TC04

In the city of Adan Malkuth ruled indirectly through Emperor Rimmon. Hamon took Lilith to a park in the heart of the city that marked the place where humans were first brought to Kemen. A statue of a cherub with a flaming sword stood over the eastern entrance. Hamon showed Lilith the ridge where the portal would open, and the field where Hebel grazed his bison. Paths laced through the grove where Kayin committed the first murder.

LILITH: [Was it always this beautiful?]

HAMON: [It was, I think, less beautiful, then. Remember it was a little farm, not a carefully landscaped park]

LILITH: [Are you familiar with the laws of this city that govern the lives of men? They are very different from the laws of Sha lem and quite prescriptive]

HAMON: [I am ashamed to admit I have taken little interest in how Emperor Rimmon oppresses the people of his capital city]

LILITH: [For my part I have thoroughly familiarized myself with his laws. There is a certain purity and logic to them that our own city, I think, will not be able to resist forever. We have more freedom, this is true, but with that freedom we tend to be much more slipshod]

HAMON: [What have you learned?]

LILITH: [Here in Adan a boy lives under the absolute rule of his father until his fifteenth year when he begins to serve in the army of the House of Adan as one of the ishim. If the ish has attained the age of eighteen years and has not advanced to the ranks of the malakim, he is discharged from the army. He is then fully a man, and for so long as he lives he is accountable to worship Malkuth even as did his father]

LILITH: [The malakim commands the ishim by squads. If a malak has attained the age of twenty-one years and has not advanced to the ranks of the ravmalakim, he is discharged from the army and becomes accountable to worship Malkuth]

LILITH: [The ravmalakim commands the malakim by platoons. When the ravmalak has attained the age of twenty-four years and has not advanced to the ranks of the sarim, he is discharged from the army and becomes accountable to worship Malkuth.

LILITH: [The sarim command the ravmalakim by companies. When the sar has attained the age of twenty-seven years and has not ad vanced to the ranks of the erelim, is discharged from the army but is numbered among the Eyes of Malkuth and leads men in their worship of Malkuth for as long as he lives. Outside of the tem ples and the army the sarim enforce the decrees of the emperor among his people]

LILITH: [The erelim command the sarim of the army by battalions and is numbered among the Eyes of Malkuth as inspectors. The erel holds his appointment for life]

LILITH: [The hashmalim are numbered among the noble born of Adan, equal in standing to a baron. A hashmal commands the ere lim of the army by brigades but when erelim act in their role as inspectors in the Eyes of Malkith a hashmal holds no authority over him. When a dispute arises between two men among the common folk a hashmal is appointed to act as their arbiter and none, even among the great lords, may gainsay his ruling]

LILITH: [The princes in Adan are the ophanim, equal in standing to a count. An ophan commands the hashmalim by divisions and appoints the hashmalim as magistrates in all disputes that go before law]

LILITH: [The kings in Adan are the cherubim, equal in standing to a duke. A cherub commands the ophanim by armies and rules in disputes among the nobility of Heaven]

HAMON: [And yet now we are confronted with a dispute between kings. Who shall decide between them?]

LILITH: [Is that what you plan to do in this city?]

HAMON: [There is no plan, Lil. My avatar reaching landfall can not be mistaken. Even now the Eyes of Malkuth are moving to take me into custody]

LILITH: [Then your actual plan is to die! Have you forgotten that Malphas pronounced your doom??

HAMON: [It will not come to that]

LILITH: [In the absence of a plan from you I say we go forward with my plan]

HAMON (with narrowed eyes): [Lilith, don't do anything stupid. Better yet, don't do anything at all!]

A squad of ishim surrounded them just then. Lilith was known to the erel commanding them, at the very least.

EREL: [Your pardon I crave, Your Majesty, but by the command of King Rimmon we must separate your companion from you]

HAMON (being led away): [Lilith! Just drop it! Do you hear me?]

Hamon was marched through a veritable museum of torture to the lowest levels of Rimmon's palace and left to shiver in a wet cell. The next day Prince Malphas paid a visit. He moved close to the iron bars to look directly into Hamon's eyes. Malphas studied him quietly for a time.

MALPHAS: [Lord Malkuth gives his regards to his nameless Binah]

HAMON: [I made no secret of the union, yet you came all the way to Salem to deny it]

MALPHAS: [Lord Malkuth knows you put on something of a conjuring act just before he whisked Prince Melchizedek to Earth. Only an eloah in union with world-dweller flesh could have timed things so perfectly]

HAMON: [Excellent, Malphas! So now that your master has come to believe the very thing you condemned me to die for teaching, why do I remain in this cell?]

MALPHAS: [Certain actions and non-actions are required of you."

HAMON: [Malkuth knows I can choose to end my life at any time. The disgusting instruments of pain you arrayed for me have no meaning] MALPHAS: [A martyr is  really the last thing  we want, Hamon. But Princess Lilith has her mind quite made up]

HAMON: [Lilith is also immune to your torments]

MALPHAS: [But not to death. Do you really think the Eyes are not aware of the preparations she has made for your rescue? You will be amazed when you see it. Sleeper cells, guards taken out with a head twist, secret disguises, body doubles, and safe houses from here to the edge of the city! But it is doomed to fail. We will catch Lilith in the act, scoop up key Fallen Angels and crush your whole movement in one night]

HAMON: [You are grossly underestimating Lilith and her Fallen Angels if you think you can just roll them up]

MALPHAS: [The Lord Malkuth suggests a better alternative. If you agree to be paraded in a cage from here to Salem so the people may witness the humiliation of their would-be god, Lilith and her friends will have no reason to carry out their suicide pact]

HAMON: [I can stop my own heart any time I choose. I will die the moment you attempt to display me in a cage]

MALPHAS: [You must not refuse, Hamon, because the alternative is Lilith, remember? Her plan?]

HAMON: [That will require some backtracking on your part, Mal phas. Have you forgotten you pronounced my death for presuming to teach I am the living avatar of the I AM? Now you would have everyone see I spoke the truth after all]

MALPHAS (curling his lips) [The rabble have short memories]

HAMON: [Very well. I agree not to will myself to die while in captivity. But this agreement is void if I am ever put to tor ment, if only for the boredom factor. Is that all your Lord Mal kuth requires of me?]

MALPHAS: [Your avatar must never again be seen in the lands ruled by my father]

HAMON: [I keep my avatar far to the north of this city. Does your father's rule extend beyond the ice wall?]

MALPHAS: [You quibble, Hamon. By 'lands' I mean that part of Ke men that is free of ice]

HAMON: [Very well. Is there nothing more he requires?]

MALPHAS: [You must share with the Lord Malkuth the secret of merging with a living lan, as you obviously have already done]

HAMON: [Easily done! When my mother and father have sent Lilith home I will comply]

MALPHAS: [You are in no position to make demands of your own]

HAMON: [How unfortunate for you, Malphas. Since the agreement is void I will now shed this container of meat, and when Malkuth makes his inquiries he will be dismayed to know how close he came to learning the trick of having a lving avatar of his own before your intransigence ruined the negotiations]

MALPHAS: [Hold! I will bring your request before the Lord him self!] HAMON: [No need, Malphas. It seems my mother and  I are suddenly back on speaking terms]

Hamon knew Lilith was already safely at Salem. Subsequently, the rumble of the avatar of Binah lifting skyward was heard. The sound and vibration reached even to the dungeon beneath the pal ace.

At a tall cataract in the foothills east of Salem Lilith and a squad of her Fallen Angels refreshed themselves before resuming their patrol. The waterfall completely obscured the sound and vibration of onrushing hooves until it was nearly too late. Not even Lilith's hypersensitive mare gave warning of Adanite horse len racing up behind them. Only at the last instant, by some odd instinct, did Lilith unlimber her blade to crash against a mighty iron rod. She was knocked clean off her horse.

Still stunned, Lilith witnessed another Adanite horselan decapi tate Imriel, her chief lieutenant, with a single stroke.

Lilith's horse possessed the discipline to linger rather than bolt. Shaking her head clear and choking back her grief, Lilith mounted up once more. Four surviving Fallen Angels rallied around her.

Lumbering after the assailants at a full gallop, Lilith and her companions loosed many arrows while standing in their stirrups. They felled the lan wielding the iron staff.

Two other weaving len blocked with their own bodies arrows fired at Imriel's killer. This surviving attacker dove into a forest glade guarded by a large armed encampment of Adanites. Contrary to her every wish Lilith reared back on her reins to come to a stop and the other Fallen Angels conformed to her movements. This soldier they had chased turned to face them. Seeing the identity of the lan who killed Imriel, the princess mouthed his name with all the bile she could.

LILITH: [Malphas!]

The track of burning villages around Salem had led Lilith to believe Malphas was ten leagues to the north. She guessed Mal phas dragged his army here by forced march overnight, but that made her wonder how he knew to come to just this place. She took pains to keep her own movements equally mysterious.

As though in reply Demonstroke soared over the trees. Lilith was shocked to see the last dragon in Kemen had been brought to the fight, but he climbed high above and made no move to attack.

At a signal the Fallen Angels gathered close around the prin cess.

LILITH: [Malphas pays for Imriel, life for life. You needn't follow me. Hamon says my death will not be a true death but he has made no such promise to you]

But the Fallen Angels were of a single mind. One among them named Raphaela answered for them all.

RAPHAELA: [Lead us, Your Royal Highness. For Imriel!]

So heedless of the danger they all turned to face the enemy. They sped forward to attack directly and not one yan held back. But Malphas ordered the canvas covering a cage to be removed, revealing Hamon just as Lilith entered the range of the enemy's darts. She brought her horse to a halt once more.

MALPHAS: [You can kill me from where you stand, Lilith, but Ha mon would join me in death]

Lilith rode  a  bit  closer. Pikelen arranged  in  a  ring brought their forest  of spikes  to the  horizontal, yet  not toward Lilith, but inward, toward Hamon.

LILITH: [Don't sink to this, Malphas. I expect this from Rimmon but not unpossessed Gerash noblelen]

She knew her words were empty. Hamon as a living shield cur tailed her actions quite neatly.

Malphas seemed to read her very thoughts.

MALPHAS: [Hamon is a noose around your neck, princess, and the closer you try get to him the tighter that noose will become. How easy it is to make you dance with a simple threat to Hamon's life!]

HAMON: [Lilith! Forget about me!]

Lilith's eyes became moist as she shook her head with a sad smile.

LILITH: [Did you not know, Hamon? That is the one thing I could never do]

Yet there was nothing more she could do on the field that day. Goading her horse, she turned and led the Fallen Angels back to the city.

When the War of Salem opened Melchiyahu's army was the ordinary force while the Fallen Angels were throwers of knives, cutters of throats, and fire setters. There were len among the Fallen Angels, but Malphas' own len and men perceived being swamped by leather-clad yen and nephilim and women.

On a grander scale, it was Melchiyahu's army that gained the victory in the first battle. But Malphas remembered only how Lilith got behind his left and assailed his supply trains. Hyz flank was turned and hy was driven down a narrowing ravine whose walls grew taller and his greater numbers were of no advantage. Malphas saw his army was in danger of being defeated in detail.

Flags of truce unfurled and Lilith rode into the lines of the enemy to see if Malphas had come to greater wisdom.

As Hamon watched from his cage a few paces away, Malphas spoke to Lilith.

MALPHAS: [Before this day, Princess, I never believed you and your Fallen Angels were so valiant. Now I would have you working for me and not against me. You can destroy my army where we stand, but I fear something unfortunate might happen to Hamon during the scuffle. To keep him alive you will dissolve your band of confused females dressed as warriors, ride at the head of my army, and go wherever elyonim and nephilim and men hold the god of Kemen in contempt]

LILITH: [Would you really appoint me your general while holding hostage a peaceful man that I love? Shemhazai would do better to shun pretense and send his dragon down to finish me and my army]

Malphas was delighted to hear Lilith declare her love for the prisoner.

MALPHAS: [Then are the wild rumors true, Princess? Hamon must never fall outside of the watchful gaze of the Eyes of Shemhazai but he need not be confined to this cage. At a word from Rimmon you could go to him this very night]

LILITH: [And at a word from my father, every Salemite would flock into his army. Yea, the old, the infirm, the yen, the wom en, even our dirks and our dolls. This war would grow so bloody that the whole face of the land would stink with the uncovered dead, and no one would be left alive to bury them. This, Mal phas, must never come to be]

Then she turned on her heels and quit the parley. Never was Ha mon so proud of his first student. She had needed no prodding to do the right thing. So when Malphas knew he was not to die that day he returned to Hamon's cage to gloat.

MALPHAS: [She knows, Hamon. The things you love are always used against you. She knows!]

HAMON: [Lilith does indeed know, but woe to those who turn love into a weapon and dare to use it against the ones who do love. Beware, Malphas. Your doom comes into view]

MALPHAS: [Speak you in the role of my oracle, Hamon?]

HAMON: [It takes no divine foresight to guess this war will end badly for you]

Long before the war Lilith's grandfather old King Gordiel hitched a wagon to a nearby tree with a knot so elaborate no one could fairly begin to unravel it. At that time he revealed a prophecy that whoever untied the wagon would rule all of Kemen.

Malphas knew of this prophecy, of course, and officially he put it down to superstition, but when he was within sight of Salem he found the wagon and for long hours while the army made camp he took his own turn at it.

This Malphas continued to do until a hashmal of the Eyes of Shemhazai arrived on the scene. He looked askance at what he took to be a move to usurp the power of Emperor Rimmon. Malphas took great offense at the insinuation.

MALPHAS: [Am I to believe the Eyes of Shemhazai give any cre dence at all to the babblings of local would-be seers and proph ets?]

EYE: [What you believe or what the Eyes believe matters not one whit, Prince Malphas. What the rabble in aggregate believes is entirely another matter]

MALPHAS: [Then you may be pleased to report to my father I am thoroughly satisfied this knot is secure and the wagon is going nowhere. Have your len lash Hamon's cage to this wagon and ar range the army on the slope along every side]

Lilith padded out her ample curves and applied false facial hair to offset the soft yenish features that belied her status as commander of the most fierce division on Kemen. Also, with the change that came with her horns, she could speak in a deep bari tone at will. This along with an eidetic memory and other sundry skills were part of what Hamon called the standard toolkit for the B'nei Elohim.

Lilith dressed as one of the poor farmers in the vicinity of Salem who had been pressed into menial service at the business end of a whip but were not made part of the army. She drifted among the soldiers ladling out water and calmly taking much abuse. In the very center of the camp she noted the wooden cage that had been Hamon's drafty home for much too long.

The cage was covered with a canvas to keep Hamon from freezing to death. It would not do, as Malphas knew well, to break the single thread keeping himself and his whole army alive.

Lilith could swagger with the best of them. The guards permitted her to attend to Hamon. She climbed up onto the wagon and ap peared between the canvas and the cage with a stoneware pitcher of water. For light she donned a lamp on a green head band made by Bat-El herself, a gift from early in her discipleship.

The brilliant white light of the headband came from the body of Bat-El herself, Hamon once told Lilith, down an intangible thread finer than a spider's silk. The canvas covering his cage was thick enough that no light escaped to betray the princess. He was overjoyed to see her and willing to overlook the beard. For the guards to hear she grunted "Here's your filthy swill-wa ter you clutty bastard!" but she framed her thoughts to say "THE KETTLES ARE SECURE ABOARD THE SHIPS."

HAMON: [Hold the ladle still you bafty hoach!]

He was quick to get into the spirit of their little game.

Again, Lilith allowed a set of words to stand clearly in her head: "THE SHIPWRIGHTS SAY THE KETTLES WILL TAKE ON SEAWATER AND TIP THE SHIPS SO FAR HALF THE OARS WILL BE AIRBORNE." And such was her new talents following the Change that Hamon clearly heard this speech in his own mind.

He replied in the same mode, "YOU HAVE DONE WELL. THE OARS AND THE LEN TO ROW THEM WILL NOT BE NEEDED."

"Take the water or leave be, you sputtering ball bag!" Lilith grunted for the benefit of the guards. To Hamon she handed over her head lamp and asked, for his hearing alone, "WHY MUST I TO BRING THIS TO YOU?"

Hamon, somewhat surprised, explained once more he could open a portal that leads to his body as a living sun, but it takes two elohim to make a bridge. "YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS," he added.

"You smelly half a loaf!" she blurted, and mentally she asked the question again with a slightly different emphasis.

Hamon took the pitcher because he really was thirsty and he drank half the contents while marveling that even mind-to-mind communication was subject to misunderstandings. Then he said, "THIS ARTIFACT IS UNIQUE IN KEMEN. NOTHING ELSE SAYS 'LILITH WAS HERE' WITH NO MISTAKE. I WANT MALPHAS TO KNOW YOU CAN GET TO ME AT ANY TIME.'"

Lilith nodded, now seeing Hamon's plan in full. For the guards she said, "Keep your stinky grabbers inside the cage!" She took back the water and climbed down.