They passed through another stone arch onto the embankment and the Citadel came into view, a monumental darkness that blocked out the stars as they drew closer. The hollow bang of wooden boards replaced the scuff of feet on stone as they reached the bridge leading to the ascension platform. The mountain was so close now it blocked out half the sky. Tears leaked from Gabriel’s eyes as they placed him on the platform. Arkadian appeared above him, his mouth forming words that he couldn’t hear, then he disappeared, ushered away by the orderlies.
The sound of wooden battens banging into place echoed through the night as the guardrails on the edge of the platform were put back in place then a bell rang high in the mountain. The ropes securing each corner of the platform creaked, then the platform lurched and lifted off the ground.
Gabriel looked straight up at the night, half filled with stars and half black. He could see the tribute cave high above, dark and wide, like a huge black mouth, growing larger as it sucked them closer. He thought of what he was leaving behind, all the sorrow and regret: his father found and gone, his mother gone too, and the woman he cared most for in the world, the one he felt bound to protect at all costs, abandoned and alone like he was. And all because of this mountain, this hateful mountain.
The ascension platform rose higher, lit from time to time by the searchlight from the hovering news helicopter, then it passed into darkness as it entered the tribute cave and banged to a halt.
The last time Gabriel had been here was in the dead of night, alone, unannounced and armed. Now he was strapped tight to a stretcher, his senses dulled by the sedative, his body wracked with a disease that had robbed him of both strength and freedom. And there were people everywhere.
Two monks loomed over him, their surgical masks looking sinister against their cowled and bearded faces.
“Bring the patients this way,” a voice commanded from somewhere inside the cave. “We have a place prepared.”
The two monks hoisted him up and carried him off the platform, the air closing in on him and the sound deadening as they moved out of the cave and deeper into the mountain.
They began to descend, bumping down narrow corridors. Gabriel could feel his temperature climbing in the trapped, stuffy air and sweat trickled down inside the tight bindings, further torturing his already screaming skin. Something started to disconnect inside him. He had held on for so long, using the focus of getting here to drive him; now that he had finally made it he had nothing left. A small part of his lucid mind registered the relief of it. He took a breath and whispered something, too quiet for anyone else to hear: “Good-bye, Liv.” Then a howl erupted from him as he finally let go and was carried screaming into the heart of the mountain.
IV
…and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
46
Brother Athanasius stiffened as the first stretcher appeared out of the darkness and was carried through the door. He was standing in the center of the cathedral cave, the largest chamber in the Citadel and the only one large enough for the entire population of the mountain to congregate in one place — though this had not happened for some time now to minimize contact and help prevent the spread of the lamentation.
The monks walked the stretcher down the central aisle toward the huge window set high into the wall behind the altar. Brother Gardener had walked this same path, dragging the dead branch from the garden and unwittingly spreading the infection among the congregation. It was one of the last times they had all gathered together, one of the last times the mountain had been whole.
He turned and looked at the beds stretching away where the monks who had once stood here to worship now lay suffering and dying.
More people were emerging through the door, carrying stretchers and crates of medical supplies. He locked eyes with one of the newcomers, easily distinguishable from the monks by his anticontamination suit, and walked over holding his hand up in greeting.
“Welcome,” he said, smiling though his mouth was hidden behind a surgical mask, “my name is Brother Athanasius.”
“Dr. Kaplan,” the man replied, raising his own hand to return the noncontact greeting.
Athanasius gestured toward lines of beds filled with the infected. “I have arranged our sick on this side of the aisle. Those you have brought with you can be housed in the empty beds on the other side. Not much of a gap, I grant you, but it seems pointless to try and separate everyone in an enclosed environment such as this. We have certainly had no success in containing it ourselves.”
The doctor surveyed the large space, the beds, the patients, the monks moving around between them, busily guiding the newcomers in. “Is this everyone?” he said, surprise evident in his voice.
“Not quite all, some of our number did not agree with letting outsiders inside the mountain. The traditionalists have locked themselves away in another part of the mountain. What you see here is what remains. There are fifty-seven sick and thirty-two still unaffected. As you can see we are somewhat overwhelmed.”
“How many dead?”
Athanasius took a breath as a rush of faces crowded his mind: friends, colleagues, enemies and rivals all now bundled together into the same anonymous statistic. “One hundred and four.”
Kaplan nodded, mentally adding them to the number he held in his head.
“And what have you observed to be the life expectancy once someone is infected?”
“About forty-eight hours.”
“No longer?”
“Sometimes, but no one has survived more than three days. The Apothecaria — the medical guild of monks within the mountain — kept records of the initial infection and its subsequent spread, which may be of some use, I have them over here.” He walked across the floor, weaving between empty beds steadily filling with bound figures on stretchers. He stopped by a long refectory table that was covered with medical equipment from inside the Citadel, some modern, some crude and homemade, evidence of the severe strain the infection had put on the community’s resources. Athanasius hunted through piles of sheets that had been shredded to serve as bandages and bindings until he found a sheaf of papers and handed them to Dr. Kaplan.
Kaplan looked at the carefully handwritten notes through his plastic visor. “Can I not speak to one of the doctors?” he asked.
“I’m afraid all the medical brothers succumbed to the infection early on. Next to the gardeners they were among the first to contract the disease.”
“Why the gardeners?”
“There is a garden at the heart of the mountain and a blight struck the trees first. The gardeners worked hard to cut it out and the infection seemed to pass to them first and then anyone they had been in extended contact with. The doctors naturally fell into this category and succumbed shortly afterward. Consequently, there is no one left here in the Citadel qualified to do anything other than provide comfort to the dying. The best way we can help now is by assisting you to find a cure. All the data we have is in these notes. This entire chamber is at your disposal, as am I and all my staff.”