Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (19 page)

The Rider stiffened, as he heard the
rustle of Kabede’s burnoose. In a few moments the black man was standing in the
light of the fire looking down at the old man, his rifle over his shoulder and
the Rod of Aaron in his hand. By the look on his face, he was not pleased to
see this person.

The old man turned, smoke escaping
from his straight-toothed grin. He tipped his hat.

If the African was unafraid of this
being, whoever and whatever he was, that was good enough for the Rider; for
now.

He too entered the firelight from
the opposite direction, and Belden followed, though unlike the Rider and Kabede
he did not lay aside his Schofield pistol for the sake of propriety. He kept it
pointed squarely at the old man.

“Please forgive me for not rising,”
the old man said. “My back.”

“Who are you?” the Rider demanded.

“His name is Shar-rogs Pa,” said
Kabede. “The blue abbot of Shambhala.”

Chaksusa’s
master
, the Rider thought. Chaksusa, the Hindoo monk who had first told him
of the Great Old Ones, when he’d battled Shub-Niggurath, the Yiggians, and the
Black Goat Man at Red House. But this man was no Oriental.

“In these parts, I go by Montague.
Faustus Montague.” He tipped his hat and motioned to the wagon behind him,
where his name was emblazoned on the sides in fanciful script. “Worldly
purveyor of wards, remedies, bodyguards, and charms.”

“Where do you come from?” the Rider
asked pointedly. “What’s your real name?”

“You should know by now, Rider,”
Faustus Montague said, winking one crafty eye, “the dangers of giving out your
name.”

“Who the hell’re you, mister?”
Belden piped up. He was still pointing his pistol at the old man.

“Oh, put that away,” Faustus said
offhandedly. “Come and sit down.”

To their amazement, and apparently
to Belden’s own, he did as he was told.

“How did you do that?” Belden asked,
an uncharacteristic waver in his voice, after he had settled down across the
fire.

“Forgive me, my good man,” said
Faustus, touching a hand to the sapphire stickpin at his breast. It seemed to
shine bright in the firelight for a moment. “Time is short, and we don’t have
time to explain everything to you tonight. Why don’t you get some sleep? You’ll
need the rest for the journey.”

Belden yawned, and before the old
man had even finished speaking he had slumped to his side, made a pillow of his
hands, and was snoring to beat the band.

“What did you do to him?” the Rider
snarled, going to Belden’s side.

“He’s only sleeping,” Faustus said,
as the Rider confirmed it. “It’s probably the best sleep he’ll ever have. In
the morning he’ll be quite refreshed. As I said, he’ll need it. We’ve a long
way ahead of us.”

“What’re you talking about? Why
would we go with you anywhere?”

“You said after your brother’s
actions among the Mexica you were forbidden from interfering here,” Kabede
said.

The Rider had heard that story from
Chaksusa. He had said his master’s brother, Mun Gsod, led the Mexica to Texcoco
and set himself up as a god there. So both had been punished for Mun Gsod’s
actions, but by whom? The Lord? The Rider wasn’t overly familiar with Mesoamerican
history, but he did know the Mexica had come to Texcoco before Europeans had
ever set foot in the Americas. Extra-universal jabber aside, the Rider had
assumed Chaksusa had been speaking about the actions of a long dead man, and
that the blue abbot Kabede had claimed to have met was just the latest to hold
the office, that Shar-rogs Pa was some kind of hereditary title. Now this
Montague was intimating that the Mun Gsod of the Mexicas was his actual
brother. How old was he? What was he?

“I am,” Faustus answered. “But
nothing was ever said about working through intermediaries.”

“How do you two know each other?”
the Rider asked, sitting down next to Belden.

“I told you, Rider,” Kabede began, “I
met him and a few of his students in Arabia. It was not long after I had begun
my journey here. They had guessed my intention and tried to force me to tell
them where the Rod of Aaron was.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Faustus
said hastily. “Some of my more impetuous acolytes did get a bit exuberant, but
that was never my intention.” He turned to the Rider. “We only wanted to
persuade Kabede to use the staff to a certain end.”

“Several certain ends,” Kabede said,
folding his arms. “They also wanted to know about various other treasures whose
locations were known to the Balankab Enclave. The Garments of Adam, the Ark of
the Covenant…”

“Yes, but the one we needed most,
your enclave didn’t have,” Faustus said.

“What’s that?” the Rider asked.

“You call it the Tzohar,” Faustus
said. “It is a gemstone which contains the primordial light of Creation. The
undivided light of pure spirit.”

“I know the legend of the Tzohar,”
the Rider said. “The angel Raziel supposedly gave it to Adam. Noah used it to
light the Ark, and Joseph used it to interpret dreams.”

“It is no legend. In every
generation it comes to the righteous,” said Kabede. “To the
tzadikim
. The true
tzadikim
, whoever they may be.”

“Without it,” said Faustus, “you
cannot hope to defeat Samael, the Angel of Death, Adon’s most powerful ally in
this universe. For now I believe it is the scabbard for the Sixteen Sided Sword
of the Almighty.”

“The what?” the Rider repeated.

“Don’t listen to this thing,” Kabede
said, pursing his lips. “He knows nothing of what he speaks.” Then he folded
his arms and looked to Faustus. “Besides, you told me before that the staff was
the scabbard for the Sixteen Sided Sword.”

“I thought it was,” he said, opening
his hands. “But I may have been mistaken.”

Kabede sighed.

“Look now,” Faustus said, “this is
not my universe. I’m not intimately familiar with all your lore.”

“What is the Sixteen Sided Sword of
the Almighty?” the Rider repeated. He had never heard of this.

“You know the story of Simon bar
Yochai?” Kabede asked.

“Which story?”

Rabbi Simon bar Yochai’s miraculous
fables were as numerous as they were apocryphal. In the second century he had
exorcised a demon from Aurelia Fadilla, the daughter of the Roman emperor
Antoninus Pius. He was responsible for the writing of the prime Kabalistic
tome, the Zohar.

“How he hid from the Romans in the
cave at Peki’in with his son,” said Kabede, “and they studied Torah until they
achieved illumination.”

He knew it. The last time he had
been in the Holy Land, just prior to the slaughter of the Council of Yahad at
Ein Gedi by Adon, he had traveled to Peki’in and secretly prayed for the power
and resolve to find and defeat his old teacher.

“Or, it may be that the Tzohar came
to them,” Faustus said. “When they left the cave, everything they looked upon
that was not righteous was consumed by fire. This was the Sixteen Sided Sword
of the Almighty. It is the only thing that Samael cannot stand against.”

“Then you think it is in the cave at
Peki’in?” Kabede asked.

“It is not. My pupils searched for
it there and didn’t find it,” Faustus said.

“Do you know where it is?” the Rider
asked Kabede.

“Each member of the Balankab Enclave
is entrusted with the location and history of one sacred object,” Kabede said
to the Rider. “That way none may divulge the hiding places of them all. I only
knew the location of the Rod of Aaron.”

“No one knows where the Tzohar is,”
Faustus said. “As Kabede said, it comes to those who need it.”

“How do you know any of this?” the
Rider said. “What are you? You’re not human and you’re not an angel.”

“In my universe,” Faustus began, “what
you call HaShem sent me down to serve man, to help them in the fight against
the Great Old Ones. We were victorious, but one such being escaped through a
rift between worlds. My brother and I pursued it here.”

“Chaksusa told me this story,” the
Rider said. “He told me all about these other universes.”

“Did he tell you that Creation is an
unending process and that the number of realities is infinite?”

“Yes,” the Rider said, rolling his
eyes.

“Really? And you didn’t believe him
any more than you believe me.” Faustus threw an amused look at Kabede. “Any
more than this one believes me.”

“I don’t know what you are,” Kabede
said.

“That’s why you don’t trust me.”
Faustus shrugged. “My friends, all things are real. All things. That is the simple
truth of reality.” He stared into the fire, the light shivering in his eyes. “Somewhere
out there, a whaler with an Indian figurehead pursues a pale leviathan to the
doom of her crew and her scarred captain. Somewhere, a young boy puts his hand
on a sword and draws it lightly from a stone, and becomes the greatest king the
world has ever known. Somewhere, thirteen heroes with two hearts between them
set themselves between an insignificant world and all the evil that time and
space can muster. Good and evil. They clash again and again in countless
different forms and in millions of different settings, and do you know why?

“Because God is within every living
being. And every living being holds the power of creation. Whatever men dream
becomes real somewhere out there,” he said, waving his long, branch-like
fingers at the stars, “and
that
is
why Creation is neverending.”

“Fairy stories,” Kabede said
dismissively.

“Yes,” Faustus laughed. “
Exactly!
Fairy stories. Adam and Lilith’s
first children were fairies. The children of their imagination— unfettered by
the limitations of the flesh and the chemical and biological restrictions of
the more profane act of creation. What are angels and men but the fairy stories
of God? And if God is within man, then what are the fairy stories of men?”

Kabede looked as if any minute he
would clap his hands over his ears to shut out this nonsense, but something the
old man had said struck a cord with the Rider.

“You’re talking about
kellipot
and
tikkun
,” said the Rider thoughtfully.

“Am I?” Faustus asked, raising his
eyebrows.

“The principle that HaShem created
Adam Kadmon, the primordial cosmic soul, a vast ethereal body in His own image
that extended across Creation. Divided and cast across the universe, the divine
sparks of essence were encased in material husks of evil and profanity, and
must be restored through
tikkun
,
breaking the husks by righteous acts so that the divine sparks within can be
liberated and return to rebuild the cosmic soul.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,”
Faustus said, smiling, a little patronizingly. “Are you ready for a little
tikkun
right now?”

“What do you want?”

“I came here for two purposes. The
first is to apologize personally,” and he fixed his blue eyes on the Rider, “to
you, Rider. My disciple Chaksusa should not have told you the word of power
which drove back Shub-Niggurath and the Cold Ones. It was imperative that she
be expelled from that quarter of the earth at that time, that the operations of
the Black Goat Man be smashed. But I am sorry it was done the way it was done.
I fear great harm has been done to you, and I know of no remedy.”

“What do you mean?”

“The word you were taught was a
word, which God used to impose order upon chaos, a name of God from the place
in which The Outer Gods originate. It is hateful to the Great Old Ones, painful
to hear. When combined with one of the Star Stones of Mnar, it is doubly
detrimental. But it is a two-edged sword, just as harmful to the one who speaks
it as to the Great Old Ones and their servants. Mere knowledge of it burns the
life away like coal oil. Luckily you had the Star Stone to siphon off some of
the power that was unleashed. Otherwise, you might have been instantly burned
to cinders. As it is, you may have inadvertently trimmed your lifespan
considerably short.”

The Rider felt cold. He had not been
aware of any ill-effects immediately after speaking the word of power,
Shamblaparn. True enough, when he had spoken it, it had destroyed the Star
Stone of Mnar and obliterated a group of Yiggians.

Since then Kabede had destroyed his
name in the Order’s
Book of Life
,
giving him until September twenty second of this year. When The Day of
Atonement came and the Rider’s true name was not found in The
Book of Life
, he would surely die. Was
this a coincidence, or had some greater force of correspondence forced Kabede’s
hand to pay some cosmic penalty for his use of the strange name of power?

“It was my intent to direct Kabede
here against Shub-Niggurath,” Faustus went on, fixing Kabede with a disapproving
stare. “With the staff he might not have had to call upon that word. But I
failed to persuade him, and so I directed Chaksusa to send for you.”

Kabede’s jowls worked and he sat
down. He glanced at the Rider, and then looked away.