Kutlar reached into his pocket and pulled out the bottle of pills he had been denying himself for the last few hours, unscrewed the top and tipped a few gel capsules into his damp palm. The label said he was supposed to take one every four hours. He threw two into his mouth, nearly gagging as he dry swallowed them down.
He looked up and past Cornelius towards the Southern gate. She was somewhere in the old town. And as he was the only one who knew what she looked like, and bikes were the only things allowed up the steep, ancient streets, they were going to have to walk. He stuffed the pills back in his pocket, let go of the van and started limping towards the ticket booths by the entrance. His leg was already numb by the time he was halfway there.
Chapter 92
The cafe was heaving, even though it was set back from the embankment and away from the main drag. It was slightly less popular than the other cafes as it had no clear view of the Citadel, but Liv could still feel its presence all the way through the stone building that blocked it out. It was like a shadow made solid, or a storm coming. She sat opposite the Ruinologist, away from the crowds and facing the wall, while a brisk young waiter in a white apron and black waistcoat took their orders. He tore off the order chit and trapped it beneath the ashtray.
‘So,’ Miriam said as soon as he was out of earshot, ‘how can I help?’
Liv placed her notebook on the table. The card she’d picked up was still in her hand. She turned it over and re-read the words:
T
MALA
MARTYR
‘How about telling me what this means,’ she said, sliding it across the table.
‘All right,’ Miriam said. ‘But first you must tell me something.’ She pointed at the T. ‘You said you’d seen marks on your brother’s body. Was this one of them?’
Liv flipped to the first page of her notebook and turned the pad round to reveal the rough drawing she’d made of Samuel’s body. ‘It was branded on his arm,’ she said.
Miriam stared down at the network of scars, transfixed by their savage beauty. She quickly closed the notebook as the waiter reappeared and placed their drinks on the paper tablecloth. ‘It’s called the Tau,’ she said, the moment he scurried off again. ‘It’s a very powerful and ancient symbol, as old as this land which took its name.’
Liv frowned, not following how the word ‘Tau’ could become ‘Turkey’.
‘I’m talking about the land upon which the Citadel stands,’ Dr Anata said, sensing her confusion. She nodded towards the distant peaks, just visible between the buildings, their jagged outlines like teeth against the sky. ‘The kingdom of the Tau.’
Liv followed her gaze, remembering the map in her guidebook and the mountain range that curled around the city and stretched across the country like a spine. ‘The Taurus mountains,’ she said, the first syllable now heavy with new meaning.
Dr Anata nodded. ‘In order for you to properly understand the importance of the Tau, and what it means to this place, you need to know a little history.’ She leaned forward, steepling her long, silver-ringed fingers above the pristine white of the paper tablecloth. ‘The first records of human life in this region describe a struggle between two warring tribes, each seeking dominance over the land. One was called the Yahweh. They lived in caves halfway up a mountain, and were believed to protect a sacred relic that gave them great power. Even in those prehistoric times other tribes revered, or at least feared them so much that they made pilgrimages to the mountain, bringing offerings of food and livestock to the gods they believed lived here.
‘In time a town grew up, prospering from the pilgrims who came to the mountain to give offerings and partake of the miraculous waters that flowed from the ground and was said to bestow good health and long life on all who drank them. A public church emerged to look after the temporal interests of the Citadel, and to preach the word of God passed down from the mountain in written form. In these scriptures the name of God was written as YHWH, which translates as Jehovah or Yahweh — the same name as their tribe. It described how the world was made and how men came to populate it. Anyone who questioned this official version was branded a heretic and hunted down by ruthless warrior-priests riding under a banner bearing the symbol of the Citadel’s divine authority.’ She pointed at the sign of the T. ‘The Tau. The one true cross. The symbol of the relic that had first given them power over others. The symbol of the Sacrament.’
Cornelius stopped just short of the great stone archway leading into the public square and flipped open the notebook to check the signal. His arrow had moved closer, but the girl’s pointed to the same spot.
He glanced back down the steep street towards Kutlar. He was about twenty feet behind, struggling stiff- legged up the hill, the front of his shirt wet with sweat, each halting step the same rhythmical cousin of the one that preceded it: the bad leg slowly swinging forward, landing gently on the ground, the good leg hopping quickly forward to put as little weight on it as possible.
Cornelius planned to shoot him with the silenced gun in his pocket once he’d identified the girl, then prop him on one of the benches lining the embankment. It would hopefully shock the girl into obedience so she would walk down the hill on her own, though he also had a syringe full of Haldol in his pocket if necessary. He watched Kutlar’s metronomic progression towards him. Waited until he had almost caught up, then glanced back down at the screen. The girl still hadn’t moved. He closed the notebook, tucked it into his pocket and headed into the shadow of the arch.
Chapter 93
Liv looked at the T-symbol — the Tau. She’d read a lot about the Sacrament on the flight over, never dreaming it would somehow be connected to her brother’s death.
‘The fact your brother had this mark on his arm means he had knowledge of the Sacrament,’ the Ruinologist continued. ‘He may have been trying to share it.’
Liv remembered what Arkadian had said: Solve the mystery of the Sacrament, solve the mystery of Samuel’s death. She looked up at Dr Anata. ‘You must have come to your own conclusions about what the Sacrament might be,’ she said.
The Ruinologist shook her head. ‘Whenever I feel I’m about to grasp it, it always eludes me. I can tell you what it isn’t. It’s not the cross of Christ, as some people believe. Compared to the religious order inside that mountain, Christ is a relative newcomer. So it isn’t His crown of thorns either, or the spear that pierced His side, or the Holy Grail He drank from. These are all myths perpetuated by the Citadel over the years as diversions to obscure the Sacrament’s true identity.’
‘Then how do we know there’s anything there at all?’ Liv said. ‘If no one’s ever seen it.’
‘You can’t build the world’s biggest religion on just a rumour.’
‘Can’t you? Think about it. You’ve got these two prehistoric tribes fighting it out. To get the upper hand, one holes up in this mountain and claims it’s got some divine weapon. Maybe there’s a drought or an eclipse and they claim they did it. People start believing they have power and treat the tribe like gods. They like it, so they keep up the bluff. So long as no one finds out there’s nothing there, the bluff still works. Wind forward thousands of years and people still believe it, only now a massive religion has been built on it.’ She thought of Samuel walking away from her. Telling her he wanted to get closer to God. ‘And if my brother found that out, discovered after everything he’d been through that the one thing keeping him going, his faith, was actually built on — nothing. .’
Miriam saw the tears in Liv’s eyes. ‘But there is something there,’ she said. ‘Something with power.’ She picked up her bottle of water and looked at the picture on the label. ‘Let me ask you this. .’ She poured water into her glass and her silver rings clinked against the bottle. ‘What do you want from life? What do we all want? We want health, happiness, a long life, right? Same now as it ever was. The most ancient of our ancestors, the ones
