Slowly and with a casual stride he came forward. “I am not afraid of pain. If it is Molekh’s will that I die, I shall die.”
“It’s my will you need to be concerned about right now,” Malcolm said. “The good news is I’m just here to do a job and leave—”
“You will never leave.”
“We’ll see. Why don’t you back up against the wall, and tell the other two to do the same thing.” The man paid no attention. Malcolm cocked the gun. “Now, or I swear to god I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
A voice spoke from behind him, a reverberant voice that rang from the stones. “You swear to god?”
Malcolm spun to find its source, but there was no one there.
“And which god is it that you swear to? When you are in my temple, do you swear to me?”
Malcolm saw movement in the corner of his eye and turned back, but the giant was suddenly beside him, and then the stones, still hot, were pressed against his gun hand, one on either side. He strained to pull the trigger, but the man had his hand firmly pinned. He felt his skin starting to sear.
Malcolm reached under his jacket left-handed, drew his own gun from its holster, jammed it into the man’s gut and fired. The force of the gunshot sent the man stumbling back, freeing Malcolm’s hand. He leveled the Luger at the man’s head and pulled the trigger. A bloody spray stained the chamber floor.
The other two men were fleeing awkwardly in their cumbersome robes, heading for corridors on opposite sides of the room. To raise an alarm? To get reinforcements? He couldn’t take the chance. One bullet apiece—left hand, right hand—and they were down.
Malcolm’s heart was hammering, his head reeling. He heard the sound of laughter all around him, echoing louder as the thunder of gunfire died down. “Blood!” The voice was exultant. “You do swear to me—you swear in blood, the blessed offering.”
“Who’s talking?” Malcolm said, turning in a circle, scanning the shadows, a gun in each fist. “Where are you?”
“I am the Lord of this place and this people. I am brothergod to the Lord you worship, and have been since men first spoke of gods. I am many-named: men call me Melech, and Molekh, and Moloch; I have been called Legion, and Horror, and Beast, in fifty tongues and fifty times fifty, but men also call me Father, and Master, and Beloved. There is no end to the names men have given me.”
“Enough,” Malcolm said. “Save the booga-booga for the natives. Come out and face me.”
“No man may look upon me and live.”
Malcolm worked his way along one wall of the room, scanning the rock for a concealed loudspeaker, or some other mechanism that might explain where the voice was coming from. “Let’s get one thing straight, Charley,” he said. “I’m not here for the sermon. I’m not here for your fifty tongues or any of the rest of it. A man sent me here to collect a statue—either you have it or you don’t. You leave me in peace and I’ll leave you in peace.”
“Peace!” The laughter was explosive. “You talk of peace? Look about you. The blood of my servants stains my altar and you speak to me of peace?”
Malcolm completed his circuit of the room. There was nothing—just rock and flame and the voice, shouting in his ear. The entrance to one of the dark corridors was next to him, and he stepped into it, but the voice followed him, chasing him along its length until he came out into a room much like the first. Only this one’s altar was shaped like a pedestal, and where the other had held stones, this one held—
He couldn’t see clearly what it held. There was a shape, but Malcolm could only see it through a haze, as though of smoke. Could it be the outline of a calf? It could be anything, he realized. And as he watched, the smoke closed up around the altar, obscuring the figure.
“You say you seek a statue. If so, your quest is doomed, for the statue you mean was destroyed a hundred generations ago.”
“But—”
“But a man told you he saw it. You are not the first he has sent to me, this blind man. And you, so quick to believe, you take the word of a blind man over that of your own Scripture?”
“He wasn’t blind when he saw it.”
“You are all blind.” The voice was now a guttural whisper, cold and insinuating. “You see only what you wish to see. Each man who faces my altar sees that which he most desires and, addressing it with impure heart, gains only what he most dreads.”
The smoke began to thin, as though blown by a breeze.
“Your blind man spent a lifetime searching for my mount, the figure they made for me at the foot of Sinai, so when he came before me, that is what he saw.
“Look closely, child. What do you see? Like your ancestors before you, you have wandered in the desert and climbed the mountain’s slopes. You did not bear this burden in pursuit of another man’s quest.”
Malcolm could make out the altar again, and upon it he saw a form, a human shape, but it was still indistinct.
“Do you even know what you are searching for?”
And the smoke vanished, in an instant, leaving the figure behind it bare. She was naked and pale and trembling, and Malcolm fell to his knees before her.
“Each man worships at the idol of his choosing.”
“No,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “She’s dead. I buried her.” He turned to the woman seated on the altar. “You’re dead, three years dead.”
Lydia stepped down, came toward him, one arm outstretched. “My love, my poor love,” she said.
He shrank from her. “It’s impossible,” he said. He shouted it: “It’s impossible! This is a lie!”
“Why impossible? Do you doubt my power?” From the corridor, Malcolm heard the echo of footsteps approaching, and then one by one the men he’d killed entered the room, the two in robes and the third in his loincloth, his bloody trunk and head still bearing their horrible, fatal wounds. “Over certain among the living I have influence, but over the dead—over the dead, I have utter command.”
“No,” Malcolm said. But he couldn’t deny the evidence of his eyes. These men—they had died, he had struck them down himself, had seen them fall. Yet here they were. And here she was, looking exactly as he remembered. His mind recoiled at the thought. And yet—
She reached out for him again, but the dead men in priestly robes each took one of her arms and between them they pulled her back toward the altar. The third man followed, his naked back gleaming in the candlelight, bloody and torn where the first bullet had emerged above his hip.
Malcolm launched himself to his feet, threw himself at the three men, but while the priests secured Lydia to the altar, the giant swatted him away, sent him reeling to the floor with one swipe of his scarred palm. Malcolm drew his gun and fired, twice, three times, till the chambers were all empty, but this time the bullets had no effect.
The priests stood back, and he saw that they had shackled Lydia to the stone, ankles and wrists encircled with iron bands. From the folds of his robe, one of them drew a knife with a curved and scalloped blade and handed it to the third man, the barebacked giant who had so casually fended off Malcolm’s charge. The second priest positioned himself behind Lydia’s head and placed one hand firmly on either side of her face.
“Close your eyes,” the giant said. His voice was soft and calm and Malcolm’s blood froze at the sound of it.