The hour of reckoning was upon him, and Aaron Seth could only hope he was prepared. He had consumed neither food nor drink for three days, as his father had instructed—so that his ego might recede and the passage be eased. He had shed the blood of an impure man and immersed himself in the blood of a pure woman.
It was the proper day of the month. A harvest moon, fat and crimson, was mounting the horizon. To compound the date’s auspiciousness, it was the proper year—the final year. The same blood-pregnant moon had presided over Cucuy’s ascendance, precisely a half millennium ago.
There would never be another chance. If the god’s powers did not pass to him this night, they would pass beyond man’s grasp forever. What that meant, Seth did not know; Cucuy had never seen fit to specify the horror failure would bring. Perhaps Tezcatlipoca would return from exile and slake his thirst for revenge. Perhaps the gods would reverse their abdication and history would circle back on itself, the New World transformed into the Old.
Seth gazed out the tinted window of his chauffeured town car, and a reverent shudder passed through him as the Rock of Tezcatlipoca loomed into view. This was the holiest of sites, described by the deity in the very first of his great decrees, when the world was young and man had not yet learned to worship—much less joust with—the divine.
Find a great spear, cast from the heavens into the earth, the sorcerer-god had commanded the man who would soon found the Line of Priests. Upon its blade, mortify your flesh, so you may come to know me.
The holy man—a simple farmer, until that day—had wandered the desert for weeks, growing weaker and purer, the veil separating the worlds lifting a little at a time. Finally, in a hallucinatory daze, he had found this place, sighted the great, jagged pillar of quartz from afar and prostrated himself before it. The razor-sharp rock drew his blood as a quill draws ink, and the god’s voice filled his head. The priest wrote the words down feverishly, until his veins would yield no more—and yet, when the communion ended, he found his strength renewed. He returned to his village clutching the instructions for a great temple, one that would cost thousands of hours and hundreds of lives.
To build it was to build an empire.
The priest would not live to see the project completed. Nor would his son, groomed from infancy to be initiated into the sorcerer-god’s mysteries.
The village had grown into a capital city by the time his grandson consecrated the house of worship—which now doubled as the seat of government. Its people were no longer land tillers and craftsmen, but warriors and politicians, savvy in the arts of death and manipulation.
On that holy day, the preserved body of the first priest was buried deep beneath the temple, alongside his son, there to await the Final Days.
The first of a great and noble line.
It would preside over the Old World’s fall—throw off the tyranny of gods and rise to heights of power that the pious men slumbering in the temple’s bowels could never have imagined.
And it would hide itself among the ashes, as the New World rose. Disappear from sight. Pull unseen strings. Bide time. Double and redouble its strength beneath a cloak of silence.
Until now.
The New World had grown old. Rotten. It, too, had to fall. And once more, the sacred Line of Priests would be there to usher in a new age.
Third time’s the charm.
The car eased to a standstill, and Seth unfolded himself from the backseat, closed the door gently, and stepped into the warm night air. Arrayed in a circle around the rock, clad in white vestments and holding unlit torches, were the elders of his flock, the eighteen men whose belief in Seth had endured the longest, burned the brightest. They had earned the privilege of witnessing the ceremony. Seth greeted each one, clasping the men’s hands in solemn recognition. These were his elect—bankers and bakers, lawyers and truckers—and while the mysteries of the priesthood were for the priests alone, these men understood the weight of the occasion, had labored for years to bring this day about.
In the days to come, Seth would lean heavily on the loyalty of such individuals. Fear was a poor substitute for belief; one shepherd was worth a hundred soldiers.
These men would teach the world how to worship him.
Communing with them quelled Seth’s nerves, and he lingered longer with each one as he moved around the circle. To his consternation, the tranquillity he wished to feel at this portentous moment remained elusive. His aides assured him that the Messenger’s arrival was imminent, and no aspect of the ceremony had been left to chance, but Seth found it impossible to find peace within himself.
Perhaps that was appropriate. The human condition was a churning stew of fear and worry. He would not be human for much longer, Seth thought as he shook the final hand and turned out from the circle. He ought to embrace the feeling while he could.
The decision to accept the fear banished it, as was so often the case.
“Fire,” Seth said softly, and the torches of the elect flared up. The light fell softly on the outer circle of guests: the pure women of Seth’s flock. They, too, wore white, and sat scattered among the lesser rock shelves, amidst the outcroppings of quartz that littered the plain. Unlike the elect, they knew nothing of the ceremony’s significance. They were mere girls, lambs among the world’s lions—the chaste forever chased, as he had often sermonized—but Seth liked to keep them close. Their presence energized him; he had sustained himself for decades on the purity of such creatures.
As had his father.
The sacred rock glowed pink in the firelight, seeming to pulse with energy. Seth stared at the plateau before it.
Where he would soon stand, a beating heart in his hand.
Like his father before him.
If Seth understood correctly—and Cucuy preferred to dole out history and explanation and command in discrete, perplexing fragments, so it was possible that Seth did not—the original journey from the temple to the rock had been a test. The power of Tezcatlipoca resided in the vessel, but Cucuy could not assume it until he had proved his mettle, until he stood at the world’s holiest site. Seth had long puzzled over that. Why would the god test his servant, when failure would ensure his own demise? What compelled him to do so?
And if the journey was meant to be a test, why was Seth not the one taking it?
That, he had pondered even longer.
There were only two possibilities. Either he was too important to risk, or he was unequal to the task.
It was a moot point now. In his boundless wisdom, and through his peerless sorcery, Cucuy had fashioned the Righteous Messenger into a double, a doppelgänger. Empowered an expendable man to assume the role.
Scores of them, Seth reflected, had not even made it out of the temple, the hearts dying in their hands, and the Messengers dying at the priest’s.
Perhaps the heart’s chaperone did not matter—only its journey. Certainly, Cucuy’s insistence that the vessel pass from the temple to the rock in the same manner as before had turned a simple task grueling—delayed this blessed day by years.
Seth’s father had set off along the secret, treacherous path with four soldiers—forbidden to bear his burden, instructed only to ward off interlopers, wild beasts, evil men drawn to the power of the heart. Their fates even Cucuy claimed to be unable to recall, but by the time he collapsed of exhaustion, he was alone.
A band of traders had found him—marauding nomadic tribesmen, the empire’s scourge—and the priest promised them great power if they conveyed him to the holy place.
Wisely, they agreed. Their descendants remained in Cucuy’s employ still. De la Mar, the man who had been assigned to meet the Messenger today, was replaying his ancestors’ errand, though he knew nothing of it. Of them.
Any more than he knew why he could not intercept the Messenger earlier.
Or why he’d been instructed to kill any companions the man retained.
The marionette does not see the strings.
The sound of an automobile brought Seth out of his reverie, and he looked up to see a black van rumbling into view. The rock was miles from any road, any settlement, any incorporated land; this could only be the Federale’s vehicle. After a few seconds, Buchanan’s sedan appeared, behind it. The anticipated escort of True Natives was nowhere to be seen.
No matter. Seth could sense the closeness of the heart.
He turned on his heel, the gold-trimmed white robe flaring around his ankles. Strode toward the altar and took his place on the rock shelf at the base of the great spear.
“Remember,” he intoned, in a voice scarcely above a whisper, and the circle of elect contracted to listen. “Tonight is an occasion for both celebration and mourning. The powers I will receive come at a cost—they come because my father gives up his life. Since we cannot honor his body in accordance with the ancient custom, we shall burn his surrogate instead. The pyre is ready?”
“Yes,” the elect chorused as one, and two of them stepped back so Seth could see the giant rectangle of oil-drenched wood laid out at the far side of the altar.
He had, of course, already noted it—just as he’d already said all this. There was value in repetition. It was how words hardened into laws. Deeds into sacraments.
“The Messenger’s daughter,” he prompted them. This was the only aspect of the ceremony they had not rehearsed for weeks—the matter so urgent that Cucuy had done the unthinkable and used a telephone in order to convey it. This, if Seth thought about it, lay at the bottom of his unease. It was unlike his father to spring such a surprise.
“She will stand at your right hand,” the elect replied.
Seth nodded, like a schoolteacher rewarding a correct answer, and wondered if any of them dared to wonder why this girl, at this late hour, should be awarded such an honor.
Cucuy had assuaged Seth’s curiosity in his own manner—which was to say, he had increased it.
When the moment comes, her purpose will be clear.
Seth chose to take it as a vote of confidence.
He closed his eyes, just as the engines of both cars fell silent. For a moment, the only sound was the crackling of fire, and Seth felt a great, ecstatic wave of energy suffuse him. As if he had already thrown off the mortal coil, was already rising to the long-awaited plane that was his destiny.
He reopened his eyes in time to see Knowles and another biker—the Natives were here after all, absent their usual means of transport—walk to the back of the van and open the rear doors.
I speak now as a god, Seth thought, staring into the darkness where the Messenger sat. He inhaled deeply, taking in the fullness of the moment, and unleashed the majesty of his voice.
“Righteous Messenger, come forth and be known. The glory of your journey shall never be forgotten. Deliver the sacred vessel unto me, and in the breadth of my munificence, I shall fulfill my father’s promise and deliver you into freedom.”
The man who stepped into the sacred circle of light, cupping the heart in the palm of his hand, looked like something out of a nightmare.
Disfigured. Rancid with hate. Grotesque with fear.
Seth spread his arms wide, leaching those poisons from him, replacing them with obedience and calm.
“I bid you welcome,” he proclaimed.
“Go suck a bag of dicks,” the Righteous Messenger replied.