Hildegard's lips moved again, and her words-in a language I didn't understand-fell upon me like a gentle rain falls upon water. Tiny drops that barely left any trace on the surface. They fell into the water, and vanished.
You can't see a raindrop as it falls, and you can't find it after it hits a pool of water. The only part of a raindrop's existence that you can participate in is the moment it hits the water. Even then you don't see it, you only see the reaction of the water to its impact. The raindrop, for all you know, may not have existed at all. But something went from above, down to below, and when it passed across the threshold between the two spaces, you were witness to its transformation.
It's a cycle. Water flows down to the sea, evaporates into the sky, becomes a rain shower, falls back to the ground, and runs down to the sea again. The only part of the cycle that we can perceive is the echo of its passage.
I fell, John. Antoine threw me down an elevator shaft.
I know, my son.
What is left? I've been betrayed by everyone I ever loved.
Not everyone. I have never forsaken you.
XXXII
I hurt all over, a persistent reminder from my abused flesh that I was still attached to it. Hermes Trismegistus, in his discussions with his son, liked to remind him of the nature and purpose of the flesh. The flesh is the anchor of the soul; it is the stone, water, earth, and fire that give the spirit shape. As long as you could feel something, you were still bound into this world.
The pain in my side. The wound from the Spear. It wasn't fatal. Not yet, at least, and the Chorus had-during my visionary blackout-staunched the flow of blood. This I could feel, and gradually, I remembered the way the world was.
On my back, resting at an angle on an uneven surface, I tried not to twitch as my spirit filled my flesh once more. The vision faded, falling away from me much like my spirit had risen free of the flesh at Nicols' suggestion. As above, so below: all things move in concert.
While my nerve endings all lined up to tell me how much pain I had recently suffered, I tried to recall the details of my fall, but after the first few seconds of despair and panic, there was nothing. Just the memory of waking up in a twelfth-century penitent's chamber with all my spirits.
The Chorus had carried me, obviously, while I had been off in Never Never Land, talking with John and witnessing the distorted history the ghosts wanted me to see. The world was filled with cycles, and the history of the Hierarch and the Watchers was no different. Too many iterations, too many loops: they all started to blur after a few generations. Minor differences cropped up, but the cosmological revolution always followed the same path. Like the leys-what was it that Philippe had called them? — the desire lines laid down by our persistent repetitions. Over and over again.
When my muscles seemed to be under my control again, I sat up slowly, and the change in position lessened some of the internal complaints, while giving voice to others. Tuning them out-the body was going to make that sort of noise for a while yet, I expected-I turned my attention outward, to the space around me.
Underground, the Chorus whispered as they slithered along the ground, tasting the soil. There was a ribbon of etheric force nearby and they tapped it, digging into the rich source of energy and information. North was just off my left shoulder, and I was near-I sniffed the air, recognizing that faint, but distinct, dry odor-an ossuary somewhere. One of the lost passages beneath Paris. With the cemetery close to Tour Montparnasse, I wasn't surprised there were tunnels similar to what led me from the Chapel of Glass to Pere Lachaise
Invigorated by the trickle of energy from the ley, I summoned a spark and let it drift overhead. The room was roughly square, with niches in the wall that seemed too short for coffins, and the floor was a jumble of stone and timber. I was draped across one of the larger pieces. Laid out on a slab. The spark drifted higher, but the ceiling didn't materialize, and I was reminded of the ceiling in Hildegard's room. Was I still under Tour Montparnasse? Some subbasement of the elevator shaft? The walls looked too old, like hand tools had carved out this space, and none of the junk under me looked like it was a remnant from modern construction.
More importantly, I didn't see a door.
Of course not, Lafoutain noted. No one has been down here for more than sixty years.
"Lucky me," I muttered.
There is an access shaft, the spirit of the Scholar said. My tiny spark leaped upward, torn from my control, and it went so high that it seemed to vanish.
"That's a long way," I said.
It's not as far as it looks, especially for a climber like you.
I lifted my stump. "It's pretty hard to climb when you're missing one hand."
I guess you'd better get started then, shouldn't you?
"I'm really beginning to not like you guys."
His laughter echoed in my head until I started climbing. It gave me strength, as I think he knew that it would.
"Your turn," I told Lafoutain when I reached the access shaft. I rested on the edge of the hole, my legs dangling. My chest ached, and my stump had started to ooze blood from all the exertion. The Chorus had activated Cristobel's magick circle and used that energy to bind off most of the stump-the one thing that transferred from the vision to reality was the presence of the Visionary's rosary around my severed arm-but the seal was dependent upon my Will, and I was tired.
More tired than I had been in a long time.
My turn for what? the Scholar's spirit inquired.
Cristobel's argument was that I needed him so that I could understand the mystery of Philippe's plan, and as a spirit, he has managed to tease helpful hints here and there from the grip of the Old Man. Husserl probably should be in my head too, but he managed to dodge that trap. As had Spiertz, in his own way. I understood that part of Philippe's plan now. The Chorus, via the mechanism of the Lightbreaker, was to have swept clean the attitudes and personal histories of the Architects, leaving only their knowledge. The Hierarch wanted new leadership that wasn't tainted by all the petty bullshit and in-fighting that had gone on in the last decade.
The easiest way to accomplish this goal was to kill everyone, but that would mean that all the institutional knowledge they carried would be lost. That was where I came in. I wasn't his courier, or his candidate for succession. I wasn't even the spark that started the conflagration that was going to wipe it all away. I was just the guy who came through later and swept up the useful relics.
"Is that why you were selected to join the others?" I asked the Chorus. "You were his Scholar, Lafoutain. Is this your reward for a lifetime of service? To be turned into a schizophrenic figment of my psychosis?"
Lafoutain didn't answer, and the Chorus' only response was to vanish into the drain of my memory.
"I thought so," I said.
The whole situation was a mess. Everyone was trying to fuck everyone else. The Crown was the prize, and with it came the rest of the Watcher organization. And Marielle as well. That's all that mattered. Keep your eyes on the prize, and be the last man standing. As primal as it came. There is always competition, Philippe had told me in one of those lucid moments when he deigned to speak to me. The secret that lay in the heart of Free Will. The Will to desire. Whoever wants it the most.