‘Christ Jesus. That’s it? That’s what I told you?’
‘Yes. You quoted Revelations to us too: “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison; And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.”’
‘Yes. Yes. It’s what Achor Bale said to me when he had me imprisoned in the cesspit. “AND AFTER THAT HE MUST BE LOOSED A LITTLE SEASON.” The maniac thought he was still protecting us all from the Devil, just like his de Bale ancestors had done for the kings of France.’
The Halach Uinic motioned to Ixtab. She crouched forwards and spoke to Sabir. ‘We do not understand this. How can the de Bales imagine they are protecting us all from a Devil they themselves seem busy conjuring up?’
Calque laid a hand on Sabir’s shoulder to stop him from responding. ‘Let me answer this. I’ve become something of an expert on the subject in recent months. The Devil-Antichrist question is a tricky one. In a nutshell, the Corpus believes that only by placating the Devil – that is, by supporting his earthly representative, the Third Antichrist (the first two Antichrists being Napoleon and Hitler, according to Nostradamus) – can the Devil be seduced into allowing the earth to follow its own devices. To run its own shop. Once the Devil himself is tempted to intervene – once he loses patience, in other words, with the machinations of his henchmen – we are doomed to Armageddon.’
Ixtab shook her head. ‘How can this be? Is there no way to stop it? Or does the Corpus think this is all preordained too?’
‘To the de Bales’ way of thinking, the only palpable threat to the Third Antichrist is via the Second Coming. Because the Antichrist is the evil mirror image of Christ – Christ’s dark shadow – the antimimon pneuma – the counterfeit spirit, or what have you, only a true representation of Christ – ergo the Son of God – ergo the Parousia – ergo the Second Coming – can possibly hope to overcome him. The Corpus Maleficus can’t afford to let that happen, because then they would have failed in their sworn duty. The crazy thing is that they think they are the goodies. That whatever they need to do to keep the Devil at bay is justified, within the greater scheme of things. That is their gage. The rest is irrelevant to them. The Devil is God’s evil brother – the Antichrist bears the exact same relationship to Christ. The one, in both cases, presupposes the existence of the other. The Antichrist is therefore Christ’s dark shadow or mirror image, and can only be overcome by his opposite number. And vice versa. You see? It’s simple, really.’
Ixtab shook her head. She glanced at the Halach Uinic. He met her gaze, then let his eyes fall to the ground.
Sabir made a grab for Ixtab’s hand. ‘What else did I say?’
‘You also spoke of your blood sister, Yola Samana. You told us that she had been made pregnant by her husband, Alexi Dufontaine, on a beach on the island of Corsica. But that her coming child was no normal child, but the one predicted by Nostradamus in his lost prophecies – the prophecies that you had read and then burned in order to keep them out of the hands of Achor Bale and the Corpus Maleficus. That this child was indeed the Parousia, which some call the Second Coming. That because of his background, and the cursed nomadic tribe from which he sprang, the child would grow up to be a representative of all faiths, both religious and secular – of all people, not simply the Christians – of all races, not simply the Aryan and the Semitic. That his birth was designed by God to bring the peoples of the world together, and not to separate them, just as Revelations had foretold. “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”’
‘Oh, God. I told you all that? But I swore not to tell.’
‘To whom did you swear?’
Sabir shook his head uncertainly. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember. To myself, I suppose. Whoever I swore it to, in my delirium, is irrelevant. I owe Yola my protection. She is my blood sister. There are vows I have taken in front of her tribe. The more people who know of this thing, the more danger she stands in.’
The Halach Uinic smiled. ‘All is well then. No one here will abuse your trust. You told us because you had to pass on the message. The Vision Serpent made you do so. The cult of the Second Coming shall start here. When the time is ripe we will proclaim his name. And that will be on 21 December 2012. At the very end of the Cycle of the Nine Hells.’
‘Then you’ll be signing the child’s death warrant. I shouldn’t have spoken. You were wrong to give me the datura. I have betrayed my blood sister.’
‘No, Adam. You told us because your unconscious mind sensed that you must share the secret you had stumbled on. That it would only be believed if it emerged under such circumstances. Such a secret is too much of a burden for any one man to carry.’
Sabir shook his head. ‘Wrong. I told you because I thought I was the chief whose eyes the Spaniards started out of his head with the garrotte – that I was about to die, in other words, and carry my secret to the grave with me. I dreamed that I was in the clearing with Friar de Landa. That I saw Akbal Coatl writing his record. That I saw the broken bodies of those the Friar had already tortured. When I was blinded, the Vision Serpent briefly lent me his eyes so that I could bear witness to what had occurred.’ Sabir ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. ‘It’s all nonsense, of course. I wasn’t there. The drug was simply working on me. I was on a fucking trip, that’s all. And my unconscious mind grabbed hold of the first thing that suggested itself to me, which just happened to be the de Landa story. Under different circumstances it could just as easily have latched onto the storyline of a book I’d just been reading. Or a movie. Or something that had happened to me earlier that day in the street.’
‘You were that chief. You did see the Vision Serpent.’ The Halach Uinic was bending forwards at the waist. He was urging Sabir to believe him with his eyes.
‘Bullshit. How can that be possible?’
‘Because we were with you, Adam. All of us. We witnessed what happened to you. Ixtab was one of the ones who carried you from the square. As was I. As was the guardian, and the Chilan, and Calque. We all carried you out of there. We were chosen to share your vision. It was a communal one. As an acknowledged midwife, Ixtab was even told by the Franciscans to tend to your wounds so that you would not die. So that your torment could serve as an example to the other chiefs.’
Sabir looked uncertainly at the Halach Uinic. Then he gave a bitter laugh. ‘This is all madness. You all carried me out here, now, this minute. Not out of the square at Mani four hundred and fifty years ago. I don’t believe a word of it. Where was Lamia in all of this? I need to speak to her. I need to ask her something.’
The Halach Uinic stood up. He looked around himself in the darkness. ‘This is impossible, I am afraid. For Lamia has gone.’
95
Calque shrugged. ‘She was definitely here a few minutes ago. I saw her. We were in that place for more than four hours. It’s my guess that she’s gone to pay a visit to the bushes – and fast. That’s not something you particularly want to communicate to everybody when they’re carrying your boyfriend out in a dead faint.’
Sabir grimaced. ‘I’m tired. I don’t want to talk about this any more. Is it all right if we leave it to the morning? I’m going back to our lean-to. Lamia will be waiting for me there. I’m sure of it.’
‘You know how to find it?’
‘Yes. It’s starting to get light. Look.’ Sabir pointed to a vague luminescence in the eastern sky. ‘We’re right next to the tallest tree in the place. It’s virtually impossible to miss it.’