Lightbreaker, p.31
Lightbreaker, page 31
Now.
I released my self, embracing the many, and took hold of the Tree.
XXXII
Is this how God dreams?
Katarina, wreathed in red, whispers in my ear. "Your reality is an illusion." Her hand is on my chest. Fingers caress my flesh. World touched by Word.
Behind her, the Tree rises like a plume of white smoke. Its heavy globes split from the trunk and hang like luminous worlds.
Her fingers touch the flickering light of my soul. Her index finger tickles my heart and I arch under her caress, pushing myself against her hand. Though I am bound, chained by my ignorance, I raise myself to meet her touch. Take me. Free me.
I cannot see the top of the Tree. A veil hides the last three spheres from my sight. A line is drawn through the neck of the Tree, separating the trunk and limbs from the head. In the center of the line, right in the hollow of the neck, there is a black smudge, a hole to nowhere.
God dreams. Fiat lux. The world immolates and is made anew. My heart is on fire, a burning stone within the cage of my chest. She touches me, and I am released from bondage.
Free to climb the Tree. To grasp the center trunk and scale to the edge of the veil. I am free to touch the dark hole at the base of the neck.
The Tree splits, sundering into a vale of darkness, lit by the black fire of negative globes. In the center of the valley, in the depth of the wood that crawls across the black land, cowers the Son of Man. Caught in his throat is the Word that will remake the world.
He has no speech, no gift of tongues. His mouth is a rotten hole through which he feeds the appetites of his body. His hands, instead of writing out the Word and making it real, tug at his flesh. His ears are filled with the sound of the leaves in the trees, almost a voice, almost a whispering promise. "Your reality is an illusion."
A hand emerges from the darkness and the Son of Man does not realize it is his own, wrapped around his emaciated body. The hand holds a seed, dug up from the roots of the black trees, and he hungrily opens his mouth to take the dark Communion.
It sticks in his throat for an instant, caught in the web of the Word, and then it falls into his stomach, wrapped in the beauty of the Word. It falls into fallow ground and yet, sheathed by the Word, takes root.
This is the way the world ends.
I am the architect of my own demise. I am the demiurge of my own ascension. This is the dream of God. This is the seed wrapped in the Word. This is the Tree that takes root and from which springs Creation.
This is the sacrifice called Faith.
We are in a palace of wind and light, buffeted by storms of orange lightning and howling fire. Bernard lies on a table of coiled smoke, his head resting on a strata of cumulonimbus clouds. He is naked, stripped of his civilized vestments. Tears leak from his eyes and water comes out of his mouth as he gasps like a fish drowning on land.
Hush, you need not speak. I know all the words you seek to make; just as I know all the words you have uttered before you came here. He looks at me, pleading with his eyes. He cannot move his arms or legs. He cannot move anything but his mouth and his eyes. I know, I forgive you.
I tear the first piece from his chest, just below his left nipple. It is a morsel of pale flesh, wet with his translucent blood—all the color has left him, all his strength has fled. I offer it to the first supplicant in the long line that stands beside the table.
She is a pale cloud lit by lightning, a swirling nimbus that shapes itself in a memory of her form. Her fabric parts, a hole through which I can see the light behind and beyond her, and I place the piece of Bernard's flesh on what passes for her tongue. The hole seals itself into a ghostly smile and the smoke of her fills with a rainbow explosion of light. She drifts into me, melting through my presence, and my vision blurs with violet and silver light. She passes through me, through the portal of my bones and through the curtain of my flesh.
I offer Communion to all of them: every man, woman, and child of Ravensdale, of Portland. I give them a piece of Bernard in exchange for what he took from them. When his flesh is gone, I rip his organs into tiny strips and break his bones into small wafers.
They are patient, the souls who have passed. Their timeless wait is an incremental span of the Universe's existence. They know, and wait. For there will be enough for all of them. Each one crosses through my gate and becomes part of the wind and light surrounding this palace.
The last one in line is more solid than the rest, and I withhold the final piece of Bernard from him. No, not you.
Please, he whispers, kneeling on the clouds at my feet.
No, I tell him, and his despair is plainly writ on his face. You have not earned this. I crouch and lift his chin. Looking into the mirror of his eyes, I tell him. The path will remain open.
I give him a kiss—ex lux et vita—and I accept the sacrifice that brought him here. But it isn't enough. Not yet.
Rede, meus filius.
EPILOGUE
Et vidit Deus lucem quod esset bona
et divisit Deus lucem ac tenebras.
—Genesis 1:4
She's catatonic. Has been since she was brought in a few days ago." The nurse shook her head. "Found her in an alley near that warehouse fire. She's non-responsive and . . ." She paused, uncomfortable with continuing this discussion with a complete stranger.
"She's dying," I said. "A little bit more every day. And yet there's nothing wrong with her that you can find. . . ."
The nurse turned from the ICU window. "Do you know her?"
"Yes."
"Who is she? What is your relationship to her?"
I put an index finger on my lip, my middle finger and thumb touching. The nurse's eyes flickered toward my mouth and her expression loosened as she became transfixed by the spell wrapped in my hand. She lost her train of thought and started to turn away as if I had suddenly vanished. "I—" she began.
I shook my head, finger still on my lip. I could See the wreath of her soul. Its subtle rotation synched with a low pulse in my stomach.
Her head moved as well, a sluggish aping of my motion. "We—" she started, feeling for the right word. "We hope she recovers." I nodded and her head moved in time with mine. Her shoulders and head drooped as if she had been struck by a sudden bout of narcolepsy. She blinked twice and then raised her head. Looking through me, she smiled at nothing—a false memory at best—and marched off, returning to her station down the hall.
I entered the ICU and stood next to the bed. I lifted Kat's arm and stroked the back of her hand. Once. Twice. On the third time, her eyelids fluttered, the tiny wings of hummingbirds caressing her face.
She looked at the ceiling for a few minutes, struggling to remember how she had come to this place and finding nothing in her memory. There were holes in her head, segments of her history now gone. The muscles in her face tightened as she became more aware and the slack simplicity of her comatose expression gave way to a knotted anger. There were holes, but what remained was more than enough to remember what had been done to her.
Kat finally realized she wasn't alone. Her expression went through elation and resignation before settling—like water soaking into a piece of worn cloth—into sadness. "Michael," she said, a whisper of wind in hollow reeds. "I See the sons of morning. Is it time?"
Rede. Go back.
I shook my head.
She carefully touched the spot on her forehead where the ibis-hound had tapped her soul. "I am broken," she whispered. "Is this how the void feels? Such emptiness." Her lips tightened. "Such hunger." Her lips moved around the word but she didn't say it.
Qliphoth.
"I have something for you." I lifted her hand from her forehead and pressed my lips to the center of her palm. She smelled like lilacs. Still.
I unfolded the Chorus, and their voices filled my spine and throat. Like an aria rising from my chest, they swarmed up to my mouth where a single voice—a single note—pushed its way to the front of my mouth. I kissed Kat's palm and breathed out the light that had once belonged to her. I closed her fingers around the star in her palm, sealed her hand tight so that it wouldn't escape.
Wait for the light.
She brought her hand to her mouth and kissed her knuckles, feeling the warmth of her soul radiating through her flesh. Her grip loosened and the starlight escaped through the gaps between her fingers. It raced into her eyes, making the welling tears glitter. Racing through the flesh of her skull, the stolen piece of her soul unknotted the twisted skin of the ibis-hound's kiss.
She sighed, a long breath unraveling from the tension that had been bound and wound in her gut. One of the tears launched itself across the curve of her cheek. "What happened?"
"The Hollow Men are gone, and so is the device."
"Gone? Where?"
"I broke them, Kat."
"Goddess, Michael. Why—?" In her eyes, the rest of the question. Pleading me to tell her otherwise, to tell her that I didn't have their blood on my hands.
"It was the only way I knew."
Another tear started across her cheek. "What price have you paid for me?"
"It was a debt owed." I shook my head. "What I gave away I had kept for too long. It didn't belong to me."
She had Seen the glow of the refreshed Chorus on me—the sons of morning—but she didn't know who they were, who they had been. John Nicols was in there, as was the tiny remnant of Bernard du Guyon. The one glittering particle of his spirit that had not been given as sacrament. He would never complete his journey. Not while I lived. There were others as well, voices I did not know. They filled my head with a different song.
Other than Bernard, the new voices were, for a lack of a better word, volunteers.
"Do you remember that phrase attributed to Descartes? Do you remember what he said? 'I think, therefore I am.' "
Her eyebrows pulled together and she sat up, propping her elbows into her pillows. "Yes, I remember it. Cogito ergo sum. What does that have to do with anything?"
"Everything," I said. "Nothing."
She laughed. "Are you pulling my leg? 'Everything' and 'Nothing' are the non-answers of the world."
I put a finger to my lip and snared her laughter in a circle of finger and thumb. "Maybe." She stared, lost in the suggestion hidden within the formed circle. "But what if Descartes' phrase was the Word spoken by God that started Creation?"
When she blinked again, I had vanished. Like a dream. Like an illusion.
Maybe this was the way the world began.
Ergo sum.
Acknowledgements
Naturally, a writer's first book can't find its way into the world without agents, editors, and publishers who are willing to take a chance with someone new, and it has been my fortune to have Kristopher O'Higgins and Jesse Vogel (Scribe Agency), Marty Halpern (my editor), and Jason Williams and Jeremy Lassen (the gentlemen at Night Shade Books) all enthusiastic about bringing this project to fruition. I want to especially acknowledge Kristopher O'Higgins for letting this book gnaw at him. If he hadn't tracked me down and asked why the hell this book wasn't on a publisher's desk, the last four years would have been very different. I'm very grateful these years have gone the way they have. Thank you, sir.
Travis Anderson, Jonathan Bond, Tom Dancs, John Klima, and Tom Lindell all responded to strange, off-the-cuff questions at weird times, and Cooper Moo has been unflagging in his enthusiasm for being able to purchase a real copy of this book. Thank you all, and any errors of translation or history or theory are my lack of attention to the details they provided me. Also, I hope those who know Powell's will forgive my dramatic license with the physical arrangement of the store. It used to be like that, you know, but things change.
None of this matters much without Emm, Ess, and Zee. I am only visible because of the light you shine upon me.
My fascination with the work of Ficino, Dr. Dee, Crowley, Hermes Trismegistus, and all the rest is only equaled by my ignorance in the finer details of their philosophical underpinnings. Any gross errors of comprehension are either just that, or me twisting things to meet the needs of the story. I hope that fellow enthusiasts will be gracious in their understanding. In the end, we're all seeking answers.
Salve.
Soundtrack
Julie K. Rose asked for my thoughts about mood music when writing books—for her website that focuses on writers and the music that influences them. This is the soundtrack for Lightbreaker:
01. Within Temptation "Our Solemn Hour" (The Heart of Everything)
02. Detritus "Collide" (Fractured)
03. Curve "Missing Link (Screaming Bird mix)" (Blackertreethracktwo EP)
04. Darrin Verhagen "Voiceover" (D/Classified)
05. Stone Glass Steel "Acidburn Aesthetic" (Dismembering Artists)
06. Darrin Verhagen "." (Zero-Stung)
07. Peccatum "Black Star" (Lost in Reverie)
08. Detritus "Lethe" (Fractured)
09. Shinjuku Thief "Agnus Dei" (Medea)
10. 302 Acid "Quest" (005)
11. Covenant "Greater Than the Sun" (Skyshaper)
12. Shinjuku Thief "Shadow Path" (The Witch Hunter)
13. Nine Inch Nails "The Great Destroyer" (Year Zero)
14. E.P.A. "With Small Shards of Glass" (Black Ice)
15. Sephiroth "Uthul Khulture" (Draconian Poetry)
16. Venetian Snares "Colorless" (My Downfall)
17. Coil "Heaven's Blade" (The Ape of Naples)
18. Shinjuku Thief "Procession of Souls" (The Witch Haven)
19. Fields of the Nephilim "Shroud (Exordium)" (Mourning Sun)
20. Fields of the Nephilim "Straight to the Light" (Mourning Sun)
A track-by-track analysis can be found at:
http://writersoundtracks.blogspot.com/search/label/Mark%20Teppo
Carl McCoy and his various incarnations as Fields of the Nephilim was an on-going soundtrack to the creation of this book. Mourning Sun, as a symphonic chaos magick ritual, was a daily reminder of what could be accomplished. Writing a book is a solitary journey, but a good soundtrack makes the long miles go by much faster.
Heartland
Follow Markham as he continues to seek the light in Heartland: The Second Book of the Codex of Souls, forthcoming in Fall 2009.
[An Excerpt]
The library in Harvey Alleningham's estate ran the length of the north wing, half-buried in the hillside, its eastern wall covered by heavy bookcases. The north and south walls were broken up with paintings and sculptures on marble pedestals. Three matching leather chairs were scattered in an open arrangement about the room, and a gas fireplace nestled in the southwest corner, its halo of blue flame flickering over a central core of reddened fake logs.
Philippe Emonet stood near the fireplace, leaning against a bookcase as he perused a book with a cover more in keeping with an airport book kiosk than a scholastic library. A crooked cane, a twisted stick that looked like a branch torn from an old ash tree and stripped of its bark, was propped against the bookcase nearby. I was dressed in a tailored tuxedo, and I looked shabby next to his Saville Row suit colored like the gray clouds filled with the mournful weight of snow over Seattle. His cerulean tie—the sky lost so long from this region—was dotted with tiny pricks of color, like lemon seeds. On the ring finger of his right hand was the crest of the Watchers: three opals arranged in a triangular pattern in a place setting of platinum. He wore no other jewelry; he had no reason to make any other accessorial statement. He looked good, but he was also older and whiter, an advancement in age that was unexpected.
"Salve, meus filius," he said without looking up.
There was an echo in my head, a reverberation of a time that I could barely remember, of a phantasmal place of wind and light. Meus filius. My son.
The Hierarch's words were a ritual greeting—one used for many generations of Watchers—and it had resonances beyond the organization and its history. But it felt wrong to respond—meus pater—even as a gesture of politeness. It felt like I was showing respect to something broken and incomplete, as if I were paying homage to an ideal that was anathema to me, a religion incomprehensible in its intolerance.
Philippe closed the book and placed it casually on the shelf. When he looked at me, he dissected my apprehension and found more in it than I could consciously articulate. "Hello, Michael," he said. More familiar. More equal.
