Heartland

details of my fall, but after the first few seconds of despair and panic, there was nothing. Just the memory of waking up in a twelfth-century penitent's chamber with all my spirits.

The Chorus had carried me, obviously, while I had been off in Never Never Land, talking with John and witnessing the distorted history the ghosts wanted me to see. The world was filled with cycles, and the history of the Hierarch and the Watchers was no different. Too many iterations, too many loops: they all started to blur after a few generations. Minor differences cropped up, but the cosmological revolution always followed the same path. Like the leys-what was it that Philippe had called them? — the desire lines laid down by our persistent repetitions. Over and over again.

When my muscles seemed to be under my control again, I sat up slowly, and the change in position lessened some of the internal complaints, while giving voice to others. Tuning them out-the body was going to make that sort of noise for a while yet, I expected-I turned my attention outward, to the space around me.

Underground, the Chorus whispered as they slithered along the ground, tasting the soil. There was a ribbon of etheric force nearby and they tapped it, digging into the rich source of energy and information. North was just off my left shoulder, and I was near-I sniffed the air, recognizing that faint, but distinct, dry odor-an ossuary somewhere. One of the lost passages beneath Paris. With the cemetery close to Tour Montparnasse, I wasn't surprised there were tunnels similar to what led me from the Chapel of Glass to Pere Lachaise

Invigorated by the trickle of energy from the ley, I summoned a spark and let it drift overhead. The room was roughly square, with niches in the wall that seemed too short for coffins, and the floor was a jumble of stone and timber. I was draped across one of the larger pieces. Laid out on a slab. The spark drifted higher, but the ceiling didn't materialize, and I was reminded of the ceiling in Hildegard's room. Was I still under Tour Montparnasse? Some subbasement of the elevator shaft? The walls looked too old, like hand tools had carved out this space, and none of the junk under me looked like it was a remnant from modern construction.

More importantly, I didn't see a door.

Of course not, Lafoutain noted. No one has been down here for more than sixty years.

'Lucky me,' I muttered.

There is an access shaft, the spirit of the Scholar said. My tiny spark leaped upward, torn from my control, and it went so high that it seemed to vanish.

'That's a long way,' I said.

It's not as far as it looks, especially for a climber like you.

I lifted my stump. 'It's pretty hard to climb when you're missing one hand.'

I guess you'd better get started then, shouldn't you?

'I'm really beginning to not like you guys.'

His laughter echoed in my head until I started climbing. It gave me strength, as I think he knew that it would.

'Your turn,' I told Lafoutain when I reached the access shaft. I rested on the edge of the hole, my legs dangling. My chest ached, and my stump had started to ooze blood from all the exertion. The Chorus had activated Cristobel's magick circle and used that energy to bind off most of the stump-the one thing that transferred from the vision to reality was the presence of the Visionary's rosary around my severed arm-but the seal was dependent upon my Will, and I was tired.

More tired than I had been in a long time.

My turn for what? the Scholar's spirit inquired.

Cristobel's argument was that I needed him so that I could understand the mystery of Philippe's plan, and as a spirit, he has managed to tease helpful hints here and there from the grip of the Old Man. Husserl probably should be in my head too, but he managed to dodge that trap. As had Spiertz, in his own way. I understood that part of Philippe's plan now. The Chorus, via the mechanism of the Lightbreaker, was to have swept clean the attitudes and personal histories of the Architects, leaving only their knowledge. The Hierarch wanted new leadership that wasn't tainted by all the petty bullshit and in-fighting that had gone on in the last decade.

The easiest way to accomplish this goal was to kill everyone, but that would mean that all the institutional knowledge they carried would be lost. That was where I came in. I wasn't his courier, or his candidate for succession. I wasn't even the spark that started the conflagration that was going to wipe it all away. I was just the guy who came through later and swept up the useful relics.

'Is that why you were selected to join the others?' I asked the Chorus. 'You were his Scholar, Lafoutain. Is this your reward for a lifetime of service? To be turned into a schizophrenic figment of my psychosis?'

Lafoutain didn't answer, and the Chorus' only response was to vanish into the drain of my memory.

'I thought so,' I said.

The whole situation was a mess. Everyone was trying to fuck everyone else. The Crown was the prize, and with it came the rest of the Watcher organization. And Marielle as well. That's all that mattered. Keep your eyes on the prize, and be the last man standing. As primal as it came. There is always competition, Philippe had told me in one of those lucid moments when he deigned to speak to me. The secret that lay in the heart of Free Will. The Will to desire. Whoever wants it the most.

Anarchy. Will untamed. Will unrestrained. The World as a billion points of light, all fighting to be the center of the universe.

Was this what he wanted? Was this how it was all supposed to end? In a chaotic squabble over the leftovers? After a lifetime of being a Witness, was that all he thought of us? Petty little animals, fighting over scraps.

One of the arguments Lt. Pender had articulated before Antoine had killed him had been that the souls of Portland had been better off as a combined unity focused on the realization of a single goal. It was a better use of their energy and their existence than they could have ever hoped to attain with their own small lives. Was such a unification not a better use of their lives?

I had disagreed with him-rather vehemently-based on the position that no one had asked them. Not that his argument was wrong, but that the methods were morally repugnant. And after I had killed Bernard and scattered all those souls to their final destinations, I had had a lot of time to think about that argument.

There is a place not far from the Portland Airport called the Grotto, one of the few active Franciscan monasteries in the United States. The main portion of the sanctuary sits on top of the bluff, looking north toward the river and the airport. You can't see downtown at all, the bluff hides most of the central core of the city from view, and when the wind blows east to west, the dry scent of the ruined city drifts out toward the coast. You could almost pretend the Ascension Event had never happened. The only indicator left is the psychic pain radiating through every ley line crossing the valley.

I had stayed at the Grotto for a few days, watching and reading the city as it tried to understand what had happened. Trying to understand what had happened to me between the first light of dawn and the moment Antoine had Seen me walking back across the water.

I had been given another chance. The black stain on my soul had been purged, and I had been given new guides. New angels to fill the hole in my chest. What was I supposed to do with this knowledge? With this experience?

More importantly, why had Philippe twisted the threads in a way that had forced me to be the one facing Bernard. What was I to have gained from that experience that would then be useful to him? Originally, I had thought he would have called upon me to serve him, and I had waited patiently for a sign that I was to come to his side. I had never anticipated that he'd come to me, especially to die.

Was that all I was supposed to be: his dumb pack animal? The transformation of the Chorus had afforded him a way to postpone Death. He had willingly become part of the voices in my head, and in doing so, had managed to retain his own identity. Was it a low-rent resurrection, a life beyond life? Or was it truly a means by which the knowledge of the Architects could be saved? If it was the latter, and I was inclined to think that was the case, then there had to be a way for me to transfer this knowledge. A way that wasn't the same as the manner in which I took souls.

A memory stirred. A fragment that unfolded into a blur of steel and shadow. Her hands on me. The cold kiss of the bulkhead against my skin. Her legs wrapped around me, pulling me close to her. So very close. Beneath all the pleasure of the flesh, that other sensation: that sucking, pulsating whirlpool. Trying to draw something out.