Lightbreaker

XVII

More extreme than taking out a Protector? My confusion must have been evident in my inability to articulate a reply. "The Watchers aren't known for their forgiveness," I finally managed.

"Spoken like a man who knows." Bernard chuckled. "We are about to embark upon an ambitious project, Mr. Markham. A project that goes well beyond the discourse of TheCorpus Hermeticum. One that requires industrious men with extraordinary talents. I think you qualify. ." He hesitated on the remainder of the sentence.

"Julian doesn't like me," I finished for him.

He hesitated, considering his answer, and then sighed. "Julian doesn't like a number of things."

"So he is in charge?"

"No," Bernard disagreed.

I glanced at Kat and raised an eyebrow. "That's funny. It doesn't seem that way. I mean, call it what you will but he's not the one who locked himself in a crate with me. With you in here. ." I raised my shoulders as if to say that I didn't really have an opinion on the matter. All the while making it clear that I thought his presence inside was certainly not the action of a man in charge.

"You're being childish, Mr. Markham. Provoking me won't achieve anything."

I looked at Bernard again, held his gaze, and slowly raised the Chorus behind my eyes. "Nothing childish about it," I said. "Especially in light of what Julian knows." I let the Chorus pulse around me once, their wave setting alight the inscribed sigil. In the background, the three gunmen raised their pistols in a frantic effort to cover me with their laser sights. But, in the sudden darkness following the ward's illumination, they discovered the lantern had gone out. They couldn't see well enough to find a target for their little red dots.

In the tiny chaos caused by the Chorus' suffocating touch on the lantern's flame, I did exactly what Bernard warned me against. In the dark, I Whispered to him, my voice riding his ear. "Julian let you come in here because you were expendable." Bernard shouted incoherently, and I heard the chair tip over as he leaped to his feet. Boots scuffled as anarchy gathered the four men together, scrambling their efforts.

A flashlight clicked on. It reflected from Bernard's white shirt, momentarily freezing him in a bright spotlight, and then it swept in a flat arc across the floor.

Kat reached out in the darkness and found my hand. When the flashlight discovered us, we hadn't moved from our position. A second flashlight covered us as well, while the third lit up the door panel. The plastic butt of a handgun rang against the metal-three strikes, followed by two more. The heavy lever holding the door was lifted from the outside.

Kat and I raised hands to shield our eyes as the four men retreated through the open door. "An infantile prank, Mr. Markham," Bernard chided me as he left. "It wins you no favors." The portal closed and the bar and lock clanged into place, sealing us inside.

"Well," Kat said after a moment. "He's kind of right."

"Yeah, but it made me feel better," I said.

"Ah," she replied. "I'm glad that's one of those critical personal policies that you're clinging to."

I stood and fumbled across the room to where Bernard had left the storm lantern and sniffed at it carefully. There was still some kerosene in the reservoir. "It also put him off his game," I pointed out. I opened the tiny door of the lantern and snapped my fingers. The Chorus made a spark that leaped onto the oil-soaked wick. I adjusted the flame and lifted the lantern to better expose the container. "You heard him, Kat. They're planning something stupid. I'm the bait to distract Antoine. It wasn't their original plan, but they're certainly taking advantage of the circumstance. And until I know why they opted to make that change in their plan, I'm going to make mischief."

A finger-length in width, the metal plate on which the firestorm sigil was inscribed made the circuit of the wall. It wasn't a solid piece of metal but the pieces were fit snugly enough it was nigh impossible to find the seams. Even the plates on the end panels made allowances for the doors. The spell could have been written on the bare wall, but dealing with the ridged construction would make the process of crafting an unbroken line of text unbearably time-consuming.

Knowing it was based in Solomon's Lore and that it was similar to the ward used in the barn made it easier to discern the pattern in the script. By the flickering light of the storm lantern, I traced the sigil. It looped around the room four times, and it ended like it began: with the symbol of fire. Arcane punctuation marks.

"This container," I asked Kat after I finished my initial examination. "Do you know where the Hollow Men store it?"

"Julian owns a warehouse down in SoDo. It's a couple of blocks from the old Rainer Brewery-where Tully's roasts their coffee now. He has some connections with the Port of Seattle and a couple of the shipping companies so it's possible this is at the warehouse."

"But you've never seen it?"

"No. But there's a lot of the warehouse I haven't seen."

"Who is Julian?" I asked as I started my second examination of the script. "He's one of those guys with the Hindu background, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"He's also the Master of the Temple?"

"Yes."

Good news, that. It meant there wasn't another magus waiting in the wings. Julian and Antoine were more than enough. I didn't need a third adept to deal with. Doug had some skills, but they weren't anything I needed to worry about. "What about Bernard?"

"He's an alchemist and a craftsman."

"Do you know anything about what he's talking about?"

Kat hugged herself, staring into the darkness beyond the lantern's glow. "No," she said softly.

I believed her. Her function in the Hollow Men ritual gave sense to the memories I had lifted from Doug. Kat was their Anima, the spirit avatar that allowed them to sever their meat ties. She taught them how to attain a pure energy state. But they hadn't told her what they planned to do with this psychoanimist knowledge. And, as she had realized by now with their casual dismissal of her safety, they no longer had any use for her.

"What happens after you teach them to break free?" I asked.

"It's a test for advancement. They are awarded the rank of Ascendant."

"What comes after Ascendant?"

"Anointed. It's the last rank."

"How many have you Ascended?"

"Doug was the seventh."

Seven. Shit. Okay, maybe there were a few I needed to worry about. "What about Julian? You do him too?"

She took the question wrong for a second and, in that glimpse of her naked emotions, I realized something about our relationship, about how the ugly severance that night in the forest had left us both raw. Unfinished. "Yes," she said, hiding herself from me. "I Ascended him. He was the first."

"Okay," I said, moving past what I had seen. "That means there are five guys who can body-jack that I don't know about." Five spirits who could be in anyone, who could surprise me at any time. More reasons to take advantage of Bernard's momentary insecurity and get the hell out of the container. More reasons to figure out a way to undermine the ward and get out of jail. The world, rushing back in now, filling us with the urgency of time.

As I examined a likely spot in the back corner where I might try my idea, the lock on the container clanged and the hinges groaned. I walked away from the section I was inspecting and quietly waited for our captors to return. Fortuna wasn't inclined to give me much of a break today.

This time, there were five gunmen-sporting an assortment of pistols and Tasers-who accompanied Julian and Bernard. Julian wasn't surprised to see me with the lantern while Bernard's mouth screwed itself tight. His mouth got even thinner when Julian leaned toward the bearded man and said something too quiet for me to hear.

"Put the lantern down, Markham," Julian called out after Bernard gave him a terse nod. He put his fingers on the metal plates on either side of him, completing the circuit broken by the open door. The letters along the wall flared white-hot. "Now," Julian said. "I'm not really in the mood."

The base of the lantern clicked on the metal floor when I set it down. I took two steps back, signaling compliance with his wishes. Julian was most likely bluffing with his threat to ignite the ward but I didn't see the return on pressing him now. And, judging by the ease with which he had sacrificed one of his soldiers at the barn, he just might not be bluffing. I wasn't about to wager our lives.

Julian nodded to his men and they approached me carefully. The two with Tasers raised their weapons. "Is this really-" That was all I managed. The first pair of darts hit my bare chest and my body locked up. The current from the second hit went right into my brain and switched everything off.

As a means of sowing discord and spreading propaganda, torture has been co-opted by a number of governmental intelligence organizations, imbedding the images and ideas into the mainstream social consciousness. But, like everything dragged into the shallow end of the pool, the practice has lost a great deal of its magico-religious refinements.

While the obvious intent was to break the flesh and Will, torture could also be used to break the soul. Hermetic thought-and the thread runs through most of the Gnostic literature and philosophy-argued there are two aspects of humanity: the gross mortal aspect of the body and the immortal, immutable aspect of the soul. While both were still part of the Ineffable-by whatever name you like to call it, it was that which resided in everything and which everything resided within-it was the body that was cast as the villain. The body dragged the soul down to the world of matter and decay. Only through purification and prurient separation from the decadent and materialistic nature of the body could the soul remember its divine origin.

The Zen Buddhists encapsulated all of this in the simple koan of asking you to remember the face you had before you were born. That was the high road.

Hermeticism-the fragmented thoughts and writings of Hermes Trismegistus-didn't condone torture. The work didn't even mention it. Very few of the old texts do. It was only the black cancer of the Middle Ages that infected esoteric thought with the concept of scourging the flesh-assisted by the whips and devices invented by the Catholic Church during the heyday of the Inquisition.

Breaking a man was an act of subjugation, of bending his Will to the desires of his interrogator. Those who couldn't create, turned to domination. The shortcut of the diabolists. Mankind was always on the lookout for a good shortcut.

The Iron Maiden was one such subjugation tool. A large cabinet topped with a sculpted head of the Madonna, the device had long iron spikes mounted on the inside of the door panels. When it was closed, the poor bastard inside was strategically pierced to ensure maximum non-lethal agony. The victims of the Maiden's embrace would die slowly, in a great deal of pain. Compounded by persistent needling from their interrogators about the need for repentance. Before the blood loss killed them, damning them to the hell reserved for heretics.

Maidens were unwieldy and a nuisance to transport. Few were made and, other than one found in Iraq a few years ago, they've been out of favor for a long time. Which isn't to say that the concept has lost its appeal.

When I woke up from being Tasered again, I found myself inside an Iron Maiden, the porcupine tickle of its spikes against my skin. I tried to not squirm too much as I tried to make sense of my new surroundings.

At the very least, I wasn't in the shipping container any longer.

My wrists were restrained again, held in place by thick leather straps. My bare feet were resting on a cold piece of metal, and I was in a partially reclined position, leaning against a curved chair back. A large breastplate attached to the frame of the chair held me down at this awkward angle. Studded with metal spikes, the interior of the plate was lowered close enough that the points pressed against my flesh. They weren't penetrating. Not yet. As long as I kept still.

Behind me, I could see an insulated cable descending from the ceiling. It split into thick cords terminating in metal posts attached to the peak of the chair. The chair (what I could see of it) was a massive piece of work: heavy oak pieces, worn smooth from years of attention; pitted iron bands wrapping the arms and legs. There were stains on the wood and dark oxidation scars on the metal.

It was an old electric chair, and the purpose of the thick cable suddenly made sense.

What were the odds of me holding still when they flipped the switch and threw a lot of juice into the chair? Not only would I be quaking and baking, but every heaving twitch of my chest would impale me more and more on the spikes of the Maiden.

My own fear was going to get me killed. And, before I thought about it more than that, I tried to redirect my active mind into a meditative state. Om vajrapani hum. One of the bodhisattvas of Mahayana Buddhism was Vajrapani, the angelic Buddha aspect who represented focused action. Om vajrapani hum. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth.

I felt my chest relax. Some of the pressure from the spikes eased, and I could focus on the area beyond the electric chair and its sadistic breastplate.

The room was long and white, a coat of industrial paint on the walls and ceiling. A trio of floor lamps made round pools on the ceiling, the ambient scatter reflecting off the white walls. Directly in front of me was a tall object covered with a dark red velvet cloth.

On my left was another chair much like mine though without the added chest plate. Kat was strapped to the seat. I tried to see behind me, tried to fully comprehend the size of the room, but when I turned my head too far, my chest naturally rose. Kat and I weren't alone; the Chorus felt soul vibrations in the room, but I couldn't place them without letting the Chorus out. It didn't seem like a good idea to start exploring when I was so precariously poised.

"Ah, Mr. Markham." Bernard wandered into my field of vision, coming around from my right. "You've come back."

Closer now than in the shipping container, I got a good look at him. He was well-groomed, wearing a white silk shirt with loose cuffs, expensive shoes, and sharply creased wool pants. His dark hair was cut close to his head in an unassuming style favored by the recent fashion dictates of glam rock stars and the eternal vigilance of Cistercian monks and penitent ascetics. His neat beard subconsciously aped the shorn point of his widow's peak-as above, so below-making his face look like a long spear blade. He had a pair of platinum rings on his right hand-index and ring finger-and on his left wrist was a diamond-studded watch with a revealed mechanism and the inset cutout of a Maltese Cross. He really did look like a European precious metals broker. The Vacheron Constantin watch helped.

"Thanks for inviting me." My voice was full of dust.

"In our earlier discussion, you said your interest lay in seeing how someone interprets the Word and the world." Bernard waited a half second for me to correct him. "I wanted to share my vision with you. I wanted to show you what is possible."

The flicker of his eyes drew my attention to the draped object. It was taller than Bernard, and the red drapery was depressed in the middle and raised at three points along its outer edge. The edge was traced with fine gold needlepoint, an undulating line of arcane symbols too intricate to read from across the room. The base looked to be about four feet wide. I caught myself trying to catalogue and identity the object against my mental inventory of antiquities, but the covering confounded my professional assessment.

"Do I really have to be strapped down for this?" I asked. "Does she?"

Kat stared at the object, the muscles in her throat working. She didn't know either, but she appeared to have an idea.

Julian, wearing a nimbus of translucent fire, stepped up to the back of her chair and placed his hands on her head. Kat jerked away from his touch and he laughed softly. "We want your undivided attention," he said.

The halo of flames about his head was an etheric shadow of his activated Will. A friend to fire, he had the Idea of flame already formed-an active security measure should Kat or I attempt to liberate ourselves. Before we could summon our own fire, he would burn us both.

"All right, so we're a receptive audience," I said. "Do we have to make cooing noises when you show off your toys or is this open to discussion?"

"By all means," Bernard said as he walked over to the shroud and grasped the cloth. "I'm curious as to your opinion." He pulled the fabric off.

Three statues reached toward a central ring, a wide band of polished silver covered with a crawl of arcane script. The statues-each one standing about four feet tall-had the ibis head of the Egyptian god Thoth and androgynous bodies, nothing but smooth stone at their groins. In the center of the silver circle was an articulated sphere made from joined pieces of glass. The sphere reflected none of the light in the room; instead, each plate seemed to exude darkness, shards of black that killed the ambient glitter.

Lightbreaker.

The three figures stood upon a single platform, a sturdy base of hammered bronze. Their lower legs and knees were made of bronze as well, the joints whorled like conch shells. They had no feet, seeming to rise out of the bronze plate. Above the knee, they became brass, extending up to the curved shape of their torsos. Shoulders and arms were like the silver of the ring which they held, and their throats and skulls were made of gold. Their faces and long beaks were black stone. Onyx or obsidian. They had no eyes, no mouths, no features other than the perfect arc of their beaks.

A triptych of hieroglyphic characters was inscribed on their chests. The writing on the silver band looked vaguely familiar, as if it might be related to the pictograms of the Egyptians, but I couldn't recall where I had seen it before.

All in all, an interesting art piece, but nothing that was going to force academe into a flurry of dodgy speculation. I thought it might fetch mid six figures in a quiet sale-maybe a million in a live auction. The style of the figures was definitely Hellenistic-even the orientation of the legs reflected the Kore stance-but due to the strange glyphs and unusual number of the figures-three Thoth figures was an unheard of grouping-dating the piece was out of the question.

The mirrored sphere, though, made all the difference. It floated inside the ring with no visible means of support.