Chapter #22The Blank by: Seuzz   His smile is warm and benign, but a little melancholy. "Why would you destroy such a precious antiquity, Tariq?" he asks.
You tighten your grip on the slim bone. "Fair warning," you reply. "Return to the shadows, or I will send you to a pit deeper than the one you crawled out of."
His face had grown grave while you spoke, but now he smiles again. "Tariq," he says, and holds out his hand. "Give it here." His tone is that of a parent who is amused but a little weary of a child's tantrums.
You grit your teeth and bend the femur. You shouldn't have given him the warning. You shouldn't give him a chance. You should have snapped the bone in two as soon as you had it in your hand. But you had chanced to look into his face just as you had grasped it--
And so you had lost.
It is stifling in this room, the private office of Hakim al-Muqanna', a.k.a., Boutros Nouh Jibril. It is stifling despite its spaciousness and the open glass doors leading onto the balcony. But it is a hot and humid day, and the overhead fan can only beat at the thick air without stirring it. You have a headache, from the heat and from the throbbing chant of the mobs outside. But mostly you have a headache from his face.
It is the face of an angel, mixing wisdom and beauty in equal proportions. It is a kindly face and a grave one. Amusement twinkles at the corners of his mouth, and love at the corners of his eyes. It is a face to inspire devotion and adoration.
If only it didn't seem to flicker and shift. Even as you stare at him you can't say what he looks like, and would never be able to sketch him or pick his photograph out of a group. His face does not metamorphose; you are never conscious that anything has shifted. But your mind cannot get a grip upon it.
It would be spooky, if it weren't for the saintliness that shines through the maddening countenance. But Boutros Nouh Jibril cannot be a saint. No saint--not even one who has grasped power as the leader of a religious-political movement ten million strong--would clasp his hands in blessing over two dozen women who, to demonstrate their devotion, had set themselves afire and died clutching their screaming babies to their breasts.
Which is what happened yesterday, here, in the streets of Chabahar.
That's why, after three weeks of hiding in the security entourage of the self-described "Seventh Veil of God," you'd told Aparijita you were going to strike.
"We don't yet know what he is, Will," she had said.
"We know what kind of thing he is," you'd retorted. "That's enough."
You grit your teeth and bend the bone. It is hard, very hard, to go against his gently insistent authority. His smile saps your will. If only he were still wearing the veil, the one he never removes in public; if only he did not show his face to those--like Tariq al-Issawi--whose "Sixth Veil" status give them intimate contact with him.
"Give it to me," the Seventh Veil says again, and stretches out his hand.
Your grip relaxes. He is so beautiful.
He grasps the center of the rod.
But it's not a hand.
From out the cuffs of the immaculate white suit stretches a claw. The skin is hard and covered in yellow scales. Four long, bony fingers wrap about the bone, each finger ending in a hard, black, glittering, curved talon.
You blink hard. Beneath his face you glimpse another. Hakim al-Muqanna' still looks directly at you, but behind his face (or beneath it) is another, larger head, turned sideways to glare malevolently at you from an enormous, ruby-red eye. A horn-like beak, like a parrot's, gapes, showing a thick, grey tongue. The skin, where it is bare, is black, but great plumes of blood-red feathers rise in a ruffle from its neck and crown.
You grasp the bone, even as this thing pulls it from you. It breaks.
But nothing happens, unless it's that the apparition of the bird-lizard vanishes. Jibril smiles at you. "You see, Will," he says. "It was nothing. You've only broken a fossil."
"What did you call me?" You're not so startled by the anticlimactic breaking of the soul jar that you've missed the use of your real name.
"I called you by your true name, Will. We have no secrets from each other. Appearances burn in the fire."
The fire. Symbol of the Church of the Flame of Purity. "And what is your true form?"
"All forms are true, Will. You know that, or you could not live with yourself."
"What are you?" If the thing is not bound to the earth by a soul jar, what does bind it here?
"I am the Seventh Veil of God. Through me shines His countenance. Through me He burns away appearances, to reveal the forms beneath."
"So why do you hide yourself?"
"Because man cannot live without appearances, Will. But the day is drawing nigh when I shall burn them away. All shall perish in beautiful fire."
Shit. It's the nuclear arsenals he's after. The nuclear arsenals of four fragile powers that are even now splintering as his Church sweeps across the northern shores of the Arabian Sea. Only a week ago Aparijita had warned you that cabinet ministers and generals were converting to his movement.
"But you, Will--" He raises his hand, and it is again a hand and not a claw. "You shall not perish. Your form, Will--" His voice trembles with hunger. "You shall be my true form."
You shudder, but cannot tear your eyes from his. His hand closes over your face, and the world fades.
* * * * *
You are within yourself, the inner places where you can meditate directly on the sigils and imago you carry within. It is not a place of tranquility--only a place of stasis and contemplation--but you feel a peace settling over you. The imago swirl around you in the familiar constellation.
There is a new one. It is very beautiful. Smiling to yourself, you think it would be very good to put it on.
You draw it closer to yourself--or it draws itself closer to you--and opens up. It is like a great spiral of plumes, and it looks so soft and inviting. How good it would be to wrap yourself in it. You are not the least put out by the gem-like eye that stares at you from the center. You flinch only a little when out of its glittering depths there stretches a great, hard beak. It opens to swallow you--
You stagger under a blow, and the new imago vanishes. The constellations stagger and wheel. You are falling, plunging fast. You stretch your hand to slow your fall.
The Moon appears within your palm.
* * * * *
The hot office reappears, and you find yourself leaning against a bookshelf, gasping and panting heavily. "To your feet, Will," a rich but clear voice commands. You sway a little as you straighten yourself. "The ficus, Will," the voice says. "I can spare you a little."
You grasp at the sad little plant that droops nearby, and as you clutch the branch it explodes verdantly in your hand. The pot shatters as roots sprawl across the carpet, and with a groan the trunk shoots up. Leaves burst out and brush the ceiling. It's a Tree of Life, and the sap in your own veins rises hard in sympathy with it. You are hot now, but hot with purpose and determination.
Aparijita crouches on the floor, a sharp switch in her hand, and glares at the thing.
It balances on one foot, like a flamingo, a great claw grasping the face of a man sprawled on the floor. It spreads leathery wings across the width of the room, and stretches another claw at Aparijita, holding her at bay with its talons. The head is fringed in blood-red feathers, and its beak gapes as it stares at you both with its eye.
"It was almost on you, Will," Aparijita says. "What was it trying to do?"
You don't answer; you're trying to work it out yourself.
You look at the man on the carpet. The thing's claw completely covers his face, and the way it is clutching onto it ...
You wince, but feel the solution as a sigil forms in your hand. "You have to fight it, Aparijita," you say. "I'll go for help."
"Will!" she yells, but you've ducked your head and dashed under the thing's wings toward the balcony. It screams and snaps at you, but you get past. "Damn it, Will, you can't just run away!" she shouts.
But you've no intention of running; you just need her to distract it. And your words have had that effect, for the thing bends its head to concentrate on her. You wheel sharply and lunge at its supporting foot, your hand outstretched.
It screams again, and you scream too as razor-like claws rake deeply into your back. But you slam your palm onto the thing's foot and tear it away from its victim's face.
You sense rather than see the thing dissolve into smoke. The face of Hakim al-Muqanna' appears. But it is no face: only a bare and grinning skull.
* * * * *
"It was just imago," you tell your partner as you drive away; the crowds, as though released from a mesmer's spell, have already dissipated. "The living imago of some long-dead thing that had attached itself to Hakim." You swallow. "It would have attached itself to me."
"It wasn't a demon?"
"No. Hence, no soul jar."
"But there's nothing like it in world, Will," she objects.
"Sure there is," you reply. "In museums. The bones of things that died in fire sixty-five million years ago."
To wake from this reverie: "The Boy from Before Everything, Part 2"   | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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