God of Tarot (22 page)

“Ha. The cherry was her maidenhead, that he ruptured. You have led too cloistered a life, and never learned proper vernacular.”

“Oh? He also gave her a chicken without a bone, and a ring without end, and a baby without crying.”

“The boneless chicken was his boneless but nevertheless rigid penis, thrusting through her ring-shaped orifice, producing in due course the baby—who naturally was not crying at the time.”

That was one way of looking at it. “I should have stayed with the stream of the unconscious,” he murmured.

“Oh, yes. That water Arthwaite says flows through the whole deck of the Tarot, starting with the gown of the harlot, yet. What crap!”

Here it went again! “I always thought it was a beautiful concept. How do you manage to see, ah, crap in it?”

“More ways than one, Brother! It is crap in that it is errant nonsense; water symbolizes many things besides the unconscious, and it is ridiculous to pretend that it can only stand for that one thing. But more directly, that euphemism he foists off on his fans—do you really think it is her
gown
that originates the fluid?”

“Well, that may be artistic license, but—”

“Her gown merely covers the real, unmentionable source, which is her body. A woman is a thing of flowing fluids, as I tried to make clear in
my
Seven of Cups. Milk from her tits, and blood from her—”

“Milk and blood are chemically similar,” Brother Paul said quickly. “In fact, chlorophyll, the key to plant metabolism, is also surprisingly close to—”

“Flowing out from her orifices, bathing the whole Tarot in its hot, soupy—”

“Let’s change the subject,” Brother Paul said, not eager to argue the case further. What a case of gynophobia!

“Coming up.”

A dragon appeared. Brother Paul whirled, gripping the sword he discovered at his hip. “That’s the Dragon of Temptation!” he exclaimed. “It belongs in a different cup; I did not invoke it!”

“You must have invoked it, Paul,” Therion said, without alarm. “For
I
did not do the dastardly deed.”

Ha! “I Animated the castle; that was the only cup I emptied!”

Therion smirked.
“You
know that;
I
know that. But does
it
know that?”

Unfunny cliché! But the great Red Dragon of Temptation was charging across the plain. No time now to debate who was responsible; he had to stop it “At least the Knights of the Round Table were mounted,” Brother Paul muttered. “A lance and an armored charger—”

“You have to battle Temptation by yourself,” Therion reminded him. “It has been ever thus.”

So it seemed. Therion wore no armor and carried no weapon; obviously he could not oppose the dragon, and had no intention of trying. Brother Paul retained his chariot armor, although he had lost the chariot itself. So it was up to him.

The dragon had a huge wedge-shaped head from which a small orange flame flickered. No, that was only its barbed tongue. Its two forelegs projected from immediately behind its head, almost like ears, and two small wings sprouted from its neck not far behind, like feathers or hair. It seemed an inefficient design, but so did the design for Tyrannosaurus Rex, on paper. The rest of the monster trailed away into wormlike coils. Only its foreparts possessed a menacing aspect; when this creature retreated, it would be harmless. Which was of course the nature of Temptation, or any other threat.

The dragon was not retreating. It was galumphing directly at him, its serpentine body bouncing like a spring-coil after the awful head.

Brother Paul went out to engage it, his sword shining like Excalibur. Yet he wondered: he considered himself to be a fairly peaceful man, not a warrior; why should he attack a living creature with a brute sword? This wasn’t a living thing; it was an Animated symbol. Still, the matter disconcerted him.

The Dragon of Temptation drew up about two meters away. It glanced contemptuously at him. It had big yellow eyes, and its glare was quite striking. Its red snout was covered with great, hairy green-and-blue warts, and gnarled gray horns projected from its forehead. Its tusks were twisted and coated with slime. Brother Paul wondered idly if it had been mucking about in one of Therion’s gooey cups before coming here.

The barbed tongue flicked about, striking toward Brother Paul like an arrow but stopping short of the target. The small wings flapped slowly back and forth, the thin leathery skin crinkling between the feathered ribs. Brother Paul could not recall ever having seen anything uglier than this.

“Whatsamatter?” the dragon demanded. “Chicken?”

Brother Paul felt a tingle of anger. What right had this filthy thing to call him names? He gripped his sword firmly and stepped forward.

And paused again. This was Temptation—the urge to violence for insufficient cause. So the monster had called him “chicken”; why should he react to the archaic gibe? This was the lowest level of social interaction, and violence was the refuge of incompetence. “I merely wish to visit that castle, for I suspect that the information I need is inside. If you will kindly stand aside, there need be no strife between us.”

“Temptation never stands aside!” the creature snorted. It was very good at speaking while snorting. “You must conquer me before you can complete your mission, chicken.”

“But I don’t want to slay you. I shall be satisfied to pass you by.”

“You
can’t
slay me; I am eternal. You can’t pass me by. In fact, you can’t even fight me; you’re a natural coward. Why don’t you get out of this scene and let the air clear?”

As if he hadn’t been trying to do just that! “I would, if I had no mission to perform. I will, after it is done. Now please stand aside.” Brother Paul strode forward.

The dragon held its ground. “Temptation cannot be bluffed,” it said.

Brother Paul refused to strike it with the sword without some more definite provocation. Though he knew it to be a mere symbol, its semblance of a living, intelligent (if ugly) entity was too strong.

He sidled around it—and the dragon was before him again. It had jumped magically to block him. He changed direction again—and it blocked him again.

So that was the way of it; the thing was trying to provoke him into striking. And if he struck first, he would have succumbed to Temptation.

This time Brother Paul walked straight into the dragon. And bounced off its warty face.

Therion still stood a little apart, watching with morbid interest. “It didn’t bite me,” Brother Paul said, surprised.

“Temptation does not attack physically,” Therion explained. “It merely offers a more intriguing alternative. Still, it must be conquered.”

Brother Paul failed to see anything intriguing in the dragon. He tried again to avoid it, and failed again. He was becoming more than mildly angry, and felt the urge simply to smash the thing out of his way, but he suppressed the impulse. Instead, he sheathed his sword and tried to heave Temptation out of the way with his hands. But the dragon was too heavy and low-slung to budge. “You can’t conquer me by halfhearted measures,” it said with a phenomenal yard-long sneer.

Brother Paul found himself sweating. Apparently this thing
could
balk him if he refused to fight it directly. Yet he remained reluctant to do so. He turned to Therion. “You’re my guide. What do you recommend?”

“You must find common ground on which to meet it. Temptation assumes many guises. Maybe one will suit you.”

Brother Paul considered this. Many guises—could that be literal here? Physical? “I don’t care to take the sword to you, beast,” Brother Paul told it. “Yet you must be moved. Isn’t there some less devastating way to determine the issue?”

“I’ll meet you on any front, chicken,” the dragon said. Part of its sneer remained, having failed to clear the far end of its long mouth.

“How about barehanded? Can you meet me in human form?”

The dragon vanished. In its place stood a man, huge and muscular, with yellow eyes, a red face, blue horns and a warty nose. And that lingering sneer. “What say now, coward?” the demon demanded.

“I say that if Jacob could wrestle with the Angel of the Lord, I may wrestle with Temptation,” Brother Paul replied. He felt better now. This was a judo situation, and he was competent. He could subdue his opponent without hurting him.

“I don’t know no Jacob!”

” ‘And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.’ It’s from the Bible, the first book of Moses, called Genesis, chapter thirty-two.” Brother Paul paused, expecting the demon to flinch at the Biblical reference, but was disappointed. But of course this was not a demon of the infernal regions, but the demon that was within every man; it would be conversant with the holy as well as the unholy. Except that it did not seem to know about this particular episode.

“Oh,
that
Jacob!” the demon said sneeringly. “He was a pretty puny angel, not to be able to beat a mortal man. In fact he would have lost if he hadn’t struck a low blow.”

Brother Paul remembered. ” ‘And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of Joint, as he wrestled with him.’ But that sounds more like a leglock than a low blow—leverage on the thigh to throw out the hip joint.”

“The ‘hollow of the thigh’ is a euphemism for the crotch,” the demon insisted. “The angel popped Jacob’s crotch.”

“Perhaps so,” Brother Paul admitted. “It is a debatable point. Yet further along it is referred to as ‘the sinew which shrank’ and since he did sire a good family—”

“Not after he wrestled with the angel!”

Brother Paul spread his hands. He had thought his combat with the demon-dragon would be physical, but he was glad to settle for this Biblical arena instead. He had done a lot of Bible reading in the past few years, being fascinated with it as both religion and history. He was also intrigued by the continuity of the Bible, in the forms of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. “At any rate, the Angel did not defeat him, and he won from it a blessing: the name of Israel, meaning ‘A Prince of God,’ and founded the tribe of Israel.”

“And his daughter Dinah got raped,” the demon said, smiling as if with enjoyment.

This creature reminded Brother Paul strongly of Therion. He glanced back, but Therion was still standing there. On second thought, Therion would not approve of rape, not from consideration for the woman, but because he seemed to feel that the sexual act was a male sacrifice bestowed on the unworthy female. Why force this gift on a mere woman? “Rape is too strong a term,” Brother Paul continued. “The young man was honorable, and begged to be allowed to marry Dinah formally, and even accepted the requirement of circumcision although he was a Gentile prince.”

“Yeah, they covered up the record,” the demon said. “Tried to make it out a good fuck in the end, so they wouldn’t have to stone him for rape or her for acquiescence. A lot of juicy dirt got censored out of the Good Book.”

Brother Paul started to make an angry retort, then realized that this was merely another aspect of the battle. Temptation fought with concepts as well as words, and truth was irrelevant. If distortion and vernacular caused Brother Paul to lose his temper, the victory would go to the dragon.

Indeed, these slights on Biblical accuracy were ones that Brother Paul himself had pondered privately. He liked to comprehend the full meaning of what he read, and much of the Bible remained tantalizingly opaque. Jacob’s encounter with the Angel of God—there was an enigma! Why would an angel
want
to wrestle with a mortal man, and why would anything as pure of motive as an angel ever yield to the temptation? Yet Brother Paul knew he had to challenge the Bible with extreme caution, for it was a document that generations of scholars had not been able to question with certainty. Indeed, archaeological evidence continued to support the legitimacy of Biblical statements. Who was he, a minor novice in a minor Order, to set his puny judgment against the accumulated wisdom and revelation of the ages?

So he must vanquish Temptation here, too. It was not his place to debate any aspect of Scripture in public. It had been a mistake to invoke it here. What he did was his own responsibility; it should not be justified by reference to the Bible. That was a perversion, to adapt the Holy Book to individual purposes— though so many scoffers and special interests did.

“Enough of this,” Brother Paul said. “If you will not let me pass, I must apply leverage.”

The demon laughed. It was taller than Brother Paul, and heavier, and possessed a better physique. But how powerful was it, actually? Temptation could not be measured by external appearances.

Brother Paul stepped toward the castle, and of course the demon moved instantly to block him. This time Brother Paul stepped into it, shoved against the demon’s right shoulder, and used his own right foot to sweep the demon’s left foot out and forward. It was the
o uchi gari
, or “big inner reap” of judo.

The demon fell on the sand, as though its foot had slipped on a banana peel. Brother Paul stepped over it and resumed his march toward the castle. That had been amazingly easy!

And the demon stood before him again. “Very clever, mortal. But Temptation is not so readily put behind you. You could throw me a thousand times, and I would still be before you, for no single act of will defeats me.”

Brother Paul stepped into it again. The demon braced against the maneuver that had brought it down before, but this time Brother Paul caught its right arm with both of his own and turned into
ippon
seoi
nage
, the one-armed shoulder throw. The demon’s momentum carried it forward, and Brother Paul heaved it over his own shoulder to land on its back in the sand, hard.

This time Brother Paul followed it down and applied a neck lock. A simple choke would have cut off the demon’s air, causing it to suffocate in a few minutes; this was a blood strangle that would deprive the creature’s brain of oxygen, knocking it out in seconds.