Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (54 page)

“Yes, but I want to talk about Adon
himself,” said Faustus. “You say he induced and invaded your dreams.”

“Yes,” the Rider affirmed. “Until
Ragshiel woke the world and flushed him out.”

Kabede and Faustus had both
experienced the same dream of tremendous drums the guards and inmates at Yuma
had complained about that night. Every sleeper on earth had, apparently.

“Have you ever experienced anything
like such a being?” Kabede asked. He respected Faustus’ knowledge if nothing
else.

“I have,” Faustus agreed. “It’s a
formidable power I have seen the Old Ones grant some of their servants. But
everything comes with a price. You say all your life you knew him as this man
Auspitz, but he possessed the prison official Laird as well?”

“Yes.”

“You said you knew Laird was Adon as
soon as you saw him?”

“I said as soon as he spoke. In
Aramaic.”

“You told me it was as soon as you
saw him.”

The Rider paused. Had he said that?
Yes, he had. Had he known Adon on sight? He didn’t remember thinking it at the
time, but there had been something in Laird’s eyes that had felt familiar to
him.

“I could tell when he occupied
Auspitz again from his expression.”

“Think back, Rider,” Faustus urged. “Did
they have any similar physical characteristics?”

The Rider pondered for a minute.

“Well Auspitz had a full beard and
Laird didn’t. There was something around their eyes that was the same, yes. I
assumed it was Adon looking out.”

“Once I met a man who could possess
dreamers,” Faustus said, lighting his pipe, the rich heavy smell filling the
closeness of the vardo. “But while he could invade anyone’s dreams, he could
not possess just anyone. Only compatible hosts.”

“Compatible how?” Kabede asked.

“Blood relations. Even distant
relatives,” Faustus said. “The family thought him a curse, but like electricity
through copper, his spirit could only be conducted through compatible blood, so
that was why he
haunted
them, as it
were. Tell me Kabede, did Elisha ben Abuyah have a son?”

“The Midrash doesn’t say,” Kabede
said.

“Even a brother or a sister?”

“I don’t know,” Kabede shrugged.

“You mean to say that Adon can only
possess his own descendants?” the Rider asked.

“It may be.”

“But Auspitz and Laird weren’t
related.”

“Adon has been around for two
thousand years,” Faustus said. “While possessing a relative, he very well could
have sired children outside his own family to extend his influence. Sort of an
investment in his own future. Like buying a summer cottage.”

“So Auspitz and Laird could have
both been descendants of Elisha ben Abuyah and not know it?”

“It’s certainly possible,” Faustus
said gravely.

“He could have relatives all over
the world,” Kabede exclaimed.

“Again, possible. But the thinner
the blood, the less stable the possession. If he did not actively maintain his
bloodline all over the world, those descendant lines would eventually become
diffuse and inadequate for his purposes. He is still only a spirit. He cannot
traverse the earth instantaneously. He is bound by geography both earthly and
celestial. And right now, in this region, we know he has two less avenues of escape.”

“If he can only possess blood
relatives, why would he allow two of his host bodies to be in the same place?”
the Rider countered. “Why would he risk it?”

“Who can know a mind as twisted as
Adon’s? From the events you described he surely did not intend to sacrifice
both bodies indeed, if he even intended to lose one. The Quechan tracker’s
bullet was a stroke of luck for us. Adon is without a body until he can locate
another host.”

“Anyone trained by the Sons of The
Essenes has the power to possess any individual. Jacobi hopped from body to
body at Camp Eckfeldt,” Kabede said.

“Yes but we’re talking about
sustained total possession for a period of years—decades,” Faustus explained. “For
the entire time Adon was enrolled in the Sons of The Essenes, he
was
Auspitz. The Rider said Auspitz
couldn’t even remember the last twenty years clearly. Neither you or the Rider
or this Jacobi fellow could maintain possession for as long as a day without
the aide of my apparition booth. It’s because your spirits are naturally tied
to your physical forms. Adon has been without a physical form for thousands of
years. Imagine the willpower it takes to keep another soul buried and unable to
use its own body for so long.”

“In the meantime, two innocent men
are dead,” the Rider said grimly.

“How do we know they were innocent?”
Kabede suggested. “Couldn’t they have been knowing collaborators?”

“Auspitz wasn’t,” the Rider said
with certainty. “I don’t know about Laird. He was apparently a cruel man, but I’m
not sure he knew about Adon any more than Auspitz did.”

“It may be that he has willing
hosts,” Faustus said. “But it would probably be safer for him if his hosts were
ignorant of their lineage. Some might take steps to rid themselves of him.”

“That’s true,” said the Rider.

“Well,” said Faustus. “This is all
conjecture until we have definite proof, but it might be something to keep an
eye out for.”

“What else did you want to discuss?”
the Rider asked.

Faustus rose and knocked his pipe
bowl into a brass ashtray shaped like a clamshell.

He went to the back door of the
vardo and pushed it open.

The Rider’s pale onager was dozing
on its feet, tethered to the back.

“This is no ordinary animal,”
Faustus said, when the three of them were out in the hot sun and surrounding the
beast.

“I’ve often thought that,” the Rider
admitted. “I’ve conducted experiments on it. I’ve looked through the lenses, I’ve
held talismans to its hide. They’ve never revealed anything. It’s just an
animal.”

“Rider, it crossed the desert alone,
located the two of us and led us to you,” Kabede said.

“Actually, it anticipated where you
would
be,” said Faustus.

“If you’ve got any ideas about it I
haven’t, you’re welcome to try them out,” the Rider said.

“It’s in spry condition for its age,
wouldn’t you say?” Faustus said, running his hand along the bristly neck.

“I don’t actually know how old it
is,” the Rider said. “It’s about the same physically as when I bought it.”

“It is,” said Faustus, pulling back
its lips and examining its teeth. “This breed tends to live about twenty or
thirty years, and considering all it’s been through…it has a strange coloring
too. Nearly white. I’ve never seen one this color.”

“I’m at a loss,” the Rider said. “He’s
a good companion. I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“Or a gift onager?” Faustus smiled.
He patted the animal’s shoulder and it brushed its muzzle against him. “There
there,
Galjâ
.”

“
Galjâ?
”
the Rider asked.

“Fifteen years and you’ve never
named the poor beast. I had to call him something,” said Faustus. “It means
bright
. I’ll get the feed,” he said, and
went back into the wagon.

The Rider frowned and rubbed the
animal’s shoulder. Funny how he had never named his most constant companion. He
was a little disappointed the old man had jumped the gun on him.

“
Galjâ
…I would’ve got around to it,” he muttered.

“Now, Rider, there is something
we
must discuss,” said Kabede, stroking
the animal’s back between them. “Will this old man go with us to Tombstone, or
will we part ways?”

“You haven’t said much about all
this,” said the Rider, meaning his encounter with Adon and their ruminations on
his nature. “Are you thinking that you shouldn’t question fairy tales?”

“I believe all you have said,”
Kabede said.

“But not all that he says.”

“Not all.”

“Some?”

“I trust
Galjâ
implicitly,” Kabede said, his dark face breaking into a
blazing white grin.

“And
Galjâ
trusts him,” the Rider smiled back.

Kabede shook his head and laughed.

“It seems like madness. But what
now? Will we tell him of the scroll?”

“If he goes with us, I guess we have
to.”

“Alright, but let us talk to your
man first.”

“Agreed,” the Rider said.

“Rider, while I was in Tombstone…”
he paused, frowning. “I searched. There are Jews here, but no Temple. There was
no Torah to be found.”

“Man plans, HaShem laughs,” said the
Rider. “There’s something I have to tell you. When I was in the dream world, as
I told you, Adon was able to pluck things from my mind. I couldn’t resist. He
knows about the Balankab Enclave now. And the name of it.”

Kabede could only stare.

“The Lord protect them,” he
murmured, turning away.

The first thing they saw on the way
down into Tombstone was placard after placard of advertisements on the fence
along the road. ‘Go To Bangley and Schlagenstein’s. They Are The Bosses, You
Bet!’ ‘The Oriental Saloon: Cool Drinks, Faro, Poker, Roulette.’ ‘The Lap of
Luxury: The Grand Hotel.’ This was a mining town, silver being the preferred
ore. A giant water tower with a faded, chipped, and unreadable advertisement
rose above the numerous miners’ humble abodes.

A city ordinance sign demanding they
check their firearms induced the Rider to unlimber his Volcanic and stow it
away inside. Kabede and Faustus had already left their rifles in the hutch.

The place had grown in the years
since he’d passed through. Like Las Vegas, the impermanent structures were giving
way to two story buildings of wood and brick, both adobe and red. A big stamp
mill like the one in Tip Top was going now, a constant dull roar. Some shafts
were sunk even in the empty lots among the buildings, and filthy miners crawled
in and out like busy ants.

The miner’s hovels gave way to the
Mexican quarter, and moving east down Fremont Street they passed Hoptown, the
Chinese quarter.

The camels began to cause a
commotion. Horses reared at the site of them, and filthy men stopped in the
street to point and remark at the whole garish procession of the blue and gold
gypsy wagon and its camel team.

“I think we’re making too grand an
entrance,” Kabede observed.

“There’s a livery just ahead,” said
Faustus.

Passing the Ah Lung Grocery, they
saw a plump and powdered, elegant Chinese woman in red patterned silks and
jewels, emerge, as out of place and overbearing as visiting royalty amid the
dingy squalor that pervaded the rest of the quarter. She was flanked by a pair
of grim looking highbinders in long black
changshan
,
hatchets dangling just below the hems of their shirts in circumvention of
Tombstone’s strict no firearms ordinance.

She regarded them with open distaste
as they passed, and her painted eyes took in each of them in turn, then went to
the garish wagon and the animals. The Rider watched her carefully cultivated
eyebrows arch.

Faustus turned away and hunched his
shoulders, pulling down the narrow brim of his tall hat as best he could.

The Rider was amused. Who did he
intend to hide from in the driver’s seat of this ostentatious, blue painted
rig?

“Do you know her?” the Rider asked.

“I had some dealings with her the
last time I was here,” Faustus said, “and I wouldn’t care to again.”

“Who is she?” Kabede asked.

“China Mary. She ostensibly runs
everything in this quarter for the Six Companies,” Faustus explained. “The
Chinese Benevolence Association. But she handles a lot of things they don’t
approve of officially. Opium, prostitutes…no Chinaman works in Tombstone
without going through her or her husband.”

Traffic was grinding to a halt
around the vardo, and as they inched towards the corner, two important looking
armed men in dark suits with badges shining on their lapels came stomping down
the boardwalk, and China Mary turned her attention to the newcomers. She pursed
her bowed lips, looking annoyed.

The Rider recognized the taller of
the two men, and something within his chest shrank a little at the sight of
him.

It was Johnny Behan, Josephine
Marcus’ no good paramour, whom he’d last seen running a saloon in Tip Top. She
had said he’d planned to run for sheriff. Now he had a lawman’s badge to
bluster behind. How was it possible that such a lowlife character could rise to
such a position?

He didn’t expect much less from a
place like Tombstone, but he did expect more from Josephine Marcus. He wondered
if they were still together.

A heated exchange began between
Behan and China Mary as the highbinders and the deputies postured behind their
respective chiefs, but the traffic got to moving again and they swung into the
Tombstone Livery and Feed Yard.