Parts of the sculpture were scattered across the floor of the subbasement, scattered across my body. Shortly after Cristobel had shoved me, the cross and Christ had fallen.

I glanced at him again, and realized he wasn't really there. Just a retinal afterimage of a strong memory.

The Chorus light floated through Cristobel's ghostly shape. He raised his head as the light moved through his chest, but he didn't open his eyes. The beads of his rosary reflected the spirit light, tiny sigils dancing along the curve of the beads.

The catacombs, he said, his voice a phantasmal echo in my head. One of the old ossuaries that riddle the underground. A remnant of the Resistance.

That explained the smell.

I glanced up at the dark ceiling once more. "Why didn't you jump?" I asked.

I did, he pointed out.

"No," I argued. "Not like that."

Father Cristobel was dead, crushed beneath the cross and glass first, and then the rest of the chapel as it had come down. The etheric implosion had brought the walls in too, the whole building crumbling in on itself. The Chorus had reached back for his soul as it had fled his crushed body, and apparently, he had come willingly.

I can guide you.

"When I said yes," I pointed out as I slowly got to my feet, "I thought you were talking about doing so while alive." More glass fell from my frame and I carefully shook out my coat and pants to divest myself of the tiny shards clinging to my clothing.

Cristobel didn't answer, and when I glanced around, his phantom was gone.

The rosary was in my coat pocket, coiled pleasantly like it had always been there. Right next to Philippe's tarot deck.

In law enforcement circles, the Chorus hinted, drawing on Nicols' memory, this would be classified as keeping souvenirs.

As Cristobel intimated with subtle shifts in the mood of the Chorus, there was a way out-there's always a way out-but it was a complicated route through a maze of unmarked passages. He might have known the route once, but all of his sensory data was aural and not visual, which meant it was next to useless for me. I didn't have enough experience to know what to do with the collection of clicks and bumps. The Chorus built a mental map as we progressed, supplemented by their reading of the spaces just beyond the nearest wall. My reserves were low, and I was tired; focusing the Chorus to extend them further would sap my remaining strength. Following Cristobel's hints was a slow process, but it was the most effective use of my resources. Frustratingly slow, but at the same time, I had to remember I was in enemy territory, and they had agents out hunting. I had to be careful.

I also needed some time to think, to sort through the chaotic swirl of emotional feedback from the last few hours. Cristobel had sacrificed himself to get into my head, as if being there would be a better place from which to direct me. But it wasn't, because while his soul energy was permanently part of the Chorus now, his personality wasn't fixed. Some of it would last, like the others, but not enough. Yet, there was no regret on his part, no sense of failure in doing what he did. It was as if his death and transference was part of the grand design.

If my Vision is True.

First, Philippe, and now Cristobel. What the hell were they doing? They were taking advantage of the psychic nature of the Chorus, of the manner in which I leeched knowledge from those I broke, but it was a fatal choice. Why couldn't they have just written down what I had needed to know? Or told me over coffee? Why the need to die to pass along their knowledge?

The body must die, the Chorus reminded me.

"I'm getting tired of that answer," I muttered.

Cristobel nudged me at the next split in the tunnel, and the Chorus added a marker to their map of the underground. I took the left fork-as directed-and stumbled slightly as the floor dipped downward.

"I realize this is a matter of interpretation," I said, "but this eagerness to jump into my head is starting to feel a little bit fanatical. Like you guys are trying to start a cult or something." Making light of the situation, trying to get some sort of reaction from my spirits. Some hint of why two Architects were co-habiting my head-space now.

Was I an easy escape hatch? The assassins in the church had been primed to take out Father Cristobel. A surgical strike against an Architect. Cristobel had expected them to show up-eventually-but he couldn't have anticipated my arrival. Nor the opportunity I presented him.

What about the assassins? They had been unwitting pawns, unaware of the nature of the stone ring affixed to their chests. Whoever was running them had been remote viewing through their eyes, and once their master ascertained the situation was properly engaged, he had sent the mental command to detonate the rings.

Who? I wondered.

Images of sigils flashed before my eyes, an encyclopedic catalogue of magick circles. Keys from Solomonic lore, Enochian matrices, others I didn't recognize. Geomancy. I knew the word, knew the style of magick, but had never seen it other than a neat parlor trick of spotting and tapping ley lines. Some of the magick circles stayed in focus long enough for me to begin to understand their construction and purpose. Geomancy went much deeper than that. A properly schooled geomancer could redirect ley flow; he could build the sort of oubliette that had been erected around the chapel.

The stone rings on the assassins. Soul lock, conduit window, magick bomb: all wrapped up in one simple ring.

Who was the geomancer in the society? Which one was he? I ran through the list of secret names for the Architects: Visionary, Hermit, Crusader, Navigator, Thaumaturge, Mason. .

Jacob Spiertz, Cristobel provided.

"Where is he?" I asked. And, equally important: Why him? What was his rationale for wanting Cristobel dead? Was he the Architect of the original plan as well? The man who had given the go-ahead for Bernard and the Hollow Men's experiment with the theurgic Key?

Cristobel didn't answer, and the Chorus shied away as I grabbed at them. "Tell me," I growled, and when the Chorus darted away from me again, I froze them with an angry explosion of Will. They shivered and whimpered as I tore at them, ripping through them like I was swatting a frozen cobweb with a stick. Their strands shattered and melted, dissolving into white smoke that curled backward into the pit in my soul. I hacked and hacked, looking for Philippe in the strands, looking for the source of the glitter of amusement I still felt. "Tell me, you son of a bitch."

Telling you won't help. Cristobel manifested on my visual field, floating beside the wall of the passage. His serene face puckered with a hint of apprehension. The knowledge isn't enough. You have to understand what it means. You have to Know what has happened, and in doing so, you will See what is to come.

I went physical, flailing at him, even though it was a pointless effort. You can't hit a spirit. You can't touch a phantom of your own imagination. Not with your fists. All I did was scrape my knuckles on the wall, which didn't give me any of the satisfaction I wanted.

You can't fight him, Cristobel said, floating just out of reach now. My own brain taunting me with the immaterial nature of the spirits in my head.

"I don't want to fight him," I said, trying to catch my breath. "I just want him gone. I'm done with his games."

My left shoulder ached, and my hip was on fire. The bullet wounds from earlier. Surface wounds that weren't fatal, but all this exertion was tearing the scabs open. The rest of my exposed skin had suffered as well, tiny scabs from all the flying shards of glass. Trying to punch out a spirit and tearing up my hands was only compounding the trauma suffered by my flesh. I needed to get out of these tunnels and find a sanctuary. Somewhere where I could get some help. I needed to find someone I could trust in the midst of all this chaos.

The Watchers were all insane, and I was caught in the middle.

I could burn the Architects out of my head. I had done it before, when I had ascended the spire and faced Bernard. I had detonated the Chorus so as to drive back the soul-dead who had surrounded me. Samael's children. The zombies of Portland who had wanted to devour my light. I had driven them back by sacrificing the Chorus. I could do it again.

A spike of pain went through the base of my spine, and my legs gave way. I banged my face against the floor, and lay there, squirming like a stuck bug. The spike reversed, coming back up and exploding in my brain, and I cried out. My vision flared white, and in the stark emptiness that the ossuary became, I saw a negative man seated on a black throne. Black flames licked from his naked skull, and his chest was a ferocious storm of black smoke. You cannot be rid of us, Philippe said. That is not the way.

"I. . am. . not your pawn," I gasped through the pain.

We are all pawns, he reminded me. There is always a grander game than the one we control.

I don't want control," I said. "I just want to be free."

You always have been, he said, leaning forward. You are free to make your own choice. That is why I cannot tell you what you must do. His eyes glittered with black tears. Do you understand, my son?

When I reached for him, the vision vanished, and I was left groping for nothing in the dark. In my head, I could still see him sitting on that chair-the colors all normal now-the memory of those last few moments in the library before I spiked him. The expression in his eyes.

Philippe knew what he had been doing; he knew the pain his death would bring to those he considered his children, but he also knew the alternative was much worse. He chose his own fate, willingly, because that was the right path. The hard path, but the right one.

You are free to make your own choice.

In that conundrum lay the obstinate madness of his actions, of his long manipulation of his fellow Watchers. He couldn't tell us what his plan was, because to know of it would be a temptation. What if we could change it? What if we thought we could make a better choice?

But we couldn't. He was Hierarch. His understanding of the Weave was deeper and wider than any vision we would have. He Knew, and had twisted the threads so as to bring about the end he had already Witnessed. Did it mean we were on predetermined paths that we couldn't change? Probably. But to walk those paths meant we had to chose them ourselves. I was in the thick of a war for the succession of the Hierarch that had its roots nearly a decade back, and in the midst of all the coming conflict, I didn't know who I could trust. I didn't know who wanted what, and from that ignorance, Philippe knew I would have to make my own decisions.

He knew I would be loath to participate in this game of vengeance-if that is, indeed, what it truly was-but if I didn't know the rules of the game or what my designated role was, then I couldn't act counter to it. I couldn't try to extricate myself from this pattern.

Besides, there was a carrot. Make it personal, Philippe had said to me one night, back when I had been a young student, craving any bit of knowledge he deigned to give me. Always make any conflict personal. That way they hand you their thread and ask you to twist it.

I couldn't trust any of the Watchers. But there was one person whom I could trust.

Marielle.

It couldn't get much more personal.

I started crawling. I had a long way to go.