Beneath this last line she could see the tips of other beheaded symbols but the jagged edge of the broken slate drew an uneven line across them, preventing further knowledge of what they might have said.
The first two lines were easy enough to reconcile.
The true sign of the cross was the sign of the Tau, older by far than the Christian cross, and it had appeared on earth the moment the monk had spread his arms.
All had seen it in a single moment via the international news networks. All had wondered because it was extraordinary and unprecedented, and no one knew what it meant.
Then she faltered. She knew the text was incomplete, but she could not see a way past what remained.
The cross had indeed fallen, as the prophecy had foretold; but the cross had been a man.
She looked beyond the window. The Citadel was about eleven hundred feet from base to peak, and he had fallen down the sheer eastern face.
How could anyone possibly rise from that?
Chapter 16
Athanasius clutched the loose bundle of documents to his chest as he rapped on the gilded door of the Abbot’s chambers. There was no reply. He slipped inside and found, to his great relief, that the room was empty. It meant, for the moment at least, he did not have to converse with the Abbot about how the problem of Brother Samuel had now been solved. It had brought him no joy. Brother Samuel had been one of his closest friends before he had chosen the path of the Sancti and disappeared forever into the strictly segregated upper reaches of the mountain. And now he was dead.
He arrived at the desk and laid out the day’s business, splitting the documents into two piles. The first contained the daily updates of the internal workings of the Citadel, stock-takes of provisions and schedules of works for the constant and ongoing repairs. The second much larger pile comprised reports of the Church’s vast interests beyond the walls of the Citadel — anything from the latest discoveries at current archaeological digs worldwide; synopses of current theological papers; outlines of books that had been submitted for publication; sometimes even proposals for television programmes or documentaries. Most of this information came from various official bodies either funded or wholly owned by the Church, but some of it was gleaned by the vast network of unofficial informers who worked silently in every part of the modern establishment and were as much a part of the Citadel’s tradition and history as were the prayers and sermons that made up the devotional day.
Athanasius glanced at the top sheet. It was a report submitted by an agent called Kafziel — one of the Church’s most prolific spies. Fragments of an ancient manuscript had been discovered in the ruins of a temple at a dig in Syria and he recommended an immediate ‘A and I’ — Acquisition and Investigation to learn and neutralize any threat they may contain. Athanasius shook his head. Another piece of priceless antiquity would undoubtedly end up locked in the gloom of the great library. His feelings on this continued policy was no secret within the Citadel. He had argued, along with Brother Samuel and Father Thomas — inventor and implementer of so many improvements within the library, that the hoarding of knowledge and censorship of alternative ideas was the sign of a weak church in a modern and open world. The three of them had often talked in private of a time when the Citadel’s great repository of learning might be shared with the outside for the greater good of God and man. Then Samuel had chosen to follow the ancient and secretive path of the Sancti and Athanasius could not help but feel that all their hopes had died with him. Everything Samuel had been associated with during his life in the Citadel would now be tainted.
He felt tears prick the corners of his eyes as he looked down at the day’s documents and imagined the news they would bring in the weeks to come: endless reports regarding the monk who had fallen, and how the world perceived it. He turned and headed back to the gilded door, blotting his eyes with the back of his hand as he slipped from the Abbot’s chambers and back into the mountain labyrinth. He needed to find somewhere private, where he could allow his emotions to run free.
Head down, he marched purposefully through the crisply air-conditioned tunnels. The wide, brightly lit thoroughfares narrowed into a dimly lit staircase leading to a narrow corridor beneath the great cathedral cave, lined on each side by doors to small private chapels. At the far end of the passage a candle burned in a shallow depression cut into the rock by one such door, denoting that the room beyond it was already occupied. Athanasius stepped inside. The few votive candles that lit the interior flickered in the wash of the closing door and light shimmered across the low, soot-stained ceiling and the T-shaped cross standing on a stone shelf cut into the far wall. A man in a plain black cassock was hunched in prayer before it.
The priest began to turn, but Athanasius did not need to see his face to know who it was. He dropped to the floor beside him and gripped him in a sudden and desperate embrace, the sounds of his sobs muffled by the thick material of his companion’s robes. They held each other like this for long minutes, neither speaking, locked in grief. Finally Athanasius drew back and looked into the round white face and intelligent blue eyes of Father Thomas, his black hair receding slightly and touched with grey at the temples, his cheeks glistening with tears in the candlelight.
‘I feel like all is lost.’
‘We are still here, Brother Athanasius. And what we three discussed in this room; that is not lost.’
Athanasius managed a smile, warmed by his friend’s words.
‘And we can at least remember Samuel as he truly was,’ Father Thomas said. ‘Even if others will not.’
Chapter 17
The Abbot stood in the centre of the
At the foot of the altar he noticed a twist of new growth curling from the rock floor, the thin tendril of a blood vine, the strange red plant that grew around the Sacrament, springing up faster than it could be rooted out. There was something about the sheer fecundity of the plant that disgusted him. He was about to move towards it when he heard the deep rumble of the huge stone door rolling open behind him. The thick air inside the chapel stirred as two people entered. The candles shuddered in their molten pools of tallow and light danced across the sharp instruments that lined the walls. The door rumbled back into place and the candle flames settled, hissing softly as tallow bubbled against hot wicks.
Both men wore the long beards and green cassocks of the Sacramental order, but there was a subtle difference in their bearing. The shorter of the two stood slightly back, his eyes fixed on the other, his hand resting on the T-shaped Crux tucked into his rope belt; the second stood with his head slightly down, eyes lowered, shoulders stooping as if the weight of the cassock itself was still too much to bear.
‘Well, Brothers?’
‘The body landed beyond the boundaries of our jurisdiction,’ the shorter monk said. ‘There was no way we could secure it.’
The Abbot closed his eyes and exhaled deeply. He had hoped the news would lift his mood, not worsen it. He opened his eyes again and regarded the Sanctus who had not yet spoken. ‘So,’ he said, in a voice that was soft yet full of threat, ‘where is he now?’
‘The city morgue.’ The monk’s eyes did not rise above the Abbot’s chest. ‘We think they are performing a post-mortem.’
‘You
