Heartland

VII

Eventually, the priest gave a small nod, and pushed his cup aside. The sound of the china moving across the laminate surface of the table dispersed the meditative ambience of the tiny apartment.

"It is not an easy task to quiet oneself," he said. "Many of us forget. Your energy is still much too quick, but I can see the impression of its orbit now. There is a lot of history bound to your light."

"I'm impressed," I said. "Most can't see me at all."

He snorted. "Most are blinded by their own light. Too caught up with the glitter of their own thread. All they see is the surface, the forward and backward of their lives."

"But you see deeper than that, don't you? Beneath the Weave."

His hands moved on the table, as if he were re-arranging pieces of a game. "We teach the new ones to call it the 'Weave,' because that is a concept they can readily understand, but it is like teaching a child to play checkers. It's a simple game, two-dimensional really. Only later are they ready to play a richer game on the same board."

"Chess."

He nodded. "The Akashic Weave extends in every direction, and when I gave up my sight, I was to see it more properly. I was able to understand the true nature of how the threads bind together."

"The big picture."

"Yes. There is a balance to all things, and we are too small and mean to want to believe such universal hegemony exists, but that is part of what we must strive toward. An understanding of the reflections and shadows that the unconscious symbols of the Divine leave in their wake. So that we, too, may be creators."

The Chorus caught a slice of memory, and turned it over, spinning it like a coin; it opened up. A small burst of memories exploded: the fiery eye of the glass furnace; the priest pulling and stretching a piece of red glass into a flat sheet; on a nearby table, a rack of colored sheets-green, blue, yellow, white-cooling. The priest wore a modified pair of goggles. Only the left eye was protected from the light of the forge.

"You made all the glass," I said, answering my previous question about his vocation. "From his designs."

The Chorus twisted the images in my head, turning them inside out so as to see a different perspective. A different time, in the same place. The priest, now kneeling before the furnace, sweat and grime staining his naked torso. A pair of hands entered the frame-my hands-and removed his protective goggles so as to firmly grasp his head. I held his face still as he opened the blast cover of the furnace. Tears started from his eyes, droplets like molten glass streaming down his cheeks. In his right eye, the emerald shard of glass glittered; in his left, a howling whiteness devoured his cornea. I could feel the heat from the forge on my hands.

The priest was unafraid, and the expression on his face held no pain.

This was not punishment. This was a reward.

"And when you were done," I said, slowly, the words shivering up from the snarled core of the Chorus, "I took your other eye and gave you your new name: the Visionary."

In speaking those words, in being Philippe for a brief second, a cascade of the Old Man's history fell into place, now anchored by my act of speaking aloud. I knew the priest's name, how Philippe recruited him, his secret training and preparation for the task of making the stained-glass panels, the title given to him by Philippe; all that and more were known to me as if I had always known them. It was a disconcerting moment of vertigo as I flickered between my identity and Philippe's before returning to my-now altered-self.

His name was David Cristobel. Once: an itinerant laborer; a student of the arts; a glass-blower. Now: parish priest, and one of the secret masters of the society. The Architect known as the Visionary.

Father Cristobel bowed his head. "Our Father," he whispered, "who art in-"

I stopped him. "No, not yet."

He hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. "Yes, of course." He raised his head and looked directly at me, Seeing me. "It is a bold binding, and he hides you well." He wasn't speaking to me; he was talking to the spirit of the Old Man, as if he was-

"He isn't hiding," I said. "Philippe is dead, but some of his. . personality hasn't faded yet."

He stared at me more, and the ever-present tear finally slipped from the corner of his right eye. "The Lightbreaker," he said. It was his turn to name me. "You knew all along, didn't you?"

"Knew what?"

A small laugh jerked free of his chest. "You are far more trusting than I, old friend. Your vision is, indeed, deep and distant."

"Father Cristobel," I said. "You and the Hierarch had an understanding of the threads that defies my feeble grasp, and I'm glad you're impressed with the Old Man's plotting, but he told me very little. And he's gone. All I have left are fragments of his memory, and I can't control how and when they offer themselves to me. I am, for lack of a better word, a bit blind here."

He smiled at that, but the motion quickly died on his face. "Yes," he said, staring at a point behind me. "There are many knots in the fabric itself, and much. . that obscures the Record. It is difficult to see very far. Or very clearly." A shake of his head wiped the rest of the humor from his face. "The Hierarch wound tight and far, Lightbreaker, and trusted-perhaps too much-that the threads would move in the manner of his suggestion."

"Endgame," I said. "All the knots, coming undone."

"But will they unravel to his design, or someone else's?" Father Cristobel wondered. "How strong was his Vision?"

"That's the big question, isn't it?"

Father Cristobel stood and retrieved a bottle of whisky from the cupboard. He got two more glasses and filled each with a finger of liquor, nudged one toward me, and raised the other one. "Now is not the time for tea," he said, raising his glass. "To Philippe Emonet. My father, in spirit and in my heart."

Our Father. Holy Spirit. My Son. A confusion of histories overwhelmed my tongue and I settled for tapping my glass against his. The whisky was heavy, filled with the earthy taste of peat, and it went down like a hot coal.

Father Cristobel coughed. "Ah," he said, after taking a second sip. "It has been a while."

I turned the bottle so I could see the label. "A Lagavulin 16," I said. "It's a little mean when you first come back."

"Most things are," he said, pouring another portion for himself. "How long have you been away from the family?"

"A while." There was no point in denying it. I was starting to See how far back Philippe's planning went. "A little over five years."

"Ah, yes," he said, nodding. "Before the Upheaval." He set his glass down. "I know you. You are the rogue who left us, taking a hand and a heart with you."

I knocked back the whisky in my glass, the peaty burn killing the words in my throat. The fire of the scotch rose up from my stomach and inflamed my lungs.

"Markham," he said. "Yes, that is who you are. 'Michael,' she called you, but it isn't your Christian name."

"Landis," I said, my tongue burning. She. Such familiarity. I exhaled, fiery exhaust from the whisky, and memory turned in my head.

A small baby, wrapped in white linen. Marielle. A nocturnal baptism, here in this church, the glass Christ hovering overhead like a watchful angel. A younger Cristobel and Philippe, their hands suspending the tiny child over the basin of purified water. The glistening stroke of a wet finger across the child's forehead.

Cristobel was Marielle's godfather.

She watched them, unafraid. Aware of what they were doing. Aware of the pulsating energy emanating from both men. The flow of life moving into the basin and then into her body. A secret ritual, hidden away from other witnesses.

Father Cristobel seemed unaware of my sudden realization, the tumult of memory happening in the blink of an eye. "You were a useful tool," he continued, "hidden away before the fracture made itself known. You didn't know your part to play in his grand game, did you?"

I shook my head. "No. I thought I was. . free." That was a lie, but I had thought I was free of Paris. Evidently not. "But that's not the case, and I need to know what my role truly is."

Because Philippe won't tell me, and that's part of his design too. That's the difference between knowing and Knowing, and when the hard choice comes, he's going to want me to truly Know.

"Yes." Father Cristobel sighed, and seemed to weigh some decision for a few moments. "I will assume that your blindness extends to the events of the last few years within the family. You wouldn't-" He hesitated, as if he were mentally preparing himself for a task, one he knew had been coming, but hadn't expected it to arrive today. Hadn't expected it to ever come, but here it was.

"It has been. . a few years now," he continued, sliding into the role he knew was his. "Call them the 'Opposition,' for lack of a better term. They've been plotting a long time, but it was only recently we realized they were more than a bunch of idle dreamers.

"U.S. foreign policy had become even more of a disaster than we anticipated. Washington's cadre of radical capitalists had gutted their own economy and were turning their greedy eyes toward the EU. With this attention came a legion of tin-star despots who wreaked havoc at a bureaucratic level. Our influence in the U.S. became problematic. Every effort we made to control affairs vanished into a black hole, this vortex of uncertainty. Then, shortly after the last U.S. election, we lost an Architect."

Emile Frobai-Cantouard, the Chorus offered, having just come up from the basement with this nugget of information. The Cantouards had ties to the vineyards of Champagne, and Emile had fought in the Foreign Legion. Sub-Sahara revolutions. His magick came from the desert. Most of the memories of the man were dim and distorted, like film that had been rescued from a fire. Philippe was much younger in these memories, a time before he became Hierarch. Distant memories that were starting to fade, history being subsumed into the muck of my soul.

"The Hermit," I said, recalling Emile's Architect title.

"Yes," Cristobel said. "Emile Frobai-Cantouard. Do you know him?"

I shook my head. "No. I have some recollection of the rank, almost like a dossier on some members, but I don't know which ones or how much data there is to be gleaned until I actually need it. It's a frustrating side effect of the process."

"Do you know the others?" The question was casual, but the Chorus reacted to an underlying tension in his words.

"Who?" I asked.

"There are nine Architects, and I know the identity of three. I assume the others are equally-if not more so-ignorant of the others."

"What do you mean?"

"Each of the nine has a distinct title, separate from his rank. Some of them recognize specialization, some of them are historical titles that bind them to a specific aspect of the Akashic Weave. As an organization, we have been consumed with secrecy for so long that the true masters have become faceless. We are just names, no longer real flesh and blood. The Architects cannot be held responsible for their actions and directives because they cannot be found."

"Like. . the Secret Masters of the Illuminati," I said.

He smiled. "That is one of our names."

In my gut, something twisted, and the Chorus dove after the elusive strand of thought. But they couldn't catch it, and any sense I had of Philippe floating near the surface of their boiling energy vanished. Something was wrong; something Cristobel had said wasn't true. Was he lying to me? The Chorus flexed, and strands of memory flared into arrays of white light. No, Cristobel was telling me what he thought was true.

"Someone knows," I said. "Someone knows who all of the Architects are."

"Of course. The one who chose them. The Hierarch."

And those names were hidden. I had a feeling they were there, down in the bowels of my subconscious, locked away in the secret vault Philippe had inserted in my head. A vault to which I had no key.

"What happened to Frobai-Cantouard?" I asked. The Chorus kept digging, sifting through uncatalogued memory.

Father Cristobel chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. He couldn't see my face, but he could read my confusion. My energy signature was in flux. "He vanished. When Philippe could not find the end of his thread, he came to me. I can't wind the threads like he can, but I can chart them better. Over the next few weeks, as I searched for signs of Emile's thread, I noticed his history was being dissolved. Somehow, the morphic fields were breaking down his thread, almost as if there was some sort of unnatural decay devouring his presence. He couldn't be removed from the Akashic Record, but it was becoming more and more difficult to discern his history."

"He wasn't dead?" I asked.

"No, in death, a thread withers, but it remains in the Weave. The next generation is laid on top of the last. In that way, the Weave is organic, a field that never becomes fallow. Each death provides nutrients from which new threads emerge.

"What was happening with Emile's thread was an obscuration, the like of which I had never seen before. He was hiding himself not only from us, but from history as well." He touched the table, his fingers idly tracing a pattern on the laminate. "In the course of searching for him, I learned the identity of two of the other Architects. They were searching for him too."

"And they didn't have any more luck than you?"

He shook his head. "The rest of the rank knew something was amiss, even if the Preceptors weren't passing the news along their chains. You can't See and not have noticed the abnormal shifts in the etheric flow across the Weave. This chaotic movement was interpreted by the younger rank as an opportunity for change."

"Personal advancement," I said. "The old-fashioned way."

"Yes. Ritus concursus. The old ways are so ingrained in us, aren't they?"

The old ways. I couldn't help but think of Antoine and our duel under the bridge.

"Protector Briande," I asked. "Do you know him?"

"Of course."

"Whom did he kill to get his rank?"

When he came to Seattle last fall he was a Protector-Witness, a full rank higher than he should have been. Most likely, Antoine had taken Traveler in the year after our duel and, given the normal schedule for advancement, he should now have been an early-stage Viator-a couple degrees ahead of Henri. There were seven sub-degrees in Viator, and the trial for each one required-typically-a year of intense preparation. Somehow Antoine had managed to leap all of that, as well as whatever degrees of Traveler that he hadn't finished, in a single fight.

The identity of who he had killed for the rank was in my head somewhere, somewhere in the vast roster Philippe had kept of the rank-names, titles, allegiances, faces even-but they were all jumbled, as if they had been all tossed in a sack and shaken. Which one? I just needed a little hint.

"Protector Hieron."

There. One of the names came into focus, and I could now bind his history to my memory of Antoine. Yves Hieron. Originally from Brussels; took his oath during the '70s; one of the Renaissance alchemists. Never married; dedicated to his research. Unremarkable trials. One of those who stay with a company for so long they become management by sheer weight of their organizational history.

Antoine's choice was, as ever, a tactical one. He took out an old scholar, a man who made safe, dependable choices, and who preferred to stay on the fringe. He had arbitrated more than a dozen disputes over the years, acted as a Witness to even more duels. Hieron had been a centrist, one who could be counted upon to hold the line. In a time of upheaval and crisis, Hieron would have been a steadfast soldier of the status quo.

The rest of the fights were small advancements, magi leap-frogging each other up the ladder, but probably nothing of any consequence in the long term. Old rivalries were settled and some narrow-minded bitterness about perceived slights were probably worked out, but nothing dramatic. Except for Antoine, who had stepped in and snatched a position of historical responsibility. Regardless of Protector Hieron's working knowledge of combat magick, he should have been able to withstand the assault of a gifted, yet nominally ranked Traveler. And yet, Antoine had won and in doing so transformed a resolute and steadfast Protectorate into a wildcard, a position held by an enigma whose allegiances and motivations were unknown.

I had thought I understood Antoine's motivations after Portland, and for a moment or two, when we had been talking earlier this morning, I thought I had a handle on what he wanted. But now, with the ring and key missing, I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure Antoine wasn't pulling threads at a deeper level. He was slipping away from me, disappearing into that inscrutable void that no one could penetrate.

Not only did I not know the inner workings of Philippe's grand design, I was starting to realize Antoine's confusion and dismay at being played may have been an act. While he had professed to not be privy to Philippe's design, I was starting to wonder if the Old Man had underestimated his star student, if he had failed to penetrate Antoine's mask and See the naked Machiavellian desire in his heart.

Maybe it wasn't a matter of who had the best insight, but who could hide their true intent. Who could guard their heart best.