‘What?’ Liv said.
‘There is a second prophecy,’ Gabriel said, ‘the Mirror Prophecy, and it follows on from the first.’
He held Oscar’s diary up to the webcam and this time Liv’s screen filled with the familiar symbols. The whispering rose again as she stared at it and again she scribbled the translation into her notebook directly below the other. Even as she was transcribing she realized its significance. She had wondered what the key was and now she knew. It was her.
The Key unlocks the Sacrament
The Sacrament becomes the Key
And all the Earth shalt tremble
The Key must follow the Starmap Home
There to quench the fire of the dragon within the full phase of a moon
Lest the Key shalt perish, the Earth shalt splinter and a blight shalt prosper, marking the end of all days
She had been yearning for home ever since waking up in the hospital. At the time she had thought it was her survivor’s instinct driving her to return to the familiar and the safe, back to America and away from the dark, threatening streets of Ruin. Now she realized it was something different. It had not been her own home she had been craving — and continued to crave — it was wherever the Sacrament had come from. ‘The Key must follow the Starmap Home,’ she repeated.
‘Yes,’ Dr Anata said. ‘The Home referred to by the Mirror Prophecy is the original home for all of us, the place where the Sacrament first walked: Eden.’
Again Liv felt her rational self take a body blow.
‘The Mirror Prophecy is clear,’ Anata continued. ‘The dragon is the symbol of fire and destruction. If you do not carry the Sacrament home to Eden in time, then the end of days will be upon us.’
‘How long have we got?’
‘Seventeen days — maybe less.’
‘And if we fail?’
‘The end of days is described in the Book of Revelation of Saint John the Divine. An antichrist will arrive on earth bringing plague, famine, earthquakes and flood. The oceans will rise up and swallow the mountains and the mountains will crumble to the sea. Cities will be destroyed. Life as we know it will end and the righteous will be gathered to God.’
Liv slumped in her chair.
Gabriel leaned forward until his face filled the screen. ‘I’ll arrange safe transport to bring you here. All the ancient biblical lands are close to Ruin and that’s where we’ll need to look. By the time you get here, I’ll have worked out a way of getting into the Citadel.’
Liv snapped to attention. ‘What?’
‘That’s where Oscar hid the Starmap. If we don’t find it, we won’t find Eden.’
Yet again the Citadel was pulling at her with its dark gravity. She had run as far away as she could and yet here she was, still shivering in the long shadow it cast, her destiny still tied up in the secrets it contained and now carried with her. Then a thought struck her. She reached for the sheet of paper, reread the note from Athanasius, then looked up at Gabriel and smiled. ‘I think I know how you can get into the Citadel,’ she said.
59
The elevator doors slid open and Dick stepped on to the blue-grey carpet of the seventh floor. He stood for a moment, scanning the long empty corridor, listening for any sounds through the early-morning quiet of the hotel. Turning right as the receptionist had instructed, and moving silently despite his size, he listened to each room as he went by.
He passed a tray covered with the gnawed remains of a room-service order, a couple of doors with ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs dangling from their handles, but other than that the corridor appeared to be unoccupied.
The hydraulic arm of a fire door hissed as he pushed through into the corridor furthest from the main stairwell. His own room was just inside, but he drifted past, drawn by sharp predatory instincts and the faint murmur of something at the end of the hallway. He followed the sound, barely more than a whisper, until he stood by the door it was coming from.
Dick reached out and touched its surface with his fingertips, feeling the tiny vibrations coming from the other side. Then he leaned forward, and pressed his ear to the door. It was fire regulated, which meant it was solid and therefore an excellent conductor of sound waves. Inside the room he could hear a TV tuned to a news channel and beneath it, softer and less distinct, the sound of two people talking.
He shifted his position, careful not to make any noise, and pressed his ear tighter to the surface. He had planned to improvise his way into her room under the guise of room service or housekeeping and break her neck the moment she opened the door. But another person put an entirely different complexion on things. He would have to wait a while longer.
For a brief moment he thought about kicking the door in with one mighty blow and taking his chances. It was what his old self would have done. But that was not the way he worked any more. He had learned to contain his violent exuberance and form his feelings into words. Words gave him control, and the word for this situation was clear:
Patience
60
Liv stood under the hot shower feeling the tension she had been carrying around for the last few weeks running off and swirling down the drain with the dirty water. She was surprised by how calm she felt following her conversation with Gabriel. In effect, she had been given two weeks to live, and a near impossible task to complete if she wanted to change that, and yet her overwhelming reaction was one of relief. She had read that soldiers often experienced similar feelings when they were finally faced with combat duty. There was something comforting about knowing that your fate was in your own hands, even if the odds were stacked against you. She shut off the water and grabbed a bathrobe and a couple of thin towels from the rail.
The bedroom seemed particularly cold and gloomy after the glare of the bathroom and the steam followed her out like a vapour trail. Gabriel had told her to sit tight until he could work out the details of her transportation back to Ruin. From there she had no idea where they would go, but she would be with him, so that was something at least.
She packed her belongings and laid some fresh clothes on the chair, but didn’t put them on. The travel arrangements were bound to take a while to sort out and she hadn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours. Until Gabriel called back, she was going to try to sleep. After towelling herself dry, she wrapped the smaller towel round her damp hair and squirmed into bed.
The sheets were starchy and cool against her skin and the mattress was firm, but it felt like the finest feather down. Outside she could hear the growing hiss of the morning traffic as people made their way into work. It struck her as odd that, here she was, lying in a nondescript corporate hotel room in New Jersey, contemplating a journey that would ultimately take her to the Garden of Eden. The idea seemed absurd, like calling up a travel agent and trying to book a flight to Mordor. In her rather vague religious upbringing she had assumed that the creation story and the Garden of Eden were legends. It had never occurred to her that they might be real.
She reached over to the nightstand and pulled open the drawer, curiosity outweighing her exhaustion. Sure enough, it contained a copy of the Gideon Bible, the only book you could find in every hotel room in America. She opened it to Genesis and scanned the first few pages, the onionskin paper feeling much too flimsy to carry the weight of the words printed on it. Then, in the tenth verse of the second chapter she came across something very interesting: And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Hav’ilah, where there is gold;
