Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (49 page)

“You haven’t slept,” said Adon, from
where he sat on the edge of the desk, once O’Doyle was outside.

“I’ve been too anxious. Looking
forward to our next meeting,” the Rider mumbled almost drunkenly, rubbing his
numb hands together. “I’ve missed you.”

“You look exhausted.”

The Rider only raised his eyebrows
in answer.

“The other night, that blow to the
head O’Doyle gave you. It knocked you senseless. How are you feeling now?”

“Why all this concern?”

“I’m going to ask you some questions
now, Rider,” said Adon. “I want to be sure you have the clarity of mind to
answer me correctly.” He stopped himself and stared at the floor behind the
Rider. A faint smile slowly appeared on his face.

“Your shadow has no head.”

“Ask your questions,” the Rider
said.

“You’re doomed, Rider,” Adon said. “What
happened to you, I wonder?” Then a light came into his eyes. He had always been
exceedingly clever. “You’ve no name. Of course! That’s why the spells haven’t
worked, why Lilith’s children have lost their power over you. But with no name
at all, you’re not in The
Book of Life
.
How did you manage that?”

“Ask!” the Rider shouted.

“You know what I’m going to ask
already.”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“I don’t want to bore you, so why
don’t I ask you this. I’ve told you what you’re opposing. Why don’t you join
me?”

“Now you’re wasting both our time.”

“I had to try.”

“I know.”

“The scroll you took from Amos
Sheardown.”

“Finally.”

“It wasn’t on your person,” Adon
went on, getting up and going behind the desk. When he moved, the Rider saw
there was a stack of items piled on the desk. “You didn’t have an animal with
you when you were taken. You didn’t rent a room or a stall in the livery.”

The Rider saw his pistol belt then,
with the butt of his golden Volcanic jutting out of the pile, and the handle of
the cold iron Bowie with which he’d dispatched Nehema. There was also a cigar
box filled with his talismans.

Adon opened a drawer of the desk and
with one violent sweep, sent the pile crashing down into the drawer. He kicked
it shut.

“It’s with the black man Kabede now,
isn’t it?”

The Rider said nothing.

“Who is he?”

Nothing.

“He has abilities like those that
were taught to the Sons of the Essenes,” Adon went on. “But all of them are
dead. Did you teach him?”

The Rider stared at him. Then he
didn’t know about the Falashans. Good.

“Did he have something to do with
the loss of your name?”

He didn’t know about the Order’s
Book of Life
either.

“He bears the Rod of Aaron. Not just
anybody can do that.”

“No,” the Rider said. “Not just
anybody.”

“Where did you find him?”

Adon was scared of Kabede. As well
he should be. Adon had likely murdered the entire Order to eliminate the
Tzadikim Nistarim
, the 36 Hidden Saints
who it was said kept the universe from being destroyed so long as they lived.
But he had to know by now that the title
tzadik
was just that in the Order. A title. An honorific the Elders of the Council of
Yahad used. Who the true
tzadikim
were no one knew. Maybe the Elders had taken the title not out of respect to
tradition, but as a way to divert attention from the true
tzadikim
. He supposed he would never know,. but the fact that
Kabede had brought forth the Rod of Aaron, that he could wield it, there was a
good chance he was a true
tzadik.

“Where is he, Rider?” Adon repeated.

“You won’t have to look for him,”
the Rider said. “He’ll find you soon enough.”

Adon slammed his hand flat on the
desk.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do
this, Rider,” he said, stalking to the door of the office.

“No you weren’t,” said the Rider,
yawning.

O’Doyle’s heavy boots stomped
inside, and Adon closed the door behind him. He felt the big man tromp across
the floor, felt his steps in the creaking boards beneath his shoes. He could
smell him, could hear his breath when he stopped to stand behind him.

“I believe this prisoner knows the
whereabouts of a wanted criminal, O’Doyle,” Adon said, in Laird’s easy drawl.

Both of them were behind him now.

“I have questioned him about the
matter, but he’s proved damned obstinate. Maybe you can extract something from
him where I have failed.”

Suddenly he was airborne. The chair
legs swept out from underneath him and he hung suspended on his side in the air
for an instant before he crashed down hard to the floor. Without warning, and
his hands bound behind his back, he hadn’t had the chance to stop himself, and
he crashed full on his side, shoulder, and face.

O’Doyle hoisted him up by his shirt
front and without pause, threw his left fist, followed immediately by his left
elbow, into the Rider’s face. No sooner would his head rock back and rebound
then the fist would be there to catch him again. He quickly lost count of the
blows.

Then O’Doyle’s knuckles came down
and smashed against his nose, sending a ringing, staggering pain soaring up his
sinuses and forcing involuntary tears from his eyes.

The big guard released him and he
fell on his back, the shackles digging into his spine and wrists.

Hot blood poured over his face, and
threatened to fill his gasping mouth. He spluttered, the rusty taste on his
lips. The pain came in waves. His eyes were swollen to slits.

“No head on your shadow. You’re going
to die, Rider. Perhaps you think that because you’re dying, it doesn’t matter
what happens to you. Alright,” said Adon. “That was only a nose. Imagine the
fingers, or the toes. The knees. The elbows. Imagine losing an eye or an ear.
Now tell me. Where is Kabede?”

The Rider shook his head.

“Who is Spates?” Adon nearly
shouted.

That gave the Rider pause. How could
Adon possibly know about Spates? Had he somehow been caught? Had the colleague
Spates had taken the letters between Sheardown and Adon to been a part of the
conspiracy? Betrayed them all?

But no…if he had, Adon wouldn’t
bother asking who he was.

He took too long to give even a
noncommittal answer.

O’Doyle’s boot lashed out and bit
into the Rider’s side. He heard and felt the snap of his rib buckling and
doubled over, groaning and gulping air.

Then he was drawn out of the fetal
position, stretched agonizingly aright. He thought he would pass out, when a
blast of cool water broke against his face. He found himself lapping at the
bloody water with his dry tongue, even the pain of his nose and side forgotten
for the moment.

He was dropped to the floor, and
fell hard on his posterior, his back sliding down the front of Adon’s desk. The
pain in his side flared again and he flopped forward, but the hard bottom of O’Doyle’s
boot pressed against the middle of his chest and held him up.

“There’s no escape from here,” Adon
said, going to the bronze incense burner on the desk. He stood over it as he
spoke, his back to the Rider. “Even if you could summon the strength to run,
there is only the desert. And if you managed to get out of sight, LaChappa and
the Quechans would be on you in no time.” He struck a match then, and the
aromatic smell of frankincense filled the room. Adon turned, smiling. “Have you
seen him hanging about? We keep him and his warriors on retainer here. No one’s
ever escaped them. They choose to live in this desert. Imagine that. A people
who choose to live in this. And not with modern amenities, I mean in little
earthen huts. Sucking pebbles and squatting in the sand. Making pets of
scorpions and snakes.”

Adon watched the incense smoke curl
up from the burner and fanned it lightly with one hand.

“You catch snakes here all the time,
don’t you, Croc?”

“Yessir,” said O’Doyle, smiling down
at the Rider from behind a wet handkerchief he had pressed to his face. “Rattlesnakes.
They’re natural killers. One bite and they pump you fulla poison. Time goes on,
the pain just gets worse and worse. By the end of six or seven hours, men
scream like little children in their sleep.”

The Rider glared at O’Doyle.

“He’s not going to talk,” Adon said,
taking up the incense burner and going to the window and opening it. “Take him
back to the Dark Cell.”

He took the lid off and dumped the
incense out the window.

O’Doyle put down his foot and
dragged the Rider across the floor.

Adon nodded to him as he bumped over
the threshold.

“Pleasant dreams, Rider.”

As O’Doyle walked him through the
dark prison yard, Adon’s parting words rang over and over in his pain-befuddled
mind.

Pleasant
dreams.

All he wanted now was the peace of
sleep. But as he was flung into the pitch black cave of the Dark Cell and the
door slammed shut behind him, he began to wonder.

How did Adon know Spates’ name and
not who he was?

Pleasant
dreams. Pleasant dreams.

He had been so concerned with the
Rider’s lack of sleep on the night previous, at the state of his mind after the
drubbing O’Doyle had given him.

When he had fallen unconscious, he
had thought about Kabede. Wondered if he had heard…from
Spates.

All the times he had snapped awake
last night, he had imagined Adon (as Laird) springing at him.

What if it hadn’t been imagined?

Adon had said he had spread the word
of the Great Old Ones through dreams and dissemination.

Through dreams.

He said he had moved among humanity
through something he called the world of dreams.

He knew that during sleep, men’s
souls could drift from their bodies, and that succubi and demons could move
through dreams and affect them. Was this one of the skills Adon had learned in
Sheol
? Perhaps from Nyarlathotep or
Lilith? Was there a world wholly consisting of dreams and could Adon traverse
it? He thought of Faustus’ words about individual men creating universes
themselves. What if this dream world were somehow the connected unconsciousness
of all sleepers, generated by them, populated by their dreams and nightmares?

Was Adon attempting to invade his
dreams and take the knowledge he needed from the Rider’s mind?

“Pleasant dreams,” he had said. No,
he had insisted.

The Rider sat up, blinking his
swollen eyes. He had no
tefillin
to
pray with, as he usually did, no
chumash
to read the Psalms of the
Kerias Shema
She’al Hamita
, as was his usual nighttime protective ritual. He had been so
lax in that as of late. He did recite the
Shema
Y’srael.

“Hear O Israel. The Lord is our God.
The Lord is one.”

Perhaps the clubbing he had
sustained that first day had put him in a dreamless, heavy sleep. Not the state
Adon required to rifle through his mind.

Prior to falling asleep the second
time, he had thought of Kabede and Spates. In that short time Adon had been
able to discern their names but not who they were. Kabede at least, Adon could
surmise was the black man that had faced his turncoat riders at Camp Eckfeldt.
But Spates was entirely unknown to him.

The only possible was he could have
learned his name was that he plucked it from the Rider’s sleeping mind.

Then Adon wanted him to sleep even
more than he wanted to sleep himself.

His heavy, swollen lids fluttered.

But no, no sleep.

He busied himself with the
protective sigil on the floor. It was blind work, and he worried it was
inaccurate, but when he was finished, he sat in the center of it and let his
eyes close.

It was difficult to concentrate
through the exhausting pain and he feared he would pass out, but he began his
meditative breathing, began to slip his physical form. If Adon sought his body
now, he would not find him in it. In the
Yenne
Velt,
perhaps he could be safe for a little while. But of course, without
his wards and his mystic weapons, he would also be defenseless once discovered.
Adon was the man who had taught him everything he knew about the
Yenne Velt
. He would be deadly there.
The Rider had no choice but to remain close to his body and dive back into it
should Adon attack.

Then something made the little shaft
of moonlight in the ceiling flicker, and something bulky and solid hit the
floor right in front of him and hissed.

The Rider’s eyes snapped open, all
thought of projecting himself vanished.

He couldn’t see far in the gloom
beyond the narrow slip of moonbeam, but he heard the angry hissing, and the
telltale serpentine rattle.