“Fortunately, however, the question doesn’t arise. I just wanted to reassure you enough so you’d listen to the real case. It may be that your daughter was removed in answer to my curse. That would account for the displeasure of my superiors with me. But if so, she’s under angelic care.”
“Prove it,” I challenged.
“I can try. Again, I’m breaking the rules, especially since I’m under penance and you’re an unbeliever. Still, I can try to summon an angel.” He smiled timidly at me. “Who knows? If you recant, your girl could be restored to you on the spot. A man of your gifts and energy would make a wonderful convert. Conceivably that’s been God’s purpose right along.” ‘
I didn’t like the idea of a Calling. In fact, I was bloody well chilled by it. Marmiadon might think the creature that arrived was from Heaven. I didn’t. But I was prepared to dace worse than devils on this trip. “Go ahead.”
He turned his Bible to another passage I didn’t recognize. Kneeling, he started to chant, a high‑pitched rise and fall which sawed at my nerves.
A wind blew down the tunnel. The lights didn’t go out, but a dimness came over my eyes, deepening each second, as if I were dying, until I stood alone in a whistling dark. And the night was infinite and eternal; and the fear left me, but in its place there fell the suddenly remembered absolute despair. Yet never had I known a grief like this‑not the three times before, not when Valeria was taken, not when my mother died‑for now I had reached in the body the final end of every hope and looked upon the ultimate emptiness of all things; love, joy, honor were less than as they had never been, and I stood hollow as the only existence in hollow creation.
Far, far away a light was kindled. It moved toward. me, a spark, a star, a sun. I looked upon the vast mask of a face, into the lifeless eyes; and the measured voice beat through me:
“The hour is here. Despite the afreet, the salamander, the incubus, and mortal man, your destiny has endured, Steven. It was not my will or my planning. I foresaw you would be among my keenest enemies in this cycle of the world, the danger that you would wreck my newest great enterprise. But I could not know what would bring you to confront my works: the thoughtless call of one fool, the rash obedience of another. Now you would seek to storm my inner keep.
“Be afraid, Steven. I may not touch you myself, buts I have mightier agents to send than those you met before. If you go further against me, you go to your destruction. Return home; accept your loss as humbly as befits a son of Adam; beget other children, cease meddling in public matters, attend solely to what is your own. Then you shall have pleasure and wealth, and success in abundance, and your days shall be long in the land. But this is if you make your peace with me. If not, you will be brought down, and likewise those you care for. Fear me.”
The sight, the sound, the blindness ended. I sagged, wet and a‑reek with sweat looking stupidly at Marmiadon in the candlelight. He beamed and rubbed his hands. I could scarcely comprehend him:
“There! Wasn’t I right? Aren’t you glad? Wasn’t he glorious? I’d be down on my knees if I were you, praising God for His mercy.”
“Hu‑u‑uh?” dragged out of me.
“The angel, the angel!”
I shook myself, as if I’d come from wild waters that nearly drowned me. My heart was still drained. The world felt remote, fragile. But my brain functioned, in a mechanical fashion. It made my lips move. “I could have seen a different aspect of the being. What happened to you?”
“The crowned head, the shining wings,” he crooned. “Your child is safe. She will be given back to you when your penitence is complete. And because of having been among the blessed in her mortal life, she will become a saint of the true Church.”