Redemption of Light (The Light Trilogy) (29 page)

“No. They can’t be.”

She closed her eyes as images of Sefer Raziel rose. The bright sunlight streamed down through a rent in their porch roof, striking her grandmother’s withered face where she sat in her chair. Sefer squinted against it, rocking back and forth in the shaft of light. The sweet scents of newborn grass and early morning dew clung to the cool breeze. Amirah sat cross-legged on the porch, her doll sleeping in her lap, listening intently to the stories Sefer told about the first Gamant Revolt, about the terrible things the Magistrates had done to
their
people.

Every muscle in Amirah’s body contracted against the word. But she still missed Grandmama and her strength. She’d guessed when she got older that Grandmama hadn’t simply vanished, that she was dead. Or else Sefer would have come home. She would never have left Amirah alone if she could have helped it. Tears rose in Amirah’s eyes. She’d loved that kind old woman….

A quick pounding of running steps sounded in the hall. Amirah jerked her head up. Voices echoed. Three men and four women entered the cave, all dressed in black battlesuits, all carrying rifles. The man in the lead, a tall blond with a close-clipped reddish blond beard and hard blue eyes appraised her warily as he swiftly hurried to Cole’s side. He slung his rifle, then knelt and examined Tahn, noting the dark mat of blood that soaked his red robe and pooled on the floor at his side.

The blond ordered, “Chaim? Get a gurney out of the shuttle. Notify the ship to have a med team waiting in the landing bay.”

“Aye, Jeremiel.” The corporal sprinted away. His steps reverberated down the stone corridor.

Amirah swallowed hard. Her ship … Jason…. She clamped her jaw to keep it still. The questions seared her insides. “Jeremiel
Baruch?”

He glanced briefly at her before carefully picking up Cole’s wrist and checking the pulse. “Yes, Captain Jossel. I see you’ve been well cared for, but I can’t say the same for my friend. What happened?”

“He provoked me,” she said straightforwardly, “so I broke his ribs.”

“Uh-huh.” Baruch gave her a disparaging look. “I’d congratulate you, but I’m not particularly pleased about it.”

“Tahn didn’t like it much either.”

“I’ll bet. How long has he been unconscious?”

“Three hours.”

The conversation seemed to rouse Tahn. He muttered something unintelligible. Baruch affectionately squeezed his shoulder. “You’re safe, Cole. Sit still. A gurney’s on the way.”

Tahn’s eyes fluttered open. When he recognized Baruch, he tried to straighten but fell weakly back against the wall. “What happened? How many did we lose? Are Merle and Rudy all right?”

“They’re fine. We’re all fine,” Baruch assured, looking uneasily at Amirah. “We’ll discuss it later.”

Cole looked at Amirah, too, and a faint smile came to his lips. To Baruch he conspiratorially whispered, “She tried to kill me.”

“Did she?” Baruch inquired. “I can’t imagine why. You were your usual charming self, weren’t you?”

“Some people don’t appreciate my magnetic personality. The next time you try to talk me into being alone with a beautiful woman for days, remind me to say no.”

Baruch gently touched the blood on Cole’s side and responded, “It was a terrible strain on you, I can tell.”

Cole winced. Baruch smiled. Their eyes gleamed with warmth for one another, like long lost friends reunited after years of worrying about each other. Amirah watched with interest. Baruch and Tahn had been vehement enemies for fifteen years. They’d killed each other’s friends, blown up each other’s ships. When had all that hatred faded? The thought of Baruch and Tahn together set her head to pounding. If they were the good friends they seemed, then they must be working in close concert in the Underground. The two most brilliant military minds in the galaxy joined? Terrifying.

A soldier rushed into the room, pushing an antigrav gurney. Baruch stood up and moved out of the way, letting him get it into position, then Jeremiel helped lift Tahn to the stretcher. Cole’s face pinched as he gritted back the pain. The soldier pushed him out of the cave. Most of the security team followed. Two women stationed themselves outside the door.

Amirah shifted, bringing her knees up. Baruch peered down at her intently, taking in her golden gown and face.

“I’m sorry about all this, Captain,” he said. “Let me assure you first of all that your ship is safe. We never had the chance to engage the
Sargonid.
It was gone before we arrived.”

All the terror and anxiety that had weighed on her for days vanished in a hot rush, leaving her trembling with fatigue.
Oh, Jason, Jason, good work.
“Thank you for telling me, Commander.”

Baruch came forward, warily sidestepping her legs and kneeling at her side. He took an EM key from his side pocket. “I imagine your hands went numb hours ago. Let me get you out of these.”

CHAPTER 29

In order that the mind of Darkness, which is the eye of the bitterness of evil, might not be destroyed, I took off my garment of light. I put on another garment of fire. I went down to chaos to save the whole light from it.

The Paraphrase of Shem
(VII, 1)
350 A.D. Arcane document presumed to be from the original Nag Hammadi Library of Old Earth. Discovered in archaeological excavation on
Aurea Catena
in the year 5065.

 

Aktariel stood on the crest of a ridge overlooking a valley of tan rolling hills. The scent of thyme wafted on the warm breezes, bathing his face in ancient memories—memories of a time when the scattered ruins below had housed thousands, and voices shouting “Hosannah!” had sundered the azure heavens. Now, only the marmots and birds frolicked amid the desolation, perching on the ragged teeth of tumbled walls.

He braced a shoulder against the sandstone ledge beside him and studied Rachel. She knelt at the crumbled entrance of the Valley Gate, her long black hair fluttering in the wind; but her eyes focused on the silted-in city beyond, as though she could see past the dross of centuries to the resplendent fortress of old. And watching her, Aktariel, too, could almost hear the plaintive calls of the milk and date vendors, the baaing of goats and joyous laughter of the children who’d raced so freely through the narrow winding streets once-upon-a-time, millennia ago.

It had taken him days of searching to track Rachel down. But despite how frantic he’d been, when he had, he couldn’t bear to disturb her. He’d been watching her since long before sunrise, seeing her erect the Kingdom of God stone by stone in her soul, not out of mourning songs and the wails of the bereaved—as he himself did—but the way she longed to see it, out of sunshine and laughter, light and warmth.

“Oh, Rachel. How can faith still lurk in your heart after the horrors you’ve seen?”

He bowed his head and shook it uneasily. This quest was undoubtedly tied to her meanderings through the multiple universes, but how? What did it have to do with Nathan? He
had
to find out.

He started down the hill, maneuvering his sandaled feet around rocks and spiny bushes. His plum-colored robe whipped in the wind until his billowing sleeves belled. How long had she searched the voids to find this place? She must have hunted for a long, long time, for this vein of the future existed in only two arteries out of the billions upon billions. What had she hoped to find? Truth? A clue which would reveal a different path than the brutal one they currently followed?

“Don’t you think I’ve searched for another way, Rachel? If I couldn’t find it in billions of years, how could you expect to in twelve?”

He tramped quietly to stand behind her. The wind flattened her jade robe across her breasts and stomach. Her waist-length black hair fluttered over her back. She tensed ever so slightly and lifted her head to gaze up at him. Tears streamed unheeded down her beautiful heart-shaped face. She did not seem surprised by his presence or resentful that he’d followed her here. He gazed down at the rock clutched in her hand, a fragment of one of the fallen stones that had formed the gate. She’d clutched it so tightly for so long that her nails had left crescents in the soft surface.

“Why do you do this to yourself, Rachel? You could have simply asked me and I’d have told you this city wasn’t built of angels’ hair high in the clouds.”

“I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Her voice sounded husky, as though she’d held Yerushalaim to her breast and wept all night for its loss.

“Here,” he said tenderly and extended a hand. “Come with me. Let’s talk.”

She glanced at his hand. “I don’t need your help. I can stand by myself.”

He inclined his head agreeably and closed his fist on the warm fragrant air, pulling it back. As the end drew nearer, she grew more bellicose and belligerent. He understood her fears. Terror had become his own constant companion, like a splinter of cold steel working its way deeper into his heart every moment.

Bracing against the wall, she got to her feet and tucked her fingers into her pockets. He hesitantly grasped her elbow, waiting for her to object, but when she didn’t he silently led her up the Hill of Gulgolet. Just why he chose that one, he couldn’t quite say. Perhaps because it tasted of defeat so vile he hoped it would make her forsake that tendril of faith that stubbornly twined through her heart.

“Let’s sit down at the top, near that boulder.” He pointed and she obligingly allowed herself to be led into the cool shadows of the overhanging rock where they sat.

Aktariel leaned back against the gritty stone and basked in the olive scented air. A small grove of trees encircled the rim of the hill. In the distance a series of earth-colored, corrugated knolls humped like camel backs along the horizon. Rachel leaned back beside him, pressing her shoulder against his. The closeness felt comforting. He reached down and took her hand. She tensed, but didn’t jerk it away. Bringing it to his lap, he stroked it intimately as he gazed out over the world. Ancient ruins dotted nearly every high place.

Rachel broke the silence. “How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy. You’ve become very adept at hiding your colors in the tapestry of Creation. I had to trace every strand that bore your shades. Why are you doing this, Rachel?”

The wind set her long hair to dancing about her beautiful, tear-swollen face. She brushed the fluttering ebony strands behind her ears. “I needed to see this—for myself.”

“Were you frightened that I wouldn’t understand this quest of yours?”

“What do you know of my quest?” she challenged bitterly.

“Oh, a great deal more than you suspect.” He smiled and patted her hand. “I once searched the voids, too, looking for hope, for another way out, for any sign that God intended to keep his promises to your forebears.”

She fumbled with the slender blades of dead grass that sprouted beneath the cool rocky overhang. “But you never found it?”

“It doesn’t exist, Rachel.”

“That breaks my heart, Aktariel.” She bit her lip and stared out across the undulating hills. Birds soared on thermals high above, darting through the cloudless blue. “Our universe may be terrible, but there’s so much beauty and serenity in some of the others. I’d hoped that somewhere the seeds of salvation lay dormant.”

And awaiting a tiller to work the soil and stir them to life? Was that what she’d been doing? Sifting through the universes to find the most likely version where Nathan could change the course of history? Yes, of course.
Which
had she chosen?

He forced down the panic that surged through him. “Ah, we’re back to the old arguments. All right, Rachel, even if the seeds could be made to sprout, how much beauty is enough to counterbalance the pain and anguish? If God truly loves us, why does He make the good things so hard to find? Why does He hide His omnipresent Light under so many bushels?”

“Maybe he doesn’t hide it. Maybe evil is an illusion. Maybe our perceptions are too limited to see the pervasive Good.”

Aktariel lifted her hand to gently kiss the slender fingers. “Then what a poor Creator He is, to have made us with such a terrible flaw that we see suffering where there isn’t any, that we feel deprived of His Light when it’s really all around us. You and I both have watched millions die horribly, pleading to God for mercy.” He hesitated, watching her fill her palm with sand. She clutched it tightly, as though it were the first handful to be cast into the grave of a loved one. “It’s a terrible thing, Rachel, to die of thirst in an ocean of Love, Goodness, and Beauty. If God were all-powerful, he could correct our myopia with the wave of His hand. He doesn’t. Why not?”

“I don’t know,” she responded softly.

“Epagael could have made a perfect universe filled with infinite choices. He didn’t. He could call all this back right now and remake it so that it was perfectly ordered, so that we felt no suffering and existed in absolute bliss with our free will intact. He won’t.”

She tugged her hand away from him. “Don’t preach to me, Aktariel. I can’t bear it.”

He lowered his fingers to draw interlocking triangles in the dirt. “I didn’t mean to. I only wanted you to think. Those old arguments which presuppose an all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing deity are quite simply false. God is none of those things. He hasn’t been since he spawned the Void of Creation. The original genesis of dichotomy lessened Epagael, condemning Him as much as it condemned the consciousness which grew in the Void. He will forever be an outsider to our experiences here—until we
make
Him understand.”

Her brow puckered as she carelessly creased the hem of her jade robe. “I’ve no argument with that premise, Aktariel. Of course, we must make Epagael understand.”

“Where is our disagreement, then? I don’t comprehend what you’re doing. You and I both know that your interference with Nathan’s death may well send all of our carefully laid plans tumbling down around us. Why would you take such a risk?”

Rachel twisted sideways, turning her back to him. The wind set her raven hair to dancing before his eyes.

As he waited for her answer, his gaze drifted over the hill. Voices, old and impassioned, rose up from the very earth. Every stone here spoke to him, crying out from a blood-drenched mouth.
“Repent! Repent! The Kingdom of heaven has come!”
Not one grain of sand, not one blade of grass on this mount had been spared the shower of blood that had poured from the slaughtered.

He lifted his eyes to the rocky tor a few feet away and again he heard the stamping of hooves, the screams of frightened horses….

A scorching afternoon. The hill filled with crosses. People pushing and shoving to get out of the way of the bronze-suited cavalrymen who formed a cordon around them, herding them forward with lances and shouts, forcing them to look upon a sight no member of the faithful could bear: A Mashiah of flesh and sinew, who’d prayed for salvation and died in despair. Weeping echoed over the valley below. When darkness fell and the stars emerged in a shimmering blanket, jackals roamed the hill, jumping and tearing at the feet of the victims until the coral rays of dawn revealed bare gnawed bone.

Aktariel rubbed his eyes. God had not helped his Chosen People that day. There’d been no angels plunging out of heaven, swords in hand, to free the writhing savior—though hundreds had waited, their gazes piteously glued to the sky. A flood of pleading repentant voices had washed this hillock clean of sin. And Epagael had heard. He’d witnessed the horrors, searched the pitch-black eyes and sun-burned faces, and irritably turned his head.

Rachel frowned at the jagged ruins in the valley below. “I would take the risk, Aktariel, because of this place.”

“What do you mean?”

“I came here because I thought … I thought I might find the twelve guardian angels floating over the twelve sacred gates, with all the peoples of the Earth lying prostrate at their feet. I thought I might see the footprints of the true Mashiah in the soil by the Valley Gate.”

Aktariel toyed with a palm-sized rock that rested at his side. He picked it up and tested its weight. The heaviness of absorbed blood made it seem a chunk of lead. “The New Yerushalaim will never exist, Rachel. None of the parallel universes have the requisite foundations for it.”

“How can you be so sure?
If we go back and influence minor things in the tapestry, won’t—”

“No! No,
Rachel. Please, listen. You and I—no matter what our powers—can never fulfill the promises Epagael made to your forebears. Only He can do that, and He won’t. Surely this city is proof of that.”

Aktariel reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder, turning her around so he could stare into those midnight eyes of hers. “You
cannot
remake any of the parallel universes to fulfill your dreams. You understand me? the strands in the tapestry are too complicated, Rachel. Neither you nor I can ever see enough of the picture to reweave it without taking dire risks that we’ll create more suffering than Epagael already has. The few times that I’ve tried, I’ve only made things worse.”

“But—”

“No buts. Judgment Day is almost here. Let’s handle it the way we’d planned. The Great Gate that leads to the Light Everlasting is almost—”

“How soon?”

“When in Darkness the Judgment takes place.”

Gruffly, she challenged, “What does that mean? You never tell me enough to allow me to make decisions for myself! Why is that? Don’t you trust me?”

“I don’t trust anyone, Rachel. I can’t afford to. I’ve been so close before and never been able to—”

“But you told me that our destinies are interconnected, that our paths have twined and missed for millennia. You said that we were part of each other and that neither of us would be whole again until we were together. How can you
not
trust me?”

“When the time comes and the Great Gate opens, then I’ll trust you. Why won’t you trust me? …
Where is Nathan?”

She swiftly got up and looked at him through haunted eyes. “If you had the time, you’d search every universe to find my grandson and kill him, wouldn’t you?”