Debris of Shadows_Book II_The Forgotten Cathedral Read online

  She coughed.

  He felt his face go warm. Had he really just been staring at her open–mouthed, like some obsessed admirer? “I’m sorry,” he said, “I thought we should talk. Is this a bad time?”

  She stepped back from the door, tilting her head to the side. Her cowl flapped back, revealing a long, slender neck that was lined with the tiny flaps that contained her wasps. Asher entered her cell, and sat on a small wooden stool.

  “Well,” he said, “this is awkward, isn’t it?”

  She peered at him, her triangular face expressionless. “Why?”

  He raised his hand, and placed it back in his lap. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I really don’t know what you are supposed to do, besides hold my hand through one of the largest resurrections ever.” He attempted a smile.

  She leaned against the wall. “Do you need that?”

  “The Church seems to think I do.” He wanted to bridge the gap between them, but he could not help feeling that she was annoyed, for some reason. Was she always like this?

  “I think if they wanted to drag you by the nose, then Brother Jacob or the abbot would be going with you.” She gnawed on a fingernail. “Are you always such a snowballer?”

  “What?”

  She somehow managed to roll her eyes at him, while still staring directly into his. “Like a snowball, rolling down a mountain,” she said, “picking up more and more snow as you roll, your imagined fears growing more and more out of proportion. Do you always do that?”

  Asher blinked. “Are you calling me paranoid?” he asked.

  She shrugged, and chewed on a different nail.

  He drummed his fingers on his thigh. Jacob had told him to make nice, but that took two. Had the abbot already poisoned her against him? “I’ve found that paranoia can be very handy in a snake pit.”

  “Is that how you see the order?”

  He made his face into a mask of childlike innocence. “Considering everything that’s happened around here recently, why on Earth would I think that?”

  She sighed, and this time, she did cast her eyes to the ceiling. “I am coming with you because the Magistrate wants me there. No, I don’t know why.”

  “That’s actually not why I came to see you,” said Asher. “The people… I feel them. I can feel their thoughts and memories, basically their entire lives. It’s almost as if I’m there, or that they’re all stuck in here.” He tapped his forehead.

  “Congratulations,” she said. “I don’t know what that has to do with me, I’m more architectural than empathic. That was Brother Leo’s area of expertise.” Asher was shocked to hear her voice break at the name. She wiped the lashes of her glistening eyes with her fingertips. It dawned on him why their corners were so red.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were that close.”

  “We weren’t,” she said, “he was too much of an asshole. But that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. I knew he was going to kill himself someday. There was nothing specific, it’s just… when you see someone who is only existing, who needs to grow to survive, but you know they never will. Watching them become more and more bitter…” She rubbed the folds of her cloak. “Some can survive and start over when everything they loved is lost, some can’t. But I suppose you don’t see him that way.”

  “That’s not true,” said Asher, shaking his head. “You’re right, he was very ill.”

  She folded her hands. “What exactly do you want from me?” she asked.

  “Like I said, I have a high empathy quotient, but not so much for structures. It’s all just memorization to me. When the time comes, I’ll resurrect it all without a problem, but I can’t see places and things in my head the way I can with people. They’re not real to me in the same way. So I thought…”

  “You thought that I’d just teach it to you?” Theresa asked. “I can’t, any more than you can teach me to feel souls.”

  “No,” he said, “I didn’t think you could. But with your help, maybe I could just resurrect one small item. It has to do with Brother Leo.”

  “Yeah, right.” She sniffed. “I may be under your command on this mission, but that doesn’t give you the right to make fun of me.”

  Asher smiled. “Careful,” he said, “you’re snowballing.”

  She took a deep breath, flaring her nostrils. “Fine,” she said. She grabbed his hands in hers. They were warm. “Close your eyes,” she said. He did as instructed.

  “Now sing it to me, like you will to your children.”

  He opened his eyes. He had been trained to sing the glyphs of his scrolls, but he had never actually done it. He had not received the sacrament yet. “That would take months.”

  “I said close your eyes,” she said. He complied. “I don’t want the whole city, I just want whatever you’re looking for.”

  “Oh.” He had not thought this through. “It’s a painting in an art gallery.”

  “That’s a start,” she said. “Did you do any research at all?”

  “It’s the New City Gallery, on 145th Street and Crescent Avenue.”

  “Go on.”

  “There are six floors, I guess I just need the third one. That’s the surrealism wing.”

  “Oh, good, we only need one wing, then.”

  “Maybe we should do this outside,” he said.

  “I was being sarcastic.” She pursed her lips. “What’s the name of this painting?”

  He told her. “Okay,” she said, “let’s try this again. Sing just that wing to me. Can you just sing the paintings?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, keep it as tight as you can.”

  Asher sang. He was not aware of the passage of time, he simply let the sound of the glyphs come, weaving their harmonies in a spiral of major and minor cadences. He became aware of her calling his name.

  “Hey,” she said as she shook his shoulders, “snap out of it.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “Yeah, I found it like ten minutes ago.”

  He swallowed. His throat burned. “I’ve only been singing for ten minutes?”

  “No,” she said, “you’ve been singing for an hour. I told you to keep it minimal. You were even singing the fiberglass insulation in the walls.”

  “I told you…”

  “Yeah, I get it. I have the picture.” She walked to her desk. An ornate box sat upon it, composed of stained glass in a golden frame. She opened it, and pulled out a vial of Structural Sands. She turned her back on him, and the folds of her cloak unfurled around the sharp angles of her shoulders. Asher felt a pang of annoyance. Yes, giving birth could be a personal affair, but he had seen other brothers and sisters produce their wasps many times. Such modesty was childish, especially if they were going to be working together.

  She tilted her bald head back, the sides of her neck bulging out. The sound of buzzing filled the cell as she released her children.

  She sang. Her voice was nasal, but fast and precise. Asher watched her back swell and fall as her wasps wove the painting into existence.

  The process took about half a minute. She tilted her head back again, and her children returned to the sanctuary of her flesh. She wrapped her cloak around herself and turned to face Asher, the painting in hand.

  He took it from her, and placed it on the table. It measured two feet by four. Its brush strokes felt rough beneath his fingertips. He stood back, and stared at it.

  The structure it depicted could not, by any charitable stretch of the imagination, be called a cathedral. Rather, it was a stone church, dilapidated to the point of ruin. Cracks branched throughout its rocks and mortar. Its stained–glass window had been shattered. A broken tombstone stood in front, its indecipherable engraving topped by a circle containing what looked like a lower case letter t. It reminded him of a sniper’s scope. Asher leaned towards the painting.

  Each stone contained a bas–relief of a giant wasp. It was as if the church had been built from insectile foss
ils, but they were not those of holy children. They were the Agents of Chaos, the mutant creatures that swarmed the wastes of WesMec.

  “Leo painted this before the Shadows fell,” he said, pointing to the stones, “so how did he know?”

  Theresa peered at the canvas, and shrugged. “They’re just bugs,” she said. “I don’t think it means anything.”

  “It meant something to him.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Theresa said, her voice sharp. “You wonder why the Church thinks you can’t handle things on your own? Well, this is the reason. You insist on being distracted by meaningless garbage, when you have a greater responsibility than any resurrector before you. Instead of being humbled by your sacred duty, you insist on seeking evidence of some kind of ridiculous scheme.”

  Asher felt his face flush. “That’s a lot of snowballing, Sister,” he said. “Brother Leo painted this. He must have had some reason.”

  “Brother Leo was sick in the head,” she said. “I heard that you saw firsthand what the results of such sickness can be. Think of the poor girl that he erased over and over. Is that what you want for San Domenico? Because that is where such obsession leads.”

  “I —”

  “You nothing,” said Theresa, cutting him off. “Your holy charges are all that matter. Do you understand? Stop feeding your paranoia, and looking for conspiracies where there are none.”

  Asher’s jaw clenched. “I think you’re forgetting who’s in command on this mission,” he said, his voice low and even.

  She let out a long sigh. “You’re right,” she said. “I went over the line, and I apologize. But you must understand that there should be nothing on your mind right now except resurrecting the city. Forget all this. When your job is done, you can walk through all the galleries in San Domenico and debate what Brother Leo was trying to say. I’ll even go with you.”

  He shook his head, biting the inside of his lip so hard that he could taste blood. “We leave in two days,” he said. “Be ready.”

  She turned her back, and parted her cloak. Her wasps devoured the painting, and their composite grains fell to the tabletop. She brushed them back into the vial with the side of her hand. “Is there anything else?”

  “No,” said Asher, spitting out the word as he opened the door. “Just be ready.”

  A few hours later, Brother Jacob paid her a visit. The wrinkled skin of his face hung from his bones, as if he found his usual mask of joviality too exhausting to wear after dark. “Well, honeybunch,” he said, “how did it go?”

  Theresa pulled her cloak back and sang, her wasps creating the painting once more. Jacob took it in his rubbery hands, and stared down at it.

  “The poor bastard,” he said, his voice hoarse. “We drove him to do what he did. I drove him to it.”

  “I know how you feel,” said Theresa, “but we never imagined he would go crazy like that, that he mistrusted the abbot so much. All we did was encourage him to remember the truth. Please, don’t blame yourself.” She caressed the back of the canvas with her pale fingertips. “His brother Benjamin was one of the most brilliant and devious men in NorMec. If he sent Leo some kind of hidden message, it could mean a way out for everyone.”

  “And then what?” he asked. “From what you tell me, the afterlife isn’t much better than this one.”

  “Probably not,” she said, “but there may be a chance to save it, and ourselves.” She snorted out a laugh. “I told you, it’s not really the afterlife. It’s just… out.”

  Jacob held the canvas to his eyes. “There has to be more to it than this,” he said, “something we’re missing. Make sure that Asher resurrects the city exactly. I hope Leo scared him into that, at least.”

  “I don’t know,” said Theresa. “The abbot is beyond biased and has a victim complex a mile wide, but at least I had her confidence. She wouldn’t have given me any trouble. Now…” She shrugged. “She’s right about one thing, though. That boy is far too egotistical and emotionally unstable to be a resurrector, and he’s going to throw a monkey wrench into everything we’ve worked for.” She shook her head. “Goddamn Leo. There was no way he could have come along. Why didn’t he trust us?”

  “That’s the problem with being a conspirator, it tends to make people question your honesty.” He laid the painting on the table. “Get rid of it,” he said, “there’s nothing there that we can use right now. And don’t be too hard on young Asher, he’s not a bad kid. He could be the greatest of us, given another twenty or thirty years. Unfortunately, we don’t have that long.” He sat on the edge of her bed while her children returned the canvas to sand. Once they were done, she joined him. They sat together in silence.

  “Jacob…”

  He turned to look into her eyes. Her beautiful eyes, with their swirling glints of azure. “I trust you, kiddo,” he said. “I trust you more than anyone else here. But the resurrection comes first, do you understand? You don’t know the pain and death I’ve seen over the past few days. Even if this world is just an illusion like you say, the souls in that boy’s head are real, and can’t be risked. So promise me. Promise me that that will be your priority. If you promise, I will believe you.”

  She took his leathery hand in hers. “I’ve seen pain and death too,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “If you could see what’s left of the real me, you would run away screaming.”

  “Promise me.”

  She squeezed his cold fingers. “I promise.”

  He reached into the folds of his satchel, and pulled out a vial of Life Sands. Its grains seemed to glow, as if lit with an inner fire. She took it into her palm, and rubbed it with her thumb. “I’ve never lied to the Church before,” he said, “but no one else knows of this. He’s the one you told me to look out for, I’m sure of it. His glyph is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It contains fractals within fractals, wheels within wheels.”

  She looked down at the tiny bottle. “I can imagine.”

  “It will take some time to teach it to you.”

  “I can learn. It’s an extraordinary soul, but in the end, it’s just one. And this is the only way I can actually be with him.”

  Jacob took his hand away, and rubbed his temples. “Remember, you can’t bring him back until after San Domenico and all its citizens are resurrected exactly as the Shadows left them. There are too many lives at risk. Maybe, after the city is whole, he can show us what that painting means. And then, as you say, we can get out.”

  Theresa put the vial to her lips, and brushed them against its smooth surface. Then she wrapped her arms around the old man, and buried her face in his shoulder. Her eyes were wet with tears. “I’m sure he will,” she said. “I’m sure he will.”

  Chapter 6

  Beige.

  Beige upholstery, with bare and frayed patches.

  Asher coughed and sputtered as the world around him came into focus. The rough, stained, beige upholstery — which, for some reason, was vibrating all around him — abraded his cheek. Had he been drooling upon it and himself? Why yes, he had.

  He lolled his head to the side, and saw the wastelands of WesMec roll by below. A small stab of panic jabbed its way through the murk that clouded his mind. Where was he? Had he been stunned and kidnapped again?

  He turned his head the other way, and saw Theresa’s pale left hand twist a joystick while her right tapped on a keypad. The events of the past few days came back to him, and his dull sense of fear and confusion subsided.

  The ceremony for the holy sacrament of children had been quick and routine. The abbot had said the words, anointed him with oil, and sealed him within the cradle of the infirmary. Presumably, after anesthetizing him, its robotics had implanted egg sacs within his chest and neck. He reached up, and brushed them with his fingertips.

  A jolt of pain erupted through his shoulders and jaw, causing him to groan through clenched teeth. Theresa chuckled. He did not have the energy to be annoyed. Loath as he was to admit it, there was no way he could pilot the ship in his p
resent condition.

  “How long until it goes away?” he asked, slurring the words.

  “The pain?” Theresa shrugged. “Hours, days, weeks, who knows? Everyone is different.”

  He groaned again, and wiped his chin. He understood the urgency, considering the destruction of his scrolls, but what harm would there have been in waiting for him to heal?

  He snuck another glance at Theresa out of the corner of his half–closed eyes. Her hands danced across the controls, as if flying was her second nature.

  “Is there a problem?”

  He blinked. “Excuse me?” The world reeled, and he closed his eyes again.

  “I’m sorry, I thought you were staring at me.”

  A flush of warmth crept to his face. “I was falling back asleep.”

  “Hmm.”

  He swallowed, and regretted it. He could feel them when he swallowed. They pushed against his esophagus, ribs, and lungs. With every breath, he felt their seething pressure. They’re a part of you now, he thought, stop thinking of them as separate entities, or worse, parasites. The word churned his already queasy stomach. “How much longer?”

  He heard her fingertips tap on a screen. “ETA about five minutes.”

  Shit. This was the abbot’s doing, sending him out like this. But, he had to admit, that was not Theresa’s fault. He cracked his eyelids again, and looked out of the window. The shield bubble surrounding the city’s remains grew on the horizon, a blob of shimmering, swirling violet amidst the wastelands. He was not taken in by the stillness of the desert. Thousands if not millions of mutants were waiting just below its surface, ready to devour anything that touched it.

  “Thanks, NorMec,” he muttered under his breath. If Theresa heard him, she did not respond.

  The similarities between the mutants and holy children were not lost upon him. The subject had been a heated point of debate within the Church for decades. Children were guided by the will of the Ophanim for the purpose of resurrection. The mutants were not merely the Agents of Chaos, they were chaos. They were the vermin of the Clown. They devoured everything in their path, and shit out new larvae. They ate, they fought, they multiplied, and only left barren sand in their wake.