Heartland

Cristobel nodded soberly as he picked up the bottle of whisky. I pushed my glass toward his open hand.

The old vegetable rituals: the Corn King slain in winter, resurrected in spring. Like all pervasive mythological structures, they were reflections of old sympathetic, magico-religious rites. What happens down here is reflected up above.

Dumbly, I watched as Cristobel, having poured an inch in my glass, guided the mouth of the bottle to his own glass with a finger, and then poured. And missed, the whisky splashing on the tabletop.

The flashing display on the microwave went dark. I may have blinked, or perhaps time simply started again, but the green numbers came back, blinking '12:00' as they always had.

The Chorus prickled up my spine, like ice crystals forming on an exposed rib of stone. Something had just happened, a subtle twist to the ley grid, but it had been enough to trigger their defensive reflexes.

Father Cristobel ignored the spill of whisky. 'The chapel grid has been compromised,' he said as he stood and moved toward the cupboard.

The Chorus poured out of my fingers, streaking for the ley energy surrounding us. They had to go far, as they only found a thin trickle running beneath us. When I squeezed them, sending them deeper, they found no sign of a natural etheric stream. Nothing but blank space, a void that reminded me of the yawning darkness in Philippe's head.

'We've been caged,' Father Cristobel said, sensitive to the radiating confusion in the Chorus. 'This is a nexus, but you can't See that now, can you? We've been placed in an oubliette.'

He returned to the table with a small mahogany box. It had no hinges or visible lock, and his fingers danced across the tight pattern of raised dots on the surface. A latch clicked, and the top twisted to the right, revealing a hidden cavity inside. He lifted out a long strand of dark beads, a strand longer than the space available within the box. They were black glass-obsidian, perhaps-and of two sizes. 'My rosary,' he explained as he slipped the chain of beads over his wrist. It was meant to go around his waist, a loop of glass with a long tail. A silver disk, inscribed with a magick circle, terminated the loop and the tail, and when he put it on his palm, the wide chain of beads slid around his arm like a serpent. The loop tightened, and the tail became longer. At the end of the dangling strand was a metal sphere, inlaid with black and white script.

'Why did they cut us off?' I asked, reeling the Chorus back in just as they were starting to read bright spots beyond the walls of the church. Oubliette. A prison within a prison, cut off from the rest of the world in every way possible. Like being cast out into the void before creation.

'This is holy ground,' Father Cristobel said. 'The circles and sigils are mine. But without access to the energy grid, they're just writing on the wall.'

I nodded. The Chorus sizzled in my fingertips as I touched the puddle of spilled whisky. The alcohol reacted to the energy beneath my skin, bursting into a blue flame that crawled up to my knuckles. 'They're taking away your advantage.'

'Yes, it is not an unexpected move on their part.'

Visionary. He was the one who had made the stained-glass panels, who Philippe used to track missing magi in the fields. Regardless of their secret names, the Architects were still thread winders, long-term plotters and manipulators. 'You played war games, didn't you?' I asked. 'Contingency planning. 'What if?' scenarios, disaster planning, tactical mapping-'

Thread winding, the Chorus supplied. Our oldest art. They had a secret in their mouths, like a grouse brought back from the field by an eager retriever. Each thread had a unique tension, a special vibration that, if you knew how to read it, made it stand out against the noise and chaos of the Weave. When a thread was tightened-pulled, plucked, wound-it reacted, generating a sub-psychic pulse through the surrounding threads. Reading this vibration was how the Architects built their machinations. They considered the possibilities and permutations, winding threads until they had the right tension. Until they twisted and bent in the direction of their choosing.

'Which one?' I asked. 'Which winding is this?'

'A variant of the Blitzkrieg, most likely.'

Germany's rapid assault of Eastern European targets in World War II. An overnight deployment and seizure of targets, effectively immobilizing the enemy before they know the fight has begun. So soon after the news of the Hierarch's death. Yes, this is the way I'd do it. Quickly, while everyone is still in shock.

'Multiple targets?'

'I would assume so. We don't know who leads the Opposition. But they know their targets, and will move swiftly against us. I have some suspicions as to who they are, but it is a Vision only truly realized in hindsight.' He picked up his cup and hesitated for a second, as if mentally preparing himself for this last sip. 'If my Vision is True,' he whispered, and then he drank the rest of the whisky in his cup.

The Chorus registered the presence of souls in the church, spirit lights moving within the empty confines of our prison. They weren't radiating magick, but they were still brighter than the surroundings. Raised heart rates, elevated adrenaline levels. Men with guns. I counted six, and said as much to Cristobel.

He nodded. 'As I suspected.'

'How does this gambit play out?' The alcoholic fire danced along the ridges of my knuckles, spreading to my other hand as I bumped my fists. Manus ignis, manus animi. I felt the circuit connect through my chest, and the air popped and sizzled over my hands.

'Statistically, the odds favor them. Especially with six.'

'There isn't a way to improve these odds?'

He cocked his head, listening to an echo I couldn't hear. 'That depends.'

'On what?'

He smiled, an old motion of his lips that spoke of a different time, of a different life. 'On you, Lightbreaker. You are a blind man, stumbling through the fields. You do not know where the path is. I can help you.'

'How?'

'Anamnesis,' he said. 'Remembering what you have forgotten. I can guide you. But we need to escape this trap.'

'Yes,' I said, the Chorus singing in my voice. 'We need to find a way out.' And then, a phrase I knew was right, that I Knew was required of me. 'Duc me, Pater.'

He clenched his fist and his Will activated the sphere at the end of his rosary. The sphere became a heavy, four-bladed cross. 'I will, my son.'

Father Cristobel disabled the power in the church with a thought as we came through the door with no knob. The church was dim, lit by flickering fingers of light from the tall candles in the sanctuary and from the sea of votive candles in the transepts. Shadows clung to the columns along the outer edge of the church, shadows deep enough for us to play hide-and-seek with our attackers.

The strike squad had split into two teams of three, and they moved in tight triangular formations. They were dressed in nondescript clothes: muted colors, some jackets, some sweaters-nothing that would seem like a shared uniform among them, but the sort of outfits that afforded places to hide guns. On that front, they were unified: compact machine guns. Heckler amp; Koch MP5s. I recognized the weapon's distinctive rattling burp as one of the assassins opened fire. Chips of stone cracked off the pillar I was hiding behind.

The Chorus filled my eyes, and I saw silver motes dancing over a glowing outline of the church's layout. The first team was in the central aisle, scattering for cover among the wooden pews; the second trio was in the rear of the church, sheltered by the pillars at the back. They were going to flank us along the outer wall. Father Cristobel was on my left, closer to the main altar.

I heard the whirling sound of his rosary, and he grunted as he cast the heavy end. Lit by his magick, it curved in a long arc from behind his hidden position. The glass beads separated, an elastic line of fire stretching across the church, and the spiked ball clipped the edge of a pew. Someone cried out and the snake of glassine fire whipped back.

First blood for us. The Chorus marked the cut on the man's shoulder with a glittering line, and they vibrated in my fingers. While they weren't the same group of souls I had before Portland, there was emotional memory there. A resonance of their predecessors. Angels of vengeance, singing a song of violence.

I moved toward the back of the church, leaping between pillars in random hops. When I was close to the