Treasure of Light (The Light Trilogy) (41 page)

He walked forward, sandals swishing in the red soil. “Yes. Let’s. This is a wonderful village. They’re known far and wide for their wines.”

He offered her a hand. She refused it, gesturing for him to lead. He nodded obligingly, but his expression appeared hurt. Rachel fell in line behind him, following him through the shadow-dappled rows of an orchard and out onto a winding dirt path. Flat-roofed houses lined the street, mud and stone exteriors gleaming like tan and ocher patchwork quilts.

As they turned down a new street, a gaggle of children came racing toward them, playing some sort of tag game. Rachel smiled at their happy faces. Memories of Horeb flitted through her mind. How could these children have such bright shining eyes when those in her own universe gazed out through haunted fear-hardened orbs.

The gaggle raced by, all except for one little boy with a dirty face. He stopped abruptly as he passed and looked up curiously at Aktariel. He asked a question in a language Rachel didn’t understand.

Aktariel threw back his head and laughed, then knelt down beside the boy and stroked his grimy cheek. Reaching into the pocket of his white robe, Aktariel pulled out an irregularly shaped coin. He tossed it into the air where it spun, reflecting the sunlight that streamed down between the buildings. Then he handed it to the boy, speaking in soft tones. The child nodded and clutched the coin tightly before running away down the streets to catch up with his companions.

Rachel watched the child disappear. “What was that all about?”

“They think we’re Romans, God forbid. The boy speaks Greek remarkably well.”

“Romans? What are those?”

He stood up and lifted both brows. “Something bad in this day and age. They’ll view us in much the same way your own people view Magisterial citizens. Well, at least we’re not wearing any jewelry.”

“Would that make it worse?”

“Considerably. They’d think we were one of Antipas’ own. That would be
very
bad. It’s a little like being one of Slothen’s cronies.”

He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder, urging her to walk beside him. “Just play the role and we’ll do fine.” He turned and examined her carefully. “But you’ll have to look more arrogant, dear Rachel. Here, lift your chin. Good, that’s better.”

She smiled reluctantly, allowing him to guide her down a hill and through the cool shadows of a two-story building that overlooked the lake. Stepping into the doorway, Aktariel jarred it open and peered inside uncertainly. The smell of baking bread wafted out to Rachel, and a number of scents she didn’t recognize. A husky female voice bellowed at them. Aktariel called back gaily, then turned to Rachel. “We’re in luck, it does exist in this universe.”

He opened the door wider. She walked past him into the flaxen lamplight of the tavern. A tiny place, it stretched no more than twenty feet square with eight rough-hewn tables lining the walls. A plump elderly woman with silver-shot black hair and a deeply wrinkled face waved at them.

Aktariel waved back. “Stay here. I’ll get us two chalices of wine and we can go sit at the outdoor tables.”

“All right.”

She stood alone in the back of the room while he strode forward, chatting happily with the barmaid, who cackled loudly at something he’d said and shoved his shoulder hard. They talked for a while, as if old friends. Then the woman tipped two ceramic chalices and a pitcher beneath a barrel and filled them full. Aktariel tossed a coin on the counter and retrieved all three. Striding across the floor, his grace struck her disturbingly. He seemed to float more than walk.

He handed her a chalice and led her out the door again, around the side of the building. Five tables sat beneath a wooden arbor covered all over with vines. Beyond, the windswept lake glimmered as though frosted with silver.

“What luck that Tzipora has no other customers this afternoon. We may get to be alone all day.”

Rachel stiffened. “You said an hour.”

He pulled out a chair for her and nodded. “No matter how long we stay here, Rachel, I’ll return you at the exact moment you left—or before, if you like. Please, don’t worry about time while we’re here. I just want you to be happy. Sit. Enjoy yourself.”

Uneasily, she took the chair and watched him drop into the opposite one. He smoothed the hair away from his handsome face and tipped his chin to the fragrant breeze, inhaling deeply. Rachel lifted her chalice and sipped the wine. It had a rich robust flavor.

“Tzipora’s an interesting character,” he said. He lifted his own glass and drank deeply. “I think her feet stay purple all year from tramping the grapes.”

“She didn’t seem to mind that you were a Roman.”

“Oh, she’s broad-minded. She serves all kinds, as long as they have money.”

Rachel gave him a stare as cold and piercing as a dagger’s blade. Why did her heart long to laugh, to be free with him?
Don’t. If you ever yield
—
you’re lost.
To counter the welling emotions, she filled her mind with hate, forcing herself to concentrate on all the old legends, the terrible stories of his brutality and cunning.

He seemed to sense the direction of her thoughts, for he smiled indulgently and leaned forward, patiently plucking at the splinters in the table. “How are you, Rachel?”

“Terrified. Feeling trapped.”

“By the Magistrates, or me?”

“Both.”

He nodded and expelled a breath. “I’m sorry I tried to rush you. It was wrong of me.”

“Wrong? You tried to
deceive
me. But then that’s what you’re renowned for, isn’t it?”

“Rachel, please—”

“You said this was a universe where you never existed. Does that mean all the people you deceived in mine are absent in this one?”

He evaded her eyes by gazing up at the birds soaring over the lake. “I didn’t deceive them, Rachel. But, to answer your question, no. All those people will be here. They’ll just be different. Their lives will have taken an alternate course.”

“But now that you’re here, doesn’t your presence affect them?”

“Not as long as I don’t meddle. And I guarantee you, I won’t. I like this universe exactly as it is—painfully, mundanely boring.”

Rachel frowned into her cup studying the way the shadows played over the dark red wine. “Aktariel…”

He looked up and his handsome face pinched. “I’m ready. Go ahead.”

“Let’s start with your reputation as the Deceiver.”

He nodded. The wind tousled his white sleeves, setting them to billowing. “Well, it’s a long story, but I’ve never been very subtle. Have you noticed that?”

She just glared.

He pursed his lips. “Unfortunately, you’ll probably notice it again, no matter how hard I try to correct my behavior. It’s just part of my nature. Well, anyway,
Deceiver
should be equated with
Tempter.
My fault lies in the fact that I’ve always tempted people to see the truth about God. And none too gently, I’m afraid. Epagael always made a point of seeking those people out, sending emissaries to drag them to the Throne and contradicting my story by showing them how loving he could be. Of course, they thought I’d lied to them.” He opened a hand. “Hence: Deceiver.”

“That sounds very neat and clean. Let’s discuss the legends about Sinlayzan.”

He stopped moving, seemed not even to breathe. Then he hesitantly leaned back in his chair. “All right.”

“The stories say that you deceived him into believing you were a messenger from Epagael and you led him into the desert where you brutally tormented him for forty days and forty nights, accusing him of every sin in the old books. He fought you, proclaiming his innocence, but you never relented. You tortured him until he fell to the ground, confessing every minor violation of the Law he’d ever committed. Sinlayzan, the stories say, wept and tore his hair, begging your forgiveness.” She gazed hard at Aktariel. His face had gone ashen, lines etching tightly around his eyes. In the cerulean sky behind him, clouds drifted.

“Yes,” he said, balefully quiet. “He did—beg my forgiveness.”

Rachel glowered into his miserable face. “And then? You dragged Sinlayzan back into the city of Gulgalto and brought formal criminal charges against him, citing every crime against God he’d ever committed.” Rachel gulped her wine, feeling the same hatred she had when she’d heard the story as a child. She’d asked her father so often why God didn’t just kill Aktariel so he couldn’t hurt people, but her father had never found an answer to give her. “After they convicted Sinlayzan, they blinded him and tied him to a pole, then slowly lowered and raised him above a roaring fire. Witnesses claimed they could hear his screams for two days before he died.”

Aktariel bowed his head and clenched his hands in his lap. His twisted face reminded Rachel of a long-dead zaddik whose heart had been gnawed out by the worms of doubt.

“Did you do that to Sinlayzan?”

He closed his eyes against the question. “Not… not exactly in that way. But—yes.”

“You
deceived
him. How could you? He was a good man, a great man! A prophet!”

“Yes. He was.”

Ruthlessly, she pressed, “I want to hear your defense.”

He looked up at her through empty eyes and she had the feeling he looked through her to some distant and horrifying past.
“Elahi, Elahi, metul mah shebaktani.

…
That’s why, Rachel. Because God had forsaken him.”

“What does that mean? What bearing—”

“Don’t you see? Sinlayzan lived in a sedate society which prided itself on pure rationalism. They were never hungry, never cold. His people never had to face the terrors that plagued the rest of the universe. God had given him that peace for a reason.”

“To defeat you, you mean?”

“Yes. I had to force Sinlayzan and his people to see a different reality.”

“The one
you
consider true?”

He reached over and lifted his cup to his lips, drinking slowly. A gust of wind blew across the lake, pushing up white caps, sending them undulating toward the shores. “Rachel, tell me, what lesson did you learn from Sinlayzan’s plight?”

“I learned that you were an abomination to be feared.”

His nostrils flared. “Sinlayzan’s people learned something different. They paraded by his dead body for seven days, until the horror became too much for them to bear—then they began asking terrible questions that they’d never thought of before.
They asked how there could be a God so monstrous He would allow His own greatest prophet to die because he’d violated a few of His petty Laws.
They asked where God was on the day Sinlayzan died. Was He watching? Why didn’t He save him? Why wouldn’t a just God grant a truly holy man forgiveness for such minor sins?”

Rachel’s breathing had gone shallow. A fire of righteousness flamed in Aktariel’s voice. The paper folded in her breast pocket seemed to cry out to her. She’d written down all the equations he’d told her she wouldn’t remember—written them down to try and figure out what they meant. Did they hold the key to a plot like the one he’d used on Sinlayzan?

She lifted her cup and drank her wine as she gazed out across the lake. Birds circled the water, wings flashing in the sun. “When I went through the
Mea,
Epagael told me that you’d deceived me into believing all of existence was suffering. He asked me if I’d never seen a sunset or counted the wildflowers in the deserts in the spring.”

Aktariel’s jaw hardened. “Did you tell him the beauty of a wildflower pales when your heart is broken, when your baby’s crying from hunger, when you’re watching your people die by the thousands and there’s nothing you can do to stop it? Did you tell him despair clouds every sunset?”

“No, I—I just asked Him if it was going to get worse.”

“Good question. And He said?”

“He said that Chaos becomes more intricate as time passes—which I took as a yes.”

“You should have. Except that isn’t the whole truth. Chaos will grow more intricate for a few billion years more, then it will gradually start to decline as the universe winds down.”

Rachel sat quietly, sipping her wine, watching the waves that washed the shore of the lake. “Adom told me something about that. I asked him if entropy wouldn’t resolve the problem of evil and he said no. He said that God would simply start it all over again.”

“He learned well.”

“He loved you.”

Aktariel gazed forlornly at the table, caressing the rough wood. “I know.”

“God told me something else that I found strange. He asked me if you’d paid me my thirty pieces of silver yet. Then he said you’d deceived Adom and me into—”

“Did he?” Angrily, he lifted his chalice and drained it dry. “Did you, perchance, mention to Him that you hadn’t met me yet?”

“No, I didn’t have the time. He threw me back to Horeb rather abruptly.”

She fumbled awkwardly with her chalice, thoughts jumping with angry confusion. His handsome face darkened as he watched. Slowly, he reached across the table and grasped a strand of her hair that had been twisting in the breeze. He drew it back and pressed it against his cheek. The gentle gesture left her feeling strangely hollow.

“On the ship,” she murmured, “you said we had an ancient connection. What did you mean?”

He caressed her hair a moment longer before letting it fly into the wind again. “What I meant is difficult to explain. Perhaps it would be better left for another time when we know each other—”

“Now,
Aktariel. I’m no simpleminded fool you can control through dallying and misdirection! Tell me!”

He gazed at her steadily, longing in his eyes. “All right. You have a right to know. I just thought it would be easier once you …. Never mind. I meant that our paths have twined and missed for millennia.”

“I’m thirty-four years old. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, thirty-four, in this current form. What you are now isn’t what you’ve always been.” He tenderly patted the
Mea
that made a bump beneath his white robe. “It relates to the vortex, the field of woven energy that stretches infinitely through the void. It’s the heart of everything. Oh, the strands of the tapestry often shake loose and drift away or change color, but they never cease to exist. They simply get rewoven into the fabric of the whole again. Are you following me?”

“No.”

“I mean that you and I, and all this …” he lifted his arms toward the vine-covered arbor and the sky, sweeping down to include the lake and hilly land, “are intimately interconnected. The strands that form my soul, have often also formed yours. We’re a part of each other.” He tilted his head, giving her a sad smile. “And neither of us will be whole until we’re together again.”

Her spine tingled. “I don’t—”

“I know you don’t. Believe me when I tell you, it will all be clear later. Don’t let it frighten you. None of it has to be if you don’t want it to. It’s just that our paths are so close now, so very close. But, if you decide you don’t want to help me, we’ll meet again. Maybe next time I’ll be more convincing.” He nervously fingered the hem of his sleeve. “But know this, Rachel. I’ll never be able to end the suffering in this universe without you. And I hate to think of all the misery that will ensue before our next conjunction.”

She stared breathlessly at him. “I’m the key to stopping the suffering?”

“Oh, yes. You always have been. I can’t do it alone. Though I’ve tried. But I was younger then—foolish and impatient.” He waved a hand negligently. “Epagael’s comment about the thirty pieces of silver relates to that foolishness.”

She sat quietly, hair fluttering in front of her eyes, partly obscuring Aktariel’s serious face. She didn’t know how to respond. Could any of this be true? It didn’t make sense. Why her? The sounds of the village crept up around her, men talking somewhere down the street, a woman’s husky laughter, birds chirping. Rachel finished her cup and reached for the pitcher.

“Oh, let me do that,” he said, taking it from her hands and pouring her chalice full again. His expression was pained, as though he felt her terrible confusion, and wished he could end it. “You’re very beautiful, Rachel, did you know that?”

She winced slightly. “Why did you tell me that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“I—I don’t know what to think about you, Aktariel,” she responded. In the depths of her soul, his strange words of strands and conjunction rang with a foreboding timbre of truth.

“Think whatever feels right, Rachel.” He cautiously reached across the table and tenderly touched her cheek. Instinct told her to pull back, but she didn’t. The warmth of his hand soothed something inside her.

He studied every change in her face. “What are you feeling?”

“Things I wish I weren’t.”

“I feel it, too, Rachel—that completeness when we’re together. Though I experience it more powerfully than you because my consciousness retains its continuity over millennia. I remember all our pasts.”

An involuntary shudder took possession of her. She pulled away from the gentle warmth of his hand. “Don’t … don’t say things like that. I need time to put all this together. Let’s go back to the
Hoyer.”

She pushed her chair back and started to stand, but he grasped her shoulder lightly, stopping her. “First, let’s discuss Tikkun.”

“What about it?”

His eyes took on a gleam. “Rachel, time is short. Jeremiel is planning on taking Carey Halloway down to the planet with him. You mustn’t let him.
He has to take Cole Tahn.
If he doesn’t…”

His voice trailed away as five men swaggered out of Tzipora’s and took a table a short distance from them. Their laughter rang through the vines, carrying on the wind. Ranging in age from around fifteen to perhaps fifty, they wore coarse brown homespun robes. They smelled of fish and salt. One of them, a tall man with dark brown hair falling around his shoulders and a long beard, smiled at her. Rachel smiled back, but her heart pounded. He had haunting eyes, filled with a pained emptiness.

Aktariel stood suddenly and gripped her hand, pulling her to her feet. “We must be going,” he said quietly. “Hurry.”

She stumbled around the table, trying to obey, but the hem of her cloak—his cloak—caught on a splinter protruding from the table leg.

“Wait. Wait!” she blurted, bending down to untangle it, but the tall stranger leapt up from his table before her fingers even touched the hem.

“Let me help you,” he said. With deft fingers, he unwound the tangled fabric and released it, then stood, facing her.

Rachel studied him curiously. Why did she understand his language? He had a heavy accent, but the words were clear. Aktariel’s grip on her hand tightened and she turned to look at him, but his gaze was leveled over her shoulder, fear in his eyes.

“Pardon me,” the stranger said politely to Aktariel. “Don’t I know you?”

“No,” Aktariel responded coldly.

The unknown man took a step forward, eyes bright, apparently drawn to Aktariel like a moth to flame—even more powerfully, it seemed, than Rachel herself. The stranger shook his head slightly, as though to clear his thoughts. “But I seem to know you.” He lifted a hand to grasp the brown fabric over his chest. “In here. In my heart, friend. Are you sure we haven’t—”

“I don’t know you!”
Aktariel said sharply. Then, as though in pain, he squeezed his eyes closed. His grip on her hand grew viselike, so strong that it hurt.

Rachel turned to the stranger. “I’m sorry,” she said, “we’re in a hurry. Forgive us for being rude.”

He nodded once, smiling his forgiveness, and she found her gaze riveted to his. Everything about him affected her like a strong belt of whiskey on an empty stomach. His muscular body, the simple dignity of his face, the haunting light in his dark eyes.

Behind them, one of his friends, a gray-haired man with a square jaw, pounded the table with his fist, “Ben Yosef, for heaven’s sake, we were in the middle of a discussion. Get back here! I haven’t finished taking you apart yet. Your notions about the nature of sin—”

“Are correct,” Ben Yosef said, turning halfway around to smile challengingly. “In everyone, there’s something of his fellow man. Therefore, whoever sins injures not only himself but also that part of himself which belongs to another.”

“Yes, of course
…” Aktariel murmured in soft agony.

Ben Yosef smiled curiously, nodding. “You know it, too?”

“Ridiculous!” his friend at the table shouted. “Come back here and explain. Let these Romans go!”

Ben Yosef lifted his chin to examine Aktariel again, vague recognition in his eyes, as though he could almost place where they’d met, but not quite. “Won’t you come and sit down with us? Let me buy you a pitcher of wine? I’d like to talk to you. Perhaps if we talk I’ll remember where we’ve—”

“No, no, we can’t,” Aktariel said, voice shaking. With stern deliberateness he pulled Rachel from behind the table. “Thank you, anyway.”

Ben Yosef bowed slightly. “Perhaps another time.”

“Yes, perhaps.”

Almost running, Aktariel dragged Rachel down the winding dirt path past Tzipora’s door. His dread hung like a pall around them. When they finally turned the corner leading out into the orchards, Rachel tugged against his strong grip to make him stop.

Panting, she said, “Wait. Let me catch my breath.”

“Forgive me,” he said shortly. He began pacing the red soil and she noticed how badly he shook.

“Are you all right?”

“I just need a moment.”

Rachel turned partway around, gazing back over her shoulder toward the tavern and the lake. “Who was that? He had the strangest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes, even in this universe. I was surprised by that. His name is Yeshwah ben Yosef. I didn’t expect to see him here. I’m sorry. I…” He inhaled a deep breath and struggled to calm himself. “He’s a fisherman, Rachel. That’s all. Nothing more.”

“You say that like he could have been. Why wasn’t he? Because you were never here?”

He gave her a moist-eyed look, then came forward and gently linked his arm through hers, leading her out into the fragrant orchard. Shadows mottled his face and blond curls. The scents of lake and thyme surrounded them as they walked.

“He was never tempted,” Aktariel answered softly. “He was never beaten by the hammers of unbearable fate, or burned by hatred to forge him into something stronger.”

“There was such loneliness in his eyes. I almost—”

“He chose his own path. He’s had a quiet uneventful life, living most of his thirty-seven years in his parents’ home. The only real excitement he’s had was when the woman he loved was stoned to death while he watched.”

Rachel looked at him severely. “How terrible. Didn’t he try to stop it?”

“No. In this universe, he didn’t have the strength to stand up against tradition—even though he knew that tradition was wrong.”

“What tradition? Tell me more, I want to understand—”

“I … I’d rather not discuss it, Rachel. Grant me that privacy, will you? Back there, I caught myself on the verge of taking up Matthya’s challenge about sin and that could have been disastrous. I’d rather forget the entire affair, if you don’t mind.” He lifted her hand and tenderly kissed her fingers.

Strong feelings welled inside her, revulsion, the urge to pull away from him, a tingle of excitement and longing to be closer. “You can forget it. I won’t. Tell me why I understood his language?”

“Actually, I’ve told you once before. Aramaic is very similar to Gamant. If we’d stayed longer, though, you’d have noticed substantial differences. Gamant has changed quite a lot.”

Facts began falling into place, bits coming from here and there. “Aramaic is a forerunner to Gamant?” Her heart did a triple-step. “Does that mean that these people are distant relatives?”

“Very distant. But let me get you back to the
Hoyer.
If you’ll share your company with me again, I’ll find a new tavern. One less likely to stir old and deep emotions in me. I apologize if I startled you back there.”

They climbed up through the orchard and back into the rolling brush-covered hills overlooking the village. His arm felt warm against hers, comforting. When they reached the crest of a hill, she stopped and turned back to look over the lake and fields verdant with golden grain waving beneath the caress of the wind.

“I almost hate to leave here,” she whispered. “It’s so peaceful, so beautiful.”

“Yes, I’ve missed it terribly. More than I’d realized.”

Beneath his robe, she saw the
Mea
flaring blue.

“Rachel,” he said quietly. In the flood of sunlight, his hair shimmered like rain-soaked topaz. A gust of wind swept by them, whirling red dust up to tumble through a cloudless sky. “I know you can’t trust me yet, but give me more time to show you I’m worthy of that.”

“I’ll never trust you, Aktariel. You frighten me too deeply.”

“I understand—though it’s difficult for me. Let’s get back, Rachel. We’ll have more time to talk later.”

In a strange movement, he slowly took her hand and placed it over the
Mea
beneath his robe. A vibration shivered through her. She tried to pull back.