to the monk.
He pulled his arm away. ‘I’m OK, really. .’
‘Well, you won’t mind me looking then.’ She parted the bloody, shredded sleeve of his cassock to peer at the red smeared flesh beneath. The source of his bleeding was immediately apparent, a nasty deep gash right across his wrist that had obviously been quite deep. It looked a good few days old, judging by the extent of the healing, yet the blood was fresh. ‘What happened?’ Dr Kulin asked.
‘It got knocked about a bit,’ he said. ‘I’ll live. But, please. Has a woman been brought in? Looks about forty. Black hair, five six?’
Dr Kulin thought of the woman in the motorcycle helmet. ‘She’s gone to X-ray.’ The high-pitched sound of a cardiac alarm sounded somewhere behind her. ‘She’s been knocked about a bit too. But don’t worry: I think she’ll be fine.’
Chapter 147
Liv heard the squeak of shoes amongst the cacophony as the doctor and nurse hurried away. She also heard a thousand other sounds.
Since Gabriel had carried her out of the Citadel, every colour, every sound and smell called to her like living things, as if she was experiencing everything for the first time.
As they had emerged into the night from the endless, smoke-filled tunnel, and Gabriel had laid her gently down on a stretcher, she had looked up and glimpsed the new moon hanging in the sky. She’d cried when she’d seen it; it was so beautiful and fragile — and free. Yet her tears carried something other than this brimming joy; they also stung with loss. She had sought her brother, and, though the memory of exactly what she had discovered in the mountain chamber evaded her, she knew it was over, and that Samuel was gone.
Now she was in this bright and clamorous place — so familiar and yet so strange. She could hear the sound of death in the erratic breathing of the men lying around her, and the drip of their blood.
She felt Gabriel’s arms close around her, sensing her distress, and the citrus smell of him engulfed her, pushing aside the antiseptic taint of the emergency room and the metallic tang of blood and fear. She closed her eyes and sank into it, focusing only on him, and the sound of his heart thundering in his chest, rolling across the landscape of other sounds until all she could hear was its comforting beat. It was a heart that beat just for her, and tears rose fresh again, for this was as beautiful as the moon had seemed.
Then another sound crept in, low and insistent, crawling at the periphery of her consciousness.
She opened her eyes.
A bunch of lilacs, still wrapped in cellophane, lay on a narrow shelf, amongst the thermometer holders and plug sockets, a forgotten gift for a previous occupant. Lilacs. . the state flower of New Jersey. Liv thought of home, and the life she had been living just a few days ago, and how strange that seemed to her now. The sound returned and her eye caught movement amongst the petals. A bee crawled out from the velvet depths of one blossom, hovered for a moment then disappeared into another.
‘What happened in there?’ Gabriel said, his voice vibrating through her body where it pressed against his.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, marvelling at the sound of her own voice. She held his question in her head, focusing on it until another memory fluttered past, fragmented and incomplete. She remembered her fear in the darkness, the tapering dagger, and her revulsion at its intended purpose. She remembered the green eyes that had stared into the depths of her soul, and divined her essential purpose. And as this memory flitted past it brought something else, whispering through the blood of the man who held her, shushing in her ear and soothing with its sound, just as the strength in his arms made her safe.
Ku. . Shi. . kaamm. .
The whisper spread through her, giving birth to other ancient words that flowed and pulsed with Gabriel’s heartbeat.
KuShikaaM. .
Clavis. .
Namzaqu. .
KuShikaaM. .
Clavis. .
Namzaqu. .
And though she could not name the languages from which the words came, she understood them all, as if born with their knowledge, as if each was a fundamental part of her.
She held Gabriel more tightly as the sounds filled her head, shutting out even the beating of his heart. They clustered together, forming an image in her mind, an image which finally showed Liv who she was, and what she was.
KuShikaaM. .
The Key. .
