“Funny weird, not funny ha-ha.”
We sat in silence for a moment. I sipped my whiskey and hoped for a nice midair collision.
“As initial encounters go,” I said, “this is a doozy.”
“Where does it leave us? Except literally and metaphorically out to sea?”
“If we’re adults, it means that we can start with a clean slate, a fair mutual understanding, and a shared agenda.”
She smiled. “I like that.”
We shook on it.
“Now,” I said. “It’s your turn.”
She gave me a half smile, kind of a “you asked for it, buster” look, and then told me all about the Goddess.
Interlude Twenty-six
The Seven Kings
Three and a Half Months Ago
Toys tried to catch Gault’s eye, but he was deep in conversation with the King of Lies. They were laughing. In the two weeks since they’d come to the castle, Toys and Gault had grown wary of each other. Gault had thrown himself into the world of the Kings and the Goddess with his whole heart. Toys walked more circumspectly around the fringes, playing the role of Conscience for protective cover but generally feeling trapped.
You, my friend, he said to himself, are in a right pickle.
Suddenly the room went silent and all eyes turned as the door to the chamber opened and Eris came in. She wore a white dress, long and tailored, and although the cut was simple and the design plain, on her it looked like a regal gown. Everyone stood. Each King, each Conscience, got to his feet, and as Eris walked across the room they all bowed.
Not wanting to stand out, Toys bowed as well. As he did so he imagined how good it would feel to slip a knife into her kidney. Do goddesses bleed like ordinary mortals? he speculated darkly.
Eris ascended the throne on the raised dais, then waved everyone else to their seats. They sat like obedient dogs, Toys thought. All except the American, who took his time.
In this lighting, in this setting, Eris looked ageless and beautiful and more regal than anyone else Toys had ever met in the flesh. And he’d met most of the crowned heads of Europe. Everyone beamed at her in a way that Toys thought looked truly … worshipful. That was the only word that fit.
It troubled him.
The King of Famine got to his feet. “Goddess … we are complete again. We are Seven.”
“Seven is the sacred number.” She looked at Gault. “Do you know why?”
He shook his head like a man in a dream. “Tell me … .”
A wicked smile played over Eris’s lips. Toys thought that it was half virgin, half whore, and thoroughly corrupt.
Eris raised her arms as if in invocation. “The world was made during seven days of Creation, and it will end when the Seven Seals spoken of in the Book of Revelation are opened. The number seven is key to every religion, every path to spirit. Look into the sky and behold the seven-starred constellation of Saptarishi Mandalam representing the Seven Sages.”
“Seven upon seven mysteries!” intoned the group.
“The Virgin Mary experienced seven joys.”
“And endured seven sorrows,” the Kings replied.
Toys saw that Gault’s lips were moving. He could not know this information—Gault was a lapsed Presbyterian—but it was clear that he wanted to participate, even to the point of trying to speak a litany to which he had never before been privy. Toys was sure that Gault was unaware that he was doing it, and that alone was frightening, because Gault was always aware. His perception was the thing that had always defined him. Now, in the space of seconds, he had descended into ritual behavior. Cult behavior.
Toys wanted to grab him, slap his face, and drag him out of this madhouse.
“There are seven heavens in Islam and seven fires in their hell,” said Eris.
“Heaven and hell,” said the crowd. “Linked by seven doors.”
“The Jews know this truth,” said Eris. “God told the Israelites that they would displace seven peoples when they entered the land of Israel.”
“Hail the power of Seven!”
Eris spoke of seven dimensions and sets of seven gods and demons in a dozen religions. She named seven dates as the key moments on which history turned, and the seven secret families who brought Europe out of the Dark Ages. She spoke of sevens in astronomy and physics, geography and philosophy. Her voice rose to a screech as she spoke of seven as a core number in sacred mathematics, naming it as the fourth prime number, a Mersenne prime, a double Mersenne, a Newman-Shanks-Williams prime, a Woodall prime, a factorial prime … .
Toys could feel the pull of the magic she wove, and it took every ounce of his will, and every splinter of his hate, to keep from being swept away by it all.
Everyone else was completely caught up in it, their faces aglow with fanatical light. None more so than Santoro, who looked like he was having a long, slow, and very powerful orgasm as he stared at the Goddess.
The only other person in the room who did not look like he had been transported by the Goddess was her son, and when Toys looked across the room he saw the American looking directly back at him. And he was smiling. It was a small thing, a tiny curl of the lip that betrayed a subtlety at odds with his bombastic personality. As Toys watched, the American flicked a look at Eris, then rolled his eyes in a “can you believe this bullshit?” expression, then smiled again at Toys.
No one else noticed. The others were with Eris in a completely different place.
Toys risked the smallest of reciprocal smiles, and the American gave the tiniest of nods. Then the King of Fear turned his face away and pretended that he, too, was enraptured by the Goddess.
Eris turned to Gault and whispered, “Now, my newest son and King, tell me a secret known to the King of Plagues. Tell me a secret of Seven.”
Everyone turned toward Gault and Toys almost reached out to touch him but could not make his hand move. The moment—every bizarre part of it��was unreal and alien.
Gault licked his lips and blinked, but his eyes remained glazed.
“Whisper truth to us,” coaxed Eris.
And Gault said, “There are seven types of viruses in the Baltimore classification. Double-stranded DNA viruses; single-stranded DNA viruses; double-stranded RNA viruses; single-stranded RNA viruses, positive sense; single-stranded RNA viruses, negative sense; positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses that replicate through a DNA intermediate; and double-stranded DNA viruses that replicate though a single-stranded RNA intermediate.”
When he began speaking his voice had the flat intonation of a student repeating information from a textbook, but with each new type of virus he named his voice became more thoroughly charged with emotion. With passion.
“Jesus,” whispered Toys, but nobody heard him as the Kings and the Consciences and the Goddess broke into cheers and applause. And even though it felt like lifting bricks instead of hands, Toys made himself clap, too.
“And,” said Eris, raising her hands to heaven, “there are Seven Kings. Speak, that the world may know!”
The American reached for his wineglass and raised it. In his booming bass voice he cried aloud, “I am the King of Fear!”
The Israeli did the same; but crying, “I am the King of War!”
And the Russian: “I am the King of Famine!”
The Saudi: “I am the King of Lies!”
The Italian: “I am the King of Gold!”
The Frenchman raised his glass. “I am the King of Thieves!”
All eyes turned to Sebastian Gault. The glaze in his eyes changed as Toys watched. It no longer spoke to a mindless vacuity but to an intellect that was as deep as pain and as precise as torture. Gault lifted his glass and stared for the briefest of moments at the contents; the wine was as dark as welling blood. He looked from it to the Goddess on her throne.