Treasure of Light (The Light Trilogy) (8 page)

A soft soothing voice swirled out of the gold. “What did God say, Rachel, when you asked him why the universe suffers so?”

“Who … who are you?”

“What did He say?”

“He told me I wasn’t worthy to ask. He asked me where I was when he laid the foundations of the universe.”

A tired sigh fluttered around her on saffron wings. “And if you could bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion, I’ll wager.”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Oh, it’s his standard rebuttal. A weak appeal to authority.”

“He told me the spinning patterns of chaos give him great pleasure.”

“And what did you say?”

“I… I told him
Aktariel
was right. I told him it would be better if we were never born than to live in misery all our lives.”

“There are things we can do to end the misery.” A hand of flame descended, stroking her hair with comforting fingers. “Rachel, Rachel, last of the sefira. Will you help me stop the suffering? Together, we can.”

“But… What is that? A sefira? I read about it in Middoth’s journal in the polar chambers.”

“It’s a vessel. A vessel of pure Light.”

Terror tightened at the base of her throat. Why did that kind, soothing voice suddenly sound so familiar?
“Who
are
you?”

“Someone who loves you. I’ve loved you and waited for you for uncounted millennia.”

“I don’t understand.”

A roar of thunder vibrated through the golden womb. Cannon fire? The civil war? Rachel shuddered.

“I’m sorry, Rachel. You have to wake up now. Jeremiel needs you desperately. We have to hurry.”

Jeremiel? For a single blessed moment her heart soared like an eagle on the wind.
“Jeremiel? He’s all right?”

“For the moment. But he won’t be if you don’t wake up soon.”

“Why?”

“He’s in a lot of trouble.”

The void moved, swirling like topaz fire. Her leaden eyelids fluttered open, lashes covered with ice. Prismatic reflections sparkled, faces broken into crystal facets, like seeing through a kaleidoscope. A thousand amber eyes stared down, singularly gentle. She let herself drown in the warmth she found there.

The ground shook.

“We must hurry, Rachel. I’m sorry.”

The golden void dissolved like clouds in hot winds. She jerked awake, panting, shouting,
“The War! Ornias!”

She tried to sit up and found herself staring into the glimmering amber eyes of Aktariel. She froze.
Not a dream.
… He had her cradled to his bosom. The hood of his blue cloak ruffled softly in the wind penetrating the ice cave. Within the hood, his face shone a brilliant gold, handsome features seemingly chiseled from light.

“Leave me alone!”
She shoved out of his grasp, scrambling madly on hands and knees to get away. Dear God, this bright alien was terrifyingly real. How could that be?
Am I losing my mind?

“Rachel, we must talk.”

She pressed back against the far wall. Her white weather-suit screeched with every movement, ice cracking off to tinkle against the cave floor. The temperature had to be eighty below zero, though her body still felt warm where he’d held her.

“No! I read Middoth’s journals, I know you misled and killed him! And you killed Adom!”

In a fluid graceful motion, he braced a hand on the floor and got to his feet. She couldn’t catch her breath. In the gleam cast by his body, the walls glittered as though crusted with diamonds. “I made a mistake with Middoth.”

“You made mistakes with everyone!
They’re all dead!
Everyone you’ve ever used—”

“Yes, I’ve made mistakes. The major one being that I should have given Middoth a
Mea,
so he could challenge God himself. That’s why I gave you one. Don’t you see? I’ve tried very hard not to make any mistakes with you.”

She reached up to touch the dull gray ball that hung from the golden chain around her neck. When Adom had first given her the
Mea,
it had glowed with such glaring blue light, it had been hard to look at directly. “But… Adom gave it to me.”

Aktariel shook his head. “No. I just didn’t want him to tell you where it came from. I was afraid it might hinder your use of the device. And I wanted you to know the truth firsthand.”

Anger and confusion swelled to suffocate her. “How many dupes in the past believed that only to discover on their deathbeds that you’d toyed with them as cruelly as a cat does with a mouse before the kill?” Gauging the distance to the exit, she vacillated. Outside, starlight plated the ice cliffs in silver. Wind howled, throwing snow like sparkling lances at the dark heavens. “Middoth wrote that you’d stolen all the
Meas.
That you’d—”

“True. I did.”

She inhaled sharply. He sounded so calm, so chillingly matter-of-fact, as though confessing to a cold-blooded murder that he only vaguely remembered committing. “If you’re so anxious to have people face God themselves, why not spread them around?”

“Because …” He clenched his fists tightly, as if to control an emotional outburst. “Rachel, most people in the past who’ve used the
Mea
have been weak, simple fools, easily influenced. When they went to talk to God, He had no trouble bending them to His will. Believers when they left, they were fanatics when they returned.” He shoved his hands deep in the pockets of his blue cloak and eyed her askance. “I had to counteract His propaganda. And … I had other reasons.”

“Then why did you give me one?”

“I bet everything on the hope that when you faced Him you’d be angry and desperate enough to ask the right questions. And you did. That’s why He locked the gate to you. The
Mea
you’re wearing is dead. That’s why it doesn’t glow anymore.”

In a gentle loverlike gesture, he opened his glowing arms, reaching out to her. Against the shimmering background of ice, he seemed a magnificent angelic sculpture of gleaming gold. She backed farther away, edging for the cave entrance.

“Rachel, listen to me. There are some things I cannot do. You think of me as being like God, but I’m not. Chaos has clear, distinct patterns. I can’t—”

“They why can’t you predict and change them?”

“Because I wasn’t standing there when Epagael established the initial conditions of this universe—though Lord knows I
should
have been. Unless one knows those conditions, one can never truly predict chaotic turbulence. Patterns that were set in motion eons ago are too strong for me to alter—except in minor ways. Occasionally, I can add an element of nonlinearity and reshape certain parameters. And I can set new ones in motion. But Adom’s path had been determined long ago.” Forlornly, he murmured, “Just as Moshe’s had and Yeshwah’s and Sinlayzan’s. Though I tried to help them, too. But they’d been forsaken by God before I descended into the void.”

Angrily, she accused, “So all the Old Stories are wrong? You’re really a saint?”

He shook both fists futilely. “No, not a saint. A prisoner! A tool, just as you are! We are all pawns in Epagael’s cruel game.
But if you’ll help me, if you’ll only—”

He took three quick steps toward her and she screamed, “No! I just want to go home and live with my daughter in peace. Leave me alone!”

Aktariel’s blue cloak waffled in the wind penetrating the cave entrance. “Rachel, please, we must discuss Tikkun and Jeremiel. What happens on Tikkun will determine the fate of this universe. If we don’t plan—”

“NO!”

She shoved past him, ducking out of the cave to run madly along the base of the towering white cliff. Starlight turned the wind-sculpted world into a pewter and black painting, throwing her shadow like an amorphous giant over the bluff.

“Rachel?” He called from somewhere behind, voice carried away by the wind. “Rachel, you’ll freeze to death out here! It’s a hundred below zero.
And Jeremiel needs you!
He’ll be looking for you. You have to stay near the cave!”

An amber glow fluttered like a thing alive over the rough-hewn parapet. She stifled a cry of fear and turned in the opposite direction, climbing a rocky slope to escape him. Cold blue shadows clung to the hollows. The words about Jeremiel were certainly false. He knew nothing of her location. How could he? She’d left Seir with Adom only hours ago. No one knew where she’d gone—except Ornias. A prickle of terror touched her spine.

For an eternal time, she just climbed and ran, until at last, she dragged herself to the top of an icy plateau. Wind hurled itself out of the silvered blackness, shoving her back and forth, draining the warmth from her body. Starlight fell like strewn pearls across the gravel-pocked ice at her feet, shadowing every undulation.

She forced her leaden legs forward, breaking over the crest—and stopped dead in her tracks. A fiery violet halo grew on the horizon. Like a massive bank of roiling clouds, it swelled with each second. The war? No, it couldn’t be. They had no weapons on Horeb that could wreak such terrible devastation.

“What is that?” she whispered to herself.

From behind, a soft and startlingly beautiful voice answered. “A scorch attack.”

She spun. He stood regally, arms crossed over his breast as though against some pain. His golden face flared like a beacon of salvation.

A scorch attack? But that would mean that the Magistrates had come to Horeb. When had that happened? Adom hadn’t even mentioned the possibility.

Aktariel looked up at her curiously, as though judging what she’d do next. “At this very moment, Jeremiel is fighting for his life and the lives of every living thing on your world.”

Her gaze went to the starry sky, seeking the source of the violet fire. “He’s not on Horeb?”

“No.” The gale buffeted Aktariel’s blue cloak, whipping it into snapping folds around his legs. Against the pewter maze of rock and ice, he seemed a lonely embodiment of light and color. “The civil war here ended an hour ago, but Captain Tahn of the Magisterial battle cruiser, the
Hoyer,
was ordered to scorch Horeb anyway for breaking the Treaty of Lysomia. Jeremiel thought he might be able to stop the attack if he willingly went along with Ornias’ plan. Ornias sold Baruch to the Magistrates for five billion notes.”

“He used himself as a bargaining lever?”

“Of course. You know him. There was nothing else he could do. But the Magistrates just took him and continued with the attack—punishing Gamants for disobeying in the first place.”

“Then what’s happening now?”

“Ah,” Aktariel breathed, cautiously walking forward to stand a few feet from her. He lifted an arm and pointed to the starry horizon just above the lavender halo. “Jeremiel and Harper took over the shuttle transporting him to the
Hoyer
and are now trying to take the cruiser.”

Rachel’s fear of Aktariel ebbed, replaced by a deeper terror—the loss of her entire world. She clenched her fists, lifting her chin to stare him defiantly in the eyes. “Will he win?”

“For a time.”

“What does that mean?”

The crystalline glory of starlight gilded his upturned face with a frosty shimmer. “It means unless you get aboard that ship with him—he’ll die.”

The word cracked like thunder. She wanted to run, but couldn’t force her feet to move. “Why? Why does he need me?”

“Because, Rachel, you are a bridge
to me.”

As though in response, the lavender fires on the horizon died, leaving them in a shadowy world. The glacial wilderness seemed to close in around her. Towering snowscapes leaned inward like huge hunching beasts. “You mean you can save him—but won’t—unless I cooperate with you?”

“I mean
we
can save him. And everyone else in the universe for that matter. Including your beautiful daughter.”

There it was. The deal laid out clearly. Jeremiel and Sybil in exchange for her. Her voice trembled when she spoke: “And if I refuse?”

“It’s your choice. It always has been.”

“What happens if I say no?”

“Truly … everything you love will die.”

She squeezed her eyes closed in futility. “I hate you! I can’t bear the thought of being your pawn.”

“You’d rather allow billions upon billions to suffer terribly until Epagael gets bored?”

“But you’re the Deceiver! All the Old Books—”

“Yes, yes,” he said shortly. “We’ve already discussed Epagael’s propaganda and I’ll be happy to discuss it further in the future, but right now, my dear Rachel, you must make a small decision. You’ve met God. Who’s more the monster? Him, or me?”

“I don’t know!”

“Well,” he sighed and put his hands on his hips, pacing with such charismatic grace she couldn’t take her eyes from him. “Perhaps we can compromise?”

“How?”
All this is gamesmanship. I’ve no choice. To save Sybil and Jeremiel, I’ll do anything. And he knows it.

He gazed at her from wounded eyes, as though he’d heard that thought. “For all the eons I’ve waited, I can wait a little longer for an answer from you. But you
must
get on that ship.”