Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel (38 page)

“That I didn’t see, but they were in a big
hurry to get here. So it’s possible.”

As we were sitting there, the Earth rumbled
beneath our feet. The bust of Abraham Lincoln, pens, pencils,
windows and every knickknack vibrated and rattled. I stood up, arms
splayed over the desk for balance. Dr. Steelsun ran to the window
and exclaimed, “Steam and light are coming out of the Mouth of
God!”

“I knew it,” Veronica said in alarm. “We’ve
built the city around a volcano!”

“No,” the doctor said in a slow and
ponderous tone. “This is something different.”

(Isaiah Wakeland)

According to Uncle Mike, nobody knew if Aunt
Feenie and her coven had gotten past the armies camped along
Galatia’s borders, but magic users were a cunning bunch. So,
probably yes.

After the procession, the traitor sheriff
had been returned to his jail cell. Now that Feenie had left town,
it was as if a fog had lifted from Barrett’s mind. The would-be
king was inconsolable over the part he had played in his brother’s
death. Guards were placed on suicide watch. Uncle Mike said he felt
sorry for him—almost. Isaiah hoped that Barrett would succeed in
killing himself and save the Galatians the hassle.

Not everyone in the video had been
identified, but minus Bryce, those who had been were missing in
action, presumed to have fled with Feenie and Mull. Isaiah hadn’t
forgotten how Bryce had risked his own life to save him, but he was
glad about his capture. As far as Isaiah was concerned, both uncles
were dead to him.

Armed with a flimsy Sliven sword, he joined
Galatia’s army at his assigned spot next to the earthen wall. There
were many familiar faces there. When he saw Luke among them, he
mumbled a civil hello. Up until last night, Isaiah had hated Luke
for dating Belle. But knowing they were going to fight together,
and probably die together, solidified them as allies. He peered
through a gun turret. Soldiers covered Galatia’s outlying meadows
and farmland like a plague of locusts. Sliding his back down the
wall to sit on the ground, he sighed, “There’s just so many of
them.”

“Yep,” Luke replied. “We’re all gonna die,
but at least we’ll go out with honor—not under the leadership of a
slut, a traitor, and a crazy warlock. Thanks to you and Gizmo.”

As the Galatian soldiers whispered in the
trenches, the Earth began to shake. Pebbles bounced along the
ground. The mud wall Barrett had built with his charisma began to
vibrate. When the shaking stopped, it remained standing, but a web
of cracks had formed before their eyes. Shouts of panic went down
the line of guards posted along the wall’s perimeter.

“You ever get the feeling someone up there
is trying to kill us?” Luke asked. His casual attitude baffled
Isaiah, but he managed to play along.

“Yep,” Isaiah replied. “Sure do.”

He peered through the turret again. The
Bulwarks were bustling back in forth in a tizzy from the quake. He
had heard they were superstitious about the weather and natural
disasters. Good. He hoped they were shitting in their burlap
trousers. A single drum began to pound in the distance like the
waking heart of a fierce dragon. Glancing at the yellow glow
growing over the curve of the dark land, he knew that an unwelcome
new dawn would be breaking within the hour.

Lacy Steelsun came running down along the
perimeter. The ever-snarky girl with the long dark hair had been
the youngest member of Isaiah’s foraging unit, so she had become
more than an acquaintance.

“Lacy,” Luke said, “the stretcher bearers
are supposed to wait behind the front line.”

“I know that.” She rolled eyes like he was
the dumbest person in Galatia. “But I’m not here to talk to the
likes of you. Dad sent me to fetch Isaiah.”

“Me?” Isaiah pointed to his chest.

“Do you see any other Isaiahs lounging
around?” She rolled her eyes again. “Something weird is happening
at the Mouth of God and my dad thinks you ought to be there.”

Other people along the front line were
turning toward the city’s center, pointing in a rush of
conversation. Luke and Isaiah regarded the rising cloud behind the
buildings with awe and trepidation. Through the darkness before the
dawn, it glowed with otherworldly light, its nebulous edges laced
with gold. The cloud billowed higher and higher like an umbrella
opening over the city.

Isaiah found himself practically floating
toward the Mouth of God, weaving through the crowd. When he arrived
at the mouth’s edge, thousands of people were already gathered
around. Someone said the mouth was a steaming geyser, just like Old
Faithful and it was going to blow at any moment. People shrank
back, but not everyone. Not Isaiah, who drawn to it like a moth who
must journey to the brightest light in the night.

The Galatians were abandoning their posts in
droves, converging around the mouth despite the fact the enemy
would be crashing through the walls at any moment.

The cloud rose higher and expanded. Its
depths began to glow with fiery intensity.

“It’s going to explode!” someone shouted.

People scattered, tripping over each other to
get further away. Isaiah stared transfixed, unable to tear his eyes
from the glorious sight. A white fireball came at him and went
through him with a hot swoosh. The heat devoured everything within
him, searing him so deep, his soul seemed to catch fire. Expecting
to die, he slowly discovered that he was being burned by the sweet
taste of love. His soul swooned with ecstasy, heaven couldn’t be
any better than this. He was standing on a white beach. Water so
calm and blue it appeared as an endless sea of glass. The violet
sky glittered with stars.

A large man dressed in a long red tunic,
golden armor and belt, with a brown leather girdle, hovered in the
sky on a white horse. How they hovered there in the air defied the
natural laws of gravity. Perhaps it was a dream? The man wore a
golden crown and held a large golden goblet in one hand, a shining
sword in the other, while his eyes sparked with white lightning.
The horse descended to only a few feet above the ground.

Isaiah’s heart pounded as the man withdrew a
crystal sword from the sheath across his back and pointed the tip
of the blade at Isaiah. The world began to melt away and the man,
sword, horse and Isaiah were above the world in a field of clouds.
The man offered him the goblet filled with wine. Isaiah drank of
its content and handed it back.

The man took the sword, resting it in the
flat of his palms to present it to Isaiah. In a voice like the
crash of thunder, the man asked sternly, “Forged by the Angel of
Galatia, do you accept this gift and all that comes with it?”

Although he literally ached for that sword,
consumed by fear at the authority in that voice, Isaiah fell to his
face on the ground and covered his head with his arms.

“Galatian,” the man ordered him. “Arise.”

Strength poured into him as the man spoke,
though the words were impossible not to obey. Isaiah rose to one
knee, and then the other. The warrior from the clouds continued to
offer him the sword.

“Do you accept this gift and that for which
it stands?”

“I--yes.”

Gingerly, and with awe, Isaiah wrapped his
fingers around the offered hilt. Searing pain ripped through his
hand, down his arm, and straight into his soul. The pain hurt so
wonderfully good—like a burning love—he never wanted it to end. The
hilt felt like it fit every nook and cranny of his closed hand.
Nothing had ever been so perfect.

Then he began to sink, like a man in a glass
elavator descending form the nine hundredth floor of a skyscraper.
His knees braced for balance as if a fast elevator had halted its
descent abruptly. Below him Galatia spread out before him like a
crazy quilt of buildings, patched with fields, the lines of
stitches the streets, and the Mouth was a big mysterious void in
the middle. The doors slid open. As his eyes adjusted to this
dimmer place, he realized the sword remained clenched in his hands.
When he stepped out he was back at the Mouth of God.

Most people looked as bewildered as Isaiah
felt, but stood empty-handed. Not everyone though.

He saw Veronica Albright, Uncle Mike, and Dr.
Steelsun holding swords like his own, but most of the recipients of
the swords were nobodies, young people close to his own age. Whoa,
how had the others gotten their angelic weapons? Had they each had
a private encounter with the fierce warrior on the horse as well?
Had they been through a similar experience as himself? So many
questions!

Grandma Elizabeth stood near the edge of the
pit. She looked radiant and healthy—her walker no longer needed.
The large golden goblet Isaiah had drank from was cradled in her
left arm.

“Behold,” he heard the voice of the heavenly
warrior speak, but his glorious form had changed from that of a man
to a radiant golden orb surrounding Grandma. “The anointed Judge of
Galatia.”

The orb rose into the air, leaving Grandma
Elizabeth by the lip of the Mouth. In one hand she still held the
goblet, but in the other she was holding a gavel with a crystal
head.

“He carried me on his horse,” she said, chin
quivering, sounding dazed. “And showed me many things. My mind is
clear. My arthritis is gone. I’m healed.”

“God was in that cloud,” an old man
exclaimed. “I haven’t been able to hear out of this ear since I was
sixteen and now it’s working again!”

Other people were miraculously healed of
illnesses and injuries old and new, thanks to the numinous mists
that had engulfed them before vanishing. Isaiah couldn’t wrap his
mind around any individual fantastic event, but he rejoiced to see
his grandmother up and about. He touched his own scabbed face to
find his wounds from last night’s attack were gone.

The war drum resumed its beat in the
distance, other drums joining in. Bringing the jubilant back to
reality. Sunrise was minutes away.

That’s when Isaiah noticed a man with a
neatly trimmed white beard sitting on a rock next to the Mouth. His
face was lined with age. He wore a gray robe with a slight sheen
that didn’t appear to be made in this era nor the bunker. His
weathered hands gripped a metal staff with a tip shaped like a
spade from a deck of cards. The spade was hollowed out. Smooth
crystal filled its frame. Hefting himself from the rock with a
grunt, the elderly man stood and addressed the dazed crowd.

“As the ancient prophets foretold, the dead
were raised and judged according to their faith and deeds.”
Isaiah’s heart did a cartwheel as he recognized his father’s voice.
“The old Covenant was fulfilled long before we arrived in the
future, giving way to a new one. May His love and protection be
with Galatia forever and ever. But as a father corrects his wayward
children, sparing neither the rod nor staff, our God punishes the
Galatians.” The people trembled to see the man they had murdered
standing before them—older now, slightly shriveled with a head of
white hair now—but the red birthmark was unmistakable. “You chose
the weapons of war over the prophet of God, so from this day
forward, the weapons of war will be your livelihood. Our sons and
daughters, and their children for generations to come, are bound to
lift the sword in defense of the innocent wherever they find them.
They will exhaust their minds in the study of justice, and their
bodies in delivering it, yet they will be despised outside of their
own nation. As it is said, so it shall be done.”

“As it is said,” Isaiah and the crowd
replied. “So it shall be done.”

“
Asbedon
is the new Amen. It seals the
new covenant between heaven and earth.”

“Asbedon,” the people replied.

The amazing cloud whirlpooled back into the
Mouth of God. The vapors vanished, leaving behind a bottomless pool
of swirling white mist below the mouth’s rim.

“What the hell just happened?” Nathan
Steelsun approached, daring to poke the man with the staff in the
chest with an index finger. “Holy crap, you’re not a figment of my
imagination. Is it really you, Red Two?”

“It is I.”

“Whoa! I mean, I’m glad to see you alive, but
why aren’t you dead? And why waste a fine new sword on an old goat
like me?”

“His ways are not our ways.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nathan
asked.

Veronica replied, “It means just go with it,
you doof.”

The laughter that followed was a welcome
relief, but the war drums were getting louder, while the first rays
of the morning were breaking behind the mountains. Isaiah wanted to
wrap his arms around his father, but was afraid that he would
dissolve with the clouds.

“A glass sword is nice to look at,” Nathan
continued, “but I can’t see it lasting long against metal.”

“In the name of the father goes the son!” Red
bashed the glass end of his staff against a rock the size of a
bowling bowl. The rock split in two. The blade was unscratched. “My
staff and your sword were forged by angels. Nothing on Earth can
break them.”

“Return to your posts,” Red ordered everyone.
“Trust in the power that brought us here.”

Two girls no more than sixteen or seventeen,
both holding angelic swords, approached. “We were holed up in
Megan’s housse until the cloud came. We don’t have a post. Where
should we go?” Three boys about the same age, also holding angelic
swords, wordlessly joined the girls to wait for instructions.

“Follow me,” Red said raising his staff high.
“To the front line!”

Ten minutes ago, Galatians hadn’t seemed to
have a chance: outnumbered a hundred to one, swordsman versus
computer programmers, seasoned bowmen against accountants, and army
captains against chefs. But through some miracle, his father was
alive, looking like Moses leading his people through the desert.
Hope renewed, Isaiah returned to the front line, holding his
fantastic new blade.