The Keeper of the Flame has formally declined an invitation to visit the supposed goddess of Wave’s Lament. “If this witch wishes to see the glories of Aure, let her come in sackcloth and ash,” the Keeper declared, reaffirming his faith in the great works of Fire which warm us all.
Just past tenth bell, Alisandra barged into the Cathedral of Fire. She wore a dress of pale rose and her hair in a long braid, the modest fashion of the older generation, but she charged through the great doors in such a hurry that the door boy squeaked like a mouse and called for a pastor.
This may have been helped by the fact that the rapport of her heel against the first, golden tile echoed through the nave like a gunshot.
Calm, Ali, calm. Let us not repeat the incident at the Conclave.
Slowing, she wondered at Aure’s intentions. What madness possessed him to craft churches that responded to wordless prayer? Would that not inevitably result in crisis as the doctrine slipped?
Perhaps that is why he found himself a victim of apotheosis.
The nearest priest motioned an altar boy to attend to their rowdy guest, though any of them could easily have done so. The chapel itself was almost deserted. Little old ladies speckled the pews, permanent residents who pestered the clergy out of nothing more than loneliness, and a young merchant couple flush with new money inspected alcoves for their wedding plans. A constable lounged on a stool by the door, disinterested, and a procession of school children followed their teacher towards the western classrooms.
In the sanctum of faith, time slept. These were the same pews and the same hymns as when Alisandra had been herself a schoolgirl. This Cathedral was the bedrock of Auren faith; proof of divinity in enduring works.
The altar boy, sixteen and lanky, intercepted her a few steps later, bowed, and sketched the sigil of fire. “How may I aid you, sister?”
“Please inform Father Lucas that Alisandra Mishkan has arrived.”
“Very good,” said the altar boy. “Where will your mistress be waiting?”
Alisandra assessed herself. She had dressed in a hurry, but surely she was not that disheveled! Smothering several choice responses, she said, “…in the dawn alcoves.”
“I will inform him. Aure be with you.”
“You as well,” she replied by rote.
Watching the altar boy hurry to his task, she wondered what could motivate a boy to leave school for chores in the Cathedral. The pay was a pittance, and he did not have noble blood to buy entrance to seminary. Could it be that the boy simply had faith?
Alisandra knew from her youngest days that Aure was kin to her father, Sebastian, and Lynne. It never occurred to her to pray to him. Yet he was the god of a nation, the center around which Ruhum spun.
But why?
The piety of an altar boy was more of a mystery to her than the divine arcana.
If I told them that their god was an angel, their monotheism a lie, and their history a pretext, would they thank me for the knowledge?
She passed a preacher developing a sermon against the Stormmother without comment.
If I were to tear this place to pieces, would that be good?
The young angel settled into the dawn alcoves, leaned against the great stained-glass window, and daydreamed of power and glory. Her sweet fantasies granted victory in every challenge and the last word in every exchange. All finally saw her strength, and she dispatched her foes with a graceful sweep and a well-timed quip.
She almost slept, and she almost heard the indulgent laugh of a butterfly.
But if were that easy, young angel, what would you learn?
A priest approached, his footsteps rousing her from the daydreams.
“Excuse me, good ma’am. I seek Lady Mishkan. Have you seen her in these alcoves?”
She turned, arching an eyebrow.
“Ah, so I find her!” Father Lucas exclaimed. “My apologies. I had not realized that cut of dress was back in style.”
The good father wore a trim black suit, a collar of metal filigree clasped to his neck, and a gold ring on his right hand. His hair thinned at the temples, but he smiled with the vigor of a young man.
“I would advise the good father to avoid taking fashion advice from my example,” she warned.
“Regardless, you wear your position with regal aplomb.” He bowed.
She acknowledged the complement with a nod.
“How fares the former Lord Mishkan?” the father asked.
“He is well, though frequently absent. His hobbies take him very far afield.”
“If it pleases the Lady, remind him that a poor altar boy has far outgrown his position,” Lucas said with a smile.
She tilted her head. “You have known him so long?”
“He officiated my ordination.”
Alisandra could not resist the urge to poke. “How old do you think he looks, good father?”
Father Lucas humored her. “He looks no older than fifty-five and hale for his age.”
“And how old at your ordination?”
“Younger, of course.”
“And when I was born?”
The priest frowned in puzzlement. “Younger still then, of course. I admit, he’s always felt old beyond his years, but I do believe he would be cross at this line of questioning.”
There was a painting of the Queen Mishkan’s consort in the museum at Mel. That man was identical to the Lord Mishkan to the smallest detail, of course. Yet Alisandra and her father had stood beneath the portrait in a crowded room, and not a soul passed remark on the resemblance.
“We are strange creatures,” she murmured. “But do we deceive mortals, or do they humor us?”
“If you worry that the church forgets all Gabriel has done for us, I assure you that we have not.”
“I apologize,” she offered. “Forgive my idle curiosity.”
“Of course.”
He offered his arm, and she accepted. Together, they mounted the stairs to administration. His office was on the same floor as the Keeper of the Flame, towering above the city, and his windows stared directly into Tower Visage.
Lucas prepared a cup of tea, and they spoke of polite nothings until both had finished their drinks.
Then the father settled into his recliner, fetched a cigarette from his breast pocket, and lit it. Smoke reeking of mildew like the forest floor rose to the ceiling.
“Smoking, Father?”
“An offering to the fire god in this time of stress,” he admitted.
Personally, she thought that weed dulled the wits, but she held her tongue.
“I presume you wish to speak on the election?”
“If you please.”
Father Lucas finished his cigarette with three more drags and left the smoking butt in a tray littered with others.
“I believe,” the priest began slowly, “that the glamour of the church itself drives the people away from Aure.”
Not the opening I expected. Interesting.
“Are you an ascetic, Father?” she probed.
“I prefer to think of myself as a pragmatist. Actions speak louder than words, and the percent of tithes spent on administration has swollen since I was an altar boy. We used to have ten deacons for the entire country; now we have nearly a hundred. The Inquisition swells as well. Did you know that the Conclave’s council of arms asked the Inquisition for help with counter-espionage in Moros?”
Alisandra scowled. “No. I did not.”
He grimaced as well. “It is the responsibility of the Inquisition to maintain the purity of dogma. What good can come of asking them to ferret out spies across the channel?”
“More like they will find enemies closer to home,” the angel agreed.
“This matter of the Stormmother only inflames them further. Not yesterday I witnessed a meeting of men I once believed to be level-headed discussing whether Inquisition would be necessary against the peasantry to inoculate Ruhum against the worship of waters!”
“The radio blockade was so effective, after all,” Alisandra said dryly.
“Exactly! The church cannot allow Aure to be defined as the opposite of the Stormmother! If we allow the battle to be contextualized as a choice between opposing elements, then we have tacitly granted the Tempest equal footing!”
His faith is so strong. Blindingly so.
“A careful study of the statutes regarding the free cities has given me reasonable certainty that the city manager has authority to approve zoning, halt construction, appoint officials, regulate shipping, and offer dispensation to exceptional individuals. Depending on the manager’s tolerance for a legal battle likely to reach the Conclave, he may be able to sanction said exceptional individuals.”
“Like Inventors and Inquisitors?” Alisandra clarified.
“Indeed…or even entire Houses.”
“Father Lucas, you would pick a fight with giants while armed with paper. What drives you to consider such desperate action?”
“Let us begin with the tenements. The common laborer must spend a third of his paycheck for a squalid bunk. Why, then, do we allow speculators to sit on empty lots to the east?”
“The city manager has neither the budget nor the authority to force such men to sell.”
“No, but the city manager can adjust the zoning. Strangely enough, I noticed that these empty lots are classified as heavy industrial manufacturing.”
Naturally, the zoning with the lowest taxation policy and no requirements for construction.
Alisandra smiled. “An oversight the city manager could correct.” The power of taxation would transform the empty lots into chains squeezing the inventors’ necks overnight. The investors would have to sell, build, or eat crippling losses. “Though you would mint powerful enemies in a stroke of the pen.”
He shrugged. “My mission was in Moros. I do not fear opposition.”
“Truly?” Relations were no warmer between the two nations a few decades ago. “Father never mentioned that you were suicidal!”
Lucas laughed. “I certainly questioned my life choices a couple times in the process! Perhaps the Lady Mishkan would like to hear the lurid details another time. You see, my Lady, I have an ulterior motive for today’s meeting. There is a very special gathering awaiting our attendance.”
She frowned faintly. A sudden invitation was poor manners. “Oh?”
“Yes, a gathering of inspired minds. I wished to invite your father, but – as you say – he is often absent.”
Her heart sank a few notches in dread. Was he going to invite her to one of Mirielle’s special parties? “I see.”
“If you would follow me?”
The young angel rose, flexing her sword hand. “Lead the way.”
Or worse…if not Mirielle, what if he has become a Redeemer? Oliver mentioned a priest on that night. Father Lucas could easily have fallen sway.
He led her through the church offices, quiet but for the tap of typewriters. They descended to the ground floor, and she prayed that he would exit to the open chapel and pleasant conversations over tea. Instead, he took the narrow steps into the basement.
She forced a thin jest. “You meet in the cellars? Is the election so controversial?”
Will I have to kill this man?
For all her bravado, the thought of murder twisted her gut. There was a great divide between breaking stones and feeling the crunch of a man’s bones…
“Oh, I asked for permission to move down here. More room to pursue my work.” He shrugged. “As I age, I care less for what the deacons think of me. Perhaps I will sit on a council one day. Perhaps not. Either way, what do future generations remember of deacons?”
The catacombs beneath the cathedral ran with metal conduits of unknown purpose. The junctions where the pipes met were as thick as a man’s waist, melded without weld or seam. The pipes ran to no apparent purpose, silent and still, and the priests had long ago given up attempting to discover their purpose.
Instead, the gaps between the pipes became the mausoleum for martyrs. Bones by the hundred crowded into the corners, neatly polished, arranged in stacks, and lit by the soft thrum of the electric lights. Tiny storerooms with arched ceilings still housed emergency supplies of grain, safe by the blessing of Aure against mildew and mold.
Here was sanctuary, armored and peaceful.
Even the dread Inquisition chose other basements for its work.
“There is peace down here,” Father Lucas continued happily, “and privacy for the work.”
“I see,” she remarked tightly.
They descended another floor deeper into the cool silence. A faint breeze swirled in Alisandra’s wake, nipping at her heels like a curious pup. Like the breath of the Cathedral itself.
What prayers do they murmur? Which do you hear? she wondered of the golden hallways.
The electric lights ended, and they descended deeper. The walls themselves emitted an uncertain, honey glow, and the silence grew deep as thought.
Father Lucas glanced back, his face foreign in shadow. “Is something wrong, Lady Mishkan?”
“How deep do the basements delve?” she asked.
“Deeper still.” He walked on, confident. “The air here breathes with a certain resonance. A peaceful contemplation.”
Like a sepulcher.
The hallways yawned and twitched in the dark, pipes like veins stretching beyond sight…
Father Lucas finally stopped before a metal door. “We arrive, Lady Mishkan.”
Alisandra braced herself.
“Welcome to the Psalms.”
He swung the door wide to reveal a prayer hall. Eighteen men in orange robes meditated in pairs, resting in shallow depressions molded into the bare, metal floor. They vibrated notes from deep in their throats, and their harmony filled every corner of the hall. What echoed back was a hymn, deep as a river, carried on a cloud of sickly-sweet incense.
“Here we may listen for the source of all peace,” Lucas expounded. “Here we seek that perfect contradiction: peaceful fire.”
Oh, thank the heavens.
Alisandra exhaled. Weeds and chants were not tools for war or Inquisition. This was a topic from her father’s library: by drug and ritual, the monks could seek to harmonize with the music of creation. Even a mortal might seek that wisdom; the echoes were safe enough.
“You study the Song,” she remarked.
“God’s own voice,” he agreed, surprised. “You are well read, Lady.”
The breeze nipped at her heels, urging her forward.
“And the church approves of this?” she stalled. The air before her prickled, and the thrum of that unified voice rumbled with a hunger that set her sword arm tense again.
“There are worse ways to spend one’s day. Come, Lady Mishkan. Be your father’s emissary.”
Still she hesitated.
Lucas smiled. “Perhaps you might offer a few questions for God yourself.”
Dreams just beyond memory and a voice whispering in my ear…
Alisandra squared her jaw and crossed the threshold.
This was a mistake.
She passed into ritual, and the air inside roared with raw faith like thunder. The candles all suddenly yanked towards her, and the carvings in the floor beneath her heel sparked.
The spark that lit the bonfire; lines of flame spilled down the channels and towards the waiting monks.
It had not been her intent to take the center of this ritual, but angels echoed with every step.
The conflagration caught the eighteen men and lit their nine resting places like stars.
In return, their prayer roared back into her.
What would you ask of us? they echoed in her head. What would you seek?
Ten waiting pools of power and faith; three columns to build the way to heaven; the world refracted upon itself fourfold times.
Eighteen men who surrendered themselves to the rush of unity.
Guide and be guided, their unity rumbled. A Work to be grasped and a burden to be borne.
All the weight of the Cathedral poised overhead, awaiting her grasp.
Just like the Hand of God.
I have no wish to bear this place! she cried out without words.
Yet the voice of unity hungered, its need vast and deep. Men sought for God, blind as kittens, and their minds turned to the smith who raised this work.
Angels in holy raiment were all that these men knew…
…and an angel they found at hand.
Mortal need filled the Tree of Life, and devout voices rose together to cry in ecstasy. Their need, their faith, their weakness, all swelled together into a torrent that crashed headlong into Alisandra.
Our Heir to Fire
Goddess child of our God
Our answer to the Tempest!
Envy… she breathed. Such terrible envy…
The catacombs quaked, and the ancient frescos of faith began to shimmer. The stories would be rewoven, and the daughter of an Archangel would rise to lead the faithful…
The Sephira were as weapons, and they reached for her with Light as sharp and hungry as sharks. Needles of color lanced into Alisandra’s hands, seeking the beating power of her heart.
Lead us
Guide us
Consume us!
Let her Call, and Ruhum would become her Work.
Peace.
No false Regency; no more squabbling Houses.
Unity.
No more would the faithful fear in the dark for the silence of God!
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Safety.
Those honeyed words of southern fools would fall on deaf ears!
Glory.
When the war came, when that foolish pretender sent her men to the north, they would find a fortress, its every corner reinforced!
Vision.
Alisandra saw herself, clad in golden armor, standing astride the harbor against the approaching Tempest.
Against Lynne.
A stab of pain sharper than the Light forcing into her veins caught in her heart and flooded outwards.
“Like hell I will!” she roared, loud as the voice of faith and twice as angry. “Find your own god!”
Unity wailed, clawing inside her veins. Scrabbling, wrestling, pleading, seeking any chink in the red-hot armor of anger.
Lead us
We are lost
Lead us!
Alisandra realized, then, that she could turn this binding against Mirielle. A noose of power, a bondage of godhood. Let the demon of indulgence rule from her throne of thorns, slave to her dominion.
She flinched from such cruelty.
We are not your martyrs!
The foreign Light in her veins found her throbbing arteries. Her rage; their need.
Wills clashed, and hers was the greater.
Unity fractured. The wellsprings of Light dimmed and died. Men remembered their own names. The Cathedral stilled.
Alisandra slumped to her knees, exhausted as though she had moved the world, and watched brilliant drips of something far too bright for blood seep from the pinpricks in the back of her hands.
I only want to know my mother’s voice, she thought, hazy as a dream, at the end of the flower path.
Watching her gleaming blood seep into the tree.
Gifting purpose to the fading Light.
Her father’s books named the spheres: Malkuth to bind the world and Yesod to dream it. Tiferet to carry fire and the great chasm that spanned the world of man and heaven. The old diagrams taught the secret chants, and the vision of the Tree of Life could lead to God…
But her heart did not yearn for God, and the path to the highest emanations would not lead her home.
Despairing, she glanced at Keter – the crowd at the height of the Tree where Grace ruled – and thought in idle fancy, But what of the time before?
The passage of time stuttered, but her yearning was no better targeted than the need of mortal men.
What if I dive backwards?
Light obeyed, but – like an overeager horse – it overshot the mark.
The angel fell into a fugue that could have been memory or dream.
A hundred times I tasted honey and clover
Among golden boughs and old friends
Rest at the end of all roads
Every cycle begins with the same raw terror
The descent through the Black Gate
From the vantage of the heavens, she saw her own history: a chain unbroken to the very beginning.
She had been there at creation’s birth.
Head over heels, she tumbled to the dawn of the universe.
Endless Being
Cherubim Singing
Veiled Figure upon the Throne
Reaching out
A Gate drawn in darkness
Dividing the Light
Words waited for her here, laid like gems for her to find in precisely this moment and this way.
As Light and Dark split apart, each spoke into her ear.
You will be needed before the end, whispered the dawn.
She waits for you at the the center of the lake, whispered the dusk.
Let her love you, demanded the Song in twin unity.
Day and night, cleaved.
The Black Gate slammed shut for the first and only time.
No time at all later – for her eldest sister had not yet created such a thing – a flint spark caught in the void of an empty universe, and creation exploded outwards, carrying Alisandra towards a thousand worlds…
…and a creature of measured paces and allotted times appeared between Alisandra and the flood. Towering beyond sight, gears whirling with clockwork accuracy, the Foundation stopped one gear in the tower of its face, and time froze.
Another gear clicked, and Alisandra felt herself steered like a child in the flow of a great river until she faced forward.
She instinctively tried to resist, but her Will found no purchase. As a mortal might wish to halt aging without the slightest effect, she now found herself dragged forward through the weave of Time by a force that commanded angels with equal ease.
At the precise moment at which she vanished from the Cathedral basement, the current dropped her.
Her hands once again on the cold metal floors.
The Foundation gears shifted, spun, knit together the gap in clicking unity, and rose to form a warning from the guardian of Time:
Next time will not be so gentle.
None are above the Law.
Alisandra heard her own scream and the howl of a desolate wind. She tasted ash, and her right arm groaned with a weight that would plague her until…
Time resumed with a sickening lurch, and she collapsed to the floor.
Dazed, she lay a moment against the reassuring solidity of metal.
The gap was closed; she had never left.
Not from a linear point of view, at least. A mortal point of view.
It was real, she thought numbly. I stood at the dawn of time.
What of this moment, then? Is it more or less true than the moment the Gate split one into two? Than dreams of heaven that are memories of this being who was once many and now is only Alisandra?
She swallowed a hysterical laugh.
I wanted to feel more like an angel, didn’t I?
Wishes poorly made and quickly granted.
And had Time left me at the beginning, would I have walked the cold, dead void while stars formed?
Or had that been the time when man worked the world with naked Will – the time before…
Her thoughts made no sense, memory and dream an inchoate mess. Yes, she had lived a hundred lives, but they did not yield nearly as easily to her divine memory as the color of a dress the day after she Bloomed.
Could the world truly be so precarious?
Could the power of angels dance between the very ticks of the clock?
No, not where Foundations hold vigil…
Breath by breath, Alisandra collected herself. She lay in a prayer hall in a church in a city on an island of a world where humans lived and loved. This morning she had taken a walk with her father; Lynne marched in the south to her old name; Sebastian was probably eating a hoagie for lunch and spending what remained of her fortune on sad orphan children.
The mortals had fared no better than her. They staggered like newborn deer, reaching for paper to transcribe their ephemeral recollections. They held each other in shameless weeping. They chased after the memory of Song with their raw voices.
Father Lucas stumbled to his knees before Alisandra, trembling. “Lady Mishkan…”
Did he see as I saw?
“I apologize,” she rasped. “The power here took me by surprise.”
“In all the years of the Psalms, nothing prepared me for such visions!”
“What did you see?” she asked.
He laughed weakly. “By Aure, truly I have no idea! I heard voices whom spoke wisdom and saw this Cathedral drawn forth from the fire of the earth itself.”
“Visions unlike my own, then,” she said in relief.
Will the blessing of mortal ignorance scour his mind by tomorrow morning?
The Father laughed with giddy joy. “In all my years, I have never felt such warmth.”
She parroted her father’s wisdom to fill the gap of her own. “Steel your heart, Father Lucas. The power of the divine can become addictive.”
“Y-yes…you are correct,” he said. “Already there is the temptation to repeat this experience when I should be content with the gift I have been given. You are wise beyond your years, Lady. What do you need?”
“A stiff coffee,” she muttered.
He straightened to give the order.
“I jest, Father!” Such sincerity! If he and Oliver shared a room, the sheer earnestness would drive me to the bottle!
The pastor shook his head wryly. “Ah. I see.”
Alisandra flexed her fingers to make sure they still existed. Then she took stock of the situation.
The priests continued to chatter, weep, and scribble with feverish focus. They swapped their visions like schoolboy tall tales, enraptured by the taste of Light.
“Might I ask what you witnessed, Lady Mishkan?”
She swallowed. “I would prefer not to discuss. It was a private matter.”
Father Lucas mastered his impulses and straightened. “My apologies. If Aure spoke for you alone, then you must cherish the words. Shall we commune with the priests?”
“Yes.”
Let her see if any of these penitents witnessed as she did. If they knew what she was.
And if they know my nature…then what?
A thought better left unfinished. Neither her father nor Sebastian could offer advice right now. Alisandra would have to decide what was good for herself here.
Smoothing her dress, the Lady Mishkan followed Lucas to the gaggle of priests. He collected the papers and presented them for her inspection.
Does he trust my judgement so easily, or does some voice in his soul whisper to him my true nature?
The papers were a mad scramble of jumbled impressions: ancient runes, scribbled pictographs, and half-formed sentences colliding across the page in haste.
“You sat in Binah, correct?” she asked the owner of the first page.
“Yes, Lady,” the priest replied, faintly surprised. “Binah, seat of understanding. The womb of creation. Shall I recite the scripture for you?”
I learned the Tree of Life at six years old. I have no need of your lessons. She addressed his paper instead. “Your penmanship brims with power.”
His runes read: From divine mother flows forth holy radiance.
She almost read the runes aloud. Thankfully, she remembered that normal people could not read the ancient runes at the last moment. Evading, she muttered, “This is not a language known to man.”
The priest bowed, accepting her tripe as wisdom.
Next, the men from Chesed presented a sketch of a loyal hound atop a boulder. Given that Chesed held mercy and compassion, perhaps this was an expression of the bond between hound and master? “There is strength in the rock of loyalty.”
These men bowed as well as though she was a guru!
If these vague musings count as wisdom, then I despair for us all!
Tiferet offered even less to work with. The two men smeared paint like toddlers. If she was particularly generous, the whorls of color resembled two children holding hands below a sphere of gold. By another viewpoint, the whorls could be runes: Light, Compassion, Rest.
“We all approach heaven as children,” she agreed, a guess as blind as a college student in a literature class. “Returning to the holy for our rest.”
The pattern repeated with the rest of their pages. Differences in penmanship meant that a mark might be a rune or a shadow or a smudge of dirt; haste to transcribe the visions meant strokes and colors piled atop each other like a gala cake. This was to say nothing of the differences in correspondence! An eagle from the sphere of Hod might well represent the transcendent Will, the mind unleashed, the hunt for purity, or just an eagle. Who was to say where the truth lay when every meaning was itself a symbol of a dozen other principles?
This was the problem with occult insight: by and large, it was indistinguishable from madness.
The Song a magic only ever confirmed by hindsight.
Better to be blind then led astray by a thousand phantom futures.
Still the priests nagged her to share her interpretations of the scribbles. High on divinity, they entertained notions that transgressed from outlandish to heretical to outright insanity.
“So now we can see the truth in the correspondence of the second dawn! A savior will appear from the east!”
“No, no, all wrong! Don’t you see? We save ourselves! We are destined saviors!”
“Fool! What need have we of saviors? We are God, singing to ourselves!”
What had begun with shaking hugs swiftly devolved into the beginnings of an outright brawl, and Father Lucas hastily forced the congregation to a close. He collected the recollections in a record tube and sent the men away with stern reminders of secrecy lest they confuse the layman with their studies – or attract an Inquisitor.
Soon only he and Alisandra remained.
“We are God?” she hummed. “Rather a dodge, don’t you think?”
I watched the beginning of beginnings, but it was not my hand that built the Gate.
“Oh, yes. A popular philosophy in second year seminary. Learning the difficulties of existing theological models, the students retreat into an almost infantile simplicity. God becomes effusive matter, something like a particularly shiny form of cloud.”
“A cloud that happens to agree with whatever the speaker has to say?”
Father Lucas laughed. “Ah, Lady Mishkan, your stomach would turn to hear some of the proposals at the councils – all the will of Aure, of course.”
“That certainly seems to be a perennial problem.”
The priest nodded. “But let us set aside the problems of the church. Would you return next week?”
Alisandra demurred.
For once, she blessed the laws of formality that forced Father Lucas to accept her words, and she abandoned him to his prayer hall.
The catacombs beyond still echoed with the sudden power. The rafters echoed, Let her love you.
Dusk and dawn, a unity from before day and night were born.
“I know she loved me,” Alisandra admitted to the walls. “I want to meet her…”
The young angel emerged into the chapel at the end of noon mass, a bitter taste on her tongue, and quickly descended to the street. Her car was not where she had parked, and she had a mind who had stolen it.
“Sebastian!” she shouted, voice like a whip.
Half the square turned to stare at her, but she ignored them.
“Here!” called the angel of witness from the far eastern intersection.
She marched across the busy square, weaving between the peasants waiting in line for their street lunches, and found the angel sitting in the shade of a sidewalk tree with a hoagie in one hand and a sad orphan girl on his knee.
“This is Susanna,” Sebastian said. “You have agreed to pay for her schooling.”
“So I have,” Alisandra agreed, in no mood to argue the matter.
He frowned, squinting beyond her. “Alisandra…you carry an echo of…”
“Is Father still on this plane of existence?” she asked brusquely.
The orphan girl giggled.
“He is,” Sebastian replied slowly. He stilled, breathed, and witnessed. His eyes flashed like the sun, and he jerked back as if struck.
“Good. I would speak with him directly.”
Her servant forced a smile between his lips for the orphan girl. “Susanna, shall we see you home for now? I promise to speak with the matron on the morrow, but my mistress requires my services at the moment.”
“Okay,” the girl agreed.
“Let me take her home and fetch the car,” Sebastian said. “Would you like the rest of my sandwich? I find eating reminds me of the solidity of earth…”
She shook her head; she had no appetite at all.
The angel of witness hurried to his task, holding the orphan girl’s hand. He soon reappeared, driving the Mishkan car, and opened the passenger door.
“Do you wish to speak on this matter?” he asked quietly once they were in the car.
How much did he truly see? Did he ask out of mere politeness?
“I think I met a Foundation,” she admitted. “The experience was unpleasant. Take me home, Sebastian. I would rather not recount the tale twice.”
***
The Archangel brought his daughter back to the Cathedral of Fire in the late afternoon. They descended to the catacombs together, and he explained the divine purpose woven through the building.
“To understand this Work, you must understand the man,” he said. “Aure was born in a land of fire and fury. The western mountains belched lava with such regularity that entire crops withered. His people knew deprivation and fear.”
She laid her hand on the piping, trying to imagine the plumbing stretching for untold miles. A Great Work that stretched from the Conclave to the Cathedral. “He created impregnable sanctuaries that even now hunger for a god.”
“Not impregnable,” the Archangel corrected. “He learned better through his early trials.”
“Better than perfect?”
“Even ideas must breathe, my daughter. The perfect sanctuary and the vault with no key are both dead and forgotten things. We cannot seal ourselves or our works from the world, or we will lose the anchor which holds us to this time and place.”
“Is that what happened to me?” she asked.
“You asked to Witness,” her father said. “The power merely obliged.”
“I hardly expected to see the fire of creation!”
He laughed and hugged her tight. “Are you truly the worse for the wear? It is a worthy sight.”
“The Foundation of Time did not seem to appreciate my presence.”
“Hers is the Law to march in lockstep from beginning to end. Our eldest sibling and queen to the Chorus.”
“You have met her?”
“If you reach far enough back, dear daughter, I believe you will come to realize that you knew her as well. We all did.”
Alisandra shivered.
Gabriel kissed her on the head. “There is no rush, Ali. We have time enough.”
She squirmed free of his grasp, still too restless with visions to meekly abandon the topic. “And such a Law is necessary because of the hubris of man.”
“The Law of Foundations is for all: angel, demon, and man alike. By her sacrifice, by her service, what has been written will never be rewritten.”
She contemplated a moment. “Could rewritten time undo a Blooming?”
“No.” The Archangel spoke with the authority of firsthand knowledge. “But mortals are not so resilient.”
“What happened?” she asked quietly. What terrors give you such confidence in that simple answer?
He shook his head. “The Foundations stand, Ali, so that mortal souls may rest in peace.”
“And if they did not?” she pressed.
Gabriel grimaced. “There is a distasteful but succinct rule of thumb: any time you try to get clever with things, the mortal just dies.”
Alisandra felt the pulse of gold beneath her fingertips quicken. Was that her own heart, or a memory wrought into the Work itself? “The blessing of mortality?”
“Indeed. So that no man might live the same day until he goes mad; so that no man might use the might of his soul to make his bigotry truth; so that no man might…” The Archangel sighed, tucking his hands into his pockets. “Well, you get the idea.”
“An escape valve.”
Her father smiled in sad agreement and nudged her forward. “Aure was drawn to the hammer and forge. His aspect dwelled in patterns of fire, and he sought to summon the holy down with every strike. The Conclave and the Cathedral are his first Great Works, twin ballasts by which Ruhum might know peace.”
“The material from the holy?” She hummed. “Would he have supported the Inventors?”
Gabriel laughed. “Aure made Thea seem talkative, my daughter. He never cared for attention.”
“If he never wanted to be a god,” Alisandra interjected tartly, “he failed spectacularly.”
The archangel shrugged, shedding a few gossamer feathers. “If only the attempt was the guarantee.”
They stopped before the Psalms’ prayer hall, and Alisandra shook herself like a runner before a marathon.
“You have seen the tree in the floor already, I understand.”
“Hard to miss, Father.”
The Archangel chuckled. He stepped inside and rapped a foot on the metal. “Dormant now.”
Even in the still air, words lingered in Alisandra’s ears: Let her love you.
She forced herself over the threshold.
No grand magic flared to life.
Releasing her breath, Alisandra glared at her father. “Do not pretend ignorance of this little cult. Lucas spoke of you like his own father.”
“It was my idea, of course.”
“But why?! How can this be stepping softly?!”
“All men wish to know God, Ali, but where is God to be found? The hungry man might meditate on the elemental beasts, but they speak of the world. He might seek after the divine arcana and the higher self, but that knowledge has been scattered and lost. Only in the Song might he find a power behind himself. Where better to learn God than His own words?”
“You are manipulating him,” she challenged, jabbing a finger at his chest.
The air before her finger rent, torn apart by a honeycomb pattern of Light. The weave spun outwards, fractal colors knitting together, and halted her fingertip an inch before his chest.
“Don’t try to change the subject!” Alisandra snapped, shoving her nail against his shield.
He was the Archangel, angel of protection, and his Light did not waver.
“Is this wisdom, Father?!”
Gabriel spread his shield forward, spinning the weave across her hand. It closed gently over her wrist, a glove of tickling Light, and lifted higher inch by inch.
But Alisandra was not a child anymore, easily distracted by her father’s glowing games, and she served him a flat glare even as her toes lifted off the floor.
“You used to love this game,” he remarked wistfully.
“Mirielle has labelled you a hypocrite. Is she wrong?” She maintained that glare.
Her refusal to play was the only weapon she had against the Archangel, after all.
He sighed; he relented. Spreading his hands, he released his shield and lowered her to the floor. “Very well, Ali. If this truly bothers you…”
She scowled.
“Since this truly bothers you,” he amended, “consider this. A mortal soul, though quiescent, still harbors its own volition. Sleeping should not be mistaken for absent. You know many true things, my daughter. If a man approached you in the streets one day and asked for advice, would you lie?”
“I would not give him secrets that could lead to disaster.”
“And you see that path with such clarity?” For a moment, Gabriel shrugged off a father’s mantle. He straightened, wings gleaming, and stared at her with the weight of sorrows older than memory.
“He used your gifts to seek a false God.”
To seek me to sate his envy!
“He chose to err. Mistakes, too, are part of free will.”
“And if I now claimed the mantle, a Goddess of Fire?”
His wings flinched, though his face remained an implacable front. “Angels, too, must be allowed to walk their own path.”
“So your version of wisdom is to smugly withhold information until it suits you?” She was being uncharitable, she knew, but sometimes she wanted to smack her father through a wall.
“My wisdom, Ali, is to recognize my own limitations. We echo far beyond even Sebastian’s sight. Who are we to determine what is good for mankind? For the future?”
Alisandra paced to the head of the room, stomping over the dormant sephira. “Then action and inaction both lead to doom. Hubris or indolence. There is no exit from this trap.”
Gabriel let himself slouch, breaking the mantle of Archangel, and smiled faintly. “I am sorry, Ali. I did not realize that Lucas would be so…enthusiastic…about sharing his hobby.”
“Your ignorance could fill a river.”
The Archangel laughed in surprise. “Your mother said the same!”
“Leave her out of this!” she snapped, quite by instinct.
“I miss her too, Ali.”
This is not a good line of conversation. All he wants to see is his darling daughter.
Thankfully, Gabriel let the matter drop. He stepped to the podium, and he drummed his fingers across the metal. His light taps boomed through the halls like the roar of a chariot, and the Cathedral vibrated like a hyperactive puppy.
“Hm. The Keeper is derelict…” he mused, listening to the reverberations.
Alisandra sighed, pressing her frustration deep into her gut. “I am not satisfied with this, Father. Answer me…please.”
“I have. Recognizing my limitations, I act under my best judgement. Whether I teach or withhold depends on whether I guess the knowledge will bring the fruit of wisdom or disaster. I err on the side of caution; I guide with gentle touches; the next step must always be their own. I seek to cherish mortal choice.”
“And you call that wisdom?”
“A tiny fragment of it, yes.”
His answer was as bitter as Sebastian’s tea. And how can you tell the difference between a mortal’s choice and your own planted answers when you have your finger on their pulse?
“Don’t pout, Ali. Wisdom is usually the bitter dregs. Would it help to consider the extenuating circumstances? Lucas is an influential young priest. He speaks, and people listen. Where he turns, the masses may one day follow. If he turns to the Psalms – to the Song – and finds inside a sliver of wisdom, then that may in turn pass into doctrine.”
Seeking the truth of God through the Psalms…
“You seek to break Aure!” she exclaimed. To supplant the lesser angel with the greater God. Her boring, absentee father planned the destruction of the royal church!
“To steer the congregation towards that greater truth,” the Archangel agreed. “Its name is immaterial. Doctrine does not survive a clean break, but a gentle erosion over generations…that is a different matter.”
“Can you really claim that the church of a greater God will be good?”
“No, but I might judge the church we have and find it lacking. Neither Aure nor I would have commanded these Inquisitions or this political meddling. When the power of governance falls beneath the mantle of God, Tyrants wear holy guise.”
She cocked her head. Tyrants again…?
He continued. “How could Lucas have known how swiftly the Psalms would latch onto you? He does not understand your nature.”
I barely understand my nature, Alisandra grumbled. “Then why not simply implant the proper safeguards into his mind?”
“As Mirielle implants her Inventions? Mortal minds have an ecosystem of their own, Ali. They can reject ideas with all the fever of an infected wound. Even when successful, something is lost in the process. The world is smaller when all men follow the same waltz.”
She sighed, surrendering the argument. His answer felt as insubstantial as a wafer. If that too was a lesson, she was not enthused.
“Shall I reactivate the sigils?” her father offered. “I promise not to offer you godhood...”
“No!” she squeaked, leaping away from the spheres. “My head still rings from this morning!”
“Ours is the duty to bear the brunt of unfiltered Light. Mortals rest in the Grace of God, but we must stand.”
“The Grace of God; the Grace of amnesia…” she asked. “How many Graces do they have?”
“When Sebastian and I find them all, we’ll let you know,” the Archangel promised. “Angels may be the greater power, but this place is theirs.”
They stepped from the prayer hall, and Alisandra once more touched the pipes. Completing the circuit of her thoughts, she asked, “So for their benefit, Aure builds sanctuaries, complete with the Kabbalah inscribed on the floor…did he realize they would smear half-mad revelations with their fingers?”
“At least this bunch used paint,” the Archangel joked.
“Father…”
“Oh, do not glare so.”
“I have not the faintest idea what those paintings mean!”
“Neither do I,” Gabriel shrugged.
“I…do not understand my experience much better,” she admitted hesitantly, falling into step beside her father. “There were words spoken by…”
He forestalled her with a hand on her shoulder. “They were words for you alone, Alisandra. Cherish them.”
She bowed her head. “Yes, Father.”
I must find my own way. I must be worthy of his trust.
Nothing short of perfection, just like her mother.
Gabriel clapped. “Do you forgive Lucas his transgression?”
I will accept, at least, that he did not intentionally inflict it upon me. “I am mollified for the moment.”
“As long as the great Alisandra stays her fury, I am content.” He paused at the junction of pipes and grinned like a mischievous schoolboy. “Now…as long as we’re here…why don’t we check on the archives?”
“The Cathedral Archives, treasure of the church, guarded by seven curses of God and its existence denied by the Keeper?”
“Yes, unless you built another one while I was out.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Did you think the only artifacts were those silly baubles in the Conclave museum?”
After a number of turns, the Archangel stopped before a locked door. He reached into the mass of his wings, fiddled like a servant looking for keys, and withdrew a silver metal bolt. This he inserted into the strange lock and twisted.
The entire Cathedral shivered.
“Does this edifice have to resound with every move?” Alisandra muttered under her breath.
“Cheaper than an alarm system,” her father teased, nudging the door open on silent hinges.
And yet the Work listens, attentive as a lonely puppy…
The Archives were dead and muted in the ochre half-light, stuffed with rack after rack of ancient scrolls. At the center, a massive table offered reading room, and several scrolls sat exposed for illumination and copying.
“Ah, the last ravings of the Shire deacon,” Gabriel remarked, skimming the largest scroll. “He grew accomplished at the Song – at least until it drove him quite mad.”
Alisandra trailed, brushing her fingers over the scroll cases. The air smelled of old manuscript and wet ink, familiar and pleasing scents for a girl raised in a library of her own. Leaning over, she read an excerpt from the man’s ravings:
All were scattered
A Tower shattered
The ship of Gold itches the crust like a sore
Aliens aliens aliens from far shores
“This is not in our library.” A Tower and a ship of Gold…
Things she almost remembered…
“Many things are not, dear daughter. Perhaps you can add a few more.”
“I would have expected more treasures from Aure himself.”
“Aisles one through thirty-five, of course,” the Archangel waved. “Though if you wish to see his Works, most of those are in the Conclave.”
“In the public museum?!”
“The blessed dinnerware of Aure, the holy bathing robes of Aure, the holy sandals of Aure, the holy screwdriver of Aure…” he recited. “A quiz: which of those are true Works?”
“Most certainly the spoon of Aure. For did it not touch his divine lips every morning?”
“Ah! We’ll make a priestess out of you yet, my little apostate.”
Alisandra circled the table, scanning the other writings. None were by Aure himself. Did mortals even remember what their god penned?
“Might I read these?” she asked.
“With permission from the Keeper. He becomes quite aggrieved when the scrolls get up and walk away.”
Alisandra blanched. “Do you think he remembers the time I told him that he smelled like cottage cheese left on a sidewalk?”
“For the correct donation, Lady Mishkan, he will forget his own name!”
Then the scrolls would have to wait…at least until the rutile mine entered production.
“If Lucas is serious about correcting the errors of the priesthood, perhaps he can start with the dispensations,” she grumbled.
The Archangel clapped his hands. “An intriguing idea! Perhaps you can whisper it in his ear. For my part, however, I have been on the wing far too long, and I yearn to experience the true soul of Lumia – the ice cream parlour!”
***
Two days later, Lady Mishkan announced her formal endorsement of Father Lucas.
Privately, she also scheduled a hefty endowment for a small study group known as the Psalms. The endowment would begin after the elections in Spring. By that point, the rutile mine would have made her House rich once more, or she would not have a House at all.
Perhaps Father Lucas would be able to steer Aure’s flock towards the Light, defang the Inquisitors, and pinch the flood of bribery to church coffers. If not, alas, the world could do worse than a good man in office.