He is coming?” a dark figure asked as he toyed with a kinetic sculpture in an alcove of Barthos’ office. “What makes you so sure?”
Barthos sat at his desk, amusing himself with a Noronian version of solitaire. Rather than cards, however, it involved small, flat, numbered squares of ivory-colored stone, all arranged in a series of circles before him.
“He’ll be here,” the man said, sliding game pieces from place to place. “Any minute now, my man will …” He checked his timepiece. “Oh. It’s later than I thought. It’s already happened.”
There was a new balance to the tone of the room, one that pricked Barthos’ ears and caused him to look up. He lifted his eyes to the door and saw there a still, silent figure cloaked in the darkness of the entryway. It had not come through the door. It had simply—entered.
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Barthos said casually, indicating a row of plush chairs to one side. “Take a seat.”
“Funny,” T. G. said, his tone serious and threatening.
“Did you have an appointment?” Barthos continued. The other person in the room, standing with his back to T. G., stopped playing with the steel-and-glass sculpture and watched Barthos for a cue.
“No,” T. G. answered. “But you do.”
The Voice stepped forward into the dim light. The click of his heels against the cold black stone echoed throughout the room.
Barthos looked up at the other man in the room. “I believe you’ve met the Voice in the Dark, haven’t you, Kir Vord?”
The man turned to face T. G. His face was round and dark, with small, close-set black eyes and a flat nose. His cheeks sagged, giving him a perpetual scowl. A familiar one.
“Grodnal,” T. G. whispered, surprised.
“Ah, yes,” the sorcerer said, his rough voice grating in T. G.’s ears. “We have met. But I knew the young man before his career had taken off, back when he was just starting out.”
“Such a touching reunion,” Barthos smiled.
“Have a good swim?” T. G. dryly asked Grodnal, walking closer. He stopped ten feet from the desk, cradling the Gift before him like a shield. “He works for you?” he asked Barthos.
“Oh, well, I suppose so, yes. When I need him, he does. When there’s a job to be done that is suited to Kir Vord’s special talents … well, let’s just say his work has proven most satisfactory.”
T. G. shook his head. “So it was a set up. You duped a whole planet into believing in a miracle that you engineered.”
“Of course,” Barthos smiled, sliding another game piece into place. “It’s not as if I could have asked Ish to help out, now is it? He seems to have a particular stubbornness when it comes to deceit.”
“You attacked and kidnapped Shass and practically killed him. Then you had him healed by the Dark. Seemingly back from the dead before the entire world.”
“Thank you,” Barthos smirked, faking a bow. “Quite clever, wouldn’t you say?”
“And Shass never knew it was coming, did he?”
“Ah! The man knows puppet strings when he sees them, Grodnal. Very good.” Vord nodded and smiled, looking at T. G. as if sizing him up.
“So why make Shass Prime Lord? Why not yourself? How does that help you?”
“No, no. That’s all for now,” Barthos replied. “Ask me again later.”
T. G. became impatient. Flexing the fingers of his right hand like a gunfighter, he stared Barthos down. “You wanted me. I’m here.”
Barthos tossed a game piece aside and rose from his desk. “T. G., you’ve become quite a problem for us ever since you walked out. I’m afraid we just can’t tolerate your behavior any more.”
“Meaning?”
The man replied in a tone of all seriousness. “You’re fired, T. G. Pick up your last paycheck and clean out your locker.”
T. G. did not smile. His anger built at the man’s mocking of the situation, at his lightheartedness after killing Pretsal. His anger even prevented him from recognizing how incongruous—how earthly—the comment was.
“Or,” Barthos continued, turning away, “we could just kill you.”
Instantly, a blunt force slammed T. G. from behind, grabbed him, spun him aside, and drove him unmercifully into the stone floor. Overpowering the force that pinned him, he managed to find his knees and whirled to see that Barthos was no longer in the room—Grodnal alone stood facing him, hands extended, eyes black and wide.
“Round two,” the sorcerer spoke quietly.
T. G. tried to stand but found himself straining against unseen hands that gripped his arms, head, and waist tightly, restricting him, pulling against the Gift, holding him motionless. Grodnal calmly walked over, reached out, roughly grabbed a handful of T. G.’s hair, and yanked his head back.
“Pretsal was just the first,” the dark man hissed. “They will all be dead by morning.”
Rage flooded T. G., whose body suddenly wrenched free with a burst of searing white power that hurled the dark forces against the walls. He leaped to his feet, but before he could fire at Grodnal, the sorcerer vanished in a dense swirl of darkness that opened up and consumed him. Deep laughter filled the room as the Voice, giving chase, hurled himself into the dark vortex before it closed and followed the sorcerer’s trail.
A black, senses-distorting, cold-as-death tunnel carried T. G. along, slamming him from side to side within the narrow maelstrom before finally and violently throwing him against a hard stone floor. Gathering his wits in a fraction of a second, he was on his feet, arms poised to fire, scanning for any sign of movement near him.
He was in a huge chamber that gave the appearance, more than anything else, of a medieval throne room. Torches lined the walls, the warmth of their dim flickering swallowed by the chill of the viscous dark. Cruel bladed weapons of configurations unknown to T. G. decorated the walls, their designs reflecting untold centuries of battlefield agony and intense savagery. A cold, ponderous scent permeated the room, that of air that had been too still and too damp for too long.
There was just enough light to reveal an arched granite ceiling that hung forty feet overhead, the entirety of its surface covered with carved figures in contorted, agonized poses. Scenarios of war and torture and pestilence danced in the ruddy, fervid glow, adding a sense of motion to the scene—the combined sufferings of human history splashed there in one grisly panorama. To the sides, tall, narrow windows cut deeply into the thick walls at ten-foot intervals, their black glass reflecting the meager torchlight.
Behind T. G., a massive, sealed lancet door of black wood reinforced with hammered black iron soared to a height of twenty feet, its huge hinges forged of bronze. Before him, at the front of the room, was a portal of polished quartz. It portrayed two reaching forms—horrifyingly thin, emaciated bodies, their faces distorted in terror, empty eye sockets staring, their arms and legs forming an archway. Their hands came together in the embrace of a cluster of skulls of reddish stone. Beneath this, at the top of six wide steps cut into and rising from the dark rock of the floor, was an empty platform seemingly meant for a throne.
Across the front of the ebony top step were carved words in the forbidden Old Tongue, characters like those on the Gift, but with a vastly different message:
I WILL REIGN ABSOLUTE
AND THE STARS THEMSELVES WILL EXALT MY NAME
He stepped forward, studying the words, then looked up to the archway and the excruciating pain on the carved faces there. A deep chill ran through him, a chill he had felt only once before.
His guard dropped for an instant as he recalled the frozen tomb his apartment building had become, as he once again envisioned the lifeless, ice-covered form of the elderly woman in her rocking chair. The cold was so deep, so final, so—
Before he knew what hit him, T. G. once more found himself on the floor. The concussion smashed his head hard into the unforgiving stone, a blow that would have killed any mere man, yet T. G. quickly rolled to his knees and fired an energy blast at the point from which the dark bolt seemed to have come. The blast struck one of the lifeless, black windows, which exploded outward—
—and then healed, leaving no sign of the shattering impact.
At the sound of laughter, T. G. whirled and fired again, this time striking the black-robed Grodnal squarely in the chest. With a lightning-quick sideward move, the sorcerer deflected most of the blast harmlessly away. T. G. followed with a second pulse, which also did little more than singe the man’s clothing.
“You were lucky last time,” Grodnal boasted. “This time I’m ready for you. This time you die.” He lashed out with black lightning that swallowed the very air as it flashed to the other side of the room—
—where T. G. no longer stood. Instantly, the Voice was behind Grodnal, his arms wrapped tightly around the sorcerer, pinning his elbows against his sides. A white glow erupted from T. G., enshrouding him in a searing radiance that scorched Grodnal with a power that nullified his black force. Grodnal struggled to break free, but the intensifying white energy, suffocating and irresistible, held him immobile. The sorcerer cried out in a bellowing, inhuman sound that was magnified further by the echoes of the chamber. The screech swelled into a cacophony beyond the range of human vocal cords, filling T. G.’s ears with pain as it became an intolerable din. Grodnal thrashed violently, like a bronco trying to shake its rider, throwing them both against the walls, floor, and ceiling with brutal force again and again. Still T. G. held him fast, squeezing more tightly as the sorcerer struggled to free his arms. The white energy surrounding them both increased to solar intensity. Seconds passed like hours, and T. G., eyes clamped tightly shut, prayed for an end to it.
Then the Voice felt a shift in Grodnal’s form as the man’s body finally went limp. Still T. G. held him, fearing a deception, but he could feel that the black force within the sorcerer had faded. Slowly he released his hold, tensed for an attack, and watched as the form slumped to the floor, where it lay still.
The white glow surrounding T. G. faded away, and he slowly walked around the recumbent man, watching for any sign of movement. Gaining position to see his round face, he watched as Grodnal’s open, black-marble eyes began to glow a brilliant blue. There was a crackling sound from the body, and it twitched slightly as the light in its eyes flared like spotlights. T. G. backed away slightly and tensed his arms toward the fallen sorcerer, not knowing what to expect. He ached all over. His head throbbed.
Like water from a faucet, the blue light drained from Grodnal’s eye sockets, spilling out into the air, where it began to take on another shape. As T. G. watched, more and more of the brilliant blue essence filled the air above the body. The temperature in the room dropped sharply, bringing with the cold a dread silence like that created by a heavy blanket of new-fallen snow.
The glowing blue shape became humanlike in form, translucent and beautiful and beckoning, hanging in a cloud of cerulean light before him. The sound of loud, raspy breathing echoed wetly from the cold walls. When the last of it had pulled free of the man’s body, it looked at T. G. with hard, glowing eyes, considering the prophet. The apparition appeared weakened, spiritually injured. After a tense moment, with nothing else to lose, it screamed and rushed forward.
Still in pain, T. G. fired. The being was utterly consumed in the dazzling light, which flared out of existence once its work was done. The thing—the demon—was gone, returned to the primordial ether from which it had come.
It had been an agent of the Dark, like the renewals and the joylights, using the fleshly shell of Grodnal Vord when necessary for the performance of its world-bound duties. A fallen, incorporeal being, it had worked since before the dawn of the world to bring down the light of the Truth.
“I told him it was a bad idea, the one-on-one thing,” a voice echoed, filling the room. “But he wouldn’t listen.”
Breathing heavily, a badly fatigued and aching T. G. turned to see Barthos standing atop the steps, under the portal, dressed in royal robes of red and gold.
“You get demons … to do your dirty work,” T. G. wearily said. “You’re a sorcerer … you think you’re using the Dark … but it’s using you.”
“I tried to tell him that you can’t be killed,” the man went on, ignoring the comment, “but you know how some guys are. They just have to see things for themselves.”
“He saw.”
Barthos shook his head in mock sadness. “I really tried. I mean, I told him who you were. I told him you had been chosen and empowered.” He indicated the artifact slung over T. G.’s shoulder. “I told him you were the one true Voice in the Dark. I told him—”
“Can it,” T. G. interrupted.
Barthos smiled at T. G.’s impatience and took a breath. “Forgive me. You’re quite right. Back to business.”
“Where’s Shass?”
“Not important. Right now, you and I have some catching up to do.”
“Not interested.”
“Don’t be so sure. I know more about you than you think.” He reached into a rib pocket of his robe and withdrew a small rectangular something that T. G. could not clearly make out.
“Terrible picture of you,” the man smiled, looking at the object. “Doesn’t begin to do you justice.” Then he began to read. “Shass, T. G., 325 Brentwood Road, Apartment 304, Ithaca, New York …” He looked up at T. G. for a moment. “Hair, black. Born November 2—”
“I get the picture,” T. G. cut him off. “You took my driver’s license last time I was here. You knew who I was all along.”
Barthos casually flicked the license at T. G. It sailed across the room, landing at the prophet’s feet.
“New York, New York,” Barthos sang. “A helluva town …”
“Speaking of Hell,” T. G. said, too weary to really listen, “What’s up with this grisly excuse for a room?”
“Decorated it myself.”
“You would have enjoyed Auschwitz.”
Barthos smiled. “I did … very much.”
The man began to walk from side to side upon the dais, speaking as he went, enjoying the sight of the exhausted prophet before him. “You still don’t get it, do you? You really don’t.” He shook his head, mockingly. “How obvious do I have to get? Perhaps I gave you too much credit.”
The chill once more coursed through T. G.’s body, more severely this time. Obviously, there was more to Barthos than he had thought.
“What are you babbling about?” he asked, perplexed.
The man held up his right hand and flexed its fingers as if they were clawed. “I rather miss those talons,” he said, admiring his hand. “Ish cheated, you know, dropping you into that portal like that … you were mine, dead to rights.”
T. G. tensed. Every hair stood on end. Cold sweat broke out on his scalp.
“You,” he angrily whispered, finally recognizing his enemy anew.
Shadowthing. Mortuary corpse. Angel of Hell. And now, the second-most-powerful man in all the world.
“In the flesh,” Barthos laughed, his eyes suddenly blazing blue. “So to speak.” Enjoying the disbelief on T. G.’s face, he went on. “Could I have been any more obvious?” he laughed. “Dropping clues here and there … call me a thrill seeker, but I just love seeing how far I can push things without blind fools like you catching on. And you were so blinded by pride … I’m amazed you finally wised up to the fact that we were using you.”
“What clues … there were no clues.”
“Come now. At Derakiin’s, the night you discovered the joy of cannibalism. I mentioned your fondness for rib-eyes, when I couldn’t have known about that. I mean, here they don’t even call it beef.”
He laughed loud and mockingly, quite pleased with himself. “And did you really think that was something other than Dr Pepper you were guzzling?”
T. G. suddenly felt very unsure of himself. “I … I thought …”
“I sent my associates to seize a whole shipment for you, truck and all. Of course, they had to kill the driver, but the smile on your little face when you took that first sip was well worth it. Long way to Earth from here, I must say. You’re lucky I don’t charge by the mile. Or by the year.” He paused. “Or by the death.”
“Enough!” T. G. turned away, his pride shattered, trying in vain to shut out the words. How could I have been so stupid? And a man died!
“Pay attention, now,” the fiend said, waggling a finger in the air. “We’re not done yet. You know, I must say … overall, you’re really very good. I mean, I’ve gone up against the best the Creator had to offer. The old Guardians, they all fell to me. One after the other. And the eleven Voices of Light—the greatest of the Guardians, who penned that accursed scroll you brought back to this planet—they died in this very room, most of them. Took a while, I’ll admit, and usually only after prolonged torture. Very messy business. I was a Deathlord back then. Not just a job … it was an adventure. The chicks always went for a guy in uniform.”
T. G.’s patience was gone. Despite the deep weariness that permeated his body, he extended his hands as if to fire, his muscles crying in protest.
“Hey, look,” Barthos said. “You wanted answers, right?”
The young prophet tensed, holding his ground, trying to disguise his pain. Something in him made him listen, made him delay the inevitable.
“As I was saying,” Barthos went on casually, “It finally came down to my dear friend, Parmenas. A tricky one, he was. I’d hunted him for years, waiting for just the right moment. When I captured him, he still held the scroll, the original. Finally, it was mine! I had won! It was the last copy of the Truth anywhere on Noron, and I was about to have the honor of destroying it once and for all. But there again I was cheated. I stood right there in front of him and saw the thing hanging around his scrawny neck, not even as far as from me to you. I’d won, fair and square. But at the last second, Ish comes and yanks the thing back from the old man. You can imagine my disappointment.”
“So how many did you take it out on? How many died?”
“Just a few,” he replied, reflecting almost fondly, “towns.”
“You’re psychotic.”
“That’s where your little leather pal there came from. It’s stolen. From me. Do you see the kind of guy you’re working for here? I just thought you should know. He didn’t even get you a new copy for your very own. That one you’re carrying is so old, so used I hate to think of where it’s been.” He then leaned forward and spoke in a low, mocking tone, as if not to be overheard. “Just between you and me … those old Guardians weren’t the cleanest people.”
T G. glared, a fierce anger burning within him. He wanted to fire, wanted to end it—but listened. From the deepest recesses of his wearied mind, he sensed something in Barthos … or in the room … or in the very stone beneath his feet, an indefinable something that held him in check, soundlessly crying out to him from everywhere at once, fighting to be heard.
“I guess what I’m getting at is that it’s just so darned … inconsistent … to kill the first eleven bearers of the Gift and let the twelfth one live. That has really bothered me. It’s the single black mark on my otherwise stellar career. So I decided, since I couldn’t find you, I needed to make you come to me. And since I can’t kill you, I need for you to die of your own free will.”
“I don’t think so,” T. G. growled through gritted teeth, reminded of Pretsal’s death.
“You are here,” Barthos gestured, indicating the oppressive chamber around them, “because I wanted you here.”
“Here, there … doesn’t matter to me where you die.”
“Fine,” Barthos smirked. “You’re the boss. But think … isn’t there one more thing you’re just dying to know?”
No … there’s nothing that—
But there was.
Panic suddenly filled T. G.’s eyes. Barthos saw it. And smiled.
The man gestured off to the side of the empty cathedra, to a pair of Watchers in a side corridor whom T. G. could not see. The sound of heavy boots against stone filled the air, their harsh rhythm mixed with other, more uneven footfalls. At once the armored men walked out onto the throne dais, their ripsticks held tightly against the throat of the shackled prisoner they held immobile between them.
T. G.’s scalp tightened, his vision tunneling onto the face of the prisoner. The glow faded from his arms and hands.
NO!
“T. G.!” a pleading voice cried out, a cracking voice strained by prior, tortured screams. A voice, nonetheless, that was pure music to the young prophet.
“Jenni!”
Their eyes locked. Her tangled blonde hair was matted with dirt and blood. Her arms were pinned behind her at an awkward angle. She wore a sweater, now ragged and bloodied, that T. G. had given her for her last birthday.
“Oh … you two know each other?” Barthos mocked.
“Let her go!” T. G. screamed. “This is between us! She has nothing to do with it!”
“Quite to the contrary … she has everything to do with everything. Right now, she’s the reason you are going to die.”
Jenni stood in utter confusion, hearing the indecipherable gibberish coming from the lips of the others. She did not have the gift of language T. G. had been given and could not understand why he spoke the odd language so fluently.
“T. G.! What is all this?” the girl cried. “Help me! They’re hurting me!”
He stood frozen in indecision. His mind was flooded by too many thoughts, too many factors to be considered. Can I shift up there and free her? Can I get her out of here before they can act?
Barthos shook his head. “Don’t even try it. You may be fast, but those ripsticks are faster. And as for shifting somewhere else, forget it. You’d only delay the inevitable. We’d follow right behind you and kill her wherever you went. And who knows what innocent bystanders might find themselves in the line of fire? You could, of course, attack my guards. I can’t stop that. But ultimately, you will not destroy us without killing her in the process.”
T. G. stood silently, fearing for the girl he still loved. He had been ready to die before—were it demanded of him—in a world without Jenni. He had no concern for his own life, short of fulfilling his duty to Ish.
But if Jenni died, that would mean—
Barthos, knowing that questions were flooding T. G.’s mind, turned to face Jenni. While he could not read T. G.’s shielded thoughts, he had seen enough human behavior over thousands of years that he could accurately surmise any person’s reaction to virtually any given situation. He spoke to her in perfect English. “Tell me, my dear, do you believe in God?”
She remained silent. The guards jabbed their ripsticks harder against her throat.
“I don’t know! What difference does it make?” she cried out, her eyes red, her face still wet with tears.
“Wrong answer,” Barthos gloated. He descended the rostrum, chuckling, and took a few steps toward T. G. “No God means no Christ. No Christ means no salvation. No salvation means …” He smiled, shrugging. “… no happy reunion on the other side. She comes to our party.”
T. G. looked at the girl with pleading eyes. Oh, Jenni … if only!
Jenni cried out in confusion and fear. “T. G.! What is all this?”
He tried to present a front of confidence and calm. “It’s okay, Jen … I’ll get you out of here. I promise.”
“Ah,” Barthos smiled. “Young love.” He signaled his men, and they dragged the bewildered, frightened girl through a massive stone doorway and back down the corridor from which they had come. She called out to T. G. yet again, crying for help, her pleas echoing. T. G. took a step toward her, a step halted by a hard forearm from Barthos.
“No, no,” he said. “Mustn’t touch.”
T. G. shoved the arm aside and mounted the steps. Barthos whirled and called out to him, just as he reached the top. His tone was suddenly grave.
“One more step, and she dies.”
T. G. froze, torn between what his emotions screamed for him to do and what his intellect demanded. Livid, he spun back toward Barthos.
“Kill her and you have no control over me.”
Barthos shook his head. “I didn’t say she’d die this instant.”
“All right. What do you want?”
Barthos smiled, his radiant white teeth flashing in the torchlight. “Ah! At last!” He walked up to T. G. and looked down upon him. “Actually, I thought I’d made that quite clear.
“I want you to die. Tomorrow. You lower all your defenses and give up your life … and I’ll release her. Once you’re dead, I’ll send her back home, to Earth, and I’ll never touch her again.”
“You’re lying.”
“Well, that’s just a chance you’ll have to take, isn’t it? But think about it … she means nothing to me, not once you’re out of the way. I don’t need a tool once the job is done.”
He thought hard, knowing what he had to do.
The Truth is already out. I’ve done what I came to Noron to do. The Awakening will happen now, whether I’m here or not. And after I die, I’ll be with Ish … and my parents … and Pretsal. But Jenni!
“Take your time,” Barthos said calmly. “You have thirty seconds.”
For spite, T. G. made him wait the entire thirty seconds.
He closed his eyes. Ish, be with me!
A flowing warmth washed over his body and curled deep into him. He was not alone. The sensation swelled into his tired, aching arms, then intensified in his chest, embracing his heart.
Where his treasure was.
He heard a voice, speaking within him, calming him. The words astonished him—and he understood.
“All right,” T. G. conceded, as if the decision had not been made long before. “You win.”
“Excellent!” Barthos signaled, and another Watcher entered with a set of heavy manacles. At his leader’s direction, the soldier began to place them on T. G., but hesitated.
“Oh, it’s all right. He won’t bite,” Barthos said. “Will you, T. G.?”
T. G. stood silently as the cold iron shackles closed around his wrists and ankles with a loud series of clicks. There was a grim finality to the sound. The chains were heavy, dragging his hands downward.
“Dramatic, I know,” Barthos smiled. “But I love a good show. Like the decor of this room … sometimes, the old ways are the best.” He gestured to the guard, who began to lead T. G. away.
“Until tomorrow, then,” Barthos laughed, waving as the Voice in the Dark was taken to his cell.
Ah, the old ways.
It was a dungeon, dark and damp and cold. Straight out of a Hollywood movie, it was as medieval a place as T. G. had ever seen, right down to the black iron chains hanging from the walls. If he could have stopped breathing, he would have done so to avoid the heavy malodor of mold and moss and rot that was the very air. No other prisoners were in the room with him, but the huge, disjointed skeletons of a few of the chamber’s former occupants kept the Voice company, pinned by shackles to the dark stone of the walls or trapped within a caged pit in one end of the floor.
“What are you in for?” he asked, looking at a skull that peered up from the pit. Leaning against the cold wall, T. G. sat on a low stone riser, one apparently meant to serve as a bed. One arm rested on the Gift.
Despite his immediate situation, his mind remained focused on Jenni. It had been, ever since he saw her there. She’s alive. Was she now nearby, confined to the same prison? Or did Barthos have something else planned for her?
“Jenni!” T. G. called experimentally. Only his own voice came in reply, bouncing uselessly from the hard walls.
He looked down at the hardened chains that so theatrically bound him. How easily he could vaporize them with a glance. The massive wood-and-steel door to his cell would be no more an obstacle than if it were made of tissue paper. In seconds he could be free, and nothing Barthos or the Dark could do could stop him.
But no.
“Just get it over with,” he whispered, his head hanging limply.
“Strength, T. G.,” Ish’s voice said, its tone one of shared pain. “Soon the moment for which you were born will come. And it will pass.”
The prophet turned to find Ish sitting next to him. “Jenni’s here. Barthos has her. Rather, Beltesha does. Barthos is just a shell he’s using.”
“Yes,” Ish nodded. “And he does not understand. His arrogance has blinded him.”
T. G. smiled. “Well at least we have that.” He looked into eyes of gentle, embracing flame. “This is hard, Ish. Really hard. Harder than anything I’ve ever done. It’s taking everything I have just to keep sitting here like this and not fight back—and not grind that infuriating smirk of his right into the ground.”
“I know,” He said. “I know.”
“I guess You do,” T. G. said, disappointed in himself for forgetting to Whom he was speaking. “Forgive me. I know You’ve been there … and then some. It’s just so big. I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around it.”
“There is nothing to forgive. I am well pleased in you.”
T. G. smiled, then after a few moments thought of the girl. “Where’s Jenni?”
“She is here, in another annex. We are in the prison of the country’s former capitol. It’s a very old structure, older than any on Earth, once a great fortress. Barthos is keeping her here until after tomorrow, thinking that doing so maintains a stranglehold on you. The courtyard where all things will come into focus is here as well.”
T. G. looked down. “Will she be okay, Ish? Please … I have to know.”
“She has a future, T. G. With Us.”
He smiled at that.
“Remember,” Ish said, laying a comforting hand upon T. G.’s shoulder, “I will be with you throughout every moment of the trial that is to come. You will not be alone.”
The Voice nodded with a faint, determined smile. “I know. I trust You beyond all else, beyond anyone else. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. To be honest, I’m not scared so much about what’s going to happen tomorrow as I am about remembering to trust when the time comes. I’m terrified I’ll let You down.”
Ish smiled. “I will strengthen you. You will honor Me, and those who follow the Truth, in a way that few men have. This single act will be the greatest thus far in this world’s history.”
The culmination of it all was almost upon him. T. G.’s hunger and thirst were intense, and he fought to keep his mind off the needs of his body. He recalled his life on Earth. Images of school and friends and everyday life passed before him like a warm, comforting parade. It was so distant now, so ordinary, so unreal to him.
The burden of his own passion finally broke through, and he wept. Too much had happened too fast for his heart to keep up with it all. Despite his faith, he was emotionally unsure of the footing ahead of him—a dark road is a dark road, no matter how many times one has read the map, and fear swelled within him. In mere hours, he was going to leave everything he knew behind and leap into the unknown in its purest form.
Later, his mind calm once again, he recalled something his father used to say, something T. G. had thought ridiculously trite at the time. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future. Suddenly, as he looked upon the robed Presence seated just a few feet away, the words seemed not so silly.
They weighed upon T. G.’s mind, bringing to light a question.
“Ish … the decision I’ve made … to do what has to be done. I, uh … I want to understand something.”
“Speak.”
“Did I decide to do this, or was it preordained for me? If I was chosen before the beginning of the world, as You said …” The question trailed off. “Well, You know.”
Ish smiled. “The Father, and I, and the Comforter alone exist outside of time, outside of the limitations of the framework We created for you to live in. We see the entire parade at once, as it were, from eternity to eternity, while you and those of the angelic and demonic realms are bound to a single, narrow vantage point. You must watch the parade as it passes. For Us, there is no past or future. There is only ‘now.’
“All choose the path they will take. Man chooses. The Dark chooses. The angels choose. All are responsible for the choices they make. Yet at the same time, the Father is utterly sovereign. All things were decreed by Him, in His good pleasure, before the beginning. Despite appearances to the contrary, free will in the creature and unlimited authority in the Creator are not mutually exclusive. But your current frame of reference will not allow you to comprehend this.
“One day you will better understand. But not now, not until you have been freed from your limitations. You see through a glass darkly. That which is possible for an infinitely dimensional God cannot be fully understood by one who is bound and limited by a four-dimensional existence.”
“Four?”
“Time. Bound as such, you cannot grasp the necessary points of reference. It would be far simpler for a two-dimensional listener—constrained by two-dimensional concepts and hearing only two-dimensional terms—to grasp the concept of a sphere. What I can tell you is that all things and all events, even those of evil, are used by Us for good and for the carrying out of the Father’s will.
“That is where trust comes in. And trust … simple trust … is faith.”
Throughout all of history, men either believed in God to keep His Word or they did not. Abraham had been willing to kill his precious son, Isaac, on a sacrificial altar not because of mere blind obedience to God, but because he knew his Lord had already promised that a great nation would one day come into existence through the boy. Abraham believed that God would keep that promise, even if it meant bringing Isaac back from the dead. And Job spoke ten of the most incredible and faith-inspiring words ever recorded by man: Though He slay me, Yet will I trust in Him.
Men either trusted Him, or they did not.
They trusted Him, or they turned elsewhere.
And many had turned elsewhere, away from the one true Door provided for them, hoping for an easy path or a shortcut of their own design, a self-made salvation that would satisfy their pride. The tragic thing was that none existed.
There was little left to say. Ish sat at His prophet’s side, invisible to all others, and would remain there all night. T. G. tried several times to close his eyes, but sleep would not come. There would be none that night for the prophet, nor would there be even the courtesy of a last meal.
T. G. sat quietly, with little choice but to contemplate his situation. That day with David on the mountainside seemed so distant, as did his time in Dr. Abelwhite’s lab as they tried to analyze the Gift. He thought back over the past two years, over his life on Noron and the role he had fulfilled. He thought of Pretsal’s smiling face, of the crunch of an apple that often signaled his approach. Of Josan and Darafine and that first night beneath the biocenter when the Gift first revealed itself to all.
And of Jenni. His love for her, dormant amid the swirling rush of events since his arrival on the new world, had flared to life again, as vital as it had ever been. He pictured her smile. He wanted her—wanted to hold her, to smell her hair, to gaze longingly into her eyes as he once had, to kiss her and taste her warm, sweet breath and keep her in his arms forever.
But he knew that would have to wait for another time, another place.
Tomorrow he was to die.