He wrapped his robe tightly around himself, then he turned to Marduk. ‘Stir up the demonic hordes that torment that imbecile Herod day and night. Infect his dreams that he may have it in his heart to kill all males under two years old. The swaddling prince shall not escape my wrath. Summon Belzoc!’ he cried. ‘Great prince of Persia, Prince Michael is his! Prepare our war chariots! Amass all regents to make war against my brothers. Astaroth!’ he screamed, ‘Alert all powers, principalities and rulers of the darkness of this world ... the great satanic princes ... Nakan and his Necromancer Kings, the Thrones of Folcador, the Warlocks of Ishtar ... Call them to assemble on the great plains of Perdition. And find my brother Michael. Where Michael is, there will be the child Christos, also!’
Lucifer hissed, ‘Then we strike!’
Chapter Eight
The Seventh Stone
Jether sat on his jacinth throne in the seventh chamber, deep in the underground crypts of the labyrinths, poring over the great blue codex. Gabriel stood across from him, studying him intently ... waiting.
‘The codex unveils Yehovah’s plan, his secret counsel prepared aeons before the advent of the Race of Men,’ Jether said, closing his eyes in reverence.
‘Yehovah prepares a place for the infant king in Egypt, in Alexandria. There is one king of Arabia; his name is Aretas. He has been chosen to bear his name. He will aid the infant in his flight.’
‘Lucifer has not seen the codices?’ Gabriel asked.
‘Lucifer was long captivated by the codices of fire. They have lain in the labyrinths for aeons before his origin,’ Jether said. ‘His soul yearned to gaze upon their pages, but no, he has not looked upon their contents.’
‘And what of Charsoc?’ Gabriel questioned. ‘He was privy to the sacred mysteries. Keeper of the sixth stone.’
‘Charsoc...’ Jether’s expression grew hard. ‘He well knows of their existence. The sixth chamber of knowledge was his abode but the chamber of the seventh flame was sealed from him.’
‘So the sacred mystery of the Messiah is safe from their polluted sorceries.’ Jether closed the book; its golden inclusions of pyrites shimmered like little stars out of the codex’s deep blue lapis casing. He looked up at Gabriel.
‘I go to retrieve the seventh stone.’
Gabriel stared at Jether, incredulous. ‘Six stones resided here within the Labyrinths,’ he whispered. ‘One went missing ... from the sixth Chamber ... at Charsoc’s defection.’ Gabriel stared at Jether intently.
‘No angelic being has ever laid eyes on the seventh stone...’
‘The seventh stone, the stone of fire, possesses all the combined power of the six. It lies beyond the ordinances of heaven.’ Jether’s eyes grew dim with wonder. ‘It lies beyond the treasuries of winds and hail, beyond the seven seas of wisdom. In the very cradle of the universe.’
Jether carefully picked up the codex and deposited it into a large crevice in the cavern wall into the great silver casket of the sacred writs.
‘It will protect the infant while he walks as one of the Race of Men, until its seal is lifted when he will face the ultimate test ... against Lucifer himself.’
Jether placed his cloak around his shoulders and clasped it with shaking fingers. ‘We have no time to waste. The child must be sealed with the seventh stone. At present he is vulnerable. Unprotected. You, Gabriel, make haste to Joseph. Instruct him of Yehovah’s plan to take the infant to Egypt. Aretas is Yehovah’s instrument to lead them to the monastery at Alexandria.’
‘I will leave at once for the land of the Race of Men,’ Gabriel said.
Jether nodded. ‘I dispatch Vesper, my warrior eagle, with a message for Michael to leave the Eastern horizons. He must journey at once to the caravan. He is the infant’s only protection from Lucifer’s evil scheming until I seal the child at Alexandria with the seventh stone of fire.’ Jether removed a small ampulla filled with myrrh and cassia oils from his robes. Gabriel knelt before him.
‘Time is against us.’ Jether anointed Gabriel’s temple, then laid his hands gently on his head in a blessing of consecration.
‘Avoid the eastern corridors,’ he whispered. ‘The Black Murmurers traverse them incessantly. I prepare for my journey.’
* * *
Balthazar had paced the small square room all night in his supplications, pleading to the God of Daniel to help Aretas, his king and his friend. He bathed Aretas’ fevered head with the rags that Mary had given him, soaked in myrrh from the caravan’s store, in the hope it would bring him back to his right mind.
He paced the room for hours, praying, pleading. Yet the ancient Balthazar sensed that Aretas was being weighed in the hands of the Omniscient. He would wait.
It had been past midnight before Aretas’ hands stopped trembling, and nearing dawn when Balthazar could first make out his first incoherent ramblings and Aretas opened his eyes again. And it was daylight before he rose from the pallet on the floor and took his first unsteady steps.
But when he finally took Balthazar’s hand in his, his hand was steady, his eyes were clear, and his face exuded a peace that Balthazar had never before seen in the proud, headstrong young king.
Aretas tried to speak, but no words would come, only tears – tears that Aretas could not stop. Tears of a king’s past bloodsheds; tears of a king’s thousand murders; tears of a king’s thousand debaucheries and treasons ... and the tears of a man’s thousand regrets. And so it was that he wept on the ancient astronomer’s arm, so that Balthazar’s robes were soaked from Aretas’ weeping.
And then, suddenly, he grew calm.
‘The babe is in great danger. We must protect Daniel’s Messiah and the holy family.’ He looked around him. Ayeshe, his ageing faithful steward, stood outside the door. ‘Ayeshe, prepare my royal guard!’ He stood up, his voice clear and strong. ‘My royal ancestors were bequeathed a monastery in Alexandria by an ancient caste of magi of the Royal House of Egypt. It will be a safe house for the infant king. We ride to Egypt!’
* * *
High up on the eastern elevation of the Black Palace, the sharp steel of broadswords glinted as Lucifer and his chief of armies, Lord Astaroth, Grand Duke of hell, thrust and parried as they did each dawn, an integral part of Lucifer’s rigorous physical regime about which he was fanatical almost to the point of narcissism. This dawn, however, he seemed strangely distracted. Astaroth’s broadsword hit Lucifer’s chest a ferocious blow, and Lucifer doubled over in agony. The strapping Astaroth laughed triumphantly and turned his back. Like lightning, Lucifer brought Astaroth gasping to the ground, his hands twisted beneath his torso in agony.
Lucifer raised his fencing mask, a smile of satisfaction on his face. ‘That is why I am king of hell’ – he threw his broadsword down on the lava floor and took a cloth from Araquiel to dry his face – ‘and you, Astaroth, are but a Duke ... albeit Grand...’
The scarred but still handsome colossus shook his blond mane, still dazed. Lucifer looked fleetingly down at the fallen warrior. At times, Astaroth’s bearing was eerily reminiscent of Michael. From the back, he could be Michael’s double. In worlds long departed, Astaroth had been commander of Michael’s finest legions, his most trusted general, Michael’s closest compatriot. Lucifer’s expression darkened at the thought of his brother. And now, Astaroth was Lucifer’s champion, commander-in-chief of Perdition’s armies. Did Astaroth have regret? Lucifer wiped his face with a silk cloth. He would never be sure.
‘Prime your legions,’ he growled. ‘We ride tomorrow at dawn.’ Astaroth bowed in reverence, striding to the far portico, then mounted his black winged stallion and rode the skies in the direction of his vast battalions’ war chariots gathering on the vast plains of Perdition.
‘Your Excellency.’
Lucifer turned. ‘I still smart from your folly, Charsoc.’ His mouth tightened.
‘I redeem myself, Your Majesty. Our demonic scholars and sorcerer sages have examined the circumstances of the infant’s birth. My archivists confrm the
ir findings.’
Charsoc moved towards Lucifer.
‘The infant was indeed born of a woman of the Race of Men. The birth was witnessed. The Black Murmurers have verified their findings. He was born one of the Race of Men, like any other in a town named Bethlehem. His mother is a Hebrew girl. A youth. The Father – one named Joseph. The possibility, however, exists that a created egg could have been implanted by Yehovah in the host.’
‘Christos incarnate...’ Lucifer rubbed his chin, deep in thought. ‘No possibility is to be excluded ... What of the egg’s conception?’
‘As is the way of the Race of Men, the infant’s conception is the result of two germ cells: the egg from the mother, the seed from the father. In the Race of Man, these share equally in the inherited mutations of the sin nature – all deriving from the fall. The egg still has to be fertilized by seed from the father, Joseph, to enable its conception and replication...’ Charsoc smiled triumphantly. ‘It is the way of all of the Race of Men.’
‘I am well versed in the biogenetic engineering of the Race of Men.’ Lucifer paced back and forth. ‘Every drop of blood the child produces is as a result of the introduction of the male sperm. The fetal and maternal blood do not come into actual contact, separated by the double layer of chrorionic epithelium.’
He turned his face to Charsoc’s, an unnatural gleam in his eyes. ‘What if they have an alternative plan – a plan to deliberately by-pass the male seed...?’ Lucifer’s expression grew dark. ‘And prevent the inherited mutations.’
‘A substitute seed?’ Charsoc frowned.
‘A seed that is not of the Race of Men.’ Lucifer stood staring out beyond Perdition’s magenta horzons. ‘One that is incorruptible...’
Charsoc turned to Lucifer, thunderstruck. Lucifer nodded.
‘Yehovah.’ Lucifer declared.
‘Sire!’ Charsoc gasped. ‘It is strictly forbidden – prohibited by the tenets of Eternal Law issuing from Yehovah himself. You know firsthand – your generals who left their first estate by having intercourse with the daughters of men. Their punishment for their transgressing of the Eternal Law was to be to be cast in eternal chains into the lowest regions of the netherworld – Tartarus.’
‘I am well aware. The pits of gloom until the Day of Judgement,’ Lucifer murmured. ‘So – if Yehovah fertilizes the created egg, He would be culpable of cohabiting with the Race of Men, just as the fallen host banished to Tartarus.’
Lucifer walked to the far side of the Eastern Wing housing Perdition’s royal aviaries, pacing restlessly up and down before hundreds of colossal gilded cages that housed his sinister scavenger scouts.
‘My brothers will have their schemes, their well formulated conspiracies but when it comes to the issue of Yehovah – He is bound to his own Eternal Law. He cannot transgress it,’ he muttered, ‘even to save the Race of Men.’
He unclasped an aviary door and gently clasped in his gloved hands a hissing vulture scavanger chick wearing a diamond collar. He caressed its black feathers soothingly, his sapphire eyes shadowed in thought.
‘Against my deeper instinct, I find myself persuaded,’ he spoke softly to himself. ‘Yehovah will have no part in the conception of the Christos seed.’ He spun around. ‘No!’ He strode over to a hellcage filled with screeching pale blue-eyed writhing bat-like creatures and grasped one by its long slimy rat tail. ‘There will be no incorruptible seed, Charsoc!’ he declared. The scavenger chick screeched deafeningly, opening its cruel curved beak, its red fangs visible. Lucifer dangled the shrieking bat creature face down. The chick crushed its head with its ferocious fangs and swallowed it with one bite.
‘Good boy, Cagrino.’ Lucifer stroked the chick’s head. ‘The Christos-infant had to have received its genetic inheritance through the father’s seed,’ Lucifer murmured. ‘He partook of the inherent sin damage present in Joseph’s seed and blood, therefore the Christos infant’s blood is defiled.’ Lucifer frowned. ‘Only one with undefiled blood, free from inherent sin damage, can exchange his soul for the souls of the Race of Men and release them from my rule.’
He placed Cagrino gently on a velvet cushion back into the gilded cage and clasped the door, deep in contemplation.
‘Yet He comes to destroy my kingdom. I sense it.’
Lucifer walked over to the Eastern terrace and stood surveying his armies. Hell’s immense and terrible militia were assembling on the smouldering volcanic wastelands of hell. ‘Why is he here on my planet?’ he whispered. ‘We must destroy him before he grows in strength.’
‘There is a way, Excellency.’ Charsoc held up a missive with the First Heaven’s seal. ‘The vulture shamans took a revelator eagle “into custody”.’ Charsoc waited. ‘It was Vespar.’
Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. ‘Vespar...,’ he echoed. He turned, immediately alert.
‘He carried this missive from Jether the Just...’ Charsoc hesitated, a sinister smile on his face. ‘It was addressed to your brother, Prince Michael, sire.’ Lucifer strode over to Charsoc and snatched the letter from his grasp, Charsoc watched intently as his liege lord examined the note.
‘Jether meets Michael and the infant king near Alexandria, with the great seal – the seventh stone,’ Lucifer murmured, a strange exhilaration in his gaze. He stared out towards the horizon, his back to Charsoc. Remembering.
‘The seventh stone’s power is indomitable. It holds in itself the combined powers of all six stones of the labyrinths. Once the infant is sealed with the stone of fire, we, the fallen, are powerless against him. Our only opportunity is...’
Charsoc moved towards Lucifer, clasping his arm with his bony fingers. ‘The breach in time, sire, before the infant reaches the monastery and Jether. His greatest vulnerability.’
Lucifer stared at him with an unnatural glint in his eye. ‘He comes to destroy my kingdom. Instead I shall destroy him. You have surpassed yourself, Charsoc.’ Lucifer held out his hand with the great damson ruby of Satan. Charsoc knelt before him and kissed his ring. ‘You are pardoned.’
‘Thank you, my lord ... my king.’ Charsoc bowed deeply.
‘The disciples of hell assemble!’ Lucifer cried. ‘Instruct Astaroth to marshal them for war without delay to the land the Race of Men call Egypt. We slay the infant king!’
* * *
The fierce, relentless desert winds blasted across the caravan, it was nearing dusk, and the party had been travelling through Egypt for what seemed an eternity. Dozens of camels, laden with frankincense, gold and treasures of the East, headed the enormous caravan across the vast desert plains, their progress impeded by raging sandstorms. Ten elegantly caparisoned white Arab stallions paced in the caravan’s centre. Mary clutched the swaddled baby tightly to her breast, her features almost hidden by her hood, her eyes resolute. A sudden chill blew over the caravan and the sky grew dark as an immense shuddering began. Mary covered the babe and held Him tightly to her.
* * *
‘Jether! Jether!’ The pressing cry filtered from the colossal balconies of the Royal Amber Chamber that hung high above Jether’s private monastic cloister quarters in the Tower of Winds, down to where Maheel and Issachar were assisting Jether in his varied preparations for his journey to the cradle of the universe.
Obadiah carried an empty silver amulet over to Jether, who threaded it deftly on a long silver chain.
‘Jether! Jether!’
Looking up, Jether and Maheel watched Xacheriel making his precarious way down the wide polished amber spiral steps of the Royal Chamber. He clung distractedly to his embroidered purple and golden taffeta toga as he descended, his curled satin slippers sliding dangerously on the steps. Dimnah clung desperately to his arm, hindering rather than aiding his progress.
Xacheriel misstepped and they both tumbled in a precarious heap of purple and gold into Jether’s private libraries, landing in an undignified sprawl on the gleaming amber floor.
‘Drat and bumble...’ Xacheriel mumbled, scrabbling for his monocle, now buried under mound
s of newly bound Annals. He glowered at the trembling Dimnah as though it were all the youngling’s fault.
Jether shook his head. He placed the silver amulet around his neck and closed the clasp, then strode over to the languishing pair, followed closely by Maheel. He stared down at Xacheriel’s enormous feet, which were crammed into a pair of tight cerulean satin slippers obviously several sizes too small. One of Xacheriel’s rare leanings to vanity.
‘You didn’t, by any sheer chance...’ Jether addressed Xacheriel, ‘...place any of your newly concocted time-travelling lubrication grease under your ceremonial slippers, did you?’
Xacheriel glared indignantly up at him. ‘I was conducting a voltage experiment in the hologram chambers.’ He scowled sheepishly. ‘My – my latest time-travelling experiment – and I wandered over into the Red Zone by mistake,’ he declared dramatically. ‘A temporary lapse of my instruments. The grease aided my hasty departure.’
Maheel shook his gentle white head. ‘You know we have cautioned you again and again not to travel on those coordinates.’ He frowned in concern. ‘It is dangerous, my dear Xacheriel. Hazardous at best. Charsoc’s spies frequent that time lock, and they are most ruthless with their methods of torture.’
‘Yes, yes...’ Xacheriel gave a dismissive wave.
‘The demon werewolves frequent the time corridors in the Red Zone,’ Jether said darkly and deliberately. Xacheriel paled momentarily much to Jether’s relief. Dimnah’s mouth dropped open, enthralled.
Jether decided to press the point while he had the advantage. ‘...As do the flesh eating Necromancer Kings...’ Jether glowered. Xacheriel’s hands trembled visibly. ‘One of the myriad advantages of not being constituted of matter.’ He consoled himself, then yanked his enormous scarlet spotted handkerchief from his inner pocket and wiped the sweat that suddenly poured from his brow. Dimnah’s mouth hung wide open in awe. Issachar strode up behind Jether.
‘You needed me?’ Jether asked Xacheriel. ‘I leave to retrieve the stone of fire.’