TCE

639 Anshar may have been free of ice, yet it remained bitterly cold, much more so than Lilith and Samael were prepared to endure with the raiment they presently wore.

640 Lilith broke into a sprint toward Michael’s home across the stony plain and Samael followed at the same pace. So Lord Samael was come to the stone dwelling of Michael for the first time. There was much glass, yet natural heating from geothermal features ensured it remained comfortably warm indoors.

641 Leliel, just four years of age, touched the back of Samael’s hand to her forehead.

642 “Leliel!” said Michael,sharply. “That is Lord Samael. Show us how you greet a seraph.”

643 Leliel released Samael’s hand as though it had burned her own and moved back a few steps. Then she sank to one knee and all the while kept her eyes on the floor.

644 “Much better, Leliel.” Lilith picked Leliel up long enough to kiss har. “Wait for me in the kitchen, baby doll.”

645 Samael watched her leave, then caught Michael’s eye. “Your daughter.”

646 “Sha knew who you were,” said Michael after embracing Lilith for a kiss of his own, “just not the proper etiquette. “Please, Samael, be seated wherever you wish. We have things to discuss while Lilith prepares what might be the last decent meal you and I will both eat for many days.”

647 Samael seemed puzzled. “What do you mean last decent meal?”

648 “No doubt you can confirm how the experience captures the psyche of an eloah like no other. Do you not see that will be a big problem in our case? What do you think will happen to our world-dwller bodies, left unattended, while we are fully occupied with our lovemaking as stars?”

649 That wiped the smile off Samael’s face. he said, “I see you have given it more thought. I trust you have arranged things so we do not lose our living avatars.”

650 “Yes, and isn’t it a good thing you have ended the war to the satisfaction of Lilith? Your life will literally be in her hands.”

651 “And I suppose you will stipulate that your soon-to-be daughter should maintain a presence here in Kemen, so that you might connect two locations with a fold-space segment.”

“Yes, that is the brideprice demanded of you, but I know you cannot give something with one hand without taking something with the other. I was reminded of that in your dealings with Lilith. So state your limitations on my fold-doors and we will move forward.”

652 Samael said, “You and our future daughter, our very near-future daughter, are hereafter authorized to maintain avatars in Kemen, yet you may not open a fold-door east of the Wall of God nor west of the bog that marks the frontier between Rammon and Adan.”

653 “I presume those lines extend north and south all the way to the poles.”

654 Samael nodded, then he said with a smirk, “Yes, but before you ask, I will say this little land called Anshar that you think you own, yet that lies more or less due north of my capital, is not out of bounds. You may still reach this little house. I would not want to my put my lady out of the mood for love.

655 "But as surety against your long-range goal of teaching these creatures to reach the stars I insist on bringing my own watchers into your system.”

656 “I will not have the Eyes of Samael wandering Earth and sabotaging human history. But I will give you fold-door access to reach any object orbiting on an ellipse which is at least four times bigger on the long axis than is the Earth’s own ellipse.

657 "By all means, Samael,his let your agents swarm through my system, but they must never draw nearer to Earth than its satellite.”

658 When living stars mate the male literally extends some of his living substance across the shortcut in space-time that bypasses the parsecs of real space separating him from the female. The sensation is ecstatic beyond all reason but it is only available to him by mating.

659 For female elohim the pleasure comes from her living substance being compressed to accommodate the male, which culminates when their living star-stuff merges to form a third individual.

660 But mating is not the sole means of obtaining this compression. Female elohim could masturbate while males could not. Evolution drove this adaption. The female could postpone having intercourse until she found the most suitable mate.

661 Males, in a perpetual state of frustration, were motivated to make themselves suitable. Elyon had never resorted to this while in union with Michael, since it captured her attention to the exclusion of attending to the needs of a body.

662 Now it was safe. The organized living nuclear matter that was Elyon piled up in density, leaving a large area empty in the thin layer of the core where she existed. At the same time Samael pushed into her, unaware of the sabotage.

663 There was only one cycle of Samael pushing inside for three weeks, culminating in the germination of his eloah daughter Bat-El in the habitable layer of Sol that had been emptied out by Elyon by pleasuring herself first.

664 Michael, who went into it prepared, was the first to come back to hymself in Anshar. Far away his half of the core of Sol was beginning to transform permanently into male and that brought an abrupt end to the mating.

665 Lilith helped Michael remove all the catheters, tubes, and needles, get dressed, then gave him the first hot, solid food he had taken in three weeks.

666 He was pleased to find he suffered no bedsores. Lilith and Leliel had done well in repositioning his body during the coma.

667 When Samael awoke hours later he would find his garments cleaned and folded neatly by his bed, lukewarm chicken, rice, and greens, plus the ground still warm outside where Michael, Lilith, and Leliel had made their escape to the land of Rammon by avatar.

--

Scissors, paper, rock, two out of three times, and Deputy Bob Lurz had to be the one to climb into the garbage truck at the place where 6th made a little jog north and 7th took its place. Paul Bergin lived on N Street and 6th. Deputy Bill Holsinger stayed out of sight and drove down to L and 7th to pick Bob up when he was done.

The fellow driving the truck and the fellow dumping the cans were duly deputized. At O street Bob was told that Paul Bergin was making a last minute addition of a grocery bag to the can already out on the street. Two more pickups and Bob had this grocery bag in his hands.

"Jesus Christ, Bob, you reek!" gasped Bill when his partner piled into the truck with the evidence.

"All in the line of duty. Look what we got." He let Bill peek inside at a wooden knife block. The handles were the same as the murder weapon. One blade was missing.

"So it's Deacon Paul Bergin for sure," said Deputy Bill. "I'm with the sheriff on this one. When the perpetrators make catching them this easy it's no fun at all."

"There should be nothing fun about any of this, Bill," his partner admonished. "Kimberly Zinter is dead."

At the sheriff’s station the deputies, Roddy Walker, and even Special Agent Mark Felt donned gloves before the knife holder was removed from the grocery bag. Photographs were taken. One blade was removed and photographed next to the tagged murder weapon for comparison. The knife handles were not identical, but that was to be expected in a hand-crafted set. Everything was dusted for fingerprints and photographed as well. Felt began to interrogate the deputies as though he were some pricey city lawyer Bergin might retain.

“Are you sure this came from Mr. Bergin’s house, Deputy?”

“I counted four stops after I got in the truck. There are three houses between the Bergin place and where I crawled inside.”

“But did you actually see that you were in front of his house?”

“No, Agent Felt. I was inside the garbage truck.”

Deputy Bill shook his head when Felt glanced at him. He had also been well out of sight. “But the driver of the garbage truck and the pick-up man both said they saw Paul Bergin throw this bag in his trash can just before they picked it up,” he said.

When Agent Felt absorbed all this he looked simultaneously pleased and troubled. “Sheriff Walker, I’m pleasantly surprised by what you’ve managed to get so far, but I wonder if you do see the glaring hole in our case?”

Walker nodded. “I do, Special Agent Felt.”

“I can give you their names if you wish, Agent Felt,” said Bill “The trash men were deputized for this operation just like the Sheriff told us to do. That gives them legal standing. ”

“It also gives them elevated responsibility, Bill,” said Roddy, “and I hope you explained that to them when you swore them in.”

Deputy Bob said, “If it’s any help, right after the Bergin stop the guy driving the truck immediately took me around the corner and three blocks away to meet up with Bill out of sight. They knew what we were after. This bag came from the Bergin house, no doubt about it.”

That made Felt relax a bit. He said, “I think we’re ready to see Judge Porter. We might have just enough now to fingerprint both Mr. and Mrs. Bergin.”

Sheriff Walker approached a large cork board to look at photographs pinned thereupon. “And if his boots and tires match what we posted here, Special Agent Felt, then we will have a little bit more than just enough.’

Felt nodded with obvious pleasure. But the homicide investigation experienced the first headwinds from Judge Karl Porter when he declined to allow the sheriff to bring the Bergins to the station for fingerprints or Robyn for questioning. The judge mused, aloud, that the case was becoming a fishing expedition. If Special Agent Mark Felt was disappointed it didn’t show. “Let’s go visit the Bergin place anyway,” he told the Sheriff outside the courthouse. “I want to see if I can shake something loose.”

“Do you want Bob and Bill to tag along?”

“No, I need them to make a phone call. Tell your men to get the number of Bergin’s plates, then have them go up to the temple and take photographs of his tire treads.”

“Oh, we already have Bergin’s plate number on file,” Roddy said. “He doesn’t think the wartime speed limit of 35 miles per hour applies to church deacons.”

Agent Felt smiled in admiration. “Sheriff, this is one of the smallest towns I’ve ever seen, but the way you run your department is a G-man’s dream.”

When they arrived at Bergin’s home Mark Felt took copious notes beginning with the fact that no vehicle was present. And Felt thought the most striking thing about the woman who answered the door was how singularly unattractive she was. If she hadn’t worn a dress Mark might have thought Deacon Paul himself was standing there. He cleared his throat and identified himself and Sheriff Walker.

“Yes?” she snapped. “How may I help you?”

“Is Mr. Bergin at home?” She shook her head. “Paul works at the Temple. I’m his wife Ruth.”

Perhaps you can help after all, Mrs. Bergin. It seems a young woman was attacked with a knife recently.”

“Good God, is she well?”

“It’s hard to say at this point,” said Felt. ‘What I can tell you is that we think we found the knife that was used in the attack. It has a unique wooden handle. It’s hand-crafted, you see. Only a very few sets were sold, Ruth, and we think you might have one of them.”

Ruth gasped. “You can’t think that I, that Paul did this.”

“Not at all ma’am. A criminal investigation is much like tracing out every rabbit trail even when they just come to a dead end. If you show us your own kitchen knife set then the sheriff and I will back out of this rabbit trail and be on our way.”

“We never bought our knife block,” Ruth said. ‘It was made by Owen Bergin when Headwater was first settled and has passed down from father to son ever since.”

Felt made a note of that on his pad, then broke into a smile. He said, “You see, Sheriff? I knew we must be wasting our time.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” said Sheriff Walker, “but we had to be sure. Still, do you mind if we take one little peek at what you do have?”

Mark Felt admired how Roddy caught his little game and slid right into his role without clashing gears. And Ruth went inside to fetch it.

The fact that Ruth didn’t know she was missing her knife set was recorded in Felt’s notebook. As he expected, she returned empty-handed and Felt recorded that too, not so much that he didn’t know it, but for the affidavit he would have the sheriff type up for Judge Porter.

“I don’t understand,” Ruth said. “I used a knife from the block just this morning when I made breakfast for Paul and the children, but now everything is gone.”

“Oh no, Ruth, that’s just what I didn’t want to hear,” Roddy said “But I’m sure there’s a good explanation.”

“Ruth, do you mind if the sheriff and I come in so all the heat in your house doesn’t escape through the front door?”

She thought about that for longer than Felt liked but in the end Ruth nodded and opened her screen door to let them in. She asked them to sit on a couch. Roddy thought Ruth’s home was very similar to Kim Zinter’s place in size and design but different in almost every other way. There were no decorations at all, no paintings, no rugs, not even a single knick-knack. Only two books were in sight, a Bible and the Green Book.

There was another difference: when he visited Robyn she was playing music, but here it was silent. No record collection and no Victrola to play them on. Roddy marvelled how religious folk were so keen on a life in the hereafter when their life here on Earth was so miserable, by choice.

“I see you don’t have a radio, Mrs. Bergin.”

“There’s only one station in town, Sheriff, and more often than not they play race records. Paul says that’s the devil’s own music. Why, even the children in the Temple high school are playing that garbage if you can imagine.”

“The girl who was attacked sang in the Temple school band,” revealed Felt. “Do you know somebody who might have stabbed her because she sang race music?”

Ruth’s eyes said yes but she shook her head no.

“It was very generous of you to allow us to come indoors, Ruth,” he said. “I have no right to ask this of you, and don’t believe for an instant that we really think you attacked the girl, but if I could just get one print of your thumb I could compare it to what we found on the knife and completely eliminate you as a suspect in this case.”

The sheriff had to restrain himself from whistling in admiration at Agent Felt’s performance, it was so beautifully done. Ruth would be thinking of self-preservation in the face of her own husband framing her for the crime. And Roddy thought that wasn’t far from the truth.

“Will you have to take me down to the station for a thumbprint?”

“Not at all,” said Felt, and he used his pencil to make a thick dark spot on a page in his notebook. “Are you right or left handed?”

“Right, of course,” Ruth said, as though southpaws were somehow cursed by God.

And so with Ruth Bergin fully and freely willing, Special Agent Mark Felt rubbed her right thumb in the spot of graphite, then flipped to a fresh page in his notebook and rolled her thumb across it to get a perfect print. He dared not close the book until it was lacquered.

“This schoolgirl who was attacked, she was Erik Zinter’s kid, wasn’t she?”

Felt stood up from the couch still holding his notebook carefully open. He said, “I’ve been careful not to say too much and upset you, Mrs. Bergin.”

“I suppose it couldn’t be helped,” she sniffed.

Sheriff Walker scrambled to his feet at that remark and politely asked Ruth what she meant by making it.

She said, “I think only a believer would fully understand me, but Erik was putting our most holy relic to common purposes. Digging coal! Our God is a sovereign God.”

Roddy made eye contact with Agent Felt, who raised his notebook a bit and shrugged. He already had what he came for. Roddy said, “So God wasn’t content to take Erik’s life for what he did? He had to take the life of his daughter as well?”

Ruth was shocked. “She’s dead?”

“Yes, Ruth, she’s dead. What a terrible thing for Clara Zinter, don’t you think, losing her entire family? But whoever did it has a death wish. He left the body draped across three states and elevated it to a federal case. It was already the Chair for the killer if I caught him.” Walker repeated that last part. “If I caught him.”

“But the Bureau always, always gets its man,” Felt finished.

Judge Karl Porter was directly descended from Alfred and Caroline Porter, who were part of the first wagon train to set down roots in Headwater. In any other town of the West, where family trees actually fork, this would be as prestigious as tracing one’s family back to the Mayflower.

From his corner office on the second floor of the courthouse Judge Porter could look down upon his ancestral family home on the north bank of the river. Most of the land of the homestead had long been sold off for the homes and apartments of the northwest quadrant of town.

The courthouse was five blocks away from the sheriff’s office on the same island in the Squaw River that formed the heart of the town. The sheriff was in Porter’s chambers again, making another run at Paul Bergin, and this time, Porter suspected, he just might get him.

The judge glanced once more at the Affidavit in Support of Arrest Warrant submitted by Sheriff Walker. On a personal level he didn’t like where this investigation was going. Until the schism Paul had been the deacon of the Church and the Bergins, just like the Porters, were Headwater Old Guard.

The Church of Green Dome had secrets, the judge well knew. Something happened last summer to bring three agents of the Bureau sniffing around. After a few weeks they had abandoned their trailer outside of town but the death of this girl brought them back.

Special Agent Mark Felt was seated at the table next to the sheriff. The judge had already learned, the last time these two men appeared before him, that Felt was guiding the case on behalf of the FBI. Knowing that, he asked Agent Felt why his name did not appear on the Affidavit.

“Your Honor, when I assumed overall direction of the case for the Bureau the Sheriff had already acquired a quantity of evidence. The Affidavit before you summarizes the entire case to this point and only Sheriff Walker could testify as to how all the facts were obtained.”

“And do you foresee a time when the Bureau will no longer be acting in cooperation with local law enforcement here in Headwater?”

“Certainly, Your Honor. After they are identified and apprehended the individual or individuals responsible for the crime will likely be transported for arraignment in Kansas City.”

Judge Porter said, “Then with the view of hastening that blessed day please lay out your evidence.”

Mark Felt nodded at the sheriff. Roddy opened a briefcase and removed a knife in a cellophane bag, a page from Felt’s notebook, and two closeup photographs of these. The sheriff said, “Your Honor, Mrs. Ruth Bergin, the wife of Paul Bergin, was kind enough to allow Special Agent Felt to take an impression of her right thumb and as you can see, it perfectly matches the single thumbprint we dusted on the knife found at the crime scene.”

“What in the name of God would make Mrs. Bergin give you her thumbprint, Sheriff, and why isn’t she named as a suspect?”

“I think, Your Honor, the answer to both questions is the same. She was shocked to find her set of kitchen knives had gone missing on the morning of garbage day.”

Judge Porter growled while he chewed on that item for a moment. Yes, the sheriff, or Agent Felt, or both, would have led Mrs. Bergin to think her own husband was framing her for murder. Still, what’s done is done, and it was legally airtight. “What else do you have?”

The sheriff reached into his briefcase and removed two more photographs. ‘Your Honor, Paul Bergin’s vehicle is parked at the Temple and is under surveillance by my deputies. You can see here that his tire tread matches the tracks we found at the scene of the homicide.”

“The judge looked at the photographs and remembered that under wartime rationing Paul Bergin could only own four tires plus one spare. Karl realized the sheriff did have enough to justify an arrest warrant. He could hardly refuse after signing one for the out-of-towner, Robyn Zinter, on much less.”

“The court finds probable cause to believe a felony offense, to wit, the unlawful killing of Kimberly Zinter with malice aforethought, has been committed. The arrest of Mr. Paul Bergin at any hour of day or night is so ordered.”

Karl Porter’s law clerk began typing it up.

“Special Agent Felt, will it be sufficient to confine your search for more evidence of the crime to the home of Paul Bergin?”

Felt replied, ‘No, Your Honor. If Mr. Bergin was a layman his house would have been enough. But as a member of the Church leadership he has physical access to the whole Temple.’

“Very well, these are the rules of the People for your search: Let’s assume Bergin is hiding evidence in the Temple. When you make the arrest you will obtain his keys. Any door that is locked, but his keys can open, you may enter and search.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. The Bureau accepts this limitation on the search.”

“Proceed with caution, Agent Felt,” he said. “The Church of Green Dome is the very lifeblood of Headwater, and the Church was already going through its most difficult passage in nearly eighty years before this happened.”

“The words of Dr. Wahkan and Sheriff Walker have already sensitized me to the plight of the Church, Your Honor,” said Felt, “and I will indeed take great care. But if those troubles somehow led to the killing of Kimberly Zinter, and the perpetrator turns out to be a member of the local clergy, I don’t know how even more trauma can be avoided.”

Special Agent in Charge Clyde Tolson was waiting in the second-floor courtroom with Special Agent Sullivan when the sheriff and Felt emerged from the judge’s chambers. “It’s not carte blanche,” said Felt when he handed Tolson the documents, “but it’s the best we could do.”

When Tolson finished reading he didn’t seem to be too upset by the limitations imposed by Judge Porter. He said, “Edgar knew what he was doing when he put you on the case. For six months we couldn’t get one foot in the Temple door.”

Mark Felt hoped he only heard that wrong. It sounded like Tolson didn’t give two floating turds for the dead girl.

--

668 Before the Deluge there was the Really Big River, which was born on the frozen flanks of Mt. Tureth. Dropping six vertical miles, it twisted its way east between the Northern and Southern Ice, which were then five hundred miles apart.

669 When Great Deluge deepened the planet’s ongoing climax ice age the northern and southern glacial sheets moved to within three hundred miles of each other, and in three places the ice was joined. The world river was no more.

670 West of the city of Rumbek the land of Magodon rose to become the very roof of Kemen and here was the most extensive merger of the two ice caps. Glacier-carved U-shaped valleys delved far into the mountains but only a single way existed to skirt Mt. Tureth and pass beyond.

671 Pairs of large wooden cages dangling from ropes and pulleys carried travelers and freight over a staircase of twenty-four cliffs, each one ranging from sixty-five to three hundred feet. Every haul that went up was balanced by a similar haul that went down.

672 South of Mt. Tureth two dozen scattered cliffs merged into a fearsome sheer rock wall nineteen thousand feet high that stretched clear to the southern ice pack. This was the Wall of God, festooned with innumerable cataracts, and there was not its like anywhere else in Kemen or on the Earth.

673 Thalury was diminished from its antediluvian majesty yet it was still the greatest sea in Kemen. A bay reached all the way to the foot of the Wall of God, dividing the land of Sastrom from Haaretz to the south.

674 At the base of the Wall of God was a jumble of talus with some boulders as large as a house. These gave way to foothills that dropped another mile before reaching the flats.

675 The ice bridge east of Adan was the thinnest of the three, and given few more thousands of years it would be the first to melt, but it was four hundred leagues across and not smooth by any means. The earliest travelers despaired of reaching the end and turned back.

676 Later travelers who did cross the ice found themselves wading through a swampy tulgey wood that may have run for another four hundred leagues for all anyone knew, since no one found the one trickle emerging from the vast bog that was the ultimate source of the River Loenna.

677 Long before some of the humans of Kemen were changed by Keter to become angels they migrated west, beating back the lethal native flora as they founded Salem and points beyond. Ultimately they reached a fertile land they called Rammon and went no further.

678 In Rammon far from any interference from Keter the Gold Beards of the House of Sala developed an enduring culture unique in Kemen based on the Ringhouse, a single common wooden dwelling of about eighty people at the center of a small circle of cultivated fields.

679 Along the rim a dozen footpaths entered the forest, but only a few of these trails led to another Ringhouse five or so leagues away. The rest petered out to game trails or (more likely) dead-ended in a grove of lethal whipping trees.

680 When girls were of age they were married to a fellow in a neighboring Ringhouse. Most people were born, lived, and died without seeing more than a dozen or so Ringhousen, yet it was very peaceful. No Adanite invaders would cross the ice and the swamp for such meager loot.

681 What combat, such as it was, came against Saharad, the sole city in Rammon, in periodic raids from the adjoining land of Gerazan by the Red Beards of House Bellon.

682 From time to time Samael appeared to both sides with the latest Adanite weaponry and left with their gold. And yet in the main the Gold Beards of Family Sala embraced Michael’s revelations of Chokhmah to an extent that rivaled the angels of Salem.

683 To a man they were the proud subjects of a powerful queen, Aurra Firegem, whose very existence would be absolutely unthinkable to latter-day Adanites.

684 When the avatar of Chokhmah made landfall nigh to Saharad it did not inspire the fear that once overcame Salem, for this was the third such appearance. The first had been with Michael alone. On the second occasion Lilith had joined him.

685 Now Leliel was present, being just two years of age. Queen Firegem cancelled what audience her courtiers had prepared for that day to receive instead her unannounced visitors.

686 With her husband Duke Evandr the two made an imposing pair, but the queen was not beautiful in the eyes of many men, as she was broad of face and frame.

687 Upon har introduction Leliel had sufficient discipline to render the Queen a parody of court etiquette before being allowed to roam free, yet neither Aurra nor Evandr were offended, so taken were they with the lovely child. But Aurra guessed that what news Michael and Lilith brought to her would be bad.

688 “Your Majesty,” Lilith began with a husk in har voice, and even as sha spoke sha was surprised at the depth of har emotion two months after the event. “Your Majesty, my brother King Melchizedek is dead, and even now the city of Salem is occupied by the army.

689 "The people embraced Michael as a teacher, even as your people have done here in Rammon. Lord Samael would not allow that to continue unchallenged. My brother saw how a siege was immanent. He deemed that no edict Samael might impose upon the angels of the city could be worse than their starvation, so he went to the enemy camp. Michael assures me hy died quickly and cleanly.”

690 The Queen glanced then at Michael. “And what befall Salem after that, do you know?”

691 “Your Majesty, Samael appointed a governor over the city who levies a heavy tax. The Eyes of Samael multiply almost as fast as do their mournful ordinances and road checkpoints, and none may depart.

692 "And yet for all that, Your Majesty, Samael has utterly failed, because a daughter and a granddaughter of King Melchiyahu remain alive, and both have slipped away from hyz grasp. I now hold Lilith to be a Cherub and the Queen of Salem in exile.”

693 Duke Evandr Firegem said, “Are you seeking asylum for Queen Lilith, your daughter, and yourself, Lord Michael? If so you are entirely welcome, indeed we are eager to have you live here in Saharad, but if the city is not to your liking you may live anywhere in Rammon.

694 Know that we humans of Kemen hold ourselves to be exiles also, and Elyon to be our only God. We of Rammon will never turn away any angel, nephil, or human who embraces her.”

695 “For that I thank you and Queen Aurra, Sire,” said Michael, “and in fact I deem Samael considers Rammon to be out of reach. Lilith has covenanted to put the lands of the Brown Beards out of his grasp as well, and the dragon has also been taken out of play, but this only means Samael will intensify his old game of setting the other houses of Kemen one against another.

696 For this reason I would ask you to entertain the idea, when the time is ripe, of a council drawing together all the noble houses of our world, with a union of our kingdoms, in some form yet to be determined, as the ultimate aim.”

697 “To the best of my knowledge,” said the queen, “such a union has never been proposed in our long history. And Samael will stop at nothing to keep it from coming to be.”

698 “All the more reason to make the attempt, Your Majesty. I came before you to introduce the idea, and more, if you deem it to be worthy, to call upon what influence you might have over King Uriel to also attend the council. I fear that Queen Lilith’s solution to the problem of Demonstroke has left the king with little love for Adanites generally, Salemite in origin or no.”

--

“Ruth asked me why the knife block she used this morning was gone,” Paul Bergin told Klaus at the temple. “I told her I didn’t know anything about it. The knife block is at the landfill and no one will ever find it, but Ruth said she let this FBI fellow named Mark Felt take her fingerprints, and that makes me wish the knife was done away with like the clothes and other stuff.”

“What’s done is done,” Klaus said. “That was the murder weapon and I didn’t know how soon I could get rid of it. But don’t worry, Paul. Even if they found the knife and trace it to Ruth, so what? She had no motive to kill the girl. She probably doesn’t even know her.”

But Paul wasn’t so easily soothed. “What if the sheriff and this Agent Felt come here next?”

“Now, I think, is a good time for both of us to be out in Headwater tending to the flock.”

Outside of the temple they looked down at the parking lot and saw three marked law enforcement vehicles and a rental. They tried to go back inside but Sheriff Walker and Special Agent Mark Felt were already waiting for them on either side of the front door. Roddy said, “Paul Bergin, you are under arrest for the murder of Kimberly Zinter. Hold out your right arm.” Paul was too shocked to move, so Roddy grabbed his jacket sleeve, cuffed his bare wrist, then made Paul face one of the doors. After both arms were cuffed behind Paul’s back Roddy patted him down, removed his wallet, and unlatched the carabiner key chain looped to his belt. He handed both of these to Felt, then handed Paul himself off to his deputies who were coming up the flight of stairs leading to the temple. “Fingerprints, new home, not a word, boys.”

The deputies took Bergin away just as Special Agent-in-Charge Tolson arrived on the with Agent Sullivan in tow. Sheriff Walker introduced Hansen to Felt as the Apostle of the Church. Hansen was indignant. “Prophet of the Church, if you please.”

“I need to talk to you,” said Felt, “but first, we have a court order to search the Temple for evidence pertaining to the murder of Kimberly Zinter.”

Klaus demanded to see the order and Tolson let him read it. Then he said, “I will hold you fellows to the absolute letter of this search warrant,” he said. “You may search only in the rooms which are locked with those keys.”

Gabriel Shybear was waiting for them just inside. “Gabriel, what are you doing here today of all days?” Roddy asked.

“I’m here every day now, Sheriff. There’s been a reshuffling. I hold a very important office in the Church: Deacon. Mr. Hansen is the Prophet now, and Paul Bergin is the Apostle.”

Sheriff Roddy Walker caught up on all the required introductions. “Mr. Klaus Hansen, Mr. Gabriel Shybear, this is Special Agent in Charge Clyde Tolson, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and with him today are Special Agents Mark Felt and Bill Sullivan.”

M1

Mark Felt said, “Gabriel, would you be so kind as to take the Sheriff through your temple so he can make a note of all the doors that are locked before we get started.”

All of the doors except one along the wide carpeted foyer of A Wing were locked. While Gabriel and the Sheriff ranged through the rest of the temple, the Bureau agents went through Paul’s office like a tornado but yielded nothing. The door to Gabriel’s office was wide open, so the agents could not enter there. They moved to the hallway that ran around the circumference of the Sanctuary and did a third of a turn to the right, checking some of the doors in Roddy’s notes, before entering C Wing. The rooms that Gabriel and Dory had cleaned were not locked.

“What’s behind that door?”

“That’s a dry hole, Agent Sullivan,” said Gabriel. “It’s just my broom closet.” Nevertheless, Special Agent Felt found the appropriate key. Like Gabriel said, there was nothing inside but cleaning supplies. After that the sheriff and the three Bureau agents headed down the wide carpeted stairs to the basement cafeteria. There wasn’t much of interest to the FBI downstairs, which was open and airy, even in the kitchen, but the supply room on the north wall was locked and everyone gravitated to there.

“Is this the room from your report?” Tolson asked Special Agent Bill.

“Mecca,” Sullivan said.

Mecca turned out to have the same broken piano, hymnals, mason jars, and stacks of Green Dome coloring books that Gabriel had seen before when he took Robyn and Hunky and Dory into the supply room.

Bill Sullivan pointed at the plywood board at the back wall. “Flashlights, gentlemen.” The board was moved aside, and presently the three G-men were standing around the rock cairn that formed the uttermost summit of Green Dome.

Felt didn’t like how the murder investigation had suddenly veered into an area where he hadn’t been briefed. Tolson’s agenda was intruding now. Stones were haphazardly torn away from the cairn and Tolson went inside. Then Felt heard Tolson utter an oath that was most unbecoming of an FBI agent, followed by, “There’s nothing here!” After the search under the altar fell through SAiC Tolson left the temple and took Sullivan with him. Special Agent Mark Felt was fine with that. Conflicting agendas were never productive. That left only the B Wing of the temple to search. It was set up as a historical museum, although under the new management of Prophet Hansen the Kuwapi contribution to the Church of Green Dome had been stripped out. Some of the more valuable pieces were missing entirely. But something about B Wing stayed with Mark Felt for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was the variety of genuine articles dating back to the Civil War. Perhaps something in the way Sheriff Walker explained what he was looking at. Agent Felt found the experience profoundly immersive.

After that Felt found Klaus Hansen’s office, which was also in B Wing, and he walked right in. M2

This prompted an angry objection from Hansen. “You’re in violation of the judge’s orders, Felt. You know you can only search those rooms which are locked.”

Sheriff Walker held up his notebook and said, “Ah yes, but this room was locked at the time we served the warrant. In fact, you presence here is interference with a murder investigation.”

Walker and Felt searched every corner of the office and found nothing. Then Felt upended the waste basket on the floor. A large book with a green cover fell out. “What have we here?”

Walker thumbed through the pages and saw that it was the text of the Green Book, holy writ for the Church, entirely written by hand. He said, “Agent Felt, this is called the Printer’s Manuscript. It is said to have been made in heaven from what they call the White Scroll.”

Felt said, “Gosh, you would think something irreplaceable like this would be considered priceless. Yet somehow it ended up in the trash. I wonder why.”

Then it was Felt’s turn to pour through the pages of the manuscript. When he saw the pages in the very front of the document he said, “Now that’s cute. This is like a kind of baby book for the Church. All the important decisions and events are recorded here, like this entry from 1931 marking when Klaus Hansen became the Apostle. Mr. Hansen, would you please write your signature in the sheriff’s notebook so I can see if they’re the same?”

“Special Agent Felt, I assert my Constitutional right against self-incrimination.”

“I see. Oh, look Gabriel, it says here Doriel resigned as Apostle, yesterday, on the very day your wife was murdered. Were you present when this entry was made?”

“Yes sir, Special Agent Felt.”

“Do you remember about what time of day it was?”

“It was about eight o’clock in the AM, sir.”

Sheriff Walker wrote that in his notebook.

Felt said, “Gabriel, I may need you to testify in court under oath to the same effect. Now let’s see who replaced Doriel as the Apostle. Why look, it’s Klaus Hansen! And he signed it. Gabriel, did you witness Klaus Hansen making this signature?”

“Yes sir.”

“So let’s back up a bit to an entry made in 1866. It says if the Prophet dies or resigns, the Apostle becomes the new Prophet. So here’s Klaus Hansen as the new Apostle, with the Prophet having only an hour or two left to live. Please Gabriel, tell me, what happened immediately after Klaus Hansen became, once again, the Apostle of the Church.”

“He had his own breakaway Church down at the bottom of the hill, with only white folk there. He said we should go meet with them and announce the division in the mother Church was healed. So Paul left with Kim, but Klaus took me separately in his own truck. He wanted me to bring the sacred relic, which we call the Golden Gift, and I told him I didn’t want Paul to know where I had hidden it because he was no longer an officer of the Church. But on the way down we got into a heated argument over racism or something like that, and he just pulled over and made me get out before driving off. So I walked back up to the temple where Dory was waiting.”

Felt said, “The reason I’m asking, Gabriel, is there’s three final entries here, one declaring Kim to be dead, one making Klaus Hansen the Prophet, and one making Paul Bergin the Apostle. Did you, as the Deacon, witness any of those entries being made?”

“No sir.”

“I’m trying to ascertain the time.”

“Dory said no one returned to the Temple before I did, and that was about nine thirty in the morning. It was about ten when they returned, and they told me Kim was dead.”

“Sheriff, what time did old Tashunka arrive at your station and report the murder?”

“It was just about noon.”

“I’m going to need to corroborate this with Dory, but we have now is Klaus Hansen affirming, in writing, that Kimberly Zinter, or Kimberly Shybear if you will, was dead approximately two hours before Tashunka discovered her corpse. Mr. Hansen, do you have anything to say before you are placed under arrest for murder?”

He said, “I will say this exactly once, Special Agent Felt. From here on out I will speak only to your superior officer, Special Agent in Charge Clyde Tolson.” Felt introduced himself to Dory and mentioned that he had a few questions for her. In his opening gambit Felt said, “You are under no obligation to answer, but I do have a few questions remaining to tie off this case and your help would be greatly prohibited. I only warn you that making a false statement to a federal agent is a crime. Do you understand, Miss Shybear?”

“Yes, Special Agent Felt, I do understand how serious this is.”

“What was your relationship to the deceased?”

“She and I were classmates at the Church parochial school. For a time, we were officers of the Church. And also we were very close friends.”

“Where were you two days ago, on January 20?”

“I spent the entire day either in the Temple, or in the Temple parking lot, or at my house, or on the road between the Temple and my house.”

“What time do you first arrive at the Temple?”

“About a quarter to eight, in the morning, as was my habit. I was still the Apostle of the Church on that morning.”

“Can you tell me if anything of note happened after you arrived at the Temple?”

“The former Apostle of the Church arrived, Mr. Klaus Hansen. He came with Paul Bergin, who used to be the Deacon, until both of them stormed out and started their own church in some barn. They came back and said we had one more chance to put the Church back together. Can you be believe that? They said we had one more chance. They wanted their old positions back, both Apostle and Deacon, as though nothing had happened. Gabriel told ’em to pound sand, so they got ready to leave again. I was bored of that whole cycle so thought I would break the logjam by resigning my own position. Offer half of what the arrogant fools were demanding, at any rate.”

“Then what happened?”

“Klaus took the deal, natch, because at least he got his job back, and Paul’s pretty much his lapdog anyway. Then they talked Robyn and Gabriel into going down to their barn and patching things up with the White Wing. I’m Red Wing so I wouldn’t be welcome there anyway. I stayed in the Temple cleaning the rooms we reserve for out-of-towners.”

“Were you alone in the Temple after that, Dory?”

“As far as I know, yes. The only vehicle sitting in the parking lot was my Woodie.”

“Did anyone come to the Temple during the rest of that day?”

“Gabriel showed up about an hour later after walking halfway up the mountain. Another half hour after that Hansen and Bergin came back too. I thought it must have been a pretty short reunion ceremony. Hansen booted me out of the Temple because I wasn’t an officer of the Church anymore. He said he only wanted to see me there on Wednesdays with the rest of the Red Wing. So I got in my station wagon and drove home.”

“Thank you Dory. That’s all the questions I have for you right now.”

Next up was Klaus Hansen, who hobbled into the interrogation room with his ankles cuffed so he had no illusion he could get up and walk out like Dory just did. He already said he would only speak with Tolson, so Clyde consulted a brief Felt had put together for him before he spoke.

“Mr. Hansen, we placed your vehicle at the crime scene.”

“With tire treads, Clyde? How many different kinds of tires does town as small as this have?”

“Gabriel Shybear is willing to testify that you declared the girl dead before her body was found by the old Indian, who, by the way, immediately notified the sheriff while you did not.”

“But you can’t tie the murder weapon to me. You can’t tie the footprints to anyone. All you have is the word of an aggrieved husband.”

“You had motive. You led the White Wing out of the Church over the marriage of Gabriel and Kim, and only returned when such a marriage was made forbidden as an article of canon law.”

“All that means, Clyde, is the new Prophet had more common sense than the old one did.”

“Ah, yes, but that ruling left the original marriage in place, til death do they part. And you cannot account for your whereabouts between the time when you left Gabriel on the side of the road and the time you returned to the Temple, which also happens to bracket the time of the murder.”

“The girl was already dead when I got down there,” Hansen said. “You already have the killer.”

“So you admit you were both there, and you deliberately made the case federal to get my attention. Now you indeed have my attention, Prophet Hansen. The floor is yours.”

“I am the Prophet, Clyde, as you just said. If you keep me in custody Gabriel Shybear will hold Last Rites for his wife in a private ceremony and you will never see the Golden Gift. But if you swear to drop the charges, I’ll make her Last Rites public services. At the end you and your agents can descend on Gabriel and scoop up the Golden Gift at your leisure.”

Mark Felt gave a start, but he knew the Director would never tolerate letting Hansen go free. No judge would instruct a jury to ignore the other set of footprints, but even if one did, Bergin’s defense team would argue for a mistrial or at the least get his conviction overturned on appeal.

Sheriff Walker responded the way Felt initially wanted to do, “You can’t be thinking of letting him go. We’ve got him cold for conspiracy to commit murder at the very least.”

Felt said, “Sheriff, I’m dying to discuss this with you, but this is not the time nor the place.”

Tolson found that remark interesting. “Where are your thoughts trending, Felt?”

“Sir, when the Director sent me here he told me the case would be independent of your DECON work, and my reports were to go directly to him, but unfortunately here’s a situation where the two investigations have run right into each other. The Director’s orders to me were to, quote, ‘mesh with Tolson where practical’ so I will look to the senior agent on site for guidance.”

M6

“Excellent, Felt. Then let us go forward and see what shakes out. Prophet Hansen, you have my word as a federal agent the Bureau will not charge you with the murder of this girl. But if this is just a big bait-and-switch operation, if I don’t have the Golden Gift in my hand at the conclusion of all this, you will be right back in here and all bets are off.”

“I understand.”

Tolson instructed the sheriff to remove the shackles from the prisoner’s ankles. After he was done Felt caught Walker’s eye and gestured to meet him outside. When they were both out of earshot, the Sheriff said, “There’s no need to explain, Special Agent Felt. I get it. Operational deception. Even the sheriff of a ramshackle town like this knows the FBI doesn’t actually charge perps with crimes. They leave that to the US Attorney or a Grand Jury.”

--

699 The status of the Fallen Angels was left dangling. They could not return east of the frontier, nor would the Cherub Metatron receive them before speaking to Lilith hymself. They made their encampment on fallow land and waited.

700 They lived on what supplies they had filched from Samael’s ice cache, but these were finite, and as the days of waiting became weeks they plowed up the land around their encampment and prepared to gamble the last of their grain as seed for more food.

701 No word came to them, yet Lilith was painfully aware of their predicament.

702 Leliel always joined them on avatar flights now, if only for the peace of mind of Lilith, who worried Samael or Belial might contrive some mischief involving a fold-door. Michael had already warned of devastating retaliation should hyz daughter be harmed by the seraphim, directly or indirectly.

703 At the top of the arc Lilith held fast to Leliel and said to Michael, “It occurred to me that when we arrive in Rumbek I might have to do most of the groveling. Cherub Metatron will accept me as the queen of Salem in exile but hy knows nothing of your union with Elyon.”

704 “You had little time to apprise his son Barachiel of that,” Michael admitted. “You were about the business of stopping an invasion.”

705 Still, Michael weighed what hyz wife said and altered the path of the avatar to a mall degree before their weight began to pile up once more.

706 Pastoral Seliah Island was the breadbasket of Rumbek. Forested uplands ranging between one and three thousand feet high ran the length of the island in two long undulating ridges, north and south, with one connecting ridge from east to west.

707 At the head of the Dul Valley on the north side of the connecting ridge was the castle of the Ophan Barachiel. But Michael choose to bring the avatar to ground on the south side, where gently-rolling slopes of grass were sparsely dotted with trees as benign as any of Earth.

708 Michael helped hyz wife down out of the avatar as sha carried Leliel, and led them a safe distance away where they could watch the artifact rise into the sky once more. Looking around Lilith saw only scattered hovels.

709 When Michael saw the questioning look in Lilith’s eyes hy said, “Something you told me on the flight led me to choose another sort of opening gambit with Metatron than frightening the king and hyz subjects with my avatar. I well remember Chokhmah’s first visit to Salem.”

710 “So a seraph and a cherub walk from the hinterlands to Rumbek,” Lilith said, bordering on disbelief. “And Leliel almost too big to carry.”

711 “We shall walk, yes, to begin, but we shall also ride and even float. And there is no need, I think, to carry Leliel. Let’s see how sha does.”

712 The land was wide open with grass kept short by grazing animals and trees that resembled those of Earth in one important way: none of them tried to kill Michael, Lilith, and their daughter. Toiling north and west they gained six hundred feet of elevation in three miles. Leliel seemed not to tire at all.

713 A connecting ridge joined the west ridge at an elevation of about a thousand feet. Michael said, “Leliel! Let’s see how fast you can get to the top! The doll sped off and Lilith was shocked. Sha had never seen even wild animals run so fast after their prey.

714 She guessed Michael had changed her daughter somehow, made har swift of foot and tireless, and sha saw the utility of the change. One question remained. “When did you do it?”

715 “On the flight. I doubt that sha felt anything. The reentry would have distracted har.” Leliel attained the summit of the hill far faster than Lilith would have imagined possible. She was waving at them furiously.

716 Michael said, “Let’s ascend to assure ourselves she remains safe. But perhaps now she no longer needs such protection as we can give her.” They continued to ascend the ridge, with ever an eye to the summit to ascertain Leliel remained in view.

717 Michael went on to say, “It was not magic, Lil, what I did to her. Or at least it was a kind of magic that will cease to be magic someday when find a way to properly explain it.”

718 “I am your first student, Michael, and more, I am the mother of that doll. Try to explain it to me.”

719 “Yes, you are Leliel’s mother,’ replied Michael, “and so there are things about har that resemble you. Yet if sha had a sister they would not be identical, because all living things are governed by both law and by chance.

720 We run so fast and no faster because there is a fire that burns within us that burns so hot and no hotter, and this is a law. Yet of old, purely by chance, some living things burned hotter.

721 But these creatures could not endure long, because the hotter fire within demanded more food than they could find, and so they perished before they could pass this new law to their young. But Leliel is an ophan, so sha will never want for as much food as she can eat.”

722 “And this change you wrought in our daughter that you call a law, will sha pass the same down to har son or daughter when she is of age to become a mother in har turn?”

723 “No, it is imposed by me, it does not rise up from what Leliel fundamentally is. Shall I undo it?”

724 “No, husband, let the change you have made stand. You have seen what a joy it seems to be for har, and if by some misfortune sha runs across enemies who would do harm to har, sha can easily outrun them. And you are right. Leliel, being noble-born, shall never want for food.”

725 They took considerably longer to attain the summit of the ridge than did their daughter. At last Lilith scooped her up in her arms and asked, “Are you well, Scout?”

726 “Yes momma! Look how far we walked!” Leliel pointed far below at a circle of burnt grass where the avatar had landed and taken flight once again.

727 Michael directed their gaze to the west where houses could be seen. “Do you see? Our walking is nearly at an end. I will hire a carriage and we will be driven to edge of Tala Strait yonder.”

728 In town they ate a late lunch. Lilith was astonished to see how much food har little doll Leliel put away. Sha wondered if sha had spoken prematurely to say Leliel would never want for food.

729 But their hosts, amply compensated with a diamond, ever brought Leliel more. Afterwards they rode down the undulating creek valley that led to the well-ordered fields stretching west to Tala Strait. The hills they passed were lower, and fewer, detached from one another like lone sentinels over the plowed fields.

730 As the carriage trundled past the thinning hills Leliel fell asleep in her mother’s lap, so Michael and Lilith grew silent, content to stir their own thoughts.

-

At Last Rites Klaus had absolutely nothing to say about Kim at all. He never mentioned her parents. He never mentioned how she had gone missing for the last two months, and how she had been in quarantine for six months before that. Hansen didn’t know the girl, he didn’t know her family, nor her friends, nor their families. He had no feelings for her other than an abiding hatred for marrying Gabriel Shybear and thus, in his view, ripping apart the One True Church.

So instead of giving anything like a decent eulogy, Klaus embarked upon a particularly malicious Bible study. He said, “Friends, please join me in turning in your Bible to the book of First Kings chapter eleven, verses four through eleven.”

Gabriel Shybear stood in front of Klaus in a white robe, but one step down from the elevated chancel platform, holding a large Bible open for the Prophet to read.

Hansen said, “For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. Then did Solomon build a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods. Wherefore the LORD said unto Solomon, ‘Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant.'”

After this the people in the congregation hoped the Prophet was finished, but then he continued, to their dread. “Now turn, please, to the book of Nehemiah chapter thirteen verses twenty-three through twenty-seven.”

The Prophet went on and on for a full hour, quoting favorite parts of the scriptures having to do with the “sin” of inter-marriage between races, until most of the Bunners were frantic, desperately wishing he would stop. Eventually he ran out of scripture.

The temple organist took her place at the edge of the raised chancel and began to play a Bach chorale prelude, “I Call You, Lord Jesus Christ”. The congregation sang the hymn in the original German from the words printed in the hymnal, though very few members still under- stood German anymore. The singing was therefore pretty lousy, but the underlying music was gorgeous.

Mark Felt, sitting in the pews, took note of the musician and remarked that the organist looked remarkably like the deceased. Sheriff Walker told him the girl playing was Kim’s twin sister Robyn, whom he once interviewed on the afternoon of the murder but he had not been able to contact her since. “Shall I hold her after the services?”

Special Agent Felt replied, “No. I think, Sheriff, that any need to question her further has been entirely overtaken by events.”

Wearing white robes in hez role as the Minister of the Final Rite, Deacon Gabriel Shybear stood behind the embalmed body of Kim, which lay face up on the altar, also clothed in white.

Sofie Krause came out of the audience to stand next to him. She was wearing her green school uniform, like she always did when she went to Temple, since it was the most feminine garment she owned. Perhaps it was the only feminine one.

Special Agent Bill Sullivan gave a start. “Sir, that’s the girl I’ve been looking for! Sofie Krause!”

Someone behind him snickered. The way he put it sounded hilarious.

Tolson restrained him with a hand on his arm. “Don’t move unless she tries to walk out of the temple. Oh yes, we have her, but my top priority is the artifact.”

“Most of you know me,” Sofie told the congregation. “If you don’t, I’m Sofie Krause. Kim was a close friend. We were the same age, we went to the same expensive school, we went to the same church. Most of you knew her too, and most of you know that she and her momma have had a pretty lousy time of it lately. Kim’s father died in the mines about nine months back. There was some trouble in the Church over that.

"After that me and Kim both got sick and we were stuck in quarantine for six whole months over in Wyoming. It was Kim, mostly, who got me out of that jam, but that’s what she always did. In school Kim always called me a scrub, but she never, ever turned me away when I told her I needed help with my class work. Somehow she had a way of explaining things to me better than the teachers did, and that kept me in D territory. Maybe, if she lived, she would have been a teacher herself one day.

'You already know she had a voice like an angel, and she could play the piano and the organ. I mean she could really play. It turns out her twin sister Robyn can play pretty good too, as all of you have heard. Thanks for coming here and doing that for us today, Robyn. Me and some other friends in band class had dreams of pressing a swing record with her, but now they’re dashed flat and that’s a terrible waste!”

Then Sofie fell silent and stepped back from the lectern, with tears rolling down her face, but she remained standing next to Gabriel on the chancel.

Gabriel did not follow up with a eulogy of hez own, though he longed to express the love che had for his wife, or even to mention that she had been his wife. But things had already gone overlong with Hansen’s sermon, and besides, this was a tough crowd. Gabriel knew any mention of Kim as his wife would simply antagonize the congregation even more than Klaus Hansen’s sermon did.

Instead che said, “On the surface this would seem to be a time of sorrow. But upon reflection, we see how that sorrow is really a sign of a deeper love. If Kimberly were a stranger to us, if she had no one among us who cared about her, we might feel, despite the Lord’s commandment to love our neighbors, only a kind of indifference. Certainly not bereavement. And that, brothers and sisters, is the second most-important purpose of the Last Rite. We gather together in sorrow to recognize and celebrate the love that underlies our grief. So let us bow our heads in prayer.

Bless us, O Lord, as today we have come together to commit the body of our beloved sister in faith, Kimberly Anne Zinter, directly into your hands. Sown in corruption, let her body be raised in incorruption. Sown in dishonor, let her body be raised in your glory. Sown in weakness, let it be raised in power. Sown a natural body, let her be raised a spiritual body as we eagerly look for the life to come when she receives again the many years that were taken away from her on Earth. In the name of your only son Yeshua we pray.”

The crowd muttered scattered amens.

“Do you believe, as I believe, that when Prince Melchizedek first came to Father Abraham, he unveiled our most holy relic as a sure sign of our Lord’s divinity?”

Some members of the crowd, who knew the correct way to answer the Call and Response of the Last Rite, said, “I do.” Gabriel produced the self-same relic then, and held it high for all to see. Clyde Tolson leaned forward in his pew.

“Do you believe, as I believe, that when the Lord our God was made manifest on this very spot, the Island in the Sky, Chief Wanica took possession of our most holy relic, which we name the Golden Gift?” A more robust response came from the congregation. They were catching on.

“Do you believe, as I believe, that when the Kuwapi people were united with the pilgrims led by our first prophet, Mark Lange, the bodies of four fallen warriors of the People were committed into the hands of our God by the Golden Gift as a sign of their everlasting union?” A very hearty “I do!” erupted from the rest of the church.

Then, before the eyes of everyone in the sanctuary, Gabriel ignited the Golden Gift and used the hissing black shaft to make every scrap of Kim’s body disappear. He even took shallow swaths of the concrete altar along with it, although Gabriel was usually much more careful not to do so. Periodically a new altar surface had to be poured and cured. Che knew such measures wouldn’t matter anymore after this last Last Rite.

Clyde Tolson was frozen briefly as he took in this astonishing sight, but he quickly recovered and gave the signal to go. Sheriff Roddy Walker, however, did not recover. He sat transfixed, realizing his lifetime of unbelief had been entirely misguided. But that, after all, was the most important purpose of the Last Rite.

The sanctuary of the Green Dome Church was constructed as a hexagon, with aisles forming six spokes. Clyde Tolson, Bill Sullivan, Mark Felt, Dr. Trochmann, Deputy Lurz and Deputy Holsinger descended toward the altar, each man descending his own aisle, making straight for Gabriel, who saw them and quickly made the Golden Gift disappear into his little ready pocket of space-time.

Clyde Tolson was the first to reach Gabriel, and he tackled him, flipping the young nephil face down. “Where is it, you son of a bitch?”

Gabriel was cuffed, poked, prodded and rolled over and over by four different men.

Some members of the congregation began to stream out of the temple. Others remained in their pews like the sheriff did, bewailing that they had come to full belief only after it was too late.

The ones who had seen the Last Rite once before shouted angry oaths at Klaus Hansen for permitting unbelieving outsiders to witness and hence defile the Sacred Relic. This was the Abomination That Makes Desolate predicted in scripture. The Temple was defiled beyond any redemption. The Church existed no more.

After the Sheriff recovered and rejoined his deputies they arrested Gabriel and Sofie and took them away. Tolson and Sullivan knocked over the massive altar in their search for the Golden Gift. They looked for any trap doors in the floor of the chancel where Gabriel might have tossed it. Ultimately they even resorted to tearing up the chancel carpet.

Mark Felt didn’t seem eager to help them. He looked at Robyn sitting at the organ, who winked at him. Somehow he sensed the search would be futile and Tolson would not get what he was looking for. He also saw Klaus Hansen standing there with his mouth wide open in shock at how things were turning out.

Felt came up behind Hansen and cuffed his hands behind his back before he had time to offer any resistance. With that his shock was doubled.

“Hey, jerk!” Hansen screamed at Tolson. “We had a deal!”

Tolson ceased from his labors to look at Hanson and saw how Felt had already cuffed him. Good. Save him the trouble of doing it himself. He glanced at Sullivan, then dropped the corner of carpet he was holding. Sullivan followed suit.

Tolson said, “We did have a deal, Klaus. And I don’t have the Golden Gift. That means all bets are off, just like I told you.”

Gabriel and Sofie were thrown into separate but adjoining cells. They spoke no words to their captors despite every attempt to intimidate them. Instead they put on implacably stony faces and conversed with Robyn by way of Doryphone.

In the middle of the night, at an hour selected by Robyn, Gabriel produced the Golden Gift and cut hez way out of his cell through an exterior wall of the sheriff’s station. Once che was outside che cut Sofie out too. Dory and Robyn were pulling up in the woodie.

Sofie looked back and saw how the holes were carved as silhouettes of of people, as though she and Gabriel had escaped by running right through the wall like the cartoon characters did on Looney Tunes. Her own escape hole was in the shape of a girl in pigtails and a dress. “Very funny, Gabe.”

It would, in fact, amuse Mark Felt to no end when he saw it in the morning.

--

731 The final leg of their journey to Rumbek by sea was not far, but there was no wind so the ship was rowed. Michael and Leliel slept for the entire passage, but Lilith lay awake through the night, ruing every passing hour with no answer for her Fallen Angels.

732 At dawn they all went outdoors to the rail of the boat to watch its slow approach to the seaport. Everything Lilith had heard about Rumbek was true. Har eyes could not be denied.

733 This capital of the Larund kingdom was by far the largest city in all of Kemen. The Great Sea of the West Lands is divided into a pair of lobes by the Magodon Peninsula, anchored to the mainland on the west.

734 But sheer cliffs rising as much as four hundred feet guarded every approach to the peninsula by sea. This wall was sheer sandstone and cannot be scaled by any army. Where it was eroded by gullies the streams filled the entire channel.

735 At the foot of this bluff around the peninsula lie impassible swamps and sinkholes that would swallow horses and trap the wheels of chariots. Also none can pass by land around the Great Sea to the north or to the south. There roaring waves run nigh to the Ice, and often frozen slabs melt and slide into the sea with great thunder. No permanent road could be carved and no tunnel bored to permit passage east or west.

736 Between Seliah Island and the city of Rumbek lay the much smaller Krone Island and Fanok Island, walled suburbs linked by a network of bridges. Even the smallest islet, Krone, was covered with dwellings and fortifications that alone made it greater than all of Salem.

737 Above all this loomed the Nine Mile Wall, that part of the cliffs ringing the Magodon Peninsula which was fortified by angels and nephilim and men. The Nine Mile Wall and the city of Rumbek were one and the same. The dwellings of the city were carved into the wall, connected by tunnels with endless ramps and stairs.

738 Where these dwellings faced the open air they boasted a facade of ornately-carved harder stone. Rumbek was so large it even spilled over onto part of Seliah Island. Where Tala Strait met the shore-line road there existed many warehouses and piers for the ships of merchants and for the peerless navy of King Metatron.

739 On the other side of the road, at the base of the Nine Mile Wall, there were storefronts and market stalls beyond number.

740 A rare mood of unhappiness overcame Lilith when sha saw these shops and this distressed Michael in turn when he saw it. “What is wrong, beloved?” “I can’t escape the memory that I used to extort shopkeepers for their money, when I already had everything I could ever need.”

741 “That was before you embraced Chohkmah,’ Michael said. “You are ashamed because cannot fall back on the justification others make that they fell in with the wrong sort of friends.”

741 “I was always their leader,” sha acknowledged. “But I was the wrong sort of friend for them.”

742 Michael took out hyz little leather pouch of diamonds. “I know it hurts, Lil, but you can let it go. The shame you feel now is sufficient punishment for the misdeeds of your past. Take three deep breaths! Good. Now, will you help me choose something to purchase for Leliel?”

743 The tip of a large knife depressed the skin at Michael’s neck. The yang holding the blade said, “Give to me what you hold in your hand or I’ll let flow your life’s blood!” This would have seemed sadly familiar to Lilith’s brother, Melchizedek, who was accosted in Harran.

744 “Scout!” barked Lilith. “Run away!” And such was Leliel’s training that sha immediately obeyed har mother as though it were a battle command, despite being only two years of age. The robber scowled at Lilith but dismissed har as any threat. Sha was standing too far away.

745 Michael carefully offered the bag of precious stones, knowing hy could always make more. While the attacker greedily grasped the pouch a terrifying hiss began to be heard.

746 Lilith, standing well away from Michael, extended the dark shaft of the Golden Gift as long as a pike. Sha sliced the attacker’s own weapon in twain, leaving only the hilt and letting the blade clatter to the ground.

747 That was Lilith’s idea of a warning shot, but it was a hint hy did not take. Hyz other hand stashed the diamonds in hyz pocket and fumbled for a second blade. When the weapon came out Lilith swept the black shaft closer to the yang’s wrist than the first sweep had been.

748 Hy screamed as his hand and the blade it was holding fell to the ground together. Michael kicked the bloody mess away as Lilith brought the Golden Gift to repose.

749 “Hold out your arm and I’ll help you,” Michael told him. The yang brought out the gushing stump from under his armpit and Michael laid on hyz hands to staunch the wound. “You should be grateful you attacked a seraph. The way the relic cuts flesh leaves arteries wide open. Only a flame would seal them, otherwise.”

750 Lilith drew near to them. “No rebuke from my teacher?”

751 “It was a good deed,” Michael admitted. “Hy could not have killed me with his blade for the same reason he’s not dying from yours. He seemed set on his unprofitable course of action even when you offered hym a way out.”

752 When Michael was satisfied the robber would survive hyz wound hy stood up and looked around. Leliel still had not returned from the place where sha had made har escape. Michael noted that many onlookers had witnessed the robbery attempt and the healing of the attacker’s arm. Lilith darted off to look for har daughter.

753 Shortly Leliel came to har father alone, showing off har new talent as soon as sha had learned from har mother that it was safe to come back. “Where did you go?” hy asked. Sha pointed to a place high above in the Nine Mile Wall. “You did well to obey your mother so quickly.”

754 “Thank you father!” After a long interval that spoke of Leliel’s new speed, Lilith rejoined them. “Five levels over our head my Scout was,” said sha.” And sha got there so quickly sha was able to watch all that transpired.”

755 “One good thing will come of this, at least,’ Michael said to har. “You have been seen wielding the Golden Gift. The Ophan Barachiel has seen you do the same on the frontier and has no doubt spoken of it to many. We should have our audience with the king soon.”

756 True to Michael’s words troops arrived and began questioning the crowd that had gathered around the scene. The robber attempted to scramble to hyz feet but Lilith pushed hym back down, digging in hyz pocket for the pouch of diamonds, which sha returned to har husband.

757 The troops were commanded by a yeoman of the king’s court who addressed Lilith as respectfully as hy could while yet being unsure of har identity. “I am Gruen, a humble servant in the court of King Metatron. Do I have the honor of addressing Har Majesty the Queen of Salem?” “

758 I am Lilith, yes, the rightful ruler of Salem. Yet I am dispossessed of that city.”

759 “Your Majesty, you shall be received by the king at mid-morning tomorrow. A messenger shall be dispatched to Ophan Barachiel in the Dul Valley expressing for the Ophan to return hither. Meantime the king bids you to lodge together with any who travel with you within chambers in the highest level of hyz castle. I assure you these lodgings are second in opulence only to those of the king hymself.”

760 “I would be honored to stay at the castle of King Metatron with my family.”

761 Gruen looked unfavorably upon the prisoner as hy was bound. “Were you but common travelers from Adan the king himself would still be filled with shame for what this lan tried to do.”

762 “Please tell His Majesty he has already been amply punished,” Michael said. “Reckless forgiveness is all I ever had to teach at the Sunset Discourse, and nothing more.”

763 The Nine Mile Wall angled south and east for half its length, then abruptly changed direction to march south and west. At the pinnacle a razor-thin ridge of sandstone half as high as the Wall jutted into the Strait. This was the skeleton of the castle of King Metatron.

764 The flesh and bones of the castle were hard stone on the whole exterior, and what windows existed were only large enough for archers to fire their darts upon attackers below.

765 There were three hundred ninety steps to the top, yet Lilith and Michael did not ascend them. Instead they were ported individually to the top in seats carried by staves. Thirteen teams of servants handed their passengers off to another team after ascending thirty steps.

766 And all the while Leliel walked beside har parents, summing everything up with one word: “Lazy!”

767 Their lodgings were everything Gruen had promised. Lilith said to the attendants who waited upon them, “My daughter shall need at least five times the amount of food you would guess a child har age would need, and har chamberpot must be emptied with corresponding frequency.”

768 The castle stood straight out from the Nine Mile Wall and when day became night the lights of the dwellings of the city stretching north from them burned for a time.

769 Michael extinguished the lights in their own dwelling to let Leliel marvel at them, but sha soon fell asleep. Leliel was gently put to bed. A side-effect of Leliel’s new talent was sha tended to sleep much more than sha ever did.

770 Michael and Lilith saw an opportunity to share intimacy, one that that had been delayed for many weeks. Michael and Lilith kissed and began to disrobe. When Lilith laid aside har weapon, har brass, and the leather that protected har, as well as the mental armor that lay beneath all these, there was revealed, to har husband alone, a yin of exquisite tenderness who could not deny har sex.

771 Michael this found very provocative. Afterwards they lay together holding hands, limbs entwined, watching the pattern of light on the wall of the chamber change as the king’s subjects who dwelt in the Nine Mile Wall extinguished the lights of their own homes as they would. Sleep quickly overtook them.

772 In the morning after a leisurely breakfast a gentle knock on the door announced the return of Gruen, who inquired how they had fared overnight. Hy was come to escort them into the presence of King Metatron.

773 “What has come of the yang who accosted us yesterday?” asked Lilith.

774 “Hyz Majesty is incensed,” Gruen replied. “It is some measure of the king’s wrath that this miscreant’s punishment is far in excess of what it otherwise merited.” Gruen saw how it troubled Michael and Lilith both to hear that.

775 The King received them at the end of a long, narrow colonnade exposed to the elements, where hyz throne had been set with its back to the very face of the Nine Mile Wall. From here hy often enjoyed watching the doings of hyz subjects in the streets of the city far below.

776 Lilith was brought before Metatron with har daughter Leliel in hand and with Michael at har side. Sha found the Larund sovereign to be like an echo of har beloved father of happy memory.

777 And yet, Lilith was forced to acknowledge to harself, if the greatness of a lord was reckoned by the realm over which hy was sovereign, Metatron bordered on the status of a seraph. All the angels of Adan at the heart of the Gerash lands would fill a mere burough of Rumbek.

778 Sha saw that the king’s son, Barachiel, sat at hyz right hand. So hy was neither dead nor in fetters, which told Lilith that hyz father had accepted the conditions of the truce hastily worked out on the field of battle between har and Samael.

779 Metatron noted har glance. “I am not certain I should welcome you to Rumbek, Queen Lilith,” said hy, after Gruen made the formal introductions. “My son Ophan Barachiel told me it was you who gave a fair portion of my land to the Black Beards in such a way that I must either ratify it or go to war.”

780 “Your Majesty,” replied Lilith, “Ophan Barachiel was at a disadvantage even with my yen fighting at hyz side. It would have been a rout and your new frontier with the Adanites would be that much closer to the city. The King knows how such decisions are made on the field.”

781 Metatron grunted dubiously, but pondered the ramifications of the truce silently.

782 Lilith said, “Your Majesty, there is a yang who tried to rob my husband yesterday.” The king emerged from hyz reverie to search the face of Lilith.

783 Sha went on to say, “Sire, what hy tried to take from Michael was of little account. If hy chose Michael could flood both Kemen and Earth with so many diamonds they would be like so many wooden beads.”

784 Metatron said, “Yet it has come to me that your own daughter had to flee for har life.”

784 “Sha did so at my command, Your Majesty, in the event the attacker threw hyz blade. I severed the hand of this yang to preserve the life of my husband. And that, I think, is a most extravagant punishment.”

785 Metatron saw to the heart of Lilith’s words to hym. With great tact sha was trying to balance hyz absolute sovereignty in Rumbek with the radical graciousness sha had learned from har husband and teacher.

786 “Gruen!” barked the king, and hyz yeoman sunk to hyz knees before hym. “Gruen, tell the malik supervising this yang’s punishment that in my desire for justice it did not enter into my mind to be excessively cruel. Let hym be released from hyz suffering and let hym be cleaned and fed. Go in haste!”

787 The king’s yeoman bounded to hyz feet and fled.

788 Lilith said, “Hyz Majesty is merciful and wise, yet a far greater thing weighs upon my thoughts than the chastisement of this thief. Some four hundred yen, exiles of Salem, are stranded on the frontier with Adan. They cannot return east under the same covenant that stays the forces of Samael from marching west, and even now their meager supplies are running out.

789 :"At the last throw Queen Aurra has offered to settle the Fallen Angels in Rammon, yet this would have the effect of disbanding them as an army. What an army they are indeed that Samael has mustered all his warriors to drive them out of his land!”

790 “It is well that House Sala has opened their gates to you, yet I deem it would be a journey of at least two years to reach Rammon. Is that what you crave of me, Queen Lilith? Provender for your four hundred Fallen Angels, and leave to pass peacefully through Magodon?”

791 “Sire, give the word, rather, and to a yin my Fallen Angels will become your most loyal subjects.”

792 “And let us say I did not make your Fallen Angels my subjects,” Metatron suggested, “nor send them provisions, nor give them leave to cross my land. What say you then?”

793 “In that event the avatar of Elyon would come into play. May my husband address the king?”

794 “By all means let the consort of the Queen speak freely,” said Metatron. ‘I would learn of this avatar, and of those things which converted the city of Salem and the whole House of Sala to follow Elyon, and which tamed the heart of a warrior yin.”

795 “Your Majesty is gracious,” said Michael. “If he is willing to accept it, an avatar is made in the heart of a sun that is the true body of an eloah, yet it can fly free, and part of the mind and will of the eloah is bound up with this artifact.

796 But mere words concerning an avatar will not suffice. If Hyz Majesty will come to the edge of hyz colonnade hy will soon see the avatar of Elyon with hyz own eyes. It was set into motion from an idle state just moments ago.”

797 And indeed Metatron did rise from hyz throne to watch. A streak of rushing fire appeared in the sky over Tala Strait followed by two thunderbursts so loud it seemed to Metatron hy would be knocked over. The fire streak, the king could see, formed behind a small dark object that raced across the sky almost too quickly to follow.

798 “Behold, Your Majesty, the first avatar of Chokhmah. With this contrivance world-dwellers were discovered on Earth, whom the elohim name the Students. The same artifact once whisked me to a hidden place to be brought into full union Elyon as a living avatar.

799 I was the first angel to join with an eloah, Your Majesty. As Elyon I taught the art to Keter, and he in turn taught Belial. Soon I will have the same power to move about Kemen at will but a new covenant with Keter restricts my use of this power to the lands west of the Wall of God.

800 Here I must resort to riding within the avatar. It brought me to Seliah with my wife and daughter and if needs be it can bring supplies to the Fallen Angels and the Fallen Angels themselves to Rammon, if aid is refused. I would honor such a refusal, your Majesty, even if it were not to my liking. In Magodon you rule absolutely, even over a seraph.”

801 “You need not resort to your avatar,” said the King, “for any of the yen willing to swear fealty to the Crown. A choice land will be given to them in my realm and you shall dwell with them.”

802 Lilith was visibly relieved. “I am grateful beyond all telling, Your Majesty, and the Fallen Angels who look to me will be much gladdened. Yet if you say they must lay down the sword, so shall it be, for this too would be their fate scattered among the ringhausen of Rammon.”

803 “Nay, Queen Lilith,” replied Metatron, “let them grasp the sword even so, and see that you train them well. Samael is faithless. I portend his army one day shall pour through an overlooked loophole in the covenant and your Fallen Angels will then repay me a hundredfold.”

804 Michael said, “I am certain Samael will never directly assail you with the main bulk of hyz army, Your Majesty. Elohim will not break the bonds of even small concessions. Yet hy can still send assassins and spies by ones and twos, and arm all thy enemies, both within Magodon and without.

805 "And Samael will continue to foment hatreds between House Larund and the other houses, that thou would remain at each other’s throat, and hy might sell hyz remedy in the form of arms, first to one, then the other. Give the word of assent, Your Majesty, and I will bring the rulers of Houses Sala and Bellon here to take counsel with the aim of forging some form of peaceful union between the kingdoms of Kemen.”

806 Metatron said, “A council such as you describe would be a good thing. But for now let us settle the exiles of Salem, and watch for a time whether Samael will break the truce.”

807 “Your Majesty,” said Lilith, “we touched down in a fair valley that runs south through the middle of Seliah Island. There are some houses and farms but it seems to be lightly settled in the main.”

808 “You speak of the Living Valley,” said Barachiel. “It is near to my own castle in the Dul Valley. The hills run nigh to the water, so it is arduous to bring the increase of the valley to Rumbek.”

809 “The Fallen Angels shall dwell in the same vale,” said the king. “And you, my son, shall extend generous hands until the Salemites are able of their own to work the land. This is the labor I lay upon you for your part in what Queen Lilith named a field decision.”

810 Barachiel bowed hyz head low. “It shall be as you command, my father and liege-lord. But meantime, Queen Lilith and har family shall stay in a wing of my own house until a dwelling is built for them in the Living Valley. Alas, I cannot extend the same to har four hundreds.”

811 Then Michael, Lilith, and Leliel departed from the presence of the king. They were taken to dwell in the Dul Valley for a time while the Fallen Angels were settled on the land set aside for them.