The Impaler

Edmund awoke in the infirmary, groggy, but clean and dry and stripped down to his underwear. The lights, the col-ors—especially the whites—seemed brighter, and Edmund could hear the tapping of fingers on a keyboard.

“He’s awake, Doctor,” said a female voice to his left.

Edmund turned toward it, but a bright light met his eyes—a man’s voice now, soothing, and a gentle hand on his eyelids propping them open. Then the light was gone, and in its place, big orange dots and lots of questions. Lots of answers, too—most of them “I don’t know” in a scratchy voice that sounded nothing like his own. Words from the doctor like dehydration, heat exhaustion, fainting, and semi-comatose—questions about what he ate, “I’m going to give you so many ccs of this and so many ccs of that,” and more words that Edmund didn’t understand.

And then he remembered—asked suddenly, “Where’s the lion?”

“The lion?”

“Yes,” said Edmund. “The lion who killed my mother.”

“You’re hallucinating, soldier,” the doctor said.

Silence. A dull prick on his forearm.

“Carry that rope for me, Doc,” Edmund whispered, fading. “It’s better to forget.”

“That’s right,” the doctor said. “It’s better to forget.”

Chapter 52

Two soldiers were killed in the ambush, two were wounded, but Edmund’s team got eight insurgents thanks in part to Edmund’s intimate knowledge of the area and his quick rerouting of his troops toward the park. And even though Edmund didn’t participate in the gun battle, even though no one ever knew what happened to him in the alleyway, his men didn’t blame him for the loss of their comrades.

But Edmund couldn’t have cared less if they had. All that, his former life, was over. All that—the Army, Iraq, war, insurgents, death—all nonsense, all meaningless to him now in comparison to his anointing.

Sergeant Edmund Lambert was given a clean bill of health but declined to speak with an Army counselor. He made two more patrols and killed one Iraqi before flying back to Fort Campbell. He never mentioned the lion or the General ever again, and never once mourned the loss of his good luck charm. The lion wanted it. The lion wanted everything. But most of all, the lion wanted him, too.

It was all so clear to him now. Indeed, the answer had been there ever since he was a child, but Edmund had simply been too stupid to see it. The General.

G-E-N-E-R-A-L

Yes, Edmund thought, if he broke apart the word General (or, wrote it on a piece of paper like his grandfather had taught him, dash-dash-dash and whatnot) and rearranged the letters, one would get Nergal with a leftover E, as in:

G-E-N-E-R-A-L = E + N-E-R-G-A-L

Or, if one preferred, on could write the equation this way:

E + N-E-R-G-A-L = G-E-N-E-R-A-L

Either way it was the same. The leftover e, of course, stood for Edmund. There could be no doubting that now. The evidence was clear, irrefutable, beyond coincidental. Edmund knew this with every fiber of his being; knew it in a way that made him feel as if he had never known anything before.

The god Nergal had visited him in his dreams all those years ago—had bestowed upon him the code, the equation, the formula—and had since waited patiently for Edmund to understand. And how many times had he heard those words from Rally and his grandfather? Equation and formula? Ner-gal had been speaking to him all that time through the old men, too!

And now, finally, Edmund understood what the god was saying: Edmund and Nergal on one side of the equal sign, the General on the other. Yes, only with Nergal could Edmund become the General.

The totality of the equation said so: E + N-E-R-G-A-L =

G-E-N-E-R-A-L

But N-E-R-G-A-L needed E(dmund) to become the G-E-N-E-R-A-L, too. But Nergal was already a general—the supreme general; the most fearful of them all, in fact. So what was Nergal getting at? Perhaps the formula meant Ner-gal needed Edmund to become a real, living breathing gen- eral again. Yes, perhaps Nergal needed Edmund to help him return to the land of the living. But how?

The images on the seal! It was all there! How else could one balance the equation? Nergal wished to return, to become flesh again, and he had chosen Edmund as his vehicle—had actually given him instructions on how to do it! That was why he sent the lion to take back the seal. The lion was Nergal’s emissary, and by returning the seal— that very thing that in ancient times was used in secret correspondence—Edmund had accepted the god’s offer. Worship and sacrifice were the keys to bringing him back!

He had not been hallucinating. The lion was real, and everything happened there in the alleyway just as Edmund remembered it. Edmund was sure of that. The proof was there in the formula.

E + N-E-R-G-A-L = G-E-N-E-R-A-L

And what was it that Rally had said on the telephone? Something again about getting the “formula” right? Well, that had to be another message from Nergal, too; and now that Edmund had finally gotten his formula right, he would never be so stupid as to ignore or misinterpret his messages ever again.

The messages were everywhere and in everything. Edmund understood this now. He just had to look more closely to be able to read them.

And Edmund knew he needed to look more closely at Rally, too. There was a message there, an answer that needed to be extracted from all his doublespeak about formulas and whatnot; an answer that had been there all along, but again Edmund had simply been too stupid to see it.

Edmund understood this in his gut, although he could not articulate it in his mind; could not reach out and touch that flash of silver stitching against that dark blue background no matter how hard he tried.

G-E-N-E-R-A-L

To see the word written that way—A memory? A dream? Something real or imagined? Something he was projecting now that he knew the formula?

But along with the silver stitching of G-E-N-E-R-A-L came other flashes—distant shadows and voices that brought with them a thick gooiness that reminded Edmund of the medicine. He could not see to whom the voices belonged, but understood there were only two of them—understood this in the same way he had understood the General’s name all those years ago as a child. But the voices were speaking in French; whispers and mumblings and back-and-forth echoes that Edmund didn’t understand.

Edmund knew his ancestors had moved from New Orleans to North Carolina after the Civil War. Was it his family he was hearing? Was it Nergal speaking through his ancestors of his destiny?

C’est mieux d’oublier….

Rally. He needed to talk to Rally. Perhaps Nergal would speak again through him as he had on the phone with the word “formula.” All in good time, Edmund thought. Nergal would reveal everything eventually, but it would be up to Edmund to make sure he read the messages correctly.

Chapter 53

After his honorable discharge was finalized, Edmund made it back to Wilson in time for his grandfather’s fu- neral—a small ceremony, complete with a rent-a-preacher at the family plot in Clayton. Edmund, Rally, Rally’s nephew, and about a half-a-dozen others were the only ones in attendance—no extended family to offer their condolences, no close friends to tell Edmund what a wonderful man his grandfather had been.

But Edmund was thankful for that. He would be able to cut things clean from his former life now that Claude Lambert was dead; would be able to begin preparing for the Raging Prince’s return in private, in secret, without