Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel (34 page)

“You didn’t tell us that,” said
Kabede, appalled.

“It didn’t come up,” Faustus said.

“A half truth is a whole lie,” said
the Rider.

“Would it have made a difference?”
Faustus said.

Kabede dismounted and went to stand
beside the Rider, who got down from the vardo with Belden. He took out the
Rider’s Bowie knife and handed it to him.

“Very likely, yes,” said Kabede.

“You did what needed to be done,”
said Faustus.

“You knew he wouldn’t listen to
reason,” said the Rider.

“I suspected. But there was a chance
with you. With me he would’ve called down all his powers from the start.”

“Nyarlathotep is Adam Belial,” the
Rider said, making his way to the back of the wagon where his onager and Belden’s
horse were tied.

“How do you know that?” Faustus asked.

“He told me so,” he said, untying
the animal and stroking its bristly mane.

Faustus sighed and stared up at the
sky. The clouds from the night of Ossodagowah had never really dissipated, but
they were a healthy gray now,as if expunged of infection. The mountains were
pungent with the fertile smell of impending rain.

Thunder rolled, but there was no
threat in it.

“And now?” Faustus said.

“Now?” said the Rider. He reached
into the collar of his coat and pulled the amulet Faustus had given him from
his neck. He let it fall in the road, then tugged his animal’s bit. “Goodbye,
old man.”

He walked off without another glance
back.

Belden fell in behind, touching his
hat brim to the old peddler before nudging his horse’s flanks with his boot
heels.

Kabede held the old man’s look and
walked behind with the staff. Belden looked over his shoulder.

The old man sat atop the dead man’s
horse for some time, watching them go.

It was raining by the time he
climbed into the seat of the vardo and took the reins of the camel train.

The Rider walked the stark desert
road locals called The Devil’s Highway alone, leaning toward the setting sun
that was his destination. The onager fought him the entire way, the guiding tether
taut between them.

No amount of cajoling or pleading or
even outright force seemed to enamor the usually facile and obedient animal to
the journey. He supposed it was a further portent that he should reconsider his
destination. That was what Kabede would have said.

Kabede.

By now, he and Dick Belden should
have reached Tombstone. If Professor Spates had come through, they had the
translations of the Sheardown Papers by now. Perhaps they knew the importance
of the scroll he had taken from Adon’s disciple. Perhaps, as Kabede had
suggested, the Rod of Aaron could lead them to Adon as it had led him to the
Rider when he had been imperiled in the hidden Apache stronghold of
Pa-Gotzin-Kay.

He couldn’t afford to think about
these things anymore.

The Rider was tired. Tired of
causing the deaths of friends, tired of chasing down Adon, tired of not knowing
whether the fight he had been fighting so long mattered to HaShem. If it did,
why hadn’t the Lord intervened in all this yet? Was it all some game to Him?

So, he had given the scroll to
Kabede, told him to go to Tombstone.

It had all begun with talk over a
campfire in Mexico a few days after they’d parted company with Faustus
Montague. Dick Belden asked what their next move was.

“I’m going to Yuma,” the Rider
answered, only a little less surprised than Belden that he’d said it.

“Yuma? What’s in Yuma?” Belden
asked.

“Nothing,” Kabede said, sighing and
not looking at the Rider. “Nothing that concerns us or our mission.”

“It concerns me.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Kabede warned,
looking at him at last.

“Whoa, what’s all this?” Belden
asked, feeling the tension.

“Someone helped me once,” said the
Rider. “Now she’s in trouble.”

Belden’s expression brightened.

“She?”

“She’s a spy,” Kabede said, staring
at the Rider.

“A spy, huh?” Belden echoed, leaning
in, intrigued.

“And a demon,” said Kabede.

Belden’s smile failed and he looked
askance at the Rider.

“Nevertheless,” said the Rider, “she
helped me and she’s being punished for it.”

“So said Lucifer.”

“Lucifer?” Belden repeated, smirking
nervously. “You don’t mean
the
Lucifer?”

“There’s no reason to think it was a
lie,” said the Rider.

“This is not part of our task,”
Kabede said, rubbing his eyes. “We should leave her to her own.”

“I won’t do that.”

Kabede laid the Rod of Aaron across
his knees, as if he would beat this notion out of the Rider.

“It is obviously a trap,” he said. “If
we go we will only be killed.”

“Then you’d better take the scroll
with you,” the Rider said, unstrapping the case from his shoulder and holding
it out.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying the scroll’s more
important than me.”

Kabede frowned heavily and took the
case, tying it to his own back.

The Rider sighed inwardly. He was
glad to be rid of the thing.

“You’re a fool if you let yourself
be taken in by this
shikseh
, knowing
what she is,” said Kabede.

“I’m not being taken in,” said the
Rider, though he knew deep down it was partially a lie. Even in the midst of
their hardest tribulations he had still managed to think of Nehema at least
once a day. Dying in the desert, pursued by the walking dead, he had seen her
face in the moon. The confrontation with Misquamacus and his gods had
distracted him, but on the quiet rainy road out of Mexico thoughts of her had
swiftly returned.

What could he do? It was true she
was a succubus, and that as such she could not be trusted. But the talisman she
had given him had been the only thing that had preserved his life from her
mother Lilith’s servants. Lucifer had said she was his spy, but he refused to
lift a finger to help her now that her duplicity had been discovered. He knew
only that she was in Yuma, and she was being punished. That was enough. He
couldn’t go on until he knew he had done something to help her.

He knew that Kabede would not deign
to help, just as he had come to know something else.

It was not the Rider’s destiny to
stop Adon and the Great Old Ones.

How had he ever thought he could? It
would take a true
tzadik
, one of the
righteous thirty six hidden saints to block the Outer Gods from entering this
world. An angel from another universe had already failed in the task and been
corrupted. Secret mystic orders had been wholly annihilated trying to prevent
it. He himself had fumbled through it unwittingly for so many years, and still
he knew no more about what they planned than he had two years ago.

How had his personal quest for
revenge suddenly come to encompass the saving of Creation anyway? It had never
been his intent. He’d only wanted vindication, to clear his own name with the
Order. But the Order was gone now. Why couldn’t he just let the indignation of
Adon’s personal betrayal go? Perhaps this was why his life had been so hard—he
had spent it in a selfish pursuit of vengeance, and then tried to stuff himself
into an ill-suited task. And who had paid for his mistakes? An orphaned boy,
some innocent freighters, Piishi…

Now, his life was nearing its end.
Kabede wanted to save him. Kabede wanted to find a
minyan
of Jews and a Torah, do a re-naming ceremony.

But Kabede had more important things
to do.

Because Kabede
was
a
tzadik.
And not
just by some wishful ceremonial title of the Sons of the Essenes. He was truly
righteous; a saint. Hidden, unknown, even to himself.

The Rider had been sure at Pa-Gotzin
Kay when, through Piishi’s eyes, he had seen him accompanied by the Gans,
Apache mountain spirits that neither Kabede nor Faustus Montague had apparently
perceived. Piishi had told him they were only visible to Apache, but the Rider
suspected that had he been wearing his mystic Solomonic lenses and looked upon
the Gans, he would have seen avenging angels, much like the ones the Lord had
sent to smash Hayim Cardin’s Molech cult in Little Jerusalem, outside Delirium
Tremens.

If angels came to Kabede’s aid
unbidden, then surely he must be one of the chosen of the Lord.

He had entrusted his suspicion to
Belden, the only man besides Kabede whom he trusted. He’d told him everything
the night he’d decided to depart, as Kabede slept.

“Are you sure about this?” Belden
asked, as the Rider packed his things.

“Yes. I’ll need you to go with
Kabede. He doesn’t know the way to Tombstone, and the scroll is more important
to all this than I am. I’ll meet you both there.”

This was a lie of course. He had no
intention of going to Tombstone. He suspected he wouldn’t even live past
rescuing Nehema, if he succeeded in that at all. Mazzamauriello and the
shedim
, and maybe Lilith herself, were
most likely waiting for him there. Besides, the two of them would compliment
each other. Dick Belden could protect the Ethiopian from the profane wiles of
Tombstone—if he could manage not to be swept up in them himself—and Kabede
could handle any supernatural menace that came their way. He had initially
thought he might be able to teach Kabede something, but the young man
instinctively knew more than he ever would. His faith was stronger. He was the
one for this fight. The Rider was sure the Sixteen Sided Sword of the Almighty
Faustus had mentioned would come to him too, when the time was right.

“He’s more important than me,” the
Rider said to Belden, watching Kabede sleep. “I don’t think he even knows it
yet.”

“What d’you mean?”

“We have a thing called a
tzadik
. It’s a saint. A righteous
individual. There are said to be thirty-six of them in the world at a time. The
tzadikim nistarim
: the hidden saints.
Even they don’t know what they are. They can do miraculous things, and as long
as they survive, the world can’t end. I think Kabede is a
tzadik
. I think he was sent here to stop Adon and the Great Old Ones.”

“You know,” said Belden, “that staff
he carries? I can’t pick it up.”

The Rider’s eyes widened. Another
sign of what he had come to believe. He had heard tell that only Moses had been
able to take the staff from Midian, and it had been the scepter of the Hebrew
Kings ever after. Perhaps only one chosen to bear the Rod could do so. Perhaps,
only a
tzadik
. But hadn’t Kabede told
him a Christian had once carried it as well, and Egyptian wizards? Hadn’t he
himself briefly wielded it against a horde of
ruhin
? Maybe only someone steeped in the mysteries then. Who better
to bear it now than a young man born with all the knowledge of Heaven? What
better champion could there be?

“These
tzadiks
,” Belden said.

“
Tzadikim
.”

“Is there any other way of telling
one? I mean, anything weird?”

“Like what?”

“Like…maybe no head on their shadow?”

The Rider stared blankly. He knew
what Belden was getting at.

“It’s not me, Dick,” he said. “I’m
no saint.”

“I know that,” Belden snickered.

“I mean it. That headless shadow
means I’m cursed. I’m doomed to die by September of this year. I don’t want to
hear any arguments,” he said quickly, when Belden started to speak. “Kabede
knows about it. He thinks there’s a way to stop it in Tombstone. If there is,
fine. Either way, he’s got to get there safely and meet with Professor Spates.”

“I’ll do my best,” Belden said. “But,
if he finds something, some way to stop what’s happening to you. I better see
you there, demonpuncher.”

“You will. I promise.”

“You be careful, partner. Be smart.”

The Rider nodded, and handed over
the Henry rifle he had engraved with Solomonic symbols and the Elder Sign.

“Take this. You’re a better rifle
shot than me anyway.”

Belden took it and clasped the Rider’s
hand.

“Thank you, my friend.”

He was about to part when Belden
drew him in for a strong embrace and clapped his shoulder.

“Hey, Joe,” Belden said thoughtfully
in his ear. “You ever heard the one about the dog that got its tail cut off
crossin’ the railroad tracks?”

The Rider said nothing.

“Train rolled over the tip of his
tail, sliced it clean off. The dog turned around to look at it, and the train
knocked his head off.”