Veil of the Goddess (42 page)

"
Una visione del virgin
,” the Priest cried as he threw himself on the floor.

Zack smiled ruefully. He didn't think Ivy was a virgin, although he couldn't have proved it. But the Priest was speaking in Italian. And Ivy wasn't speaking in English or Italian. Instead, she spoke a language he'd never heard before, yet one he seemed to understand intuitively.

She'd once babbled something about the language of the priestess being the true language from before the Tower of Babble. Could she be using that to cut through barriers between people?

No one left as Ivy lectured them on what was at the center of their shared Christian faith—and at the center of the faith of Moslems, Hindu, and others of the great religions as well. Trusting in God to judge, rather than leaping to condemnation. Avoiding violence, rather than creating new enemies to fight. It was pretty standard stuff, but from her, in the magical language of the ancients, it sounded different. It sounded
True
, and it sounded as if saying it made it inexorably true. It was a call to change, a cry for action.

According to a mythology class he'd taken while working on his degree, the supposed
True
language is different from any other language because words spoken in it are self-fulfilling. Ivy wasn't just repeating church doctrine, she was creating it and making it true with each word she spoke.

No one had left the church since he and Ivy had appeared from the crypt, but more and more people were arriving, already breathless with excitement about the mystery unfolding in their midst.

He briefly wondered whether Ivy had sent psychic reverberations throughout the city, but then saw the cell phones. Even in a world where the True Cross had been recovered, it made sense to look for technology before magic.

"There are those who are attempting to misuse the
Word
,” Ivy insisted. “They call themselves The Foundation, because they hope to be the cornerstone of the new Temple, of the reign of God. But they are mistaken. A temple built on
that
cornerstone would crumble into dust."

"We'll fight them, kill them,” the priest moaned near Ivy's feet. His body writhed in ecstasy from whatever vision he saw.

"Yes,” Zack breathed to himself. The Foundation agents would be helpless if swarmed by the true believers of Venice. If these ordinary people got word out to their friends, it could make the parade in Constantinople look tiny by comparison. After all, Turkey was a Moslem nation. Italy wasn't just Christian, it had been the center of the Catholic faith for fifteen hundred years. Against the massed might of eighty million Italian Catholics, with as many more from nearby France, Spain, Southern Germany, Austria, and Poland, the Foundation would be a speck of driftwood washed away by a tsunami.

Ivy smiled, then shook her head. “I did not come to bring more violence, but to make peace."

Zack was a soldier. And there's nothing a soldier likes more than peace. But peace with the Foundation wasn't going to be a happening thing. Not until a lot of Foundation Agents were dead, anyhow. He could only hope that Ivy would realize that before it was too late.

As if his fears created their own reality, the main doors to the church burst open and four grim-faced Americans strode in, accompanied by perhaps a dozen Uzi-equipped Italian policemen.

"This woman is a known terrorist threat,” the lead agent announced in English, then in Italian little better than what Zack could have mustered. “Please stand clear, people. No one needs to get hurt."

Ivy's laughter was the sharp tinkle of breaking glass. “Those who seek God using the tools of the deceiver will deceive and mislead themselves,” Ivy said. “Do you truly believe that the Kingdom of God can be built on your lies?"

"Get her."

Zack moved to intercept the killers. Ivy was a fighter, but he feared she wouldn't fight now. He wasn't going to let them create a new martyr here in Venice. Not while he could still move.

Ivy laughed again, then swirled Mary's Veil like a matador waving his cape before a bull.

The small plastic bags of herbs they'd left smoldering in the crypt should have burned out long before. Impossibly, though, they hadn't. A rich cloud of smoke swirled around the Agents and they stumbled into one another, blinded by the acrid fumes.

"Shoot her down,” the lead Agent commanded.

Seconds later, a flurry of shots rang out. Unaimed bullets sprayed from the cloud of smoke, ricocheting from stone walls.

Ivy shook the veil like a maid shaking out a dustcloth and a score of bullets tumbled from the sheer silk fabric to the floor.

One of the altar boys stumbled forward, blood turning his white robes bright red, his screams filling the church.

"Antonio, some day you will be a Cardinal. But that time is not yet. Better to keep the white of innocence for a while,” Ivy said. She placed the veil over the wound, then drew it back.

The boy fingered the hole in his robe, then pulled the robe off, exposing his pale and unbroken skin. “It doesn't hurt."

"The Queen of Heaven accepts only sacrifices that are freely given, only that whose ripeness is full."

The smoke had cleared and the Agents still had their guns out, but they were clearly having second thoughts about another round of firing.

"Didn't you hear what she said?” the lead Agent demanded of the priest. “She's not a Christian. She's a New-Age follower of some made-up Goddess. Queen of Heaven, indeed."

"While you may scorn Mary, Mother of God, we do not.” The priest squared his shoulders and looked straight at those guns. “The Virgin has come to us with a message of mercy and goodness, and you welcome her with violence and gunshot. You are not welcome in this house of the Lord. Leave."

"These guns are all the welcome we need,” the Agent blustered.

"You will put your weapons away.” The Italian police lieutenant pushed his way between the Americans and Ivy. “We've seen a great miracle today. We won't let you continue."

"You're forgetting who's in charge here."

"Am I? We are in Italy, not America."

"I'll get you fired."

The cop laughed. “You threaten me? Even if your threat had any weight, I would still stop you. Now, lady, what are your intentions?"

"What are your intentions?"

She'd preached the message of the Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, as the priestess had asked her to do. But the Foundation was still there. The locals were impressed with what they had seen, but Ivy knew it wouldn't be long before they started selling cheap china figurines of the messenger and forgot the message.

And the Foundation was still out there. They seemed immune to the message, separated from the truth by the twisted power of their sanctimonious beliefs. High on the Priestess's promise and on the vast power that she suddenly could access, Ivy had believed it would be possible to reach them. That she could remind even Foundation Agents of their shared faith, show them how their actions were taking them away from Grace, were based on a wholly misguided view of the divine. Horribly, the very certainty of their faith shielded them from the truth.

She could mobilize the entire city to come to her aid. Water is at the secret heart of the female principle. And Venice was the city of water, a city of the Goddess as were few others in the world. This, then, was the true reason they'd been sent to this city. In Venice as much anywhere in the world, she could draw on the power of the Goddess, use it to perform little miracles like the healing she'd done on the altar boy, or even greater miracles. But the human mind, especially a mind protected by the shields of fanaticism, remained beyond reach of her powers. She could destroy one easily enough, but she couldn't heal those who clung to their illness.

She tried to remember everything the priestess had told her, everything she'd learned in studying for her Confirmation. But no easy lessons jumped out at her. She'd have to figure what to do on her own.

She had access to all of the power in the world. She could destroy anything. She could kill or heal. She could declare herself the Goddess Incarnate, and rule Venice with a velvet fist. She could reach around the world and crush anyone who made war.

But she followed the logic of each of those choices. Each led to the same result—a world ever-more crippled by religious violence and religious hatred. And that world was the world of The Foundation.

She hadn't lied when she'd told the congregation that a City of God based on hatred and violence could never stand, but if she used the power of the Veil, the Cross, and the City, she could only become like them.

With the power in her, she could peer into the origins of the Foundation—to that group of frightened men who had gathered to celebrate their faith and work together to create a better world. They'd been then like she was now, seeking only good.

To succeed in the face of all the obstacles, they'd needed power. And seeking power, they'd discovered its allure, been perverted by it, until power became their unspoken goal.

Now, she had the power. But the only way she could see to use it would lead to that same result.

Realizing that, seeing those frightened men in her mind, brought the answer to her.

She headed toward the Church's open doors.

As she stepped past them, parishioners reached for her, their hands brushing against the Veil but unable to hold it.

"The Virgin,” she heard whispered again and again. “We've seen the Virgin."

She smiled at them. She could joyfully do what needed to be done now.

"Come with me,” she said. “Follow.” The words rolled from her, spreading out like the ripples spreading from a stone thrown in a still pond, reverberating through the church and beyond where a still-growing crowd stood and waited. Some of them, she saw, had knelt in silent prayer. Others looked thoughtful, or angry, or filled with greed.

"Come,” she repeated, knowing as she said it that her words made it an imperative, that they could no more resist the compulsion than they could talk a tornado into changing its path.

The people parted around Ivy like water yielding to a ship. They clutched at her, but their hands didn't stick. Yet, even as their hands slid from her, their lips turned upward into smiles, or opened into prayer.

Zack was blind to the colors of power that Ivy spoke of so often, but even he could sense the electrical nimbus that surrounded her.

She brushed near the Agents and for a moment, hunger lit the lead Agent's face.

His thoughts were completely transparent, and they weren't about Ivy being a saint, either. He wanted to grab her, snap her neck, kill her once and for all, and then rape her body. With Ivy dead, the compulsion would end. Even if the Italian cops reacted instantly, killing the Agent, it would be too late to save Ivy. And the Agent would welcome martyrdom.

"Watch out,” he called to Ivy. He pushed himself forward but the mob didn't respond to him as it did to Ivy. People shoved back, jealous of their closeness to their vision of the Virgin.

"Come, Zack,” Ivy said, laughter in her voice. “You were with me from the beginning. Try to stay with me to the end."

"Watch the Agent."

His warning came too late. The Agent threw himself at Ivy, a knife clutched in one hand while the other reached for her neck.

Zack shoved forward, desperate to reach her in time, knowing he would be too late.

Ivy must have heard his warning, though, because she turned toward the Agent.

Rather than stepping into a defensive stance, she simply held the veil in front of her.

The Agent hit the thin layer of silk—and bounced off as if he'd rammed a brick wall.

"Do not harm him,” Ivy said to a couple of Italian policemen who had drawn saps and were heading toward the Agent with serious faces.

"But make sure he can't get away,” Zack added. Ivy might have converted to pacifism, but that didn't mean they couldn't take reasonable precautions. Not if he had anything to say about it.

Outside the church was a stone courtyard filled with a growing crowd.

An eerie hush descended as Ivy stepped into their midst.

"Follow me,” Ivy repeated.

She walked through the crowd and stepped onto a gondola that couldn't have been waiting for her, but seemed to be.

"Need me to row?” Zack asked.

She smiled at him, then reached out and brushed a hand across his cheek.

"Call ahead to Father Paulo. We need the Cross to finish this. But this part, I have to do on my own. As we used to say when I was little, ‘no boys allowed.’”

Okay, Ivy had a plan. Zack felt a little better with that realization.

He borrowed a cell from the bald priest at Santa Lucia and put through a call to the Church of Mary of the Sailors.

To his surprise, Father Francis answered. Zack told the older priest that Ivy was coming and to have the
item
ready. On an open channel, that was all he dared say. Even that was probably too much.

"The Saint is exultant in the power that flows through her, but not all those whom she faces will be powerless,” Father Francis warned him.

Those weren't the most encouraging words for Zack to hear. He handed the cell back to the bald priest and took off to share the warning with Ivy.

She stood in the center of a Gondola as it moved down the canal. Although there appeared to be no oarsman, the gondola's single oar cut through the water, moving her at a steady pace that the joyful crowds could just follow.

Each time they passed a building, more people flooded into the streets and walkways along the canal, their voices a babble of Italian and other languages as they demanded to know what was going on, who that woman was, whether she was breaking city code by sailing a gondola without a gondolier, what holiday had been declared.

Zack spotted a bridge ahead and hurried toward it. He needed to get Father Francis's warning to Ivy and there was no way he could make himself overheard over the hubbub from the increasingly huge crowd.

By the time he got to the bridge, it was already filling but he was able to secure the last front row location.