Heartland

Goosebumps ran along my arms. 'Is this the justification for what happened? It was ordained more than eight hundred years ago. We aren't responsible. We're just carrying out our destiny. Is that it?'

Vivienne smoothed out the page on the edge of the basin and looked at the picture. 'Perhaps. Would you want that to be true?'

'I'd like-' I stopped. She was right. It was all a matter of interpretation and of rewriting history. Did it matter why Bernard and the Hollow Men attacked Portland? Did it matter why the Watchers had allowed it to happen?

No. Yes. Neither. Both.

If Hildegard had Seen that event, if she had Scried that night in Portland, then she had brought it into being. According to Husserl's argument for the power inherent in scrying. See the future; make the future. The rest of us were only fulfilling the world already visualized. Thinking that I failed to stop Bernard or that I had somehow triggered a series of events leading to this fight for the Crown was to take on guilt that didn't exist. There was no fault to assign, no blame to carry, because there was no free will involved. I walked on a predestined track-we all did-and what I thought about my actions and my desires was a subjective hallucination. Every decision I came to as a result of reason and logic were pieces in a puzzle that was already cut. Every hard choice I made was no choice at all.

If I wanted to believe this line of thought, then there was no tragedy. No crime committed against humanity. It was all part of a predestined course of action. We were but tiny players in God's cosmic drama, one He had written at the dawn of existence and was now watching play out.

'I don't want it to be true,' I finished.

She held up the picture so that I could see it once more and then dropped it in the basin. 'So, don't believe it,' she said.

The paper darkened immediately as the ink ran, the lines blurring and smearing. The image of the angel went first, and then the tower with all its windows. The child with the long neck became even more distorted as the page floated toward the bottom of the basin, finally losing all semblance of human shape. Only the figure filled with eyes remained intact, and eventually it became invisible against the smear of ink. It looked, all too familiarly, like one of Philippe's tarot cards.

'Is it still there?' she asked, watching me.

I blinked and took a deep breath. Was it? I took a step closer to the basin and peered more closely at the page. The paper rested on the bottom, edges curling up along the slope of the bowl. The ink had run completely now, and some of it was bleeding off the page, tiny tendrils wisping into the water where they became bleached of their darkness. Fading strands of smoke that vanished as they became filled with light.

'No,' I said. 'There's nothing left.'

'See? So easily dismissed. So easily turned into nothing more than a bad dream.'

'You can't dismiss the vision as easily as that,' I said. 'You can't just throw it away and pretend it doesn't exist.'

She leaned forward and looked at the nearly blank page. 'I did, though. Besides, how do you know I was telling you the truth? Maybe that wasn't something Hildegard drew at all. Maybe it was something someone gave to me. 'Show this to him,' they said. 'See what he does.' ' She shrugged. 'Freaked you out, didn't it? How I got under your skin so quickly.'

I took a step back from the basin. 'No, now you're lying to me.' The pictures on the walls seemed to flow, the faces changing into demonic visages wracked with laughter.

'Are you sure?' she asked. 'Or is it more convenient for you to believe that I am?'

What do you Know, foolish magus? The faces all danced with mirth. What do you Know?

'I was there,' I tried, my voice faint against the raucous laughter ringing in my head.

'Where?' Vivienne asked.

'Portland,' I whimpered. 'When Bernard activated the Key of Thoth and tried to talk to God.'

'Were you?' she asked, pressing the point. Her words came hard and fast. 'Not according to the Record you weren't. We had a Witness there. He didn't see you. Are you accusing a Watcher of falsifying a True Record?'

Antoine lied. He lied to protect himself and to elevate himself in the eyes of the Watchers. He hadn't done it to protect me; he had done it to take power for himself. His report gave him control of the situation. Whatever he claimed as the Record became permanent. I had been written out, like the shadow filled with eyes. Smeared into the background and then dissolved. What's gone is gone.

What was I doing now? Was I part of the cosmological rebirth that was coming? Was it my destiny to take up the Cup and drink from it at the Coronation ceremony? To be Crowned, thereby receiving the vision and wisdom of the Hierarch. Me-the untested, untrained, and uninformed magus-who had been given the keys of power by a madman. Or was that part of the lunacy of Husserl's interpretation: to twist me so much that I argued that I wasn't the Hierarch's tool, performed the tasks anyway, and when the end came, was pushed aside because, yes, I really wasn't his tool after all?

I didn't exist. I had died in the river, buried under all that water and flowing energy. There was no Record that I was still alive. Not if the Record was to be believed, and who was I to contradict the Record? To accuse a Protector-Witness of lying? I was a lonely voice in the wilderness, crying out to be heard, to be accepted, to be loved.

But why? Why did I want their affection? Their adulation? Hadn't I spent five years hiding from them, trying to get away from my past? Hadn't I tried so very hard to not be a Watcher? Yet, here I was: running errands for the Architects, killing the competition, and being twisted by the continued admonishment that I wasn't a real player, that I wasn't worthy of being initiated into the secret histories and occult mysteries of La Societe Lumineuse.

I took another step back and collided with the wall. My hand touched the painting and it felt warm and resilient, more like flesh than dried oil paint. A hand grabbed mine and I tried to pull free, the Chorus sparking down my arm and into my neck, but something sharp pierced the top of my skull and the lights went out.

XXX

At first, I thought the lack of illumination had simply been a result of the bowl going dark, but when the light in the basin came back, I realized I was sitting down, back against the wall, with no recollection of how I got there. I reached up and touched the top of my head, expecting to find an entry wound, but there was nothing but a tender spot. Nothing was broken. The Chorus buzzed in my ears like angry bees, and my sense of balance was off by several degrees in the wrong direction.

Vivienne crouched next to me, and put her hand under my chin so as to lift my head. 'Are you all right?' she asked.

'No,' I admitted. 'It's been a long day. Couple of days, actually.' Now that I was sitting, I really didn't feel like getting up. The thought earned me another buzzing pass from the Chorus. Angry little bees.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I understand. I was a bit abrupt. I could have been a bit-'

'No, no. That's fine,' I interrupted. 'I. . just. . well, never mind. It's not important.' I forced a smile onto my lips. 'I get it, though. I'm not the white knight everyone expected.'

She pursed her lips. 'What makes you think we need one?'

I started to protest, and then wondered why I was bothering. 'You know?' I said, 'I don't really fucking care if you do.' My social filters were low, and I let the words out. I didn't care anymore. 'I don't really care if Hildegard foresaw the Ascension Event in Portland. I don't care if it was my destiny to stop Bernard. All I know is that a lot of people died that night, and, really, there's no spin you can put on what happened that will alleviate the moral culpability of the Watchers. You were either Witnesses or participants, and both positions aren't acceptable to me. Both positions are reprehensible.'

She looked at my face a moment longer, watching the movement of the Chorus in my eyes, and then she let go of my chin. 'Very well.' She sat back on her heels, and her hands fell into her lap where they unconsciously folded