Enoch's Device (34 page)

Hundreds of mail-clad Franks with shields and spears made up most of this army, but more than three score were gigantic warriors a full head taller than the Franks and thickly muscled, with skin the color of bleached bone. Their heads were shaven, although a few had beards, and all wore armor from some ancient time, with iron breastplates, and carried spears as long as a ship’s oar.

“Nephilim,” Isaac said softly. “As in my dream.”

“They must dwell now in the Otherworld,” Dónall said. “Gog and Magog.”

Ciarán gazed in horrified awe at the pale giants halfway across the plain—and at the massive beasts beside them. For amid the besieging army were five enormous wheeled carts, pulled by long-horned aurochs larger than any bull. The carts carried great iron beasts, barrel-shaped, with stout necks ending in dragonlike heads with gaping maws. Smoke rose from their mouths and nostrils, lacing the air with the stench of brimstone.

Suddenly, one of the beasts belched a stream of fire, accompanied by a thunderous roar. Ciarán covered his ears as the fiery vomit blasted against the side of the spire, shattering rock into fragments and leaving a smoking divot in its side. A myriad of similar wounds pocked the spire in other places.

“The tower,” Ciarán said. “They will destroy Rosefleur.”

Khalil stared hopelessly into the reddish plain. “They have already destroyed its defenders.”

Eighty yards ahead, the carcasses of white and gray chargers lay in heaps—so many dead, it seemed a small cavalry had met its end. And the riders, too, for near the horses sprawled crumpled bodies clad in silvery mail. Tendrils of smoke wafted up from the fallen riders, who numbered a score or more. In their midst, spears jutted from the bodies of hundreds of men, their round shields laying beside them. Other men, still living, traipsed through the field, stabbing any horse or silver-clad rider who showed signs of life.

“Is there anyone left?” Ciarán asked, beginning to comprehend what had happened.

Isaac was shaking as he peered through the crystal. “Many of those are not normal men,” he said grimly. “They are possessed. I can see the demon forms clinging to their flesh. Dozens more of them,
ruhin,
rule the sky, circling within those clouds. This is very bad, and whatever is happening behind that tower is worse. That smoke is red like fire, gathering in the sky above as if it is feeding the
ruhin
.”

“Those riders . . .” Alais pointed but twenty yards from where they stood, where one of the mail-clad figures sprawled dead on the red plain. Where its armor was not streaked with blood, it shone like polished silver. It was mail, not of chain but of scales, like silver feathers that fit snug against the rider’s lithe form. Beneath its plumed helm, the flesh of the rider’s female face was in a state of rapid decay. Particles wafted like dusty smoke from the rider’s skull, revealing the origins of the wispy strands rising from the field.

“Are they the Fae?” Alais managed to ask.

Dónall shook his head sadly. “They
were
.” He ran a hand nervously across his face. “It’s everything Remi and Thomas feared, everything the prophecy had warned of. We’re too late.”

“But the device?” Ciarán asked, alarmed by the despair in Dónall’s voice.

“You’ll never get inside that tower,” Khalil muttered.

Behind them, something moved in the forest. Khalil snapped alert and drew his curved blade.

A spear shaft appeared through the thick growth, and Khalil readied to meet this new threat. Brushing past the low-hanging tree branches, a figure emerged, and Ciarán wondered for an instant whether he gazed upon one of the Tuatha Dé Danann or, perhaps, a Valkyrie of Norse myth. For the slender figure, clad in a tight-fitting hauberk of scaled mail stained red with blood, had long copper tresses and a face as beautiful and pure as any he could imagine. As she opened her lips to speak, her eyes were wide and pleading.

“Who among you is the champion?”

C
iarán had not expected to
hear those words. In the red plain beyond the trees, the iron beasts unleashed another booming roar, belching their fire at the walls of Rosefleur and filling the air with brimstone.

The warrior woman eyed them carefully. She held a hand over her abdomen, where blood seeped from a gash in her mail.

“You’re hurt,” Ciarán said.

“It is no matter now,” she said. “I must know: who among you is the champion?”

Dónall stepped forward, his despair from a moment ago having given way to awe. He gestured toward Alais, barely taking his eyes off the woman standing before them. “She is the one descended from Charlemagne.”

Ciarán turned to Alais and said, “You don’t have to do this.”

She looked into his eyes and nodded, then turned to the woman in mail. “It’s true.”

“If you are the champion,” the woman said, “then you must come with me.”

Alais nodded solemnly. “I’m going with her,” Ciarán insisted.

The woman flashed him a curious look. “The choice is yours, but we must hurry, for there is little time.”

“First,” Khalil demanded, having lowered his blade, “who are you? And where are we?”

“I am Una of the Fae,” she said, “and this is our purgatory, the realm where we have lived since before the Deluge, when we were forbidden to return to our true home.”

Isaac, who had been listening in rapt silence, found his voice at last and said, “What is happening?”

“Before dawn,” she said, “the Nephilim sailed up the river Lethe with their engines of war to lay siege to Rosefleur. They are led by a Nephilim prince of the Dragon’s line, who gathered his own army of Franks from your world. From beyond the forest wall, he led this second army through the misty gate and then poisoned them with the breath of the demons who rule the sky overhead. Human sorcerers aid the ultimate purpose of this attack. For the Dragon’s bonds are weakening, and they seek to draw him from his prison to this realm.”

Dónall’s expression turned grim. “What sorcerers?”

“Men willing to sacrifice their souls for answers to mysteries they were never meant to know. They have made a death pit behind the tower, and there they feed its magic with sacrifices of blood. That smoke,” Una said, tilting her spear toward the billowing column behind the spire, “rises from the underworld. Soon the Dragon shall come, and nothing here can stand against him.”

Ciarán felt queasy. “What about Enoch’s device?”

“That is why we must ride,” Una said. “To save it.”

Overhead, the smoke swirled over Rosefleur and threatened to blot out the faint sunlight that penetrated through the blackening sky. She glanced at Dónall and the leaf-shaped blade in his hand. “You can use the power?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Can you slow their sorcery?” she asked.

Resolve settled in Dónall’s brow. “Lucien was a brother of mine at Reims, and those sorcerers are his men. We’re due for a reckoning.”

Isaac placed a hand on Dónall’s arm. “You will not go alone, my friend.” Dónall smiled faintly. Then Isaac turned to Khalil and said, “We could use your sword.”

Khalil drew a deep breath and nodded to Dónall. “I will follow your lead.” He looked to Una. “But how will we ever cross that plain?”

“Travel along the forest’s edge. The Nephilim and their men will not be watching you. And we can provide ample distraction.”

Una whistled a long, melodic note. From the forest came a loud rustling of foliage as two pale mares emerged from the trees. Both were well-muscled chargers, each with a saddle and bridle. Una mounted the first charger.

“You two,” she told Ciarán and Alais, “ride close, and do not stray.”

Ciarán swung up into the second mare’s saddle, then helped Alais up behind him. As soon as they had mounted, Una turned toward Dónall, Isaac, and Khalil.

“You fight today to save your world. Go now, and Godspeed.”

Dónall nodded grimly as Una raised her spear and kicked her charger’s flanks. Ciarán gave his horse rein, and the powerful animal bolted after her. He felt the exhilaration of the charge, only to realize a moment later that he had not given a parting glance to Dónall or the others. Yet by then it was too late, for Una was riding like the wind across the red plain, and an army of the apocalypse stood before them.

*

Five hundred yards across the plain loomed Rosefleur. Ciarán’s charger darted through the carnage of men and horses and the decaying bodies of Una’s fallen sisters, whose remains wafted up into the air like windblown dust. For an instant, he wondered what had happened to these women, for their wounds on the battlefield looked no different from those on the hundreds of Franks who also lay dead and bleeding on the plain, yet the flesh and bone of these warrior maidens was decomposing so fast that soon only their scaled silver armor would remain. He had no time to ponder this thought, however, for the mail-clad spearmen ahead had seen them, and more than a score of Franks rallied for an attack, raising their spears and painted shields and howling crazed battle cries.

Una hurled her spear at one of the black-bearded men, hitting him dead center. The impact knocked him ten yards back, leaving him impaled along with the scores of dead littering the plain. The other men rushed at her like a pack of wild dogs. She whipped a long sword from her scabbard and sounded her own battle cry: a shrill, unearthly sound that chilled Ciarán’s blood and cut through even the booming of the iron beasts . . . and that heralded a slaughter.

The head of the first man to meet her blade tumbled through the air, hitting the dusty plain while his body rode on for another dozen paces before pitching sideways from the saddle. With merciless precision, Una cut a swath through the raving Franks, cleaving through mail and bone and flesh. Others fell under her charger’s hooves, and soon only a few remained on the fringe of what had been a wedge of attackers.

Ciarán spurred his mount into the breach Una had formed. Behind him, Alais clung on tightly as the surviving Franks charged. Wild eyed, they foamed at the mouth and cursed in some unknown tongue. But the charger was too fast and too strong for them, and it burst through the ragged wall of men, trampling the first warrior in its path. In another heartbeat, it was again behind Una, racing toward Rosefleur.

More Franks poured across the red plain, but on foot they moved too slowly to reach the swift chargers. Ciarán’s nerves tensed, however, at the sight of what they now approached. It was a gap, little more than fifty yards wide, between two of the iron beasts and their gigantic carts with massive wheels. The beasts did not move but, rather, kept their gaping iron maws pointed at Rosefleur, and as his mount drew him closer, Ciarán suspected that they were not beasts at all, but monstrous siege engines of some Byzantine design, spewing Greek fire. Yet the iron beasts were not the problem. For in the gap, the Nephilim massed.

There were ten of them, each at least seven feet tall and garbed in an ancient style of armor, with iron breastplates, broad shields, and helms with crosslike openings for the eyes and mouth, like the images of Ares or Hector that Ciarán had seen decorating the pages of Greek tomes. The Nephilim moved with colossal strides, and what flesh showed beneath their armor was as white as bone. They gripped massive war clubs—all but one, who held a sword long enough to cleave a horse in two. The gap was wide enough, but the speed at which the charger moved caused Ciarán to sit low in the saddle and hug the horse’s sides with his calves. On the back of his neck, he felt Alais’ breath.

“Follow to my left,” Una called over her shoulder. Then suddenly, she broke left, heading toward the iron beast. Ciarán’s charger veered to follow her. The Nephilim amassed in the center of the gap, but Una raced for the edge.

The nearest giant moved swiftly to block her path, but Una raised her sword, unleashing another shrill battle cry, and charged. The giant’s blood arced through the air as her sword lopped off its arm. Ciarán never slowed his mount, though his jaw fell in horror as the sword-wielding giant closed on Una and chopped her mare to the ground. She leaped from its saddle, swinging at her nearest attacker and hewing halfway through its neck.

Ciarán rode on. The iron beast boomed behind him, and his ears throbbed in pain. A fiery blast arced overhead, raining a shower of burning embers from the sky. An ember seared his arm, and Alais brushed another from her shoulder. An instant later, some eighty feet above them, the walls of Rosefleur shuddered, spilling rubble from the smoking divot in the cylindrical wall.

Then, behind them, Una screamed.

Alais gasped, and Ciarán glanced over his shoulder. The six remaining giants surrounded where Una had stood, hammering downward with their clubs. Ciarán felt a pang of grief for the brave woman warrior, then looked ahead to a new horror, for the charger was galloping straight toward the walls of Rosefleur. In the urgency of their ride, Ciarán had never thought to look for a gate, trusting that Una knew where to find it. Yet now the mare was running headlong toward a face of sheer red stone. He jerked on the reins, and the charger slowed, but the Nephilim had broken from their kill and now came rushing toward him.

Alais tugged hard on his shoulder. “Look!” she cried, pointing to the walls. Where the wall had seemed solid an instant before, the outlines of a portal began to define themselves. A seam appeared and slowly parted. Ciarán kicked his mount. The Nephilim were but twenty yards away as the mare charged toward the widening breach. The giants raced toward them, but with a leap, the mare crossed the threshold.

In that instant, a blinding light engulfed them, as if the mare had leaped straight into the sun. Ciarán dropped the reins to shield his eyes. Then, with a loud slam, the gateway closed behind them.

*

For a moment, Ciarán thought that perhaps he had been struck blind. But then the brilliance began to fade, and he perceived the outline of a figure slowly coming into view. As the light continued to wane, the figure’s shape grew clearer. It was a woman, taller than most men, yet slender. A white cloak draped her shoulder, falling onto a mail shirt that seemed sewn of silvery feathers and clung to her lithe torso. The woman gazed at them with piercing eyes in a sculpted face framed by flowing hair the color of platinum.

Alais stared in awe at the woman. “Orionde?”

“Yes, child,” the woman said. “You remember me?”

Alais stammered, “In the field of wheat . . .”

Ciarán touched Alais’ hand. Could this be the same woman in white Isaac had seen in his dream? Surely it must be. Yet, if this was indeed Orionde, the Fae who instructed Maugis d’Aygremont, she was more than two hundred years old—and even older still, for the Fae were timeless, like the angels themselves.

Orionde was not alone. A half-dozen Fae, all warrior maidens dressed as Una had been, stood behind her in a vast torch-lit hall encircled by towering archways of reddish stone. Behind the Fae, in the spaces beyond the archways, were horses, all of them pale like Ciarán’s charger. Piles of rubble dotted the floor beneath gaps where portions of the ceiling, thirty feet above, had collapsed into the hall.

Ciarán regarded the Fae with awe, before realizing that he still sat astride the charger. Quickly, he eased Alais down from the mare’s back and then dismounted from the saddle. He started to bow, when another thunderous boom came, and more reddish debris spilled from the ceiling to the floor.

Orionde looked to Ciarán and said, “We must hurry. These walls will not hold much longer. The moment of the prime conflict is nearly upon us. You must come with me and take Enoch’s device. It will be safe only in your world.”

“But I am not the champion,” he said. “I’m not of Charlemagne’s blood.”

“There is no bloodline,” Orionde replied. “That has long been an error in human understanding. Rather, the mystery of Enoch’s device is revealed only to those who have deciphered its inherent truth and ancient purpose—those who can see the beckoning light. The champion is the one who answers that call.”

Ciarán stood stunned. For an instant, he struggled to grasp this reality, but then it settled within him like the stillness of a deep lake. Whether Kismet or fate, events had guided him to this point, and, strangely, he felt ready.

“Then it’s not me?” Alais asked in a relieved tone.

“You have made your choice and have yet another role to play,” Orionde said. “But not now.” She gestured to Ciarán. “Follow me.”

He looked at Alais, relieved that she was free of this burden and the danger that he knew would come with it. She put a hand on his shoulder. “Be brave,” she whispered. “And be careful.” He touched her fingers and then turned to follow Orionde.

The archway she had entered led to a stairway of reddish stone that ascended the curve of the tower. They climbed nearly fifty feet past candle lamps set into narrow sconces along the wall, until they reached an iron-bound door. Orionde pushed it open to reveal a chamber, round like the tower and lit with more candle lamps. The candlelight gleamed off coats of silver mail draped on racks along the room’s perimeter, and behind these hung shields, flanked by spears like the one Una had held. The shields were polished to a mirror finish that reflected the candlelight, which blazed through the armory, for that was what this place must be. Orionde moved swiftly toward a tall archway across the chamber, where the stairwell resumed its spiral ascent up the tower.

“Did you know this attack was coming?” Ciarán asked Orionde as he tried to keep pace with her long strides.

“We assumed the Nephilim would eventually learn where Maugis had hidden the device, but I had hoped you would arrive here first.”

“But if you wanted us to come, why didn’t you help us get here?”

She paused for a moment and looked back at him. “I did what I could. But in the end, you had to find your own path. It was the only way you would be ready.”

“For what?” Ciarán pressed.

“To fulfill your purpose,” she said as she marched up the stairwell. “The prophecy in the stars is told through twelve signs in three groups, with each group representing a stage in the life cycle of the prophecy. We are at the birth of this cycle, the time of the prime conflict, when the champion of men must unite with the device—the weapon—and prevail in the initial battle with a champion of the Dragon’s line. Beyond the prime conflict, a great journey lies ahead, like the stage of life after birth. But first, you and the weapon must survive this present battle, or all will be lost.”