Like wolves, the Brothers of Babylon struck at once; and at once, they were repelled. Adnihilo’s sabre bounced off the abbot’s bare flesh, and Adam’s sword bent unable to penetrate the man as he cocked an arm, rechambered at his hip, then slammed the Messah’s gut with the force of a canon. At once, the half-blood recognized the strike as one requiring a root, ponderous as it was powerful. There’d be a split second before his opponent could move—his last opportunity. But could he do it? A thousand memories of being caught the very moment he’d thought he’d landed a hit on Eyebrows played back in an instant. Armed or not, his arm would go taught, and he’d see the world from the perspective of a hammer—feel it too, the wind crushed from his lungs like all the weight of a punch dropped from a roof onto his diaphragm. Then Eyebrows would loose his barking laughter. But could he do it? There was not time for such questions in the split second that Adnihilo let his sabre fall in the midst of recoil and dropped into a low, open guard. He watched a whirling of arms and a coiling of legs, a hand shoot like an arrow, stop just short of his heart, change course, then snatch at the air. After that came a blast of thunder, a smoking black pipe, and the bishop smirking till he saw the abbot peel the slug from his palm.
He stood for a long while, the abbot, staring at the shallow wound, his lips down turned. He spoke in Gautaman, but Brother William was too shocked to translate. It didn’t matter. Watching the Gautaman’s face, Adnihilo knew exactly what he was saying, how he felt, for the witch’s son felt the same way—robbed of his fate by unwelcome machinations, never to know the outcome, what could have been. But then something unexpected happened. The abbot burst into laughter, so genuine it frightened them, even Brother William, so much the pale monk went white and fled.
A voice called from the end of the hall. “Kyogen,” it said. The abbot turned and faced the real source of the pale monk’s fear, not laughter but an enigma.
There appeared an archway at the end of the chamber where no archway had been before. And on the threshold stood a man, bone thin and golden, naked but for a tawny loin cloth. His eyes were crescents, his face soft, his hair a black, oily bun, and his ear lobes so long they touched his shoulders. He spoke first in Gautaman, then in Messaii as the abbot gathered Adam and Magdalynn onto his shoulders.
“Your friends will be taken to the infirmary,” the stranger explained, turning toward the mysterious passage. “Come, for what you seek resides within.”
Wordlessly, Ba’al and Adnihilo followed the man into the thirty-sixth chamber. Inside the barren room, a single candle burned, throwing shadows on every corner in the shape of the petrified wheel which stood free at the center. It smelled of sandalwood yet seemed of stone and old yellowed bones, its spokes bound by golden thews—below it, a scaffold of lustrous black stone. There, the stranger sat, cross legged on the scaffold’s edge, the candle before him. His eyes did not move as the two guests entered, nor as he addressed them. A story—a question—a riddle.
“Of Gautama’s disciples, there was once a young monk who had attained enlightenment. When this was announced, the monk’s fellow were much impressed. They flocked to him. ‘Is it true that you are enlightened?’ they asked. ‘It is,’ the monk said. They asked him, ‘what does it feel like?’” The stranger paused and asked his own question. “What do you think the young monk said?”
He spoke to Adnihilo, but the half-blood didn’t know what to say, so it was Ba’al who answered. Yet the bishop did not sound himself. “I’ve come a long way to find you, Mara. I don’t appreciate being greeted with riddles.”
“Yet one has been asked and waits to be answered.”
“I don’t know,” confessed Adnihilo, “I’ve never heard that story before.”
The stranger smiled. His eyes remained crescents. “‘as miserable as ever,’ said the enlightened Kyogen.”
A sudden fear gripped the half-blood. “Who are you,” he gasped, and it was as if his breath blew out the light.
The candle died. The stranger spoke in darkness, “There is no ‘I.’ Such a thing does not exist. There is no Mara, just as there is no ‘you,’ truly.”
“Is that how you excuse your cowardice?” asked Ba’al in a voice which was not Ba’al’s. “The war is not over, you know. There is still time. You could join us again. The King would forgive your trespasses.”
“The only trespasses are against this race of men. They are mortal and fragile, and subject to the suffering of life and death.”
“All beings are subject, Mara. The legate is dead, as are Veles and Merihem. Dagon is lost.”
“These are not mysteries,” said the stranger.
“Then you know of the passage in the west and the great seal that the legate placed upon it. It cannot be broken, and no other path is known. I came hoping you’d remember our kinship and the battles we fought together. I hoped you might know how to bring down the Walls, or that you’d found a way around them.”
The Walls of Barzakh, Adnihilo realized. The black tower, the Bridge of Babylon. He thought of what little lore Cain had taught him of that place—that the gods rested there, dead or sleeping or awake and imprisoned. It sent chills down his spine that behind him the bishop could speak of such things he should not know. It made him wonder who they were speaking to. He recalled the statue
