Rah hyuun!
Rah hyuun!
Rah hyuun!
But it was as if he stood on both sides of the mirror, both priest and victim. Holding the knife and wearing the black robes of a High Priest, he stared down at the naked and bound form on the altar stone.
And also, but what seemed to be a different time: He looked up, straining against the bonds, the sacrificial victim, feeling the cold from the engraved concrete of the altar biting into his back. The wide blade of a rune-carved knife rose up, catching torchlight on its tip.
But then a switch again, from the point of view of the High Priest: The hilt, made of simulated human bone, felt dry against his uncallused fingertips. He brought the knife down in a smooth arc. He watched the victim as foamy arterial blood sprayed upward, scarlet, like thick hibiscus tea.
Rah hyuun!
Rah hyuun!
Victim: He didn’t feel the tip of the sacrificial knife pierce his chest. The echoing chant filled his head, filled the heavens. A brilliant blackness exploded outward simultaneously from his heart and brain….
And Danal found himself crumpled on the kitchen floor like a survivor cast free from the wreckage of a ship. The thin teacup still wobbled on the counter where he had abruptly released it, but it hadn’t spilled.
The colors, the vibrant pain, the growing confusion and uneasiness about his former life, all made Danal reel. The thick scar in the center of his chest throbbed in remembered pain.
The Servant stepped up the workings of his microprocessor until subjective time had almost stopped; in his own timeframe he spent the equivalent of half an hour composing himself, calming his responses, searching for answers—or at least to hide from them….
Returning to the surrounding world, Danal balanced the smooth cup on a saucer. Walking with a methodical gait in his slow-time that allowed him to keep careful poise, the Servant left the kitchen, returning to the study. Van Ryman had rolled the top down on his desk, locking it. He sat in the overstuffed chair, watching Danal come in with his tea. The dark-haired man rubbed his hands together.
“Your tea, Master Van Ryman.” The Servant extended the cup forward; in an offhanded way Van Ryman gestured for him to set it on an end table instead. The man did not seem to have noticed any additional delay caused by Danal’s flashback.
“Please turn on the fireplace, Danal. But leave the heat off.”
“Yes, Master Van Ryman.” The Servant felt beneath the mantel of the fireplace until he found a pair of switches. He flicked the outer switch, and purple light flashed down, scattered from the quartz crystals and the mirrored panels of the hearth, and sent a scintillating violet glow about the room.
Danal hesitated under the oceanscape hologram, but he forced himself to look away, terrified that he might have yet another explosion of visions. Memories seemed to lurk everywhere.
Van Ryman took one sip of his tea, grimaced at its tartness, and then smiled in satisfaction. “Now then, Danal, as to the crucial errand I mentioned. I want you to return to Resurrection, Inc. You have an appointment to meet with Francois Nathans, in person. He’s very interested in your well-being.” He allowed himself a slight smile. “And in our success. He’s eagerly expecting you.” Van Ryman rubbed his palms together vigorously, and once again Danal felt that something was terribly out of place, even deeper than the Master’s out of-place eyes.
“Will I be escorted, Master Van Ryman?”
“No! You have to do this alone. Your own actions are very important. You won’t understand now, but if everything works out as it should… well, we’ll see.”
Van Ryman stood up, leaving his tea untouched, and went over to the rolltop desk. He produced a key from a leather thong around his neck and twisted open the desk’s catch, sliding up the oak slats and revealing the scrolls and books crammed into the desk cavity. He rustled through the papers until he yanked one out of the stack.
“I’ll let you in on a secret, Danal. Listen to this, from the Writings.” He ran his finger down the handwritten pages, ticking off several items.
“You are Danal. Danal, the Messenger. You are the Prophet. You are the Bringer of Change and the Fulfiller of Promises. You are the Stranger whom everyone knows. You are the Awakener and the Awakened. You are the Destroyer. Our hope rests in your future.”
Van Ryman closed his eyes for a moment, then quickly came back to himself, pushing the paper inside the desk and slamming the desktop down again so that it locked by itself. “Come with me, Danal. We need to prepare you.”
Baffled by what Van Ryman had said, the Servant followed him into the foyer. Destroyer? Bringer of Change? Neo-Satanist ritualistic babble—it meant nothing to him. He wished now that he had taken some time alone in the house to look at the documents, to familiarize himself with the theology his Master Van Ryman took so seriously.
But the last flashback gnawed at him: the sacrifice, the pain, the excitement—and he was afraid to unearth any more.
Van Ryman opened the doors of a narrow coffinlike closet in the front hallway. He withdrew a beige trenchcoat with slate-colored lining and shook it out before extending it to Danal.
“Here, you’ll have to wear this. A Servant walking alone in the streets will look too… vulnerable.”
Danal passively took the jacket and slipped it over his jumpsuit. The cloth felt stiff and alien, encasing him in something which, as a Servant, he felt he should not wear. Unconsciously he slipped his hands into the deep pockets.
Van Ryman took two objects from a shelf in the closet. “By disguising you, Danal, we should be able to throw any suspicious people off the track. You’ll be much safer this way.”
He placed a thin stencil template of an inverted star-in-pentagram on Danal’s forehead and sprayed red grease paint with an airbrush. The mark stood out brightly on his pallid skin.
The Servant felt uncomfortable and frightened, but he could not refuse his Master’s direct wishes. This was too carefully planned, too well rehearsed. What did Van Ryman have in mind?
“There, much better! Now you’re marked as a neo-Satanist—you should be all right. They can still tell you’re a Servant by your skin, but only if they look.” Van Ryman glanced at the stenciled star-in-pentagram. “You’ll need to wear a hat, too.”
From the depths of the closet Van Ryman produced a fuzzy black stocking cap that slid neatly over Danal’s smooth scalp but left the red pentagram showing clearly against his forehead.
Danal felt like a mannequin, a toy about to be wound up and set on a course he had no choice but to follow. Van Ryman moved with an intensity, captivated and involved in the game, filled with eagerness overlying an anxious dread.
Danal waited passively as Van Ryman opened the door of his Intruder Defense control room. Switches and panels and surveillance videoscreens glittered and glowed.
“Danal, you know how to get to Resurrection, Inc. from here, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he replied. A detailed map of the entire Metroplex had been burned into his microprocessor.
Van Ryman seemed to be only half listening. “Good.” He punched some keys on one of the already logged-on terminals, establishing a direct communications link with Francois Nathans. Danal tried not to listen.
“He’s coming. You’d better get ready,” he said to the screen. The voice receptor picked up his words, encoded them, and transmitted the message directly to Nathans’s electronic address. “This is the trigger moment we’ve all been waiting for.”
Van Ryman turned to Danal. “Open the front door.”
Mid-morning sunlight entered the foyer, illuminating the dark shadows inside. He could see the black textured concrete of Van Ryman’s walkway extending to the public sidewalk, and from there to the streets and the people and the entire city—people who hated Servants and, he recalled uneasily, who disliked neo-Satanists as well.