The Shotgun Arcana (47 page)

“One thing I like about your God,” Huang said. “He’s very still. Are you sure he’s not Chinese?”

Bick sighed and held out his cup. Huang poured more tea.

“Not to insult or belittle,” Huang said. “But we look at existence very differently than you, my friend. You see rules: rights and wrongs, good and evil. We see experience and understanding and growing from those. Behavior is neither inherently good nor evil, it simply is. Life is duality. We are good and evil, why should not our creator possess the same duality? Why only hold one image of such a vast and powerful creator as absolute? Embrace them both. Your people judge far too much, Malachi.”

“And where does that leave us, exactly?” Bick said. “Wandering the desert with no map to guide us? Wander left, wander right, wherever a fickle god points?”

“If you walk the desert long enough, you will know it better than any map could ever show you,” Huang said. “Inherently, our worlds have one thing in common, Biqa: All of us, immortal and man, have been given the freedom to act as we choose—to be—and then we must face the consequences of those actions, of being.

“This world is our stage. Mortals play the starring roles while you and I and our ilk are behind the curtains, doing as we see fit, wondering if the audience approves of our actions as much as the actors wonder.”

“An occasional ‘bravo’ or catcall would be most appreciated,” Bick said.

“Such actions might influence the performance,” Huang said.

“Huang, you are one of the most moral beings I have ever known,” Bick said. “How can you tell me there is no good or evil in creation, after all we have seen? What Raziel is about is evil. It destroys lives, disrupts the play; it is malicious harm for its own sake. How can such acts be justified, be seen as anything but evil?”

Huang sighed and stroked his beard. “It is difficult to explain to you or to anyone not inside such thought, or born to it, my friend, but I will try. The nature of mortals is wild, undisciplined—like a child or an animal. That is why it is called ‘a nature.’ It comes from nature, from natural forces at work upon the individual, from the individual seeking desire with no concept or care for the cost.

“Do animals commit evil? They kill without mercy or thought to fulfill a need. Some kill for sport, or acquire a taste for human flesh and blood. Are they evil in what they do? Children can be agents of chaos; they can do great harm with no true understanding of their actions and their implications. Does that make a child evil?”

“They are outside of sin,” Bick said. “One must have awareness of one’s own actions to commit sin.”

“What you call awareness, we call teaching and enforcement. A man becomes moral through discipline and experience.”

“So you think we need to educate and rein in Zeal and he will become a moral man?” Bick said. “Good luck with that.”

“No,” Huang said. “The closest approximation to true evil is losing control of the spirit, allowing it to run roughshod over your life and others, to rut in the self at any cost. It is the ultimate expression of selfishness and attachment.

“Raziel, like you and I, is a being more of spirit than flesh and to lose control of that spirit makes him very close to irredeemable. There is a small chance he may learn from this and change, but when the spirit runs unchecked, madness and death follow. No, Malachi, I understand why you oppose him, but do not think that your whole existence is invalid due to the actions of one misguided individual.”

“God created all this,” Bick said.

“Yes,” Huang said, “quite a few of them.”

“Yet He does nothing,” Bick said. “He watches silently, and He allows sickness and death, injustice and cruelty and horrible caprice, and He does nothing.”

“To act,” Huang said, “would be to violate the very definition of free will. Has it ever occurred to you, my dear friend, that the carpenter built this house from the inside out, and did not give himself a key to the door, so that he could not tinker and meddle with the design? Perhaps he left his tools within, allowing the inhabitants of the home to do as they will?”

“God is omnipotent,” Bick said. “He has no limits. He could act if He wished to do so.”

“If He is truly all-powerful,” Huang said, “then He must have the power to limit Himself.”

“Leave it to you to make me feel more at ease and more confused all at the same time,” Bick said.

They both laughed.

“Thank you, Huang,” Bick said. “You are a good friend.”

“And an excellent enemy as well,” Huang said, and smiled.

“Even better,” Bick said, nodding. “I have a plan for dealing with Zeal. It’s dangerous and it may backfire. I need your help. If it fails there is danger for you and your people.”

“If Zeal is not stopped, then my people and I are in danger anyway, so I see no choice but to help you,” Huang said. “Allow me to summon us more tea and you can tell me all about your plan.”

The Ace of Wands

Jim and Constance reached the end of Dry Well and Jim turned Promise east, threading through the sagebrush and the large, old homes at the base of Methuselah Hill to pick up Old Rock Road, which ran through the narrow valley between Methuselah and Rose Hills. Once they cleared the hills on either side of them, the scrubland stretched out ahead of them and the morning sun painted their view in brilliant golds, oranges and reds. Jim urged Promise on and the brown mustang began a smooth gallop across the desolate beauty that was the border of the desert. Constance’s arms held him tighter and he felt her face on his back, warm, like the sun. Promise took the two youths deeper into the savage beauty of the wilderness, their hearts thudding in time to the horse’s hooves.

Constance loved the feel of the sun on her face and the acceleration of the horse. Jim was an excellent rider and she loved the bond between him and his horse that she could feel easily; it was more than love, it was respect. It gave her just another reason to like and trust Jim Negrey. It was another reason to dread and hate what was coming.

“You’re going to cut over to the southern road into town to save time,” Constance said. It wasn’t a question but more like a statement of fact, and she said it with a great deal of apprehension, almost dread in her voice.

“Yeah,” Jim said. “My thought exactly, good guess.”

“I was hoping I was wrong,” she said. The cryptic response troubled Jim. He focused on the trail.

They rode through the edges of the 40-Mile Desert, bore northeast and picked up a dry, rutted trail that eventually became a proper road out Golgotha. It was after eleven and Promise was making excellent time. Constance was holding onto his waist and her face rested occasionally on his back. She tapped him on the shoulder and he turned his ear to listen.

“Remember I told you I dreamed about this,” she said. ‘Well, I was praying this part didn’t happen this way, but it is. The not-so-good part is coming up, Jim, and you need to be ready. The people we are about to meet are lying to you. They want to kill us, torture us.”

“What?” Jim said. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Constance said, “I just saw it in the dream.”

“Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me sooner?” Jim said. “We could’ve changed it, not come this way, got help.”

Constance squeezed him tight and held on.

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me,” she said, “but I know if I try to ignore the dreams or change them, then worse things happen to everyone. All we can do is try to survive past the end of the dream, and then we can do whatever we need to.”

Up ahead, the dark shapes of horsemen huddled on the road in sharp contrast to the bright desolation of the desert. Jim began to slow Promise as they neared. Four men, looking like U.S. soldiers.

“I can cut off the road, now,” Jim said.

“No!” Constance said. “Not yet, please, Jim. It will be worse if you do!”

Jim reached back and patted her head as best he could. “Okay,” he said. “It’s all right, we’ll make it through. Don’t you worry.”

They were closer now. Jim noticed something wasn’t right. The men dressed like soldiers, sat in the saddle like soldiers and cradled their rifles like soldiers, but they had no unit or rank insignia and they flew no banner or flag. There were a few tents off the road and a civilian tent as well. From the sparse number of shelters, it looked like only this small patrol was present here. He turned his lapel over to hide his badge.

He felt Constance shift and slide behind him. Her arms slid away from his waist. She leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss on his cheek.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

“Don’t suppose you had any dreams with me in it since this one, have you?” Jim said.

Promise came to a halt about twenty-five feet from the four riders.

“Morning,” Jim said, nodding to the grim-faced riders. “Is there a reason you’re blocking the road?”

“Where you two headed, boy?” the lead rider asked.

“Virginia City,” Jim said. “Our Granny lives over there. My sister and me, we live over by Golgotha. We’re on our way to see her with a basket of goodies.”

Constance smacked him hard in the ribs and Jim couldn’t help but smile. “Is there a problem, sir?”

“Golgotha, huh?” the leader said. “You two are going to have to climb down off your horse. Now.”

“What’s wrong, sir?” Jim said. He patted Promise’s neck, readying the horse to bolt. Constance, on the back of Promise, smiled at the soldiers, making sure to put the proper amount of vacuous fear in her look to insure they wouldn’t remotely consider her of consequence. “We’ll just be on our way. Thank you kindly, sir,” Jim said.

“A moment,” a hollow, muffled voice said. “Who have we here?”

Jim and Constance turned to see a man walking away from the tents toward them. He was slender and dressed in a vest and a well-made suit, a bit too much for the desert, even in late fall. He wore white gloves, like a servant might, and his face was covered by a long wooden mask that looked like it belonged to an Indian medicine man, or from one of the stories about the Dark Continent. The eyes of the mask were large and empty in the shadows of the ascendant sun.

“Two children from Golgotha, sir,” the leader said. “We were about to send them up to you.”

Jim and Constance could hear the man’s labored breathing from ten feet away. It wasn’t heat or poor health, it was excitement. The masked man’s white hands clinched and unclenched eagerly as he regarded the two youths. Constance could feel his eyes burning into her flesh from behind the shadows and wood. Jim turned Promise, ready to bolt, but he knew the soldiers’ rifles could cut them down from a quarter mile away.

The lead rider looked to the masked man and Jim knew it was all going south. He could smell the crazy off the man in the mask. Everything became silent in the desert. The wind tumbled and spun between the riders, kicking up the dust of the road. Jim took a deep breath and prepared. He saw his sister, Lottie, and told her he loved her; his throat was dry and it was hard to swallow. He wished Mutt was here, or Jon Highfather. He remembered the promise he made to Maude about Constance, and his mind calmed and cleared.

The man in the mask cocked his head and clinched his gloved hands to his chest silently. “Bring them into the tent. Restrain them. If they resist, kill the boy but please, by all means, I want the girl in as pristine a condition as possible.”

Jim flipped his lapel and drew his father’s revolver. He used his legs to turn Promise and drive the little mustang to close the gap into the circle of riders, where their rifles would be a disadvantage.

“Deputy! Drop your guns!” Jim shouted.

Jim took bead on the lead rider and fired as the man was trying to aim with the rifle in the tight circle. Jim switched to the next rider and fired again; that man had already fired and the bullet buzzed past Jim’s ear. Jim readied himself for the impact of the third and fourth riders’ bullets. They had time, by now, to get off shots. Something flew past his face and he turned to the third rider, to see him clutching at a thin throwing knife buried deep into his throat, blood gushing from his mouth, the rifle falling from his hands. Jim glanced back to see Constance snap her hand again, like a magician summoning a card, and a second blade appeared in the eye of the fourth rider, who tumbled from his horse, instantly dead.

There was a sharp, deep ache in Jim’s right leg and he saw the masked man had driven a large steel ice pick up to the handle in Jim’s thigh. Blood gushed, soaking his jeans. The masked man had an ice pick in his other hand as well and was preparing to drive it into Promise’s neck. Jim felt darkness closing in on him as his lifeblood gushed out. He tried to swing his pistol around to shoot the masked man in the strange empty face of the wooden mask before the madman could kill his horse, but it was hard to make his arm and hand work.

Suddenly Constance was there flying off the back of Promise and tackling the masked man. The girl and the man tumbled and rolled in the dust beside the road. Jim struggled to stay in the saddle, to stay awake; he clung to Promise’s neck and tried to keep his eyes open as blood streamed down his leg.

Constance rolled up off the ground and into a hopping, aggressive stance. The masked man scrambled to his feet quickly. He was wiry and fast; he held the large ice pick like a blade and slowly worked to circle the girl.

“Well, aren’t you children just full of surprises,” the masked man said, his voice muffled and breathless in excitement. “I do hope the whole town is as sporting. You have something of a reputation to uphold after all.”

Constance stopped and allowed the masked man to move almost behind her. As he lunged quickly at the spot between her shoulder blades, she spun and landed a powerful kick to his upper chest. The man flew back, staggered by the power of the blow. He regained his footing and, tossing the ice pick to his other hand, charged and pressed the girl, swinging the huge steel needle back and forth, attempting to slash her. Constance ducked under and around his blows, moving in to strike at one of the nerve clusters her mother taught her would drop this man, and then she could focus on helping keep Jim alive.