Chapter Fifty-Three

Sword of God

Rage filled my thoughts. They had been after me all along. I’d walked right into their trap. My stupidity put all of humanity at risk. When the ninth is bound? …

The dark angel finished my silent question. “Once you are bound, my dear Fire Walker, a new path will lead me to the dreams of all living souls. I will become the sword of God.”

A woman’s voice suddenly called to me from the direction of Center Island. I first thought I heard the tinkling notes of a piano, something bright and beautiful, and I turned my head that way. Umbra saw my shift in concentration and eyed me warily. The notes gained clarity, and the melody became more distinct. Billie’s voice came to me softly, so dulcet no one else heard. Her voice was the music of water lapping against stone. She intoned the lyrics to a song she once wrote for me, a tune about overcoming hardship and loss. Isaac’s face glowed with a recollection of things past, with a sense of the ineffable, which only music can provide. He heard her song, which made me smile.

“And somewhere in the distance,” she sang, “you hear the sound of violins. The music penetrates the pages. The darkness doesn’t always win.”

Isaac reached up and rested his hand paternally upon my shoulder. “We’re not so far away, after all.” And just like that, I felt what had been missing for such a long time. Warmth, hope, love, a sense of peace. Billie’s voice. My family.

My smile deepened. The soul cannot embrace the names of the Nizad when it is filled with love.

“The sun sets,” I thought, “but it also rises.” At long last I emptied myself of the tyrannical bitterness that had so consumed me. In its place I found the names of the Center. They, too, had been written upon my soul.

The dark angel seethed with black, venomous anger when he saw a breach in the gray lifelessness of the sky. He sensed the shift in focus of his two pathetic prisoners and sneered at their false sense of hope.

“I’m sorry to break up your last stand, gentlemen, but my friends are waiting and it’s time for you both to drown.” He was no longer willing to wait patiently for the two travelers to sink into the fathomless waters. He would take matters into his own strong and capable hands. He bowed and then met our eyes as he hefted his staff upward like a sacrificial knife poised to strike.

He closed his impassive eyes and breathed deeply the gray poison of the air. His moment of triumph was at hand, and he was obviously savoring every second. I’m certain he pictured the staff crushing the Fire Walker’s trachea like a brick upon a bamboo cane. He laughed out loud when he undoubtedly foresaw Isaac plead for his own soul from bended knees. He must not have seen the rays of light penetrate the gray gloom.

The fire of the sun returned to this world, and it filled me with unconquerable heat. I embraced the life Isaac was destined to lose and felt a kinship with the boy running like a river from that sea where my family and I were permanently connected. The fire seared to ash any remnants of fear or even anger, leaving me austere of emotion. I had no concerns now other than getting Isaac to the shores of Center Island. The ivory-cloaked man and the countless black-robed demons were simply clumps of sewage to be circumvented.

The sun rapidly turned banks of charcoal fog to vapor, exposing tendrils of violet and blue in the sky overhead. The sky opened, and the sunlight danced upon the water. That dance lit thousands of tiny flames, and the flames coalesced into one fiery path that reconnected us to the copper dome of the white tower. The angel opened his eyes in time to see the scarlet crossing solidify beneath his feet. The sky suddenly became the color of blood, and the bay became its ruby reflection. The air was warm, clean, and clear, and the scent of jasmine hung lightly in the air.

“Are you ready to go home?” I asked.

Isaac nodded, and I placed my arm around his shoulder to guide him.

The angel of death jabbed his spear violently toward my throat, crying out in fury. I deflected the blow with my free arm and released the other from Isaac’s shoulder long enough to point my finger accusingly at the fallen angel’s tattoo. I did not wait to see his throat burst into flame, nor did I stop when the man’s screams changed from angry to painful. He shrieked as he sank into the dark waters.

The row of Binders charged us, their staffs of rotting ash held aloft to attack. I did not change my pace as I released the fires of the sun unto the approaching demons. They each burst into blood-red flame. Two cascading lines to the north and south fell like dominoes, each Binder of Souls consumed by a scarlet inferno.

Neither Isaac nor I turned to watch the sun sink into the ruby depths behind us. The shape shifters continued to ignite to the right and left of the path as we two travelers walked past the line once defended by those towering demons.

Ahead of us the granite bluff rose like a wave, buoying a conical white tower whose luminous rays cast a revolving white Fresnel light unto the red light of dusk. Huge rectangular slabs of blue marble twice my height had been arranged in a circular pattern around the light. At last we reached the dusted white granite boulders strewn about the shoreline of Center Island.