Cardinal Mustafa stared as if speechless.
“My friend … M. Ananda … also taught me this,” said the boy.
For a second, the Cardinal’s face was twisted by something like a sneer. He turned toward Aenea. “I would be pleased if the young lady would teach me … teach us all … this clever conjuror’s trick,” he said sharply.
“I hope to,” said Aenea.
Rhadamanth Nemes took a half step toward my friend. I set my hand in my cape, lightly touching the firing stud of the flashlight laser.
The Regent tapped a gong with a cloth-wrapped stick. The Lord Chamberlain hurried forward to escort us out. Aenea bowed to the Dalai Lama and I clumsily did likewise.
The audience was over.
I DANCE WITH AENEA IN THE GREAT, ECHOING RECEPTION hall, to the music of a seventy-two-piece orchestra, with the lords and ladies, priests and plenipotentiaries of T’ien Shan, the Mountains of Heaven, all watching from the edges of the dance floor or wheeling around us in shared motion to the music. I remember dancing with Aenea, dining again before midnight at the long tables constantly restocked with food, and then dancing again. I remember holding her tight as we moved together around the dance floor. I do not remember ever having danced before—at least when I was sober—but I dance this night, holding Aenea close to me as the torchlight from the crackling braziers dims and the Oracle casts skylight shadows across the parquet floors.
It is in the wee hours of the morning and the older guests have retired, all the monks and mayors and elder statesmen—except for the Thunderbolt Sow, who has laughed and sung and clapped along with the orchestra for every raceme quadrille, tapping her slippered feet on the polished floors—and there are only four or five hundred determined celebrants remaining in the great, shadowy space, while the band plays slower and slower pieces as if their musical mainspring is wearing down.
I confess that I would have gone off to bed hours earlier if it were not for Aenea: she wants to dance. So dance we do, moving slowly, her small hand in my large one, my other hand flat on her back—feeling her spine and strong muscles under my palm through the thin silk of the dress—her hair against my cheek, her breasts soft against me, the curve of her skull against my neck and chin. She seems slightly sad, but still energetic, still celebrating.
Private audiences had ended many hours ago and word had spread that the Dalai Lama had gone to bed before midnight, but we last celebrants parried on—Lhomo Dondrub, our flyer friend, laughing and pouring champagne and rice beer for everyone, Labsang Samten, the Dalai Lama’s little brother, leaping over the ember-filled braziers at some point, the serious Tromo Trochi of Dhomu suddenly metamorphosing into a magician in one corner, doing tricks with fire and hoops and levitations, and then the Dorje Phamo singing one clear, slow a cappella solo in a voice so sweet that it haunts my dreams to this day, and finally the scores of others joining in the Oracle Song as the orchestra prepares to wrap up the evening’s celebration before the predawn begins to fade the night sky.
Suddenly the music ends in mid-bar. The dancers stop. Aenea and I lurch to a stop and look around.
There has been no sign of the Pax guests for hours, but suddenly one of them—Rhadamanth Nemes—emerges from the shadows of the Dalai Lama’s curtained alcove. She has changed her uniform and is now dressed all in red. There are two others with her, and for a moment I think they are the priests, but then I see that the two figures dressed in black are near-copies of the Nemes thing: another woman and a man, both in black combat suits, both with limp, black bangs hanging down on pale foreheads, both with eyes of dead amber.
The trio moves through the frozen dancers toward Aenea and me. Instinctively I put myself between my friend and the things, but the Nemes male and its other sibling begin to move around us, flanking us. I pull Aenea close behind me, but she steps to my side.
The frozen dancers make no noise. The orchestra remains silent. Even the moonlight seems stilled to solid shafts in the dusty air.
I remove the flashlight laser and hold it at my side. The primary Nemes thing shows small teeth. Cardinal Mustafa steps from the shadows and stands behind her. All four of the Pax creatures hold their gaze on Aenea. For a moment I think that the universe has stopped, that the dancers are literally frozen in time and space, that the music hangs above us like icy stalactites ready to shatter and fall, but then I hear the murmur through the crowd—fearful whispers, a hiss of anxiety.
There is no visible threat—only four Pax guests moving out across the ballroom floor with Aenea as the locus of their closing circle—but the sense of predators closing on their prey is too strong to ignore, as is the scent of fear through the perfume and powder and cologne.
“Why wait?” says Rhadamanth Nemes, looking at Aenea but speaking to someone else—her siblings perhaps, or the Cardinal.
“I think …” says Cardinal Mustafa and freezes.
Everyone freezes. The great horns near the entrance arch have blown with the bass rumble of continental crusts shifting. No one is there in the alcoves to blow them. The bone and brass trumpets bracket the endless one-note rumbling of the horns. The great gong vibrates on the bone conduction level.
There is a rustle and stifled outcry across the dance floor, in the direction of the escalators, the anteroom, and the curtained entrance arch. The thinning crowds there are parting wider, moving aside like furrowed soil ahead of a steel plow.
Something is moving behind the closed curtains of the anteroom. Now something has passed through the curtains, not so much parting them as severing them. Now something is glinting in Oracle light and gliding across the parquet floors, gliding as if floating centimeters above the floor, glinting in the dying light of the moon. Tatters of red curtain hang from an impossibly tall form—three meters at least—and there are too many arms emerging from the folds of that crimson robe. It looks as if the hands hold steel blades. The dancers move away more quickly and there is a general and audible intake of breath. Lightning silently supercedes the moonlight and strobes off polished floors, eclipsing the Oracle with retinal echoes. When the thunder arrives some long seconds later, it is indistinguishable from the low, bone-shaking rumble of the still-reverberating horns in the entrance hall.
The Shrike glides to a halt five paces from Aenea and me, five paces from the Nemes thing, ten paces from each of the Nemes siblings frozen in their act of circling us, eight paces from the Cardinal. It occurs to me that the Shrike shrouded in its dangling red curtain tatters resembles nothing so much as a chrome and bladed caricature of Cardinal Mustafa in his crimson robe. The Nemes clones in their black uniforms look like shadows of stilettos against the walls.
Somewhere in one of the shadowed corners of the great reception hall, a tall clock slowly strikes the hour … one … two … three … four. It is, of course, the number of inhuman killing machines standing before and behind us. It has been more than four years since I have seen the Shrike, but its presence is no less terrible and no more welcome despite its intercession here. The red eyes gleam like lasers under a thin film of water. The chrome-steel jaws are parted to show row upon row of razor teeth. The thing’s blades, barbs, and cutting edges emerge from the enfolding red curtain robe in scores of places. It does not blink. It does not appear to breathe. Now that the gliding has stopped, it is as motionless as a nightmare sculpture.
Rhadamanth Nemes is smiling at it.
Still holding the silly flashlight laser, I remember the confrontation on God’s Grove years ago. The Nemes thing had gone silver and blurry and simply disappeared, reappearing next to twelve-year-old Aenea without warning. It had planned to cut off my friend’s head and carry it away in a burlap bag, and it would have done so had not the Shrike appeared then. The Nemes thing could do so now without hope of my reacting in time. These things moved outside of time. I know the agony of a parent watching its child step into the path of a speeding groundcar, unable to move in time to protect her. Superimposed on this terror is the pain of a lover unable to pr
otect his beloved. I would die in a second to protect Aenea from any of these things—including the Shrike—indeed, may die in a second, in less than a second—but my death will not protect her. I grind my molars in frustration.
Moving only my eyes, afraid that I will precipitate the slaughter if I move a hand or head or muscle, I see that the Shrike is not staring at Aenea or the primary Nemes thing—it is staring directly at John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa. The frog-faced priest must feel the weight of this bloodred gaze, for the Cardinal’s complexion has gone a pure white above the red of his robe.
Aenea moves now. Stepping to my left side, she slips her right hand in my empty left one and squeezes my fingers. It is not a child’s request for reassurance; it is a signal of reassurance to me.
“You know how it will end,” she says softly to the Cardinal, ignoring the Nemes things as they coil like cats ready to pounce.
The Grand Inquisitor licks his thick lips. “No, I do not. There are the three of …”
“You know how it will end,” interrupts Aenea, her voice still soft. “You were on Mars.”
Mars? I think. What the hell does Mars have to do with anything? Lightning flickers again through the skylight, throwing wild shadows. The faces of the hundreds of terror-frozen revelers are like white ovals painted on black velvet around us. I realize in a flash of insight as sudden and illuminating as the lightning that the metaphysical biosphere of this world—Zen-evolved or not—is riddled with Tibetan myth-inspired demons and malevolent spirits: cancerous nyen earth spirits; sadag “lords of the soil” who haunt builders who disturb their realms; tsen red spirits who live in rocks; gyelpo spirits of dead kings who have failed their vows, dead, deadly, dressed all in pale armor; dud spirits who are so malevolent that they feed only on human flesh and wear black, beetle skin; mamo female deities as ferocious as unseen riptides; matrika sorceresses of charnel grounds and cremation platforms, first sensed by a whiff of their carrion breath; grahas planetary deities that cause epilepsy and other violent, thrashing illnesses; nodjin guardians of wealth in the soil—death to diamond miners—and a score more of night things, teethed things, clawed things, and killing things. Lhomo and the others have told me the stories well and often. I look at the white faces staring in shock at the Shrike and the Nemes creatures and think—This night will not be so strange in the telling for these people.
“The demon cannot vanquish all three of them,” says Cardinal Mustafa, saying the word “demon” aloud even as I think the word. I realize that he is speaking about the Shrike.
Aenea ignores the comment. “It will harvest your cruciform first,” she says softly. “I cannot stop it from doing that.”
Cardinal Mustafa’s head jerks back as if he has been slapped. His pale countenance grows visibly paler. Taking their cue from Rhadamanth Nemes, the clone-siblings coil tighter as if building energy toward some terrible transformation. Nemes has returned her black gaze to Aenea and the creature is smiling so broadly now that her rearmost teeth are visible.
“Stop!” cries Cardinal Mustafa and his shout echoes from the skylight and floor. The great horns cease rumbling. Revelers clutch one another in a rustling of fingernails on silk. Nemes flashes the Cardinal a look of malevolent loathing and near defiance.
“Stop!” screams the Pax holy man again, and I realize that he is talking to his own creatures first and foremost. “I invoke the command of Albedo and the Core, by the authority of the Three Elements I command thee!” This last desperate scream has the cadence of a shouted exorcism, some profound ritual, but even I can tell that it is not Catholic or Christian. It is not the Shrike being invoked under an iron grip of talismanic control here; it is his own demons.
Nemes and her siblings slide backward on the parquet floor as if pulled by invisible strings. The clone male and clone female move around us until they join Nemes in front of Mustafa.
The Cardinal smiles but it is a tremulous gesture. “My pets will not be unleashed until we speak again. I give my word as a prince of the Church, unholy child. Do I have your word that this”—he gestures toward the bladed Shrike in its velvet tatters —“this demon will not stalk me until then?”
Aenea appears as calm as she has through the entire incident. “I do not control it,” she says. “Your only safety is to leave this world in peace.”
The Cardinal is eyeing the Shrike. The man seems poised to leap away if the tall apparition flexes so much as a fingerblade. Nemes and her ilk continue standing between him and the Shrike. “What assurance have I,” he says, “that the thing will not follow me into space … or back to Pacem?”
“None,” says Aenea.
The Grand Inquisitor points a long finger at my friend. “We have business here that has nothing to do with you,” he says sharply, “but you will never leave this world. I swear this to you by the bowels of Christ.”
Aenea returns his gaze and says nothing.
Mustafa turns and stalks away with a swish of his red robe and a rasp of his slippers on the polished floor. The Nemes things back all the way across the floor while following him, the male and female clones holding their gazes on the Shrike, Nemes piercing Aenea with her stare. They pass through the curtain tent of the Dalai Lama’s private portal and are gone.
The Shrike stays where it is, lifeless, its four arms frozen in front of it, fingerblades catching the last drops of Oracle light before the moon moves behind the mountain and is lost.
Revelers begin moving toward the exits on a wave of whispers and exclamations. The orchestra thumps, clangs, and whistles as instruments are packed in a hurry and dragged or carried away. Aenea continues holding my hand as a small circle remains around us.
“Buddha’s ass!” cries Lhomo Dondrub and strides over to the Shrike, testing his finger against a metallic thorn rising from the thing’s chest. I see blood on his finger in the dimming light. “Fantastic!” cries Lhomo and swigs from a goblet of rice beer.
The Dorje Phamo moves to Aenea’s side. She takes my friend’s left hand, goes to one knee, and sets Aenea’s palm against her wrinkled forehead. Aenea removes her hand from mine as she takes the Thunderbolt Sow gently by the arms and helps her rise. “No,” whispers Aenea.
“Blessed One,” whispers the Dorje Phamo. “Amata, Immortal One; Arhat, Perfected One; Sammasambuddha, Fully Awakened One; command us and teach us the dhamma”
“No,” snaps Aenea, still gentle with the old woman as she pulls her to her feet but stern of countenance. “I will teach you what I know and share what I have when the time arrives. I can do no more. The hour for myth has passed.”
My friend turns, takes my hand, and leads us across the dance floor, past the immobile Shrike, and toward the tattered curtains and unmoving escalator. Former revelers part for our passing as swiftly as they had for the Shrike.
We pause at the top of the steel stairs. Lanterns glow in the hallway to our sleeping rooms far below us.
“Thank you,” says Aenea, looking up at me with her brown eyes moist.
“What?” I say stupidly. “For … why … I don’t understand.”
“Thank you for the dance,” she says and reaches up to kiss me softly on the lips.
The electricity of her touch makes me blink. I gesture back toward the roiling crowd behind us, the dance floor empty of the Shrike now, at the Potala guards rushing into the echoing space, and at the curtained alcove through which Mustafa and his creatures have disappeared. “We can’t sleep here tonight, kiddo. Nemes and the other two will …”
“Uh-uh,” says Aenea, “they won’t. Trust me on this. They won’t come creeping down the outside wall and across our ceiling tonight. In fact, they’ll all be leaving their gompa and shuttling straight up to their ship in orbit. They’ll be back, but not tonight.”
I sigh.
She takes my hand. “Are you sleepy?” she says softly.
Of course I am sleepy. I am exhausted beyond words. Last night seems days and weeks away, and I had only two or three hours’ light sl
eep then because of … because we had … because of …
“Not a bit,” I say.
Aenea smiles and leads the way back to our sleeping chamber.
20
ope Urban XVI: Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created.
All: Thou shalt renew the memory of Earth and the face of all worlds in God’s Dominion.
Pope Urban XVI: Let us pray.
O God, You have instructed the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit. Grant that through the same Holy Spirit we may always be truly wise and rejoice in His consolation. Through Christ our Lord.
All: Amen.
Pope Urban XVI blesses the insignia of the Knights of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.
Pope Urban XVI: Our help is in the name of the Lord.
All: Who made Heaven and earth and all worlds.
Pope Urban XVI: The Lord be with you.
All: And also with you.
Pope Urban XVI: Let us pray.
Hear, we pray You, O Lord, our prayers and deign through the power of Your majesty to bless the insignia of office. Protect Your servants who desire to wear them, so that they may be strong to guard the rights of the Church, and quick to defend and spread the Christian faith. Through Christ our Lord.
All: Amen.
Pope Urban XVI sprinkles the emblems with holy water.
The Master of Ceremonies, Cardinal Lourdusamy, reads the decree of the newly appointed Knights and of those promoted in rank. Each member stands as his or her name is mentioned and remains standing. There are one thousand two hundred and eight Knights in the Basilica.
Cardinal Lourdusamy lists all honorees by rank, lowest to highest, Knights first, followed by Priest Knights.
At the conclusion of the reading, the Knights to be invested kneel. All others are seated.
Pope Urban XVI asks the Knights: What do you ask?
The Knights answer: I ask to be invested as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.