The light turned green.
Her heart leapt with fright, but her body moved, as if with a mind of its own, compelled by the fiber of her determination. She would see this through. Just one small step and she would cross over the line, pass the threshold of the moment and disappear into the infinite possibility of time. One small step, and she would vanish from the here and now, joining the dizzying spin and flow of the auroras in the Arch
In the chamber of the Archive Paul sat listening to Jabr as he recited the holy verses of the Koran. He had been reading for some time, pausing at intervals to take water and to add oil to the guttering lamp by which he read. All the while the day passed beyond the portal of the cave, and Paul began to feel a cold lightness of being, a feathery frost settling over him, warmed only by the brown eyes of Jabr Ali Sa’d and the quiet meter of his recitations.
He had reached the eighty-sixth sura, which spoke of nightly visitations and the temporal fiber of a man’s being. Of all the world’s great religions, Paul had never studied Islam. Born a Catholic, he had been drawn to the Eastern traditions after reaching an age when he could think on his own. Now his office and home were littered with Buddhas and trappings of the East, and his mentors were writers like Alan Watts, Krishnamurti and Joseph Campbell. Yet there was something familiar in the rhythm and spirit of the verse that reminded him of those sermons on Sunday, reverently spoken by the church pastor from the pulpit, relating one parable after another to the rows of the faithful.
Islam was a beautiful religion, he thought, and surely he could not hear, in any of this verse, the hatred and awful vengeance that some men, claiming to be Muslims, held against the West. Yet, even as he listened, two great hosts were assembling near the Sea of Galilee, at a place called the Horns of Hattin—the Gate of the West. He ran through the history in his mind.
They had come to that place after decades of hostility and misunderstanding. Each side had made a claim to holy ground in Palestine, and one city in particular had been the great bone of contention between these rival cultures: Jerusalem.
There, in the place where the Muslims built the Dome of the Rock, the Knights of the Temple and the Sepulcher had set up their headquarters in the city. The Muslims claimed the ground and said that Muhammad and his steed ascended to the heavens above, where he visited Allah and then returned. The Christians said it was where Christ, the Savior of all, was laid for a time before he rose in glory and ascended the heavens from the Mount of Olives. The Muslims called the city Al Kuds, and held it third in the hierarchy of all holy places, behind only Mecca and Medina. The Christians claimed the relic of the True Cross was kept safe there in the shrine of the Patriarchs. The city guarded the Garden of Gethsemane and the Rock of Calvary, all sacred sites orbiting about this holy center of great strife and paradox. Each side quoted sura, and chapter and verse, yet while they strove with one another, all thought of holiness and righteousness was made as nothing.
The Christian host came, some thirty thousand strong, from every castle and keep of Outremer. From Syria, and Egypt, Persia and beyond a much greater host of Muslim warriors assembled, the chafe of their countless steeds fretting the air with the urgency of war.
Like two great animals the armies sat facing one another in the heat of early July, the year 1187. The Christian camp was set at Saffuriyah, and it was led by many lords in the finery of their gowns, some strong and clear thinking, some vacillating and misguided. The hapless Guy had lately been made the new king in Jerusalem, taking the crown from the hand of Baldwin’s sister, Sybil. Yet it did not fit him well, for he was weak, and malleable, and undecided in the issue that was now before him. Many lords argued that the Muslim host was too great to assail. Only by waiting here, barring the way to the coast and standing on defense, could the army of Outremer hope to prevail.
One among them would not agree, however: Reginald of Kerak, Arnat, the Wolf. It was he that lit a fire beneath Saladin by daring to set his greedy hands upon the Sultan’s caravan. It was he that broke the long truce between the East and the West, and set a hundred thousand souls marching to this place in anger. When Guy relented and thought to stand at Saffuriyah, Reginald was fretful and beside himself with anger. It was an insult, he said, that heathen soldiers should come to Tiberias and sully the land of Galilee with their blasphemous words an deeds. It was unseemly, he bellowed, that with all the might of Christendom at hand the King should cower, and wait for the hand of his enemy to strike. One man refused the council of all others, Reginald, Arnat, the Wolf of Kerak. Then, to his side came De Riddeford, the dour head of the all the Knights Templar. Together they would go to the King’s tent that night, and argue with him until the sun was nearly up, bending his mind to another, more dangerous course. Poor Guy had not the spine to stand by his earlier decree, and he wavered, reversing himself in the hot morning, and ordering instead that all the Christian host should set forth to attack.
The assembled lords protested, for there would be no water for two long days until they reached the Sea of Galilee where Saladin waited for them. They would be in grave danger under the merciless sun, extreme with thirst and then forced to fight while their need was greatest. Yet, Guy, set upon in the night by the Wolf and his accomplice, would not hear their words. Reginald shouted the dissenting voices down, accusing them of cowardice and sacrilege, and demanding they hold their allegiance to the king and march as he ordered.
Paul knew the history, yet he doubted if he would see any of it play out. His time was ebbing away. The chill of eternity was settling around him, and he seemed to be fading, insubstantial, a ghostly figure waiting for the final moment to strike. He heard strange sounds at the edge of Jabr’s recitations—otherworldly sounds, like hounds racing wild over the purple veiled highlands, braying at the slowly setting moon. He shook himself, gathering strength by sheer force of will, and he listened once more to Jabr’s voice—his one tether to the here and now.
“I swear by heaven and the one who comes in the night;” he chanted the Sura of Nightly Visitations. “And how may you learn of the one who comes by night? The star of piercing brightness shines; so remember, there is not a soul that roams this earth without a keeper. Then let man consider of what he is created: He is created of water pouring forth, pure and flowing water…”
How true, thought Paul; how thin and insubstantial was the life of a man, constantly flowing away to some unknown end, merging at last in the ocean of life and time. But there was hope in that verse as well—there is not a soul that roams this earth without a keeper, he repeated the phrase in his mind.
As Jabr spoke Paul shivered with an icy chill. Could this be the moment, he wondered? Then he saw how Jabr shuddered as well, pulling his robes tight about his thin frame and looking over his shoulder. His eyes opened wide at the sight of a strange, frosty mist hovering near the arch of the hidden vault. Paul saw it too, and he struggled up with a start, seeing a human form take shape in the haze!
It was a woman, veiled in white, with tawny hair. The light of her eyes shone upon him briefly, with strange recognition. He gaped at the spectacle, as if an angel had come upon him in his hour of greatest need, a visitor in the night, called to this place by Jabr’s faithful reading of the holy Koran.
The spirit quavered in a mist of a thousand colors, reaching an arm towards him as though she were come to lay claim to his soul. Poor Jabr quailed at the sight, bowing low. Then the icy fire of the mist and light failed, and the vision was gone, fading to blue vapors that fled into the shadows.