Heartland-The Second Book of the Codex of Souls (50 page)

I tilted the Cup and poured the water out.

"What are you doing?" Husserl demanded.

"It's not my future," I said.

"But it is," he said. "You can't change it."

"I can refuse to participate," I said.

He laughed. "What will that prove? That you want to be martyred?" He pointed at the Cup. "We're at the nexus of life, you idiot. You can't empty it."

He was right. The Cup was still full. I poured it out a second time and when I righted it, the chalice was still full.

"Give it to me," he said. "Witness me, and I will grant you whatever is in my power to do so. Defy me, and I will have any one of the men outside kill you and take your place." He smiled. "I am sure I can find a few volunteers."

He had a point there. I looked at the swirling waters of the Grail. What was my choice? Be party to his future, or be removed from it. Life, or death. What other terms are there ever with any choice, really?

Every moment, in every day, we make that choice, don't we? Do we continue to live, or do we give up? Do we take this next breath, look toward the next second of our lives, or do we shut our eyes and let it slip away? We no longer care to See; we don't want to Know; we are no longer willing to participate in this mystery. Our eyes will not record existence.

Hildegard's vision swam into my head—the one Vivienne had shown me, the one I had thrown into the Cup where it had dissolved. The angel atop the mountain of iron filled with windows and souls. The man who was nothing but eyes, staring in every direction, and the child who had been raised to Heaven where he was allowed to See of the Divine.

I had thought it represented the Ascension Event in Portland. I had thought I had been the man filled with eyes—the voices of the Chorus. But it was all a matter of interpretation, wasn't it? Why couldn't it be a vision of this moment? Why couldn't Husserl, with his scrying glasses, be the man filled with eyes. Why couldn't I be the one who had been raised up. The man who had been made into a child again.

Rede, mi fili.

Go back, my son.

I had been given another chance. I had to find my way home. I had to earn the right to be raised up again.

I was the child.

Husserl was the specter filled with eyes, looking in too many directions at once. Too many echoes. Too many reflections. Too many choices.
I am sure I can find a few volunteers.

That was either an empty threat or he truly didn't need me. If so, then why bother with me at all?

Because it came down to a choice. To a matter of belief. Was the future his or mine? Or none of ours? Was it fixed because he had Seen it, or could there be an alternative? One based on a different
interpretation
.

He had Seen the future, but he needed me to believe in his vision of it. He needed me to accept it as the truth. Otherwise, it was just a dream, a mad vision born from his brain, a vision without anchor, without another soul to give it meaning. That was the crux of Hildegard's pain, wasn't it? She needed someone to acknowledge her visions, to hear her story, and to tell her that it could be true. Someone needed to believe.

I raised the Grail and flung the contents in Husserl's face. The fire in his glasses went out, snuffed out by sheets of falling rain, and his face went pale. "What are you—" he started, and then he shook his head. "No," he said. "No. No. No."

There was water on the inside of his glasses too. Water that disturbed his vision, that broke up the purity of his scrying mirror. He was seeing in too many directions now. Too many futures. Too many choices.

He ripped the glasses off his face. "No," he shouted. "I have Seen—"

I picked up the Spear and drove it into his throat, splitting his voice box. He gargled and squirmed around the point, his glasses falling from numb fingers. The light stayed fierce in his eyes for a moment, fighting to keep his vision alive. Until I leaned against the Spear and shoved it further in. Back, and up, into his brain.

The Land trembled as he collapsed, and the calm surrounding the altar vanished. The weight of the Crown—so very near his own head—came down on mine instead. Gasping at the immense weight, I let go of the Spear and reached for the Grail.

Marielle woke up first. Her eyelids fluttered a few times, and I watched as she came back to herself. Pain crossed her face, leaving lines in her forehead and at the corners of her eyes. I recalled staring at her face in bed that morning long ago when we had met at the dawn of the new aeon. I could have stared at it the whole day, and now, I felt time slow to a crawl as I watched her wake once again. She was a beautiful woman, and for a little while, I had been happy with her. For a little while, I had dreamed that I would be the one to stay with her.

Antoine groaned, and his hand feebly crawled toward his throat. The cut was there, but covered in a heavy scab that threatened to crack open again if he moved too much.

They were alive because I had wanted them to be, but they weren't healed. Not yet.

The Cup sat between my feet, and I waited for them to be aware of both me and the Grail, and the heavy weight of the Land, unrequited. The Coronation, unfinished.

"Now, the way I understand this ceremony is that someone needs to recognize the one who takes the oath. Is that right? Which means I only need one of you to be my Witness."

I watched their reactions: Marielle didn't look away; Antoine lowered his eyes.

"It may seem a bit brutal of me to heal you enough that you could attend to my choice, doesn't it? I mean, you were both busy dying here, and I could have just let one of you go, and skipped this drama. Right? That would have been kind of me." I leaned forward. "But, really? Do you think you deserve such kindness from me right now?"

"No." Antoine's voice was a gravely rasp.

"You really hate me, don't you?" I asked him.

His gaze flickered up toward me for an instant, and then slid away. "I'm not going to give you that satisfaction," he murmured. "Just end it, and be done."

"That would imply that what I want is to break your spirit and take away everything you ever wanted," I replied. "But, Antoine,
my friend,
I am not you. Even though we have been told—time and again—that we are the same." I heard Marielle's breath hiss in her throat.

"I know what you tried to do at Batofar," I said to her. "I know what you tried to take. And I know what you did to Vivienne. Here—
nunc
—I Know you, little sister."

I took a step back, taking a moment to let go of the steam building in my voice. "Frankly, I'm not all that happy with either of you being my Witness. I would have had Husserl do it, but he couldn't let go of his own vision. What about you two?" I watched them carefully as I crouched down and picked up the Grail. "Still scheming to take it from me?"

I had already drunk my fill and had my body restored, and they both watched—Antoine more greedily than Marielle—as I used my right hand to lift the Cup to my lips. The magick of the Land, flowing through the Grail, had made me almost whole again. I had been purified to be a ready vessel for the spirit of the Land. The Hierarch had to be whole. My right hand was still gone, but the gauntlet had become solidly fused to my wrist now. Once I took the oath, the Land would complete my transformation, filling the gauntlet with bone and flesh.

"Do you remember what you said to me when we were in Portland?" I asked Antoine as I set the Grail down. "We were standing beside the Willamette River, before I went back to face Bernard. You pointed out that I wasn't supposed to be there. I was—what did you say?" When he didn't leap to answer, I filled it in for him. "I was the 'dead man lost to us all.' Do you remember?"

His tongue wet his lips, and he nodded.

"It's true," I said. "And I should have listened to you then."

"Michael—" Marielle started, but I stopped her voice with a flick of the Chorus.

"There needs to be a Witness," I said. "And there is nothing you can say to me that can change my mind." I stood, and waved a hand toward the back of the church. "I could go out there and ask for a volunteer, but this choice,
my choice
—doesn't need to be that complicated."

I smiled at her. "It's pretty easy, actually. You two need to come to a consensus. One of you is going to be the Witness, and you have to decide who that person will be."

"Why?" Antoine found his voice. "Why should we choose which one of us dies?"

I shook my head. "I didn't say anything about killing one of you."

Uncertainty flickered across his face, and for a second, Antoine was naked before me, and I could see through his flesh. I looked on his soul, and there was no satisfaction in Knowing him because I realized, as I saw the light of his spirit, that he wasn't that much of a stranger in the end.

In the woods, lost, a small child, naked before the light and shadow, looking up.
Why?
had been his question too.

"My choice," I said with a little sadness, "is to reject both of you. I don't want the Crown. My choice is to be free of the responsibility of being a Watcher, and of being Watched. In a moment, you two will be all alone here, and then the only thread that you can twist will be the one next to you."

Marielle closed her eyes finally and lowered her head.

What is gone is gone.

The Chorus flew into the studio like an owl, darted around my head, and then left again, returning to their watch post on the roof of the barn.
Visitors
. A single car, coming slowly down the old road from the highway. Seeing the landscape around the farm through their psychic radar, I watched the sedan approach. Two souls: one in front, one in back; I recognized them both, though they had been changed by the coming of the spring.

I wandered over to the sink by the window to wash my brush, and looked out at the yard. The flowers were blooming in the old field; it was starting to look like I remembered it. Though there were no geese and no little girl to chase them.

The car rolled up to the main house, and Marielle got out of the back. Antoine stayed in the car. Driver's seat. The significance of their positions in the vehicle was not lost on me.

I had finished drying my hands by the time Marielle walked across the yard to the barn. It hadn't housed horses since she had gone off to school, and Philippe had turned it into a makeshift studio, complete with a small furnace for glass in one corner.

Someday I might try my hand at glass, to see how much of Cristobel I still had. Though judging by the way I was making a mess out of the watercolors, I was going to be a dismal glass blower. Probably just as well; the artist's life was a little too sedentary for me anyway.

When I had first arrived at the old farmhouse, I had spent a few days cleaning out the main house, getting it ready for habitation again. Philippe hadn't been here for a few years, and the whole place, while still sealed from the elements and curious locals with too much wine in their bloodstreams, had become filled with dead air and ghosts. It had needed a good cleansing.

I had then turned my attention to the barn and had discovered the canvases and the glass-blowing tools. A memory of Cristobel's initiation had given me an idea, and after a few days of poking through books in the extensive library, I had formulated a spell.

I hadn't taken the oath, in the end, and the Land had been generous enough to let me go with the healing magick of the Grail still upon me. My right hand was still gone, and the gauntlet was still attached to my wrist. I could have had Nuriye undo her magick and remove it, but I had wanted to get out of Paris. I had wanted to put all of my past behind me.

Besides, the daughters were undoubtedly busy. Vivienne had managed to breach the wards enough to allow access to the roof of Tour Montparnasse, but it was going to take a little longer, I suspected, to free them entirely from that building. They didn't need me underfoot.

The spell I had in mind required a lot of heat, and the glass-blowing furnace turned out to be perfectly suitable for my needs. After two nights of incantations and preparations, I had gone into Carcassone and stocked up on raw meat and fish. I was going to need a lot of protein afterward.

The glass-blowing furnace had come back to life with some reluctance, as if it was unwilling to serve a new master, but I stroked it in the right way and it slowly became a white-hot core. The Chorus had shielded my eyes and my flesh, and a heavy apron—inscribed with a number of seals and sigils—protected me from the brunt of the heat as the forge melted the gauntlet down. I shaped a new hand from the magick fire and bound it to the liquid smoke of Cristobel's rosary beads. I stole marrow and bone from my feet and made new fingers, I sloughed flesh off my thighs and ass to make new skin, and I kept John ab Indagine's chiromantic drawing as the foundation of my new palm.

The lifeline went all the way around the base of my palm, twice around my wrist, and ran up my forearm and bicep to my armpit. A tiny tattoo of black beads.

Afterward, for almost a week, all I had done was eat and sleep while the Chorus helped my body grow back the raw materials I had taken to make the hand. It was still a bit stiff, and the flesh was new and pink. There were no scars on the knuckles. I had wiped away my past.

Marielle knocked once before she entered the studio. She was wearing a green cashmere sweater and a pair of old jeans that were supple in their familiarity and comfort. She had dyed the color out of her hair; it was solid black again, as it had been when she was younger. Her father's signet ring glittered on her left thumb. It was clearly a man's ring, but she wore it well. It drew your attention, but not because it was an incongruity, but because it was an anchor. It grounded her, announcing how she was the rock upon which all the world turned.

"Salve, mi soror,"
I said, tipping my head forward a touch. My sister.

"Salve, mi frater,"
she replied. The slight of my honorific wasn't lost on her and her reply came somewhat awkwardly.

"I wondered when you might come," I said.