Heartland

XXXII

I hurt all over, a persistent reminder from my abused flesh that I was still attached to it. Hermes Trismegistus, in his discussions with his son, liked to remind him of the nature and purpose of the flesh. The flesh is the anchor of the soul; it is the stone, water, earth, and fire that give the spirit shape. As long as you could feel something, you were still bound into this world.

The pain in my side. The wound from the Spear. It wasn't fatal. Not yet, at least, and the Chorus had-during my visionary blackout-staunched the flow of blood. This I could feel, and gradually, I remembered the way the world was.

On my back, resting at an angle on an uneven surface, I tried not to twitch as my spirit filled my flesh once more. The vision faded, falling away from me much like my spirit had risen free of the flesh at Nicols' suggestion. As above, so below: all things move in concert.

While my nerve endings all lined up to tell me how much pain I had recently suffered, I tried to recall the details of my fall, but after the first few seconds of despair and panic, there was nothing. Just the memory of waking up in a twelfth-century penitent's chamber with all my spirits.

The Chorus had carried me, obviously, while I had been off in Never Never Land, talking with John and witnessing the distorted history the ghosts wanted me to see. The world was filled with cycles, and the history of the Hierarch and the Watchers was no different. Too many iterations, too many loops: they all started to blur after a few generations. Minor differences cropped up, but the cosmological revolution always followed the same path. Like the leys-what was it that Philippe had called them? — the desire lines laid down by our persistent repetitions. Over and over again.

When my muscles seemed to be under my control again, I sat up slowly, and the change in position lessened some of the internal complaints, while giving voice to others. Tuning them out-the body was going to make that sort of noise for a while yet, I expected-I turned my attention outward, to the space around me.

Underground, the Chorus whispered as they slithered along the ground, tasting the soil. There was a ribbon of etheric force nearby and they tapped it, digging into the rich source of energy and information. North was just off my left shoulder, and I was near-I sniffed the air, recognizing that faint, but distinct, dry odor-an ossuary somewhere. One of the lost passages beneath Paris. With the cemetery close to Tour Montparnasse, I wasn't surprised there were tunnels similar to what led me from the Chapel of Glass to Pere Lachaise

Invigorated by the trickle of energy from the ley, I summoned a spark and let it drift overhead. The room was roughly square, with niches in the wall that seemed too short for coffins, and the floor was a jumble of stone and timber. I was draped across one of the larger pieces. Laid out on a slab. The spark drifted higher, but the ceiling didn't materialize, and I was reminded of the ceiling in Hildegard's room. Was I still under Tour Montparnasse? Some subbasement of the elevator shaft? The walls looked too old, like hand tools had carved out this space, and none of the junk under me looked like it was a remnant from modern construction.

More importantly, I didn't see a door.

Of course not, Lafoutain noted. No one has been down here for more than sixty years.

"Lucky me," I muttered.

There is an access shaft, the spirit of the Scholar said. My tiny spark leaped upward, torn from my control, and it went so high that it seemed to vanish.

"That's a long way," I said.

It's not as far as it looks, especially for a climber like you.

I lifted my stump. "It's pretty hard to climb when you're missing one hand."

I guess you'd better get started then, shouldn't you?

"I'm really beginning to not like you guys."

His laughter echoed in my head until I started climbing. It gave me strength, as I think he knew that it would.

"Your turn," I told Lafoutain when I reached the access shaft. I rested on the edge of the hole, my legs dangling. My chest ached, and my stump had started to ooze blood from all the exertion. The Chorus had activated Cristobel's magick circle and used that energy to bind off most of the stump-the one thing that transferred from the vision to reality was the presence of the Visionary's rosary around my severed arm-but the seal was dependent upon my Will, and I was tired.

More tired than I had been in a long time.

My turn for what? the Scholar's spirit inquired.

Cristobel's argument was that I needed him so that I could understand the mystery of Philippe's plan, and as a spirit, he has managed to tease helpful hints here and there from the grip of the Old Man. Husserl probably should be in my head too, but he managed to dodge that trap. As had Spiertz, in his own way. I understood that part of Philippe's plan now. The Chorus, via the mechanism of the Lightbreaker, was to have swept clean the attitudes and personal histories of the Architects, leaving only their knowledge. The Hierarch wanted new leadership that wasn't tainted by all the petty bullshit and in-fighting that had gone on in the last decade.

The easiest way to accomplish this goal was to kill everyone, but that would mean that all the institutional knowledge they carried would be lost. That was where I came in. I wasn't his courier, or his candidate for succession. I wasn't even the spark that started the conflagration that was going to wipe it all away. I was just the guy who came through later and swept up the useful relics.

"Is that why you were selected to join the others?" I asked the Chorus. "You were his Scholar, Lafoutain. Is this your reward for a lifetime of service? To be turned into a schizophrenic figment of my psychosis?"

Lafoutain didn't answer, and the Chorus' only response was to vanish into the drain of my memory.

"I thought so," I said.

The whole situation was a mess. Everyone was trying to fuck everyone else. The Crown was the prize, and with it came the rest of the Watcher organization. And Marielle as well. That's all that mattered. Keep your eyes on the prize, and be the last man standing. As primal as it came. There is always competition, Philippe had told me in one of those lucid moments when he deigned to speak to me. The secret that lay in the heart of Free Will. The Will to desire. Whoever wants it the most.

Anarchy. Will untamed. Will unrestrained. The World as a billion points of light, all fighting to be the center of the universe.

Was this what he wanted? Was this how it was all supposed to end? In a chaotic squabble over the leftovers? After a lifetime of being a Witness, was that all he thought of us? Petty little animals, fighting over scraps.

One of the arguments Lt. Pender had articulated before Antoine had killed him had been that the souls of Portland had been better off as a combined unity focused on the realization of a single goal. It was a better use of their energy and their existence than they could have ever hoped to attain with their own small lives. Was such a unification not a better use of their lives?

I had disagreed with him-rather vehemently-based on the position that no one had asked them. Not that his argument was wrong, but that the methods were morally repugnant. And after I had killed Bernard and scattered all those souls to their final destinations, I had had a lot of time to think about that argument.

There is a place not far from the Portland Airport called the Grotto, one of the few active Franciscan monasteries in the United States. The main portion of the sanctuary sits on top of the bluff, looking north toward the river and the airport. You can't see downtown at all, the bluff hides most of the central core of the city from view, and when the wind blows east to west, the dry scent of the ruined city drifts out toward the coast. You could almost pretend the Ascension Event had never happened. The only indicator left is the psychic pain radiating through every ley line crossing the valley.

I had stayed at the Grotto for a few days, watching and reading the city as it tried to understand what had happened. Trying to understand what had happened to me between the first light of dawn and the moment Antoine had Seen me walking back across the water.

I had been given another chance. The black stain on my soul had been purged, and I had been given new guides. New angels to fill the hole in my chest. What was I supposed to do with this knowledge? With this experience?

More importantly, why had Philippe twisted the threads in a way that had forced me to be the one facing Bernard. What was I to have gained from that experience that would then be useful to him? Originally, I had thought he would have called upon me to serve him, and I had waited patiently for a sign that I was to come to his side. I had never anticipated that he'd come to me, especially to die.

Was that all I was supposed to be: his dumb pack animal? The transformation of the Chorus had afforded him a way to postpone Death. He had willingly become part of the voices in my head, and in doing so, had managed to retain his own identity. Was it a low-rent resurrection, a life beyond life? Or was it truly a means by which the knowledge of the Architects could be saved? If it was the latter, and I was inclined to think that was the case, then there had to be a way for me to transfer this knowledge. A way that wasn't the same as the manner in which I took souls.

A memory stirred. A fragment that unfolded into a blur of steel and shadow. Her hands on me. The cold kiss of the bulkhead against my skin. Her legs wrapped around me, pulling me close to her. So very close. Beneath all the pleasure of the flesh, that other sensation: that sucking, pulsating whirlpool. Trying to draw something out. Trying to take a part of me.

Marielle.

She knew. She knew they were in my head. She knew what they offered, what secrets they held. She had tried to draw them off while we had been at Batofar. In the hallway. That was what she had been trying to unlock.

She had tried, and failed.

After that, things had gotten out of our control, and there hadn't been another chance.

I leaned out of the shaft and looked up. What time is it? I asked the Chorus.

They touched the ley, synced to the geomagnetic pulse of the planet, and told me.

After nightfall. Not yet midnight.

Unprompted, they also reminded me of the date.

"Second day of spring," I murmured. The seeds, planted in winter, were starting to break ground today. The dead kings, buried in the cold ground, rising again. The world, broken and bleeding, made anew.

I laughed, and something broke free in my chest. I coughed, spat, and laughed again, my lungs clearer now. You are a sentimental bastard, Old Man, I thought.

He had waited until the last minute to come find me. So that everyone would be scrambling to find their new place in the organization. Within all that chaos, I would be able to move more readily, to be more able to accomplish the tasks laid out for me. But he could have initiated this plan weeks ago, in the cold death of winter, when everyone was hunkered down and waiting for spring to come. He could have surprised them all by starting early, but he hadn't. He had waited until the end of winter, until spring was imminent. For all of his education and enlightened thinking, he was still a vegetable god at heart. He was beholden to the cycle of the Land, and he wanted to be properly received into the bosom of that which waited for him.

In the old stories, the young lovers don't flinch when their goddesses tell them the price of being loved. They don't turn away when the ground opens up for them. They know, even before it is spelled out for them; they know what happens after that first kiss, and it never diminishes their love.

Leaning back into the shaft, I sent my tiny spirit light into the tunnel to see if there was any clue where it led. It went around a corner and bounced light back at me for a while. A route to follow at any rate; Lafoutain may have known where it went, but that knowledge was not forthcoming from the fog of the Chorus.

"What am I going to do with you three?" I wondered aloud. They were sulking, Lafoutain's suggestions about the way out notwithstanding, and the uneasy way the Chorus was boiling in my head said there was unrest in the rank. They were captive in my head, and it looked like I was going to miss the Coronation event; my presence wasn't required for it to proceed anyway. If I was supposed to give this knowledge over to the winner, then all I had to do was wait for someone to come looking for me. Antoine would probably smack his forehead tomorrow and suddenly remember where he left me. Then it would just be a matter of cracking my head open and letting the spirits out.

Was this what Husserl meant when he said they would leave me?

I had a feeling I wasn't supposed to die in this hole. That would ruin everyone's plan. As much as I wanted to curl up and die, if I tried-if I leaned forward a little too far and slipped off this shelf-the Chorus would just save me again. I wasn't done carrying them yet, and until I delivered them, they'd keep me alive.

So much for Free Will, I thought, slumping against the wall of the access shaft. I could be pithed like a frog for all that my ego was needed. Just as long as basic motor functions stayed on. Just as long as the pilot light in my soul stayed lit.

Is that it? the spirit of Detective John Nicols asked.

"Pretty much," I whispered, fending off his insistent question. "I'm pretty sure I can see bottom from here. What else is there?"

What about the child in the woods? The one who was frightened of the dark and the unknown? How did he survive?

"Was that survival?" I asked. "Look where it has led me. All that darkness, and for what? To be a pawn in someone else's game."

We're all pawns, Michael. Another spirit intruded, another echo welling up.

"Fuck you, Old Man. You used all of us. Even your daughter. What kind of father does that?"

He didn't answer-probably thinking my question was rhetorical-and the Chorus stormed into a wall of white noise in my head. Nothing but noise.

What else was there?

There's a psychological oversimplification about men: they don't ask for directions. If you swallow that line, then there's a thousand more that follow, justifications and rationales for nearly every injustice or moment of human stupidity that can be read in our history. Men are too proud to ask for directions; their testosterone causes this hubris, this blindness to the world around them, and everyone else suffers for it. But if you look at our stories, the myths that have formed the basis of our society for generations, you find that part of the complex cycle of comprehending the Divine is getting lost.

If we knew where to go, then there would be no story, no crisis, no opportunity to transform our lives into something extraordinary. We would know all the secret portals to faerie, all the hidden paths through the black woods, all the secret signs that unlocked the sealed doors. Not knowing the path is an integral aspect of not knowing who we are, and being lost upon that path is critical to finding it, to finding ourselves.

It's not that men don't ask for directions; it's that most confuse the mundane journeys they take as being something extraordinary and special. Not every adventure from your front door to the supermarket or the deli or the shopping mall is symbolic of the great journey of self-discovery and initiation; some of these are errands. Some of them don't matter one fucking bit, and the sooner you get from point A to point B and back again, the sooner you can go about doing something that isn't a matter of fulfilling a baseline Maslowian need.

Neither is being lost an excuse for an existential meltdown. Sometimes being lost isn't anything more than not having the proper perspective on your situation, or not asking the right question about your current course and your heretofore destination. Being lost is a binary state, really, a frame of reference not much different from being on track. It's a matter of perspective. Flipping from being lost to being on track changes nothing about your physical state or your metaphysical location. You either know your orientation in space and time, or you don't. Light is either a wave or a particle. It all depends on the observer.

And his state of mind.

What else?

I still had the deck of tarot cards. The pocket they were in was somewhat inaccessible from my left hand (being on the same side), but eventually I managed to tug out the velvet bag. Everything else Philippe had given me was gone, but I still had the cards. I still had a way to find myself.

I tugged the bag open and spilled the cards into my lap. I didn't even bother trying to shuffle them; I moved them around for a moment, losing a couple to the long drop, and then picked five. I considered trying to get the rest back in the bag, and started shaping the pile into some semblance of the rectangular deck, but then a thought struck me.

Why?

Why was I bothering? They were Philippe's cards. What was the point of keeping them? John had called my attention to what I was doing in the beginning, but from his perspective, it hadn't made much sense. Keeping trophies. I was hanging on to the Architects. I was hanging on to the symbols of an office which was never going to be mine.

Why?

No more, I thought, and I pushed the cards off my lap and let them twist away in the darkness of the shaft.

I was going to do a five-card spread. Keeping it simple. One for me; two for influences, above and below; one for the past, and one more for the future. I arranged them on my lap, face-down, and then leaned my head back against the wall of the access tunnel for a minute. Reflecting on what I was about to do. It all depends on the observer and his state of mind.

Card reading wasn't the same as scrying, but it was close enough that I wanted to think twice before I committed to this course of action. Piotr would be the first one to point out that, invariably, the question asked wasn't the one answered by the cards. The reading always gave you a broader world-view than your tiny query encompassed; your subconscious' way of reminding you that your light was an infinitesimal dot in the vast sea of experience and being.

This is how it ends, I thought, and let my breath out slowly as I opened my eyes.

Valet of Cups. Reversed.

Hanged Man. Reversed.

Knight of Cups. Reversed.

Ten of Cups. Reversed.

The Emperor. Reversed.

"Not much Grail influence there," I muttered as I swept them up and put them in my pocket. Struggling to my feet, I crouched and duck-walked into the access shaft. I had some walking to do, and there was probably another climb in there somewhere. Time enough to think about what the cards revealed.

Time enough yet.