CHAPTER 40 #3
Jericho said nothing for a long time. He didn’t look away.
When he did, his voice sounded as if it were under enough pressure to form diamonds.
“Abraham tried,” he said. “He would have been a monster if he didn’t.
So I’m going to try and get as many people down to An El and into silver-clad rooms as I can. ”
“It won’t work,” Avelyn said. “Those rooms only have silver wallpaper, it will just melt and . . .”
“Well, I’m going anyway.”
“No, me too. Of course we have to try. I’m—Jericho, I’m not disagreeing with you.”
The way Jericho looked at him then made it clear that they disagreed about everything that mattered.
Avelyn would have given anything not to have had that conversation. Usually he was good at explaining to people outside the Church why it was less awful than so many atheists thought, but with Jericho, he was a useless mess.
Under the door, there was a flare of salt light, but it wasn’t the things in the courtyard.
It was softer; an aurora flash, like in the deep mine.
At the same time, Avelyn felt the warmth of the ras, and it was bizarre, because it was distinctly different to the savage ecstacy that the others generated.
It was much gentler, just a sudden certainty that everything would be all right, someone loved him, loved him back, no matter what he thought about angels. He felt sick.
“That’s a point,” Avelyn said. “Where is he? The King, I mean. All the stories . . . when the town is in danger, he wakes.”
Jericho shook his head slightly. “He can’t fully wake without witches to believe him awake. I think that’s the whole point.”
“What?”
“Saint Hildegard had to go down into the mine to fetch him, when the French knights came. He didn’t appear by himself.”
“I . . . no, but . . . what?” said Avelyn, lost.
“The mine, An El, the miners’ songs,” Jericho said.
He sounded spacey, as though he had let go of something he had been worrying about because it had already happened and there was nothing left he could do.
“It’s all to one purpose, yes? To keep the King asleep.
Down in the deep, the King sleeps, and dreams; it’s the first thing Hreod children are taught.
That he exists: and that he’s asleep. Every time a mining shift goes down, they sing it.
Generation after generation. But Hreoda know too much, they see his dreams in the deep and they know what the images are in the salt, they know this place and their own history, they know he can wake, so what’s necessary?
An El, the firewall for emergencies, so that if Hreod belief isn’t enough to keep him asleep, there’s a monastery full of people who believe in no other god but their own.
” He sounded exhausted. “While there are humans in Hreodwater, the King sleeps, even if he’s trying to wake.
Trying is bad enough, that can kill Outsiders at An El, but to actually wake, the light that would bring—it’s all been built for that to be impossible.
Unless . . . unless, someone goes down to wake him. ”
“It’s a prison. You—have to let him out,” Avelyn said slowly. “I wonder how you make him go back in.”
“We need to do it. He will help. He always has.”
They had argued enough already. Without really meaning to, Avelyn pulled his rosary out and wound it around his hand, digging his nails into the cross. “Are we really talking about setting loose a demon so that it fights angels for us?”
“I’m talking about setting loose something that shows every sign of wanting to protect people here, against things that kill people by the tens of thousands,” Jericho said wearily.
He pulled out his cigarettes. He didn’t bother with the lighter and just conjured fire into the palm of his hand.
And then, because he was still himself: “Want one?”
“Thanks.” Avelyn swallowed. “That’s a good trick, with the . . . How did you do it?”
“I didn’t,” Jericho said. “I just stopped believing there’s no such thing as Hell and let you take over for a second.”
They sat in silence. Avelyn noticed wretchedly that the tobacco was beautiful. Jericho was watching the smoke, his head resting back against the wall.
“The salt light is like fog here,” Avelyn said at last. In here, there was a layer of it just above them, about three feet off the floor and three feet from the ceiling.
Lower than the courtyard, he thought pointlessly, and then just as pointlessly: it has something to do with surface area.
The enormous curtain walls of the castle kept it twelve feet away.
A smallish room; three feet. Jericho; inches.
“It’s everywhere. That’s why those things can’t find him.
I think it’s camouflage. I think . . . we need to walk around until we can find somewhere brighter.
The King should be wherever it’s brightest.”
Jericho nodded once. They both looked at the room’s interior door, small and arched, leading . . . somewhere, deeper into the castle.
Avelyn had to sit for a few seconds with the weight of what they were about to do crouching in his head like an anvil. Finally, he stood up, and held his hands out to help Jericho up too. “Jericho . . . did you say Saint Hildegard left records? Have you read them?”
“Yes.”
“What does she say?”