Heartland

XXXV

Kind of heavy on the rhetoric, weren't you?" Antoine noted as we walked up the central aisle of the church. My attention was drawn to the gigantic mosaic of Christ over the main sanctuary. I had forgotten how huge that piece was. Behind me, over my right shoulder, was the tiny rose window that held the sacred heart.

Sacre-C?ur. Built ostensibly to honor the dead of the French Revolution and, later, the dead of the Franco-Prussian War, the church was erected on the highest point in Paris, and was dedicated to the motif of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. The symbolic representation of love for mankind by the Divine. Used by the Watchers as the center of their universe during the annual renewal of the Hierarch's promise to the Land. To Watch and to Wait.

"They deserve to know," I replied. "You lied to them."

Antoine was examining the sword I had given him. "There are worse sins, my friend. Besides-" He shrugged off the weight of my words. "It is your word against mine. When this is over, the matter will be settled." He glanced at me. "Once and for all."

"Once and for all," I echoed. "It'll be nice to be done with it, don't you think?"

Antoine didn't answer.

Inside the church, the presence of the Land was palpable. The leys came here, pouring all the world's energy to this nexus. Once a year. The abundance of energy beneath our feet was overwhelming; too much, in fact, for the ground to contain. It was almost like an inverse of the blank oubliette where there was no etheric energy to tap; here, there was such density of force that it was starting to collapse in on itself. Too much longer and who knows what would happen. A black hole of magickal force, perhaps. Or something worse. I didn't really want to find out. Nor did anyone else.

Tapping this energy would release an uncontrollable eruption of power. It would be like trying to stick a pin in an overinflated balloon and control the release of the air trapped inside. You can't control the release of all that pressure. It tears everything around the hole, and the entire balloon becomes a ragged scrap of cheap rubber.

That'd be my fate if I tried to tap the power. Turned inside out and spattered all over the church floor.

Antoine could tell what I was thinking. Sweat beaded across his forehead and on his upper lip. How long had he been standing in here, waiting for dawn? "It's too much, isn't it? Too much for anyone."

"And yet, here we are, fighting for it."

He raised an eyebrow. "Are we?"

I wondered if Antoine was strong enough. Was that one of the hallmarks of being granted the rank of Architect: being able to handle the touch of the Land? Was that why the room wasn't mobbed with all of the rank, fighting to be the one given the opportunity to take the Crown? Was Antoine's Will focused enough that he could control the etheric flow? Instead of a messy explosion of spirit and flesh, would he be able to control the flow in a tight beam through a pinhole of restraint?

"Maybe," I tried, seeing if he bit. Seeing how much he knew.

A smile tugged at Antoine's lips, as if he saw through my bluff. He fell back a step and swung the sword experimentally. The one he had taken was the more simple of the two: just a long blade, burnished steel, with a hilt wrapped in gold thread. Layers and layers of gold thread. In the pommel, a single, flawless diamond, about the size of a walnut.

"They're nice blades. Where did you find them?"

"The Archives."

Mine had a slight curve to it, an Arabian influence in its design, and the hilt was plain-black leather wraps worn with sweat and blood. The blade itself was mercurial, shifting in color as it cut the light in the chapel.

He pursed his lips. "A gift from the daughters?"

"Loan, more likely. They expect them back."

He caught me looking at his right hand. "The way I see it, you owed me at least one." He had cleaned up while I had been climbing out of the subbasement of Tour Montparnasse, and his suit was impeccable as ever. When he raised both hands and held them side by side, the difference between them was noticeable against the white cuffs of his shirt. "Though, it is a bit worn," he said. "But it won't matter later." He smiled. "When I am Crowned."

We were more than halfway to the front of the church now, and I let my gaze roam across the space beyond the low railing separating the nave from the sanctuary. The platform was low, only a few steps, and the altar was a simple marble block. Marielle and Husserl stood behind it, off to one side, watching us. The Grail sat on the altar in the middle, and it shimmered and wavered in the mirage-inducing heat. The gold chalice was bleeding energy off, acting as a release valve for the pressure building beneath the ground.

Antoine expected to be healed by the Grail.

When I received the Grail from the chapel in the Archives, I had been completely healed. Of course, since then I had been stabbed in the side and had my hand cut off by the Spear, but the wounds I had sustained earlier were gone. I suspected both of those wounds would be repaired by the magick of the Grail. I, too, had high expectations for the restorative power of the Cup.

"Yeah, about that," I said. "You realize Husserl is going to fuck you for it."

"Of course," Antoine said. "He will try. I'd be disappointed if he didn't. But I have the Spear, and once I am done with you, I will deal with him. He will wait until the very last moment to touch the Weave. That's how he brings about the future he has Seen. Besides, he thinks, given the choice between Marielle and the Crown, we won't sacrifice her."

"Really?"

He shook his head sadly. "She really wound your thread tight, didn't she?"

"No," I said, but it sounded false to my ears.

"She is her father's daughter, and I think he'd be proud at how she has manipulated all of us, but it only works-" He swung the sword back and forth a few times; the blade sang through the heavy air. "-if you let her in your heart." The sword fell back to rest against his shoulder. "I should thank you for that. Without you, I never would have realized how much I would have let her twist me."

"Well, I'm glad I didn't spend too much time feeling guilty about fucking her, then."

Antoine's first stroke would have split me from throat to stomach if I hadn't been ready for it. As it was, his blade skipped against mine with a clang of steel, and I felt the shock of his blow in my elbow. The fingers of the gauntlet tightened about the hilt of my sword, and I shoved his blade away.

"Never talk badly about a man's girl, even when he's protesting that he doesn't care about her anymore," I said as I stepped back to a more comfortable distance. I smiled at Antoine. "I learned that lesson the first time around."

He had thought I would have been lulled by the fact that he was holding the sword in his left hand, but I knew, after all these years, it was now his dominant hand. The right held the Spear, and I had to watch out for that sharp point too, but the sword was going to be deadly in his left.

I was actually surprised he had waited as long as he had before taking a swing at me.

Antoine swung his blade-one-handed-in a butterfly pattern, clearing space more than trying to hit me, and we shuffled from side to side as we gauged the working space between the pews. Antoine had actually studied longsword techniques with a cousin a half-dozen steps removed who could trace his lineage back to fifteenth-century Doges. His cousin was a Fiore man, through and through, an old Renaissance throwback intent on bringing the old art of sword-fighting back into twenty-first-century vogue.

I learned my technique from too many black-and-white Hollywood films caught late at night at too many nondescript and insignificant hotels scattered around the globe. Basil Rathbone, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, and even the ubiquitous Three Musketeers film from the 1970s. No one was terribly surprised that I was a mongrel with the sword, a juggler with a sharp stick. I had hacked my way to a partial victory last time, and honestly, all I could hope for this go-round was to not get cut to pieces. At least not in the first few minutes.

Antoine waited for me, his sword moving back and forth. He knew I didn't have time to wait him out. He knew we were fighting the clock. I had to finish this duel quickly.

The air was thick and humid, hothouse-style moist, and already the light was changing in the church. The sun had crested the eastern horizon. It wouldn't take long before the light hit the high windows in the cupola and streamed down on the altar. On the Grail.

It was even harder for the Chorus to tap the ley now. It was like scrabbling against a flat slab of stone. There was nothing to grab. No seams. No ripples. Just a solid stream of force.

I turned and sprinted for the front of the church. Antoine shouted in surprise, and I knew he wasn't far behind me. I pivoted on my right foot, and turned into one of the last few rows of pews. Three steps down the aisle, next step on the seat of the bench, and then a long leap over the rows of pews. I felt his sword whip through the air behind me. Closer than I expected. I was dwelling too much on how close I had come to getting my ass sliced open and nearly blew the landing two rows up. I danced along the seat of the pews, and finally managed to face the other direction.

There was a little more space between us now.

"Where are you going, little lamb?" Antoine asked. He kept to the aisle, moving toward the altar. His Will was rampant, tightly focused about his frame, and there was no sense that he was drawing energy from the ley. He was still more adept than I, but at least he wasn't tapping the entirety of the grid.

Back when we had faced off in Bechenaux, he had used the grid to slide through space, moving more quickly than I could track him. He could probably still do the same here, but it would be a much tougher trick. One I would hopefully be able to see coming. Ripples in the etheric patterns. Disturbances in the grid.

He flickered, his body outlined in light as if someone had switched on a strobe behind him, and I dropped between pews, ducking below the height of the bench backs. Antoine re-appeared, not more than three feet from me, one row over, and his sword whistled through the space where I had been a moment before.

He was close enough to thrust with the Spear, and I turned its point aside with my blade as I skipped along the row. "I can see you coming," I panted. "You're leaving too much of a trail." He was forcing himself through the dense morass of energy, moving against the current, and a body moving in opposition to the vector of force tends to leave a wake.

Snarling, he whipped his sword around, underhand, and connected with the pew. The blade flashed as he cut through the wood, and splinters-arcing with blue lightning-flew at me. The Chorus absorbed them, its peacock shield rippling with meteoric death of the tiny missiles. The spent energy of his missiles slithered along my shield, collapsing into a storm of force. The Chorus kissed this knot and I threw it back at him. Antoine caught the ball of energy on his sword, splitting it, and the energy dissipated as water vapor, a tiny rain shower dashing across his chest and arms.

The Spear quivered in his right hand, its point seeking a target. It was active, a hungry blade seeking sustenance. Our magick was drawing its attention.

Antoine vanished, and the Chorus filled my eyes with their spectral overlay. I could see Antoine now, moving through the ether-a ghostly image impossible to stare at, but definitely visible in my peripheral vision. In illo tempore, I thought, and the Chorus responded, slowing everything down for a heartbeat. Within this bubble of slowed time, I moved forward, transferring my sword to my fleshy hand, and raising my gauntleted right.

Time snapped forward again, and Antoine appeared at my shoulder. My blade caught his on the cross-guard, stopping his strike before it even started, and I connected with a strong right hand to his face. His head snapped back, a cut opening over his left eye, and an involuntary grunt slipped from his lips.

He was preternaturally quick, slicing upward with the Spear. I twisted my fist over, and the point of the Spear skidded off the metal of the gauntlet, leaving a long gash in the cuff. The wound burned, ice on steel, and I snapped the hand around again, trying to connect once more, but one lucky shot was all I was going to get. He blocked my sloppy jab with a web of force swarming around the hilt of the Spear.

I backed off before he could press his attack. He let me go, and stood there, watching me like a tiger does a wounded canary. What was the point of distance really? With his ability to slip through space, distance was irrelevant.

"Seems familiar, doesn't it?" Antoine called.

"Like we never left," I offered as I put a hand on the back of a pew and vaulted over. One row closer. Only a handful remained. I risked a glance toward the sanctuary. Marielle and Husserl had shifted, drifting toward us, but they were still watching. Still waiting. Her expression was impossible to read at this distance, and I-

The Chorus shrieked, their colors darkening. Antoine-slipping into physical space again-on my left, and the Chorus caught the brunt of his sword strike, but they missed the Spear.

"Uh," was all I said.

I could see all the striations and tints in his irises, and there were dark rings under his eyes. So much strain. On both of us. You will always be mirrors of one another. We were both running on fumes. If I had been more prepared, if I had been better rested, this would have turned out differently.

As it was, I stood there, stupidly staring at the blade stuck in my gut. It seemed wrong, like it should have been coming from the other side, but this time I had seen him coming, and it hadn't made any difference.

A flicker of a smile crossed Antoine's face, and the muscles along his jaw tightened as he prepared to push the blade further in, but in the next second, we were both overwhelmed by a psychic wave of pressure. A scream that echoed throughout my head, scattering the Chorus, and making my teeth ache. Antoine staggered against me, and I sagged against the nearest pew, the wooden bench holding me up.

Distantly, I was aware of Marielle, Husserl reeling away as she shoved him back. She moved toward the railing of the sanctuary, the heavy weight of her magick rippling through the church. Light started to smear, and Antoine's form became a Technicolor blur.

I was still holding on to my sword, and when I raised it, Antoine knocked it from my metal hand with a sharp blow of his own blade. Blindly, I caught his wrist with my left hand, and we stood there, arms crossed, fighting over the remaining blade.

Dimly, I realized he was still holding on to the Spear, and I wondered why he hadn't let go. The Chorus, forcing their way through the haze of pain that overwhelmed my senses, forced me to focus on the sleeves of his suit coat. His arms were the same length, even though there was less of his right arm. He took your hand at the wrist, they shouted-a crackling, shrieking noise in my head. At Mont-Saint-Michel, he lost most of the arm. How is he controlling the hand?

My control of the metal hand wasn't very precise. I couldn't pick up pins, or pull the wings off flies. I could open and close the fingers. I could hold an object. I could crush an aluminum can. Or a sleeve filled with magick.

Antoine forced me back against the pew, pushing his blade closer to my face. His eyebrows pulled together as I closed my fingers about the right sleeve of his suit jacket, but he didn't realize what I was doing until I started to squeeze.

There was nothing in his sleeve but his realized Will, holding my severed hand in place. Much like the cuffs of the gauntlet around my shortened wrist, the fabric of his coat helped to anchor my hand. But because his arm ended just below the elbow, he had to re-create his missing forearm so as to anchor his new hand. The sleeve of his suit coat provided a framework through which he could bind his Will, and it worked well. To a point. Now I was putting pressure on it, pressure backed by the Chorus and my Will.

He struggled, trying to pull away from me, but I had his wrist still. And his coat. He tried to twist the Spear, and it moved slightly in my gut. Enough to send starbursts of pain into my intestines and stomach, but not enough to make me lose my focus. Not enough to make my grip slacken.

The fabric of his coat creased in my grip as he wrenched his left hand free. He brought his sword down in a heavy stroke, and I had no choice but to retreat. I couldn't block the blade, and I had no way to stop him. I squeezed with my right hand and stumbled back, twisting my upper torso to protect my head as best I could. The blade sliced across my shoulder, cutting deep into the deltoid. I took two more stumbling steps, bouncing off the pews and then tripped, banging my hip against a pew before collapsing in the central aisle.

"Stop!" Marielle was on this side of the railing now, running toward us. "Enough."

Antoine side-stepped through the ether into the space between Marielle and me, and forced her to stop with the point of his sword. "No," he said. "This is what he wanted." His right arm was crooked and bent, the forearm twisted. He still held on to the Spear, but his control of the arm below the elbow wasn't very good. As I struggled to get to my knees, he put his sword down and transferred the Spear to his left hand.

The floor was slippery with blood, and I fell again, pain shrieking in my back as I pulled my shoulders together. My vision was blurring again, and I focused on the blade resting on the bench two rows up. That was a goal I could still manage. Adducite gladium mihi. The Chorus slithered along the floor, ripples of magick nearly invisible against the heavy haze of etheric possibility.

There was a ringing in my ears, and at first, I thought it was an internal sound, but when Antoine and Marielle looked up, I realized they heard it too. The bells of Sacre-C?ur were ringing. It was dawn. Yellow light was shining through the square windows of the cupola, and a slow wave of gold was flowing down the western side of the dome.

I gathered myself together and got my feet under me. I was a clumsy missile, but I was in motion. The Chorus wrapped around the hilt of Antoine's sword, making a connection between my Will and the steel. Venite mihi. The blade moved, and my metal fingers closed tight.

Antoine turned as I lumbered toward him, a gored bull making one last charge toward the victorious matador, and his Will compressed into a shimmering blue fire along the edge of the Spear. He realized his mistake at the last second; he realized I wasn't even going to try to stop his stroke.

The Spear slid between two ribs, missed my heart, and punctured a lung. The blade was a cold icicle in my chest, stealing my heat and light, and a sob escaped from my lips. There was no pain; there was just an emptiness that opened in my chest, a gaping void like one I had felt before. But whatever despair I had felt earlier at its earlier touch was nothing compared to the bleakness that washed over me now. This was the cold touch of betrayal, the final moment of your life when you realize there is nothing left. Nihil est. This was the black vacuum when hope has fled; this was the bleak nihilism of knowing how empty the Universe truly was.

Antoine flinched. He could read all of this in my eyes, and the desire for victory, which he had been so flush with a moment prior, fled, leaving him aware of what he had done. Aware of the price paid for his chance at Coronation.

I tried to smile. "You have no idea," I Whispered.

He realized what I was holding in my metal hand, and he tried to pull the Spear out, but it was stuck in my chest. Caught on a rib. He let go, raising his hand to deflect the sword, and my first blow opened his hand to the bone. I caught him on the cheek with the pommel, and he finally stepped back. Enough for me to get a decent swing. He twisted away and the blade took him in the side of the neck instead of the front. Blood spurted in an arc, and for a second, my vision went black.

What is done is done.

I staggered forward, bringing the blade back for one last swing, one last cut across his spine. To stop him from crawling away from me.

But Marielle was in the way.

Everything froze, and I blinked again, trying to figure out how I had lost track of a few seconds. She stared at me, unflinching, her arms lifted in a pose that seemed too familiar. I tried to let go of the sword, but my metal hand was slow to respond. The intent was already in the blade. My Will had already engaged. She didn't blink or flinch as the sword struck her; she only mouthed two words before she closed her eyes and crumpled around the blade.

I closed my eyes too.

And then the light of dawn hit the Grail and the world was lit with pain.