Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (30 page)

  
“Who are you?” he interrupted suddenly.

  
The unknown man fell silent and his eyes shut.  The wasted head tilted all the
way back with a deep breath and the veins and sinews of his neck swelled.

 
 “Who am I?” he exhaled, bowing his head again.  “That
is
a fine
question … I assume the answer you want is a name.  Of course, you must know, a
name would not answer your question, even if I had one.”

  
“If the Commission knows you, you must have a name.”

 
 “I am sure they have many, and they are free to call me what they will.  Names
are repositories of the past; they mean nothing in this place.”

  
There was a disturbing sapience about the man’s demeanor.

  
“
What
are you, then?” Saul rephrased.

  
“A more answerable question…”  The figure in black nodded and lifted his eyes
to the ceiling. ‘I suppose it would depend on whom you asked and, since you are
asking me… ‘hermit’ is probably as good a word as any.”

  
“
Hermit
,” Saul repeated. “…What does that mean?”

  
“A voice,” the hermit answered succinctly. “A lone voice, weeping in the
wilderness.  Not too different from you.”

  
“Me?”

  
“Yes …  You.

  
“What do you know about me?”

  
“Oh, I know all about
you
, Saul.” The flames in the hermit’s eyes
flashed.  His pale hand rose, and when the sleeve drew back from over his arm,
the candlelight shone over the distinct lines of the faded signets.  Their
colour was a stonewashed blood-red.  “You might say I’ve known you… your whole
life.” 

  
He watched the raised hand grip the collar of the cassock and pull it down to
reveal the faded three-horned, three-headed beast of the martial seal, just
over the collarbone.  On closer look, he saw the seal was not faded by age, but
by a single scar that cut through, exactly the same way it did across his own.

 
That moment the scarred seal appeared, he was overcome by that most familiar
sense that he should wake up any second, for this
must
have been a dream
more real and more vexing than any other.  But the hermit remained before him,
still and silent.  It was no dream.

  
Every chronometer across the martial world blinked back to 0000. 

  
When the pale hand drew the collar back over the seal, he looked back up at the
flashing blanks of the hermit’s eyes.  He was never disposed to fear, but this
new feeling which overcame him was something far more profound than mere terror. 
All of his former interest as to who the man was died away, and in its place, came
a new, more fearful question:

  
“Why are we here?”

  
“Another fine question,” hummed the hermit.  In keeping with his habit, a
period of silence preceded his answer, which was another question: “Tell me,
Saul Vartanian … Do you know what Providence is?”

  
“No…”

  
“It is not entirely unlike what you would call ‘fate.’”

  
“I do not believe in fate.”

  
“Why not?”

  
“Because it vindicates everything that people do.”

  
The hermit bowed his head.

  
“That’s right … Good.”

  
“What is good?” he asked.

  
“Ah … Now, that is the finest question of all.”

  
A sharp blow and rumble of thunder perturbed the still-burning flame ever so
slightly.

  
“Providence,” the hermit continued, “is also a vindicator.  With one crucial
difference.”

  
“What is that?” he asked.

  
“Fate preserves the strong.  Providence preserves the good.  Of course, to
preserve the good does not necessitate a bloodless path.  No …  To preserve one
thing is to destroy another.  You should know by now; that is the ultimate rule.” 
The hermit leaned forward until his face was just over the flame and laid his
hands flat on the table.  “I believe that Providence is what brought Naomi to
you.  I believe it is the reason you and I are sitting here right now.”

  
Every time the hermit spoke, Saul found himself having to stop to decrypt his
words. 

  
“What reason?” he asked.

  
“That,” the hermit replied, “cannot be known until it has come to pass.  It is
the way of things.”

  
“What good is there believing in reasons you cannot know?”

  
“All the good in the world, of course,” the hermit answered with a transitory
smile.  “But I don’t expect you to understand that.  No.  Not yet…”

  
A number of theories flashed through Saul’s mind with regard to the hermit –
not least among them; the theory that he was nothing more than a very lucid
madman.  However, the strongest possibility presently nurturing his misgiving
was that he was, for some as yet unknown purpose, in collusion with the
Commission.  He grew restless.  Who was this man and what did he want?

  
“You wanted to know why we are here.”

  
He affirmed the hermit’s statement with his silence.

  
“You are here because you see the truth,” said the hermit.  “The truth is that
the world is lost and does not know it.  But,
you
know it.  How you know
it, you cannot justify.  It is like a sense to which the consciousness of the
world has been dulled:  That voice  … that only you can hear.  And, so, you are
forced to watch them stumble in a blind stupor, chasing illusions, abolishing
themselves from the inside out by gradual degrees until one day there will be
nothing left in the world but the final culmination of the soul: an endless
cycle of fire and ash … and that lone, wailing voice in the wilderness.”  The
hermit’s voice became lower and graver with each word.  “You see it … don’t
you?  You see it every day.”

  
As the hermit spoke, he could hear the voices of his nightmares screaming.

  
“Yes,” he gasped. 

  
“I see it too,” the hermit answered, drawing away from the candlelight.   “You
are here because you have felt that fire scorch for a long, long time.  Even
now, it burns you.  I can see it in your eyes.  You are here because
she
is the only thing that can take the pain away…”

  
“And why are you here?” he rumbled.

  
At this question, the hermit bowed his head and the shadows extended over his
eyes.

  
“I am here to tell you that it is time … for you to let her go.”

  
All the suspicion that had been mounting flared up inside him at once, and the
flash of sudden wrath bore itself in a fierce frown.  He got up from his seat,
nearly sending the chair tumbling, and stepped up to the door while the hermit
remained calmly seated.  He pulled sideways on the handle but the door wouldn’t
give.  He pulled again, sharply, and again. 

  
“Open this door.”

  
“Not until we are finished.” 

  
He turned and drew the blade.

 
 “Open – it.”

 
 The blade edge shook an inch from the hermit’s face.

  
“If you must kill me, then, so be it,” the hermit sighed, wearily.  “But you
should know that there is a very particular way to open that door, and it would
be far more expedient for you to spare my life – at least, until we are done …  The
alternative, of course, is that we both die in this room.”

  
His fury had risen to the point where he would have certainly slashed the
hermit’s throat.  The shaking blade yielded to reason, and the terse, feral
breaths stifled with his rage.  He slowly put away the blade and lowered back
into the seat, averting the hermit’s eyes for fear of having his indignation
roused beyond control.

  
“It does not matter who you are,” he said, after a long silence.  “I will not
let you take her.”

  
The hermit maintained his piercing gaze as he leaned forward into the
candlelight.

  
“Do you love her?”

  
The question was abrupt and unexpected.  He looked up and was sucked back into
the black holes of the hermit’s eyes.

  
“What?” he muttered.

  
“Naomi … Do you love her?”

  
It was a question he had only vaguely considered.  And the more he’d considered
it, the more he was convinced that he did.  Now that the question was being put
to him in this way, and by
this
man, for some unknown reason he found
himself unable to answer. 

  
“I would die for her,” he whispered.

  
“Of course, you would; your life would be worth nothing without her.  That is
not what I asked.”

  
“Then I do not know how to answer your question.”

  
“Very well … then I shall ask you another question.”  The hermit reclined
again.  “Suppose
she
was the one who wanted to leave you – to leave this
place,” he said. “What would you do?”

  
The question brought him to the edge of the abyss.  He dared not answer.  He
knew
the answer.  And that is exactly why he would not say it.  He didn’t have to. 
The hermit knew.  He could tell by that convicting look in his eyes … he knew
that he would not allow it to happen.

  
The hermit lowered his eyes

  
“You
need
her,” he murmured, “but you do not love her.  As soon as she
causes you pain, you will hate her more than anything else in the world.  It is
in your nature.”

  
“You do not know me.”

  
“I don’t have to,” the hermit replied, slowly shaking his head.  “Do you
realise where you are?”

  
His eyes wandered uncertainly about the surrounding darkness while the hermit’s
gaze was straight, true and unwavering.

  
“I know that you’ve asked yourself the question before:  What kind of man could
possibly choose a place like this.  But, we did. 
You
did.  Have you
ever asked yourself why?”

  
“It does not matter,” he replied sharply.

  
“The past does not matter?}

  
“The past is dead,” he averred.

  
“To your mind, perhaps,” said the hermit, shaking his head once more.  “The
soul never forgets. 
Never
.  And until your mind remembers, your soul
will never find respite.  The nightmare will not stop.  It is the same for
everyone who chooses this place.” 

  
“You chose this place too,” he rejoined.

  
The hermit nodded.

 
 “I have been here since the beginning,” he said.

  
“So what makes
you
any different than me?”

  
At this, the hermit’s eyes lowered with an aspect of sorrow.

  
“I know where your path with her ends.”

 
 He lifted his sullen gaze again and the candle flames dilated to sparkles.  

  
“Naomi loves you, Saul … She loves you in a way that neither you nor I can
truly understand – in a way that
only
someone like her is capable of
loving.  But because of who she is, a world like ours can only destroy her. 
And because of what
you
are, her love will cause you pain unlike
anything you have ever felt before, leaving only two possibilities:  Either she
will destroy you … or you will destroy her.”

 
 The warning was one he had heard before – though not in quite the same words. 
He had not believed it then, but now the horrid doubt started to creep in,
through the omniscient eyes of this strange old hermit.

  
“Why are you telling me this?” he murmured.

  
The hermit held a sombre silence which went uninterrupted.  When the silence
endured to a point that it became clear that the conversation was over, the
hermit took the candle, stood from his chair and stepped up to the door.  He
drew a finger over the door seam and stopped just before the middle, then
dragged the finger two inches to the right and pulled his hand back in a fist. 
With one sharp thump, the lock clicked and the door slid open.

 
 “Come,” he beckoned, floating through the door.

  
After a moment of hesitation, Saul stood up and followed back through the
narrow, candlelit corridor and up the stairs.  The hermit stopped outside the
closed door at the top, opened it and stepped aside, candle in hand.  Inside, the
pale street lights shone in through the window onto a bed with a small bulge in
the middle.

 
 The hermit held out the candle, and Saul regarded him skeptically as he took
it.  He edged across the threshold into the room.  As he came nearer to the
bed, tassels of blonde locks came within the reaches of the candlelight.

  
“Naomi…”

  
“You should not wake her,” warned the hermit with a grim look.

  
Ignoring the warning, he inaudibly approached the head of the bed.  The little
head appeared over the line of the quilt and he knelt down and brought the
candlelight closer.  It
was
her.  The first sight of her kindled the
long lost warmth in his soul. 

  
“Naomi.”

  
Her eyes were closed.  Her breaths were long and wheezing and more strained
than usual and her skin became sallower and sallower under the candlelight.  A
narrow slit appeared between the dreary little eyelids, and the little
moonstones peered through.  A whisper effervesced off the small, pale lips.  He
brushed the hair from over her eyes and cupped his palm over the side of her
face.  Her skin was cold, her eyes strained to see, and for a while she was
silent; breathing long, heavy breaths.