Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear (22 page)

“Peace!”
The laughter was explosive.
“You talk of peace? Look about you. The blood of my servants stains my altar and you speak to me of peace?”

Malcolm completed his circuit of the room. There was nothing—just rock and flame and the voice, shouting in his ear. The entrance to one of the dark corridors was next to him, and he stepped into it, but the voice followed him, chasing him along its length until he came out into a room much like the first. Only this one’s altar was shaped like a pedestal, and where the other had held stones, this one held—

He couldn’t see clearly what it held. There was a shape, but Malcolm could only see it through a haze, as though of smoke. Could it be the outline of a calf? It could be anything, he realized. And as he watched, the smoke closed up around the altar, obscuring the figure.

“You say you seek a statue. If so, your quest is doomed, for the statue you mean was destroyed a hundred generations ago.”

“But—”

“But a man told you he saw it. You are not the first he has sent to me, this blind man. And you, so quick to believe, you take the word of a blind man over that of your own Scripture?”

“He wasn’t blind when he saw it.”

“You are all blind.”
The voice was now a guttural whisper, cold and insinuating.
“You see only what you wish to see. Each man who faces my altar sees that which he most desires and, addressing it with impure heart, gains only what he most dreads.”

The smoke began to thin, as though blown by a breeze.

“Your blind man spent a lifetime searching for my
mount, the figure they made for me at the foot of Sinai, so when he came before me, that is what he saw.

“Look closely, child. What do you see? Like your ancestors before you, you have wandered in the desert and climbed the mountain’s slopes. You did not bear this burden in pursuit of another man’s quest.”

Malcolm could make out the altar again, and upon it he saw a form, a human shape, but it was still indistinct.

“Do you even know what you are searching for?”

And the smoke vanished, in an instant, leaving the figure behind it bare. She was naked and pale and trembling, and Malcolm fell to his knees before her.

“Each man worships at the idol of his choosing.”

“No,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “She’s dead. I buried her.” He turned to the woman seated on the altar. “You’re dead, three years dead.”

Lydia stepped down, came toward him, one arm outstretched. “My love, my poor love,” she said.

He shrank from her. “It’s impossible,” he said. He shouted it: “It’s impossible! This is a lie!”

“Why impossible? Do you doubt my power?”
From the corridor, Malcolm heard the echo of footsteps approaching, and then one by one the men he’d killed entered the room, the two in robes and the third in his loincloth, his bloody trunk and head still bearing their horrible, fatal wounds.
“Over certain among the living I have influence, but over the dead—over the dead, I have utter command.”

“No,” Malcolm said. But he couldn’t deny the evidence of his eyes. These men—they had died, he had struck them down himself, had seen them fall. Yet here they were. And here she was, looking exactly as he remembered. His mind recoiled at the thought. And yet—

She reached out for him again, but the dead men in priestly robes each took one of her arms and between
them they pulled her back toward the altar. The third man followed, his naked back gleaming in the candlelight, bloody and torn where the first bullet had emerged above his hip.

Malcolm launched himself to his feet, threw himself at the three men, but while the priests secured Lydia to the altar, the giant swatted him away, sent him reeling to the floor with one swipe of his scarred palm. Malcolm drew his gun and fired, twice, three times, till the chambers were all empty, but this time the bullets had no effect.

The priests stood back, and he saw that they had shackled Lydia to the stone, ankles and wrists encircled with iron bands. From the folds of his robe, one of them drew a knife with a curved and scalloped blade and handed it to the third man, the barebacked giant who had so casually fended off Malcolm’s charge. The second priest positioned himself behind Lydia’s head and placed one hand firmly on either side of her face.

“Close your eyes,” the giant said. His voice was soft and calm and Malcolm’s blood froze at the sound of it.

“Malcolm!” Lydia’s cry took him back in an instant to her bedside at the hospital. “Help me.”

“It’s not real,” Malcolm said. He shouted it to the ceiling of the cavernous room. “It’s not real!”

“Your arrogance is awesome,”
the voice intoned,
“if you presume to state what is and is not real.”

“My wife is dead. You cannot change that. No one can.”

“Perhaps. But can the dead not also suffer?”

And from the altar came a shriek of purest terror, of anguish beyond measure. He saw only the giant’s broad back, stooped over the bound figure, saw the hugely muscled arms, streaked with sweat, rock as he gently worked the knife.

“Stop it,” Malcolm said. “Please stop.”

“Why, if it is not real?”

Malcolm had to struggle to keep his voice under control. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I can, child, and because it is my pleasure. It is my pleasure that my power be revealed, that men may know a god of might still walks among them, that they may bend their knees in supplication.”

“You want me to kneel?” He dropped to his knees, spread his arms out. “Please.”

“Kneeling is more than a matter of being on your knees. I will spare her for you—and then you will kneel to me in earnest, you will bow to me and do my bidding, as your blind man does in spite of himself. And in time you will speak my name with true reverence rather than with deceit in your heart.”

The men surrounding the altar stepped away, and Malcolm saw that Lydia was still bound to it, her face smeared with blood. He ran to the altar. She was shaking and pale, her torso covered with sweat, and he took her hand gently. One of the priests held a square of silk out to him. He took it and carefully wiped the blood around her eyes.

“My darling,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me.”

So, Burke, he thought, here’s your golden calf. I understand now. There’s a thing you love and crave, and you had it once, too briefly, and now you ache to have it back. Yes, I know how you ache. There is no way you could leave it behind in the desert: you’re bound to it for life, you are its slave. Even if it no longer exists outside your imagination.

I crave, too, Malcolm thought. You’re not the only one; my imagination is no less troubled. But I am not blind, Burke, and I have not your capacity for blind faith.

“I left my wife in Glasnevin,” he said softly, “and I’m going back to her there.”

He let go of her hand, stepped back from the altar,
and walked as rapidly as he could toward the corridor through which he’d entered. Behind him, the voice thundered.

“If you go, you will never see her again.”

He kept walking.

“You will never speak to her, touch her, hear her voice.”

He bit back tears.

“She will suffer torments you cannot conceive!”

And then she screamed, a shattering, curdled scream that seemed to contain more pain in it than any body could bear. Malcolm ran from it, tore through the first chamber and the iron gate and the entry hall, pursued by the sound of it. The flames of the candles lining the walls all at once were snuffed out, and at the far end of the corridor he saw the stone wall slowly swinging closed.

“Coward! You will curse the day you abandoned her to me.”

The hall seemed endless, the band of light beyond the wall shrinking as he ran toward it. He bent forward and strained for extra speed, for the last desperate dregs of energy that would carry him through, and he reached the wall at last when only inches remained. He squeezed through sideways, scraping against the rock on either side. From inside, a final angry whisper came, one he could only barely make out.

And then the wall slammed shut.

He leaned against it, breathing heavily, sobbing freely. What have I done, he thought. What have I done?

It was twilight outside and dry and hot. He had little water and less food, and seven miles between him and the nearest source of either. There was nothing for it. He started walking.

I’ll make it, he told himself. I’ll make it home. I’ll tell
Burke nothing—let him think I died, let him send other men after me, I don’t care. Just let me make it back.

An image came unbidden into his mind: the shackles, the altar, the woman writhing upon it.

It wasn’t her, he told himself. It wasn’t. The dead don’t walk, or speak, or feel pain, or beg you not to leave.

But it looked—her touch, her voice, it was all—

Rubbish. It was an illusion, a dream, a bit of desert madness.

In his jacket pocket, where he’d crammed it as he ran, he felt the crumpled square of silk, still damp. He took it out, turned it this way and that in the fading light. It was real, and the blood on it was real—not a dream, not an illusion. But what did that mean? Something had happened in the temple, something terrible; but not to Lydia. That wasn’t possible.

Are you certain? a voice in the back of his mind whispered.

Yes, damn it. I am certain.

Then why are you so frightened?

Because—because—

Because you saw her with your own eyes, you held her in your hand, and now you’ve gone and left her behind…

It wasn’t her. It couldn’t have been.

No, no, of course not. It couldn’t. But you’ll never know that for sure, will you?

And he remembered Molekh’s final, whispered imprecation, the words hissed out at him just before the stone walls ground together.
You may leave this place,
the voice had said,
but you will never escape it.

The Jebel Akhdar was barely visible at the horizon. He marched on, and the night closed in around him.