Chapter 64
LXIV
The darkness was all but absolute.
A single light held back the shadows, a pained and trembling wisp hovering above my open hand.
The Archangel leaned into the frail light. The lion’s face was a ghastly mask, looking down from overhead.
“This one is in my charge, Sebastian Grave of Larnaca. He cast aside the false tenets of his youth, and devoted his life to serving the Almighty. In death, he will Commune.”
The magnificent beast’s half-human paw stretched out for the glimmering light, ready to carry it away. But then it stopped, uncertain.
“Just take him, damn you,” I sobbed, lowering my face. “If this is the price you demand for allowing me to share his last moments, then I despise you. But I will not fight you.”
But another hand appeared from the darkness, covered in stinking, ragged fur. It also yearned for the beautiful light, hovering just within my reach.
“Why so coy, Michael?” came the voice of the baboon. “Take it, if the claim is yours.”
The Archangel did not reply to the mocking voice in the darkness. The silence grew long, and I feared I would go mad there, stuck in between waking and sleeping.
But then a tiny thing fell, flashing through the air, down into nothing. It sang like crystal.
A tear from the eye of the Archangel.
His breath was a rush of divine perfume over my face as he lifted the shimmering wisp gently from my palm. “I could take this one; it is my right. He followed the Sacraments, even unto his death. The pathway he chose led always to the Almighty’s door. And you are indeed in my debt. But . . .”
I drank in the hovering light with my gaze. In its flickering, sleeping form I could feel Antoine. His laugh. His curious eyes. His surprise as the trout slapped him—one-two!—with its silver tail.
“But what?” I demanded brokenly. “Take him if you must! Do it, and leave me! I cannot bear it.”
The silence was heavy.
“I . . . will not. Not unless it is also your will,” he said finally.
“There is so little mercy in the world, and there are so few worthy of it. But I would allow you to exercise that Divine gift which so uplifts mankind, and which you have so abused. I would give you choice—you, Sebastian Grave, most wretched and most wondrous of men.”
“You’re not . . . you’re not going to take him?” I asked.
“If so you will, then so I shall,” answered Michael gently. “I will take him to the Almighty and you may consider our Contract fulfilled. He will know infinite peace, infinite love, infinite—”
“Infinite shit,” interrupted the baboon.
I could not see him, but I felt his other hand alight reassuringly on my shoulder.
“He will be erased like an eddy in the ocean, and the Almighty will add another dimple to his burgeoning rump. Sebastian, this one is ours. We have earned it. How many have loved you like Antoine did? To the very end, he wanted to be with you—he chose you over the Almighty!” The glee in his voice seemed an affront to this quiet place.
“He did. He did. He loved me.” I said the words almost in disbelief. The realization was like the soothing of a long-standing ache; a balm over a place in my soul I had rubbed raw with questions.
The Archangel hesitated before speaking.
“You overstate your claim, Lariel. You held a place alongside his Lord and God, it is true. In his final moments, his heart was clouded, and so I have met you here.” He gave a rose-scented sigh.
“It says much of the fickleness of men that they die so, their love sincerely divided between their immortal God and the impermanent things of the world.”
“But you take them all anyway, Great Prince,” said the baboon. “You and Azrael and the rest of the Host. Do you not?”
“Only one love is eternal, Lariel,” said the Archangel, with patience. “All other ground is sinking sand.”
“One eternal love, and one eternal lie,” mocked the voice from the darkness.
“You have said it yourself—man was given choice, and yet you would have them all follow blindly where you lead, unto death. When the Almighty awakens, will he thank you for the millions you have hoodwinked into his sleeping maw?”
“You are a tiresome thing, Lariel. Must you always answer charity with scorn; compassion with ridicule?” The lion showed his teeth, but did not rise to the bait.
Instead, he turned to me. “Mark me, Sebastian Grave, and mark the honor you are afforded. Take him with you, if you will, and add him to the many souls who so amplify your own; he would join them as gladly as he would the faithful in Paradise.”
“Yes, Sebastian!” Another matted paw emerged from the shadows, beckoning.
Suddenly there were three, then four, then a dozen of the baboon’s hands surrounding me in the darkness, all reaching, imploring, reasoning.
“Do not consign him to the oblivion of the Almighty! Come, I will take him. You may have him with you, always. Antoine will be part of us.”
The dancing, quivering light waited. The beautiful face of the Archangel bowed in compassion. The hand of the baboon squeezed my shoulder in camaraderie.
And then I saw the long muscles of Antoine’s forearms kneading as he secured the straps of his saddle.
I saw his fingertips stained with walnut juice.
I saw him laughing madly as the timber wolf carried him off the bridge at Saint-Julien-by-the-Stream.
I saw the hollow below his jaw, where he liked to be kissed.
I saw him naked and breathing hard in the shelter of the maple, his hair tangled with leaves and his eyes full of pleasure and wonder.
“Can you give him what was taken, Michael?” I asked. “Give him back the life he deserved? Without . . . without me, without any of us, I don’t care. Can he live again?”
The Lion of Judah was silent a moment. Then he shook his head gravely. “You know that is not within my power. Only the Almighty has ever dared such a miracle, and the world was changed forever.”
“Then the choice is not mine,” I said. Tenderly, I scooped the light from his paw. “Or yours.”
“Sebastian, wait! Think on it!” The baboon babbled desperately in my ear. “Do not—NO!”
With a cry like dying, I cast Antoine’s anima far out into the infinite blackness.
It blazed liked a meteor for only a moment, and then it fell apart, dissolving into bright mist. Whatever Antoine had been, whatever delicate energetic configuration and spiritual circuitry had made the man he was, sublimed in an instant.
He would return to the eternal cycle of matter and energy, dispersed to become a million new children of Creation.
And he was lost to me forever.
“So mercy is answered. Your debt stands,” intoned the Archangel. “Say Grace.”