I shook my head. "No, he beat them to it. He died before they could take his Crown."
"Giving it to you."
"Yes."
"And it isn't a physical gift."
"No. It is his. . "
"Essence?"
"Essentially."
"And what are you supposed to do with it?"
I stopped pacing. "I don't know."
She nodded. "No wonder Marielle brought you to see me."
"Excuse me?"
She closed her eyes for a moment, and the room felt darker. All the exhaustion of the day came racing back to the forefront of my brain. On the desk, the tiny drawing I had scribbled no longer looked like anything important. It didn't look like the Ace of Cups at all, and a tiny part of me wondered what I had been thinking.
Something had definitely changed in the last moment, but I didn't feel like I had been conned, or that the words had been taken against my will. Quite the opposite. It had felt liberating to tell her, and now that it was done, I was glad to be rid of the weight. But whatever glamour had been on me, it was gone now. In the back of my throat, something clicked shut and my tongue felt heavy in my mouth again.
She sat down at the desk and laid her hand on what I had thought was the mouse pad beside the keyboard. It glowed beneath her fingers, a green light outlining her hand.
"What rank did you achieve when you were actively part of the fraternity, M. Markham?"
"Please, Michael." We might as well be on first name basis, after that confession I had unleashed. My tongue still felt a bit wooden. "I made Journeyman."
"Seventh Degree?"
I flushed. "No. Only Third."
"And how long have you been gone?" The computer came out of sleep mode, and the light from the LCD screen illuminated her face, highlighting the shadows under her eyes. "Did you study during that time?"
"Five, no, six years now. I've been teaching myself since then."
"Ah. Venefice."
"I wish you wouldn't put it that way."
"You were-are-an unrecognized and self-taught magus, who was given access to the teachings of the society and who, while retaining those teachings, no longer answers to the hierarchy to which you once swore an oath. I don't know; what name would you give to that sort of person if not 'traitor'?"
"How about 'free radical'?"
"All right, solute frater." With just a touch of sarcasm in her voice. "Let me ask you a few questions."
She moved her hand across the pad, mousing with her fingers, and the flat screen on the wall came to life, displaying a line drawing of a human figure, but overlaid with the ten spheres of the Tree of the Sephiroth. The sphere at the top of the tree floated over the figure's head. This was Kether, the holy crown at the apex, and it wasn't by accident that it appeared to be a halo. Much like the representation of saints in medieval art and iconography.
Like the saints in the watercolors and stained glass at the Chapel of Glass.
"What's this?" I asked.
"You tell me," she said. "What does it look like to you?"
"It looks like an overlay of the Sephiroth on an anatomical drawing. Like da Vinci's Vitruvian Man without all the geometric distractions. It looks modern though, like some aspiring occult student did some sketching and didn't bother with doodling a bunch of commentary around the margins."
"Very likely," she acknowledged. "But what does it represent?"
"It's the symbolic representation of mankind. Rather, humanity, if you prefer a more gender-neutral word. We stand upon the globe of Malkuth, and the forces and energies of the Sephirotic realm travel up through our bodies so that we may attain the enlightened awareness of Kether."
She selected an icon on her screen and the picture changed. The figure was no longer standing with its arms outstretched over the Sephiroth of Geburah and Chesed — Strength and Mercy. Now, the figure was in the traditional crucifixion pose, and resting in his open and upturned palms were the globes of Binah and Chokhmah, the spheres of Understanding and Wisdom. His head was bent at an angle, and the sphere of Kether was a solar disk pressing down on his neck, like a vast weight.
A dim line went through the man's neck, separating the head from the body. It was the line on the tree between Binah and Chokhmah, and the center of the line corresponded to the base of the man's throat. Right where Daath lay, the entrance to the nightside of the tree. The Abyss where the Qliphoth dwelt, where they waited for the innocent to call them forth.
"And this one?" she asked.
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat, a sympathetic memory of the night in the Pacific Northwest woods where I was initiated into magick and touched the Tree of the Sephiroth. I made the mistake of touching that dark spot between Binah and Chokhmah. "The ascended martyr," I croaked, as I turned away from the screen. "The one who knows he cannot sustain the weight of the tree. But he bears it anyway, and so it crushes him."
I closed my eyes, but the image was still there, and the similarities between Vivienne's picture and the enormous Christ figure in the Chapel of Glass were readily apparent. Head bowed by the weight of the crown, no longer supported by Strength and Mercy, but holding Understanding and Wisdom in his bloodied hands. This was the magus who Knew, who had Seen beyond the veil and understood the nature of the Divine. This was the man who died, knowing who he was and what he would become. I had thought the figure had been sleeping, but there wasn't much distinction between sleep and understanding.
Philippe Emonet understood. Hierarch of the Watchers, Architect of Architects. I am the Silent Guardian Who Waits. In that down-turned face, in the serenity that wreathed the slumbering visage, was peace.
When I had killed him, when I reached into his heart and broke his soul, he had smiled.
"I am the daughter of the Scholar," Vivienne said after a moment. She spoke quietly enough that I had to come away from my own thoughts to hear her. "I am the chief librarian of the Archives. I have devoted my life to the illumination of knowledge. I don't like questions that appear to have no answer." She waited for me to look at her before she continued. "Like: Why did the Hierarch choose to give an untested, untrained, and uninformed magus-a dumb courier, at best-the symbols of his office? So that you could arbitrate?" She shook her head. "I don't think so."
Peace is not for us, Michael. Responsibility yes, but not peace.
Something popped in my chest. A reaction to those words, to this question. "It's a perfectly valid answer," I snapped. "You just don't care for the inference that it carries. Philippe wanted someone untested, untrained, and uninformed in the ways of the organization because that would be someone he could trust. Not the rest of you.
"I am supposed to seem like a clueless monkey sent to deliver a message, and fortunately enough, I am pretty good at that sort of charade. But I'm not, and while this game of rubbing my nose in my lack of formal training might be fun for you, it's the very sort of self-righteous and sanctimonious attitude that has poisoned-"
She stiffened. "I'm not-" With an angry swipe of her hand, she blanked the screen. "You think this is about power? About me not being happy that after a lifetime of service to these Archives I'm supposed to eagerly welcome some rogue magus into my sanctum? 'Oh, sure, come in. No, I don't mind that you've thieved two of our more prized artifacts from us. No, not at all. I don't mind that you're a fucking clueless idiot who has no idea what is going on. It's okay. I'll wipe your ass and hold your hand.' "