Heartland

XXXIII

I was a child of the Crowley generation, those magi who came into an understanding of magick in the era following the Great Beast's death. In the era following the occult revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s, actually. We were symbolically aware, charged with an understanding that every culture had its own sigils, its own systems of magickal reckoning. Crowley appealed to us because of the illusion he provided of being a great synthesizer. He spent a great deal of his life trying to convince people of his identity, and in the end, he forgot even that.

Crowley's entire tarot deck was a living thing-highly stylized, overflowing with a profusion of symbols, always fluid-in contrast with the more traditional decks. Like the version of the Marseille deck that Philippe used. While occultists before Crowley like Etteilla and Waite opted for simple designs that plainly evoked meaning, Crowley layered his deck with excess baggage, hiding everything in plain sight so as to obfuscate the real meaning within a wash of noisy symbolism. His cards tended to explode any given query into a profusion of interpretations, but I liked having more than one choice. A selection made it easier for me to understand the true path I should take.

Philippe's deck, though, was one of the Tarot de Marseille designs, one of the oldest patterns still used. There were variations of the Marseille pattern-two primarily-and over the years, printing mistakes and bad color correction had turned those two variants into a dozen or so. In Philippe's deck, the Fool was missing the seat of his pants and the small feline prancing behind him looked like it was about to claw his scrotum and penis. There was only one deck that featured a Fool with a bare ass and dangling sex parts. The John Noblet deck.

There was only one specimen of the deck-in the Bibliotheque Nationale-and it was missing a few cards-half the Swords. Marielle and I had gone to see the deck once, and when I had pointed this out to her, she had said something enigmatic. Something that hinted she knew more than I. As that was a common occurrence in those days, I hadn't given it much thought.

She had been right, in this case. There were other copies. Philippe's deck was complete, and the cards had been made in the last twenty years. Like Piotr, Philippe had probably made his own deck, and the cards, while worn and creased and stained with ink, felt like modern cardstock.

The Noblet cards were simple, line drawings filled in with a few colors. None of the confusion and motion of Crowley's deck. And yet, even with these simple drawings, there were hidden meanings to uncover, hidden symbols that would influence the querent's mind. I hadn't touched the cards very much after I had chosen them; I didn't want Philippe's influence to start changing them. I wanted a pure reading. One without too much noise. A reading that would clarify my confusion, that would show me the one path through the chaos of Philippe's death. I didn't care who wanted the Crown more; I didn't care who was manipulating whom, or how deep the thread-winding went.

I wanted to know my own mind.

The cards were all reversed, and typically that could be read as an error by the fortune teller, an inversion of the deck that, by being endemic, indicated a full rotation. A full circle. But I wasn't inclined to use that excuse. Let them all be reversed. It had been that sort of week.

The Valet of Cups was an awakening. Crowley's card was feminine-the Princess of Cups-and she was the genesis of an Idea. The wellspring of the Imagination. She was-

Devorah.

In Nicols' last reading, the Princess of Cups had been a librarian figure. A woman who had given us guidance. The Chorus had tweaked her spirit, awakening the imagination in her, and she had become a rhapsodomancer-an interpreter of events filtered through a linguistic proxy. Devorah had found her voice in Milton's Paradise Lost, and she couldn't undo the damage I had done to her psyche.

What is done is done.

That was a debt I would have to pay someday, and the Valet of Cups was a reminder. Reversed, he was the closing of the springs. The shuttering of the mind. Water, buried beneath the earth, not yet allowed to bubble forth. Instead of being the awakening of the spirit to its higher calling, he was the loss of illumination. He was the soul, trapped in the flesh, bound to stay in this world a bit longer.

I had come back from the sky after all the souls had been freed in Portland. I had come back, because I hadn't earned the right to go on. Too much blood on my hands. Too much that I had to atone for.

But it hadn't been Death. Or the Tower. Or the Nine of Swords. It was the Valet of Cups. The postponed awakening. Show me the way to the Crown.

Les Filles de Mnemosyne. The daughters forever caged by the Watchers. If they were the wellsprings of the imagination-the Muses who gave us all our creative ideas-then what did it say about all of us that they were trapped in the Archives?

Show me the way. .

Above the Valet was the Hanged Man, who, in being reversed, was the only figure that appeared to be standing right side up. He was the Fisher King, and I had seen him in Nicols' reading too. He had been in the same place in the spread-the position over the card that represented the querent. He was the Heavenly influence, that which floated above. In being inverted, he was the antithesis of transformation. He was a magus caught by indecision-caught by too many choices, too many paths. Crushed by too much knowledge, he could not act. He was, indeed, trapped. His foot was caught in a loop of his own mental peregrinations, and he could not move. His hands were bound behind him, further symbolism of his failure to contain his wisdom (unlike the Magician card, a figure whose hands were free to indicate both Heaven and Earth). He hung over my head like the sword that hung over Damocles.

It had been hanging there a long time, hadn't it? Ever since the duel on the bridge. Antoine and I had fought over Marielle, and I had fled Paris, and the threat of discovery had been a persistent fear ever since. Stay hidden, and keep the deception alive. Don't let them find you; don't let them hunt you.

The Ten of Cups signified a fulfilled life, one filled with the contentment of family. In Crowley's deck, it was the Tree of the Sephiroth, the ten spheres of Life. Reversed, it was ten cups all spilling their wine. Noblet's wine was dark red, and it didn't take much to read the card as signifying the loss of life. All that blood, spilling out of all those chalices. Positioned behind the Valet, the Ten was all the history I had been fleeing. All that blood.

Below the Valet was the Knight of Cups, the physical manifestation of the mystical element arrayed above. In Crowley, he was an enigma. An individual who wore a mask and whose motives could never be ascertained. He was aloof, dangerous, and volatile. In another time, I would have liked to have drawn this card. He was the wolf, hidden among the sheep. The Noblet Knight carried the Grail and his expression was filled with sympathy and understanding. He was an insightful companion, an empathetic reader. One who intuitively understood the suffering of others.

Reversed, he was a buffoon. A man who was unaware that the contents of his cup were spilling out, splashing all over his clothes, his horse, and the ground. His expression became one of confusion, of chaotic frustration. The reversed Knight does not know why the ones he loves have hurt him so. He can't figure where all the blood is coming from. What have I done wrong? he asks, and no one will tell him.

The last card, in front of the Valet, was the Emperor. He stands outdoors, one leg crossed behind the other, leaning against a shield with an eagle symbol. He holds a scepter of office, topped with a globe and a cross. Though his beard is long and white, there is nothing about his countenance that suggests infirmity or dotage. He was the Hierarch, the leader of men and the keeper of knowledge. In Crowley, he sits on a throne, and his leg is crossed in the exact same triangular pose as the Hanged Man. They are not too different, these two men, though one is the king in power, and the other is the king in transition.

It happens every year. The old vegetable rituals. One king is buried, another is born. The king is dead; long live the king.

But my Emperor was reversed, because the office would never be mine.

By the time I discovered a locked door, I had the reading all figured out.

For the first time in a week-in a long time-I knew myself. I knew what my role was. I wasn't supposed to become the new Hierarch, nor was I just a tool. I was my own man. Neither angel nor agent. The reading showed me fear, the sort the fortune teller in Eliot's old poem held in a handful of dust.

Eliot cited Jessie Weston's book as an influence on The Waste Land, and her book, From Ritual to Romance, had offered an initiation into the Western mysteries via the Arthurian romances-the stories of Gawain, Lancelot, and Parzival. I saw the connections now; I understood the rituals Vivienne had enacted and which I had been completely oblivious to. No wonder she sacrificed me; I had let her down. I was not the knight she had expected.

There were too many reversals, though. Too many deviations, variations brought about by the flood of noise of our twenty-first-century lives. Too much chaos brought about by the passions of the body which we confused as being passions of the spirit. This was why Philippe used the old deck: it was pure.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The dust comes upon us when there is no water, when we have lost ourselves in a desert of our own creation. Jesus wandered in the wilderness for forty days, according to the stories, where he was tempted by the Devil. All the temptations pursuant to the flesh. Not the Will. Not the spark. The Devil showed Jesus the desiccated flesh of the world, all the grains of sand running through his fingers, and said: This is all that you are, and all that you will be; why will you not take water from me and make clay from this dust?

I am not a Creator, Jesus said to the Devil. I am a Witness to creation.

The Chorus, emboldened by my focus, sparked through the lock of the door, and it swung open with a groan of ancient hinges. The spark of light fell into the room beyond, revealing the detritus of forgotten maintenance equipment.

A subbasement of Tour Montparnasse.

I gave the Chorus a new directive, and they flew out of my head, silver streamers penetrating the walls. Find a working elevator.

I needed to go back to the Archives.

I pushed the zero on the elevator keypad, and kept pushing it until the internal speaker in the car crackled to life.

"Why are you here?" Vivienne asked.

The same question again. The ritual started anew.

I held up the Hanged Man card so that the security camera could see it.

She didn't answer, but the light turned green on the keypad and the elevator started to ascend.

I reviewed the five cards as the elevator ascended, going over the interpretation one last time. Making sure I was ready to accept it. The Chorus started to boil in my head, the spirits of the Architects growing agitated as they became aware of my decision. I held them all down with a clamp of my Will. I had controlled worse in my head for a lot longer. They were smarter than me, assuredly, but I was their master now. They bound themselves to me with their choice, and now they would be bound by mine.

They had thought I would have been more malleable, more pliable, especially after losing the Qliphotic influence. I would have been bereft of purpose, of direction. I would have been eager to be given new orders. I should have been an easy tool to manipulate.

The elevator sang its arrival.

The wall of the Archives was translucent, shot through with silver threads, and beyond the barrier, Vivienne and Nuriye waited. Behind them, hidden in the shadows like the faded drawings on old temple walls, were other figures, the other archivists. The other daughters. My heart ran a little faster at the sight of them. They knew something was going to happen; they were hanging on the cusp of possibility. Like Crowley's Moon. That moment prior to transformation. All is possible; nothing is true. What comes next is not preordained, not scripted, not anticipated. What happens is the result of what is said and done in the next few moments.

You See it, Michael, it becomes so; that is the key to the ego of the Moon.

I approached the border between the external world and the secretum sanctorum of the Archives. I approached the threshold that separated the Grail Castle from the mundane world, that separated the daughters of Mnemosyne from the sons of Light.

"The Hanged Man," I said, showing them the card. "He's the Fisher King. The wounded magus who is the representative of the Land. Is that his role?"

After a moment of silence, Vivienne responded. "He is the spirit of the Land." Her voice carried the gravitas of ritual.

What happens next is all that mattered. What will be done will be done.

Juggling the cards, I showed her the Emperor. "And his role?"

"He is the guardian of the Land."

"They are the same, aren't they? Right now, it is the Hanged Man who is waiting to be recognized. He cannot become the Emperor until he is healed. That's what the Grail is for, isn't it? Every year, the Hierarch must renew his promise to the Land with the Grail. Every year, during the winter, he becomes the Hanged Man, and on the first day of spring, he is resurrected and reborn as the Emperor."

She nodded.

I dropped those cards, and held up the Knight of Cups. After a second, I reversed him. "You let me fall, because I didn't understand my role." When she didn't say anything, I shrugged. "It's all right. I get it. We're all trapped in our own cycles." Nuriye stirred at my words, glancing at Vivienne.

"Does she know?" I asked.

"Do I know what?" Nuriye inquired.

"The price exacted from your sister for your freedom." I paused. "Or is that a promise of freedom?" She didn't answer. "It hasn't happened yet, has it?" I asked. "You still need to be good in order to get your reward, don't you? Which one is it? Husserl or Antoine?"

Vivienne laughed. "You still don't understand, do you?"

I glanced at the Knight. "I guess I don't." I dropped him, and showed her the Ten of Cups. "Family," I said, and her face hardened.

Then again, maybe I do.

I dropped the Ten, and watched it flutter to the floor. I had one card left. One intuitive leap to make.

"I want to make a deal," I said.

"A deal?" Vivienne was incredulous. This wasn't part of the ritual. "What do you have to offer? It's over, M. Markham. The Crown has been given and received."

I glanced at the other women watching. "Has it?" I asked. The Chorus touched the ley and rebounded from the throbbing tension in the etheric channel. Blockage. The whole world outside was waiting, still caught on the cusp between night and day.

Antoine and I hadn't gotten the Spear until after dawn, and as a result, the Coronation hadn't happened. Nor had Antoine been able to accomplish it with the Grail after I had gotten it from Vivienne. We were all still waiting for the right time. The right moment.

"They're still waiting," I said. "Still waiting for dawn. That sounds to me like there is still time. Time enough to hear what I have to offer."

She scoffed. "You have nothing to offer. The outcome of the Coronation has already been Seen. What can you do to change that?"

"That's a very good question," I said. "I seem to remember you saying how you hated unanswerable questions. This time, though, I do know the answer to your question. In fact, let's not bother with that one, since I know the answer. Let's ask a different one instead." I nodded at the others. "Do you speak for all of them, when I ask you, Chief Librarian of the Imprisoned Sisters, would you rather wait until dawn to find out if the promises made to you are going to be kept, or would you rather make your own choice? Would you rather find your own path to freedom?"

Her mouth opened and closed several times before words came out. "You're a lunatic," she said. "Your mind has been shattered. You have lost too much blood, and don't have enough sense to die."

"Probably," I said as I held up the last card. "But I've got one card left."

"The Valet of Cups? What can that possibly signify?"

I spelled it out for her. "I have the spirit of the Hierarch in my head. A lot of his arcane knowledge, too. I was supposed to pass on what is in my head to whoever was Crowned. You can have all of it instead, in exchange for some assistance."

Vivienne was too stunned to say anything, and I heard a buzz of voices from the other sisters. Before Vivienne could tell them to be quiet, or even find her voice to admonish them, Nuriye spoke the all-important words. The ones that told me the answer to my question.

"What sort of assistance?"

"I need to crash the party. Before dawn."

"That answer is a non-answer. You must offer us some specifics if we are to properly judge the value of what you offer."

I went down the list. "I need a flight circle. From the roof of this building. Targeted to the roof wherever they are doing the ceremony." I laughed. "I only made Journeyman, remember. I don't even know where the ritual takes place."

"Sacre-C?ur," Nuriye said. "On the hill."

Of course. I should have known. It was in the background during my visitation to the apartment where Marielle and I had spent New Year's Day. The vision that was both memory and precognition, brought on by the etheric storm at Mont-Saint-Michel.

Vivienne whirled on the other woman, who stood her ground. "What?" she said with a shrug. "In the shape he is in? He wouldn't make it past the first rank. Telling him gives him nothing of value." Nuriye raised her eyebrow at me. "But the flight circle is a matter of conveyance, a way of easing your journey. Hardly a worthy trade for the Hierarch's knowledge."

"True," I admitted.

"If you only made Journeyman, I doubt you have the skill to inscribe one properly; plus, you need someone to anchor it for you, to keep the target aligned."

"Yes," I said, pretending that I knew the details of how the circle worked. It coincided with my plan anyway.

"But how do you suggest we help you with that? We cannot leave the Archives." Even as she asked the question, I could tell Nuriye got it. She knew what I was suggesting.

"I guess I'd have to give you the tools to let yourselves out, wouldn't I?"

Nuriye laughed as Vivienne's face grew dark with anger. "You go too far-" she started, but Nuriye cut her off with a stroke of her hand.

"I want to hear what he has to say, sister. He did not come back from the hole the Protector threw him into just to toy with us." She directed her attention at me. "But tread carefully, solute frater. We are not caged animals. You cannot taunt us with impunity. Speak your offer plainly."

"I'll give you what I have in my head in exchange for whatever aid I need, and I acknowledge that part of that assistance will require you to be freed from your duties as keepers of the Archives."

"You can't release us," Vivienne ground out. "Only the Hierarch can do that. And until one is Crowned, there is no one who can release-"

"Not even your father?" I interrupted. The Hierarch may have been the one who could bring down the wards that kept them here, but I was willing to bet that Lafoutain-as Preceptor in charge of the Archives-knew as much as any man could about how the wards were maintained.

Her face went rigid, a mask of frozen emotion. I had just stabbed her, and she was trying to not show how deeply my jab had gone.

"I need to get to the Coronation," I said, listing the items on my fingers. "I need to get past the host of Watchers that are, obviously, standing guard to keep soluti fratres such as myself out."

"True," Nuriye acknowledged. "That's two." She noticed that I was holding the Valet of Cups with two fingers. With two raised, there was one left. "What's the last thing?"

"A pair of swords," I said.

"Swords?" she echoed.

I nodded. "All things must end the way they began. This started with a duel under the bridge five years ago. A duel over a woman. It's going to end the same way."

"A list of three," Nuriye said, with a curt nod. "In exchange for the knowledge of the Hierarch." She glanced at Vivienne and then at the other sisters. "We will have to consider your offer. It is a dangerous thing you ask of us, freedom or no." She returned her gaze to me. "I am not so stupid to think that the only thing you want is revenge against your rival. If we were to provide you access to the Coronation, we would be acting in opposition to the entire rank. We must consider whether the knowledge of one man is worth the wrath of all his brothers."

"I said that I would give you everything in my head," I said. "I've got more than one Architect up there. The Hierarch, the Visionary, and-" I looked at Vivienne. "-your father."

It was more than she deserved for what she had done to me, but I was past that now. My terms. Not hers. Not Philippe's. Not Marielle's. This is what I offer you. This is how we embrace the future.

"There is no need to consider this offer. I accept these terms, and the responsibility that comes with them," she said, and her voice broke.

The wall came down.