kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"Salvation"

words

Salvation (with Shweta Narayan) March 10, 2000

Brother Jacob slipped into the monastery library, cupping his hand around a candle, needing the light but afraid that it would draw attention to him.

Afraid. It came down to fear. Jacob shivered in the papery chill as he hurriedly shut the door. Hurriedly, but in silence. Fear again. He jerked his hand as wax spilled over, dripping in slow burning droplets, sending screams of pain up to him from his fingers. Pain. The candle went flying. Fear and Pain. Well, Jesus knew both well, and he never turned back. Brother Jacob ran his fingers -- left hand, the right was still throbbing -- over the smooth wood of the floor. Gingerly. All he needed now was a splinter. Bad example, Jacob; Jesus was the Son of God, so of course he could prevail. And Jacob knew that a splinter was quite likely. He bit his tongue on a curse. Bit too hard. More pain, and blood. Well, it distracted from the fingers. His penance for blasphemy. One would think five years in a monastery could cure a person of that instinct, but apparently not. He chuckled, a grim soft sound; fear and pain were his reward for piety. Well that was nothing unusual. Job! Job would do. Job kept faith and did what was right despite fear and pain and loss. Oh, lord, was loss the next thing he'd be hit with?

Except Job had known what was right. All Jacob had was faith. Except again, chances were that Job hadn't a clue either, any more than people ever did. Good example, Jacob. Good boy, no splinter. His thumb found the candle, and he lit it with his cigarette lighter. A vestige of his sinful past. The library flickered into being with the smell of burning wick, and Brother Jacob sighed, his heart slowing down as anticipation died. The room was serene, dusty, normal. Not even the slightest trace of the infernal.

A week ago, Brother Jacob would have laughed at anyone who claimed to have witnessed demonic forces at work. Well, probably not laughed; smiled gently and recommended psychiatric treatment, more likely; which, if you consider it, would probably have been worse. It wasn't that he did not believe in the Adversary. He did, more or less, and he certainly believed in God, and given that God was all-benevolent there had to be an entity creating evil, and so rationally demons had to exist; but there is a difference between tentative belief and the blood-stopping, sweat-drenched knowledge that there is a devil, and he's after you. Actually, Jacob still considered himself skeptical -- he just couldn't think of a more rational explanation for what had been befalling him. His heart and stomach refused to listen to the brain's disbelief, though, and it was two on one. He could no longer enter a darkened room without his throat seizing up on a prayer and his palms becoming slick, and thoughts of shadow monsters creeping up his spine.

He crossed himself, stepped forward, and froze. There was something in the chair. The shadow thrown over its back was lurching with sinister purpose. Jacob held his breath, his skin like a layer of cold rubber over warm gelatin, furiously thinking the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic. It had to be Aramaic; English and Latin didn't work. Jacob had discovered this the week before, with his right leg trapped up to mid-calf in a shadow and sinking. He had stepped on ground that should have been solid, had been solid, and slowly, sickeningly, that ground had given way. Pulled at him. Sucked. Jacob no longer believed in solid ground.

But saying the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic had disappeared the thing, leaving Jacob standing on a perfectly smooth and even floor, dizzy, skittish, and afraid of the dark. Afraid for his sanity. There had been no screams, no puff of smoke from the fires of hell, nothing to convince him that it was real. If it had not been for his recent stream of nightmares, he would have put it down to the aftermath of an interesting youth, and perhaps even the nightmares were signs of growing delusion. Call it divine retribution or neurochemical imbalance, it still sent you crazy, jumping at flickering shadows.

And it was just that. As Jacob stilled, the candle flame also quietened, and the shadow on the chair resolved into itself, the innocent result of a single light source. Nothing more than the back of the chair imprinting its form on the seat. In the joy of relief, Jacob voiced his thanks; then he left the candle on the table and collected an old book. Burning the midnight oil. There were worse things involved in the search for truth, no doubt; burning one's fingers came readily to mind. He settled into the chair to read.

Hours flipped his eyes through dusty tomes, some of which even his decades of study couldn't make sense. At least he understood all the words' he had learned all the requisite languages, one after another after another. Hebrew had followed Latin, Aramaic had followed Hebrew, and so on, until he [knew more dead languages than live ones.] [found himself fluent in several languages nobody else could speak.] So much the better: his books spoke to him in secret whispers. Jacob was certain of one thing, and that was that the road to truth was shrouded in mystery. Ad pain. He remembered his fingers, and as though indignant they resumed their angry throbbing. Distracted again. He leaned back, rubbed his eyes and set his tired mind free to wander.

In one way, he felt, the Hindus had gotten it right. God was in every thing, in some form or another, or at the very least his signature was. And if Jacob's research was true, God could be found in that signature. And should. The Hindus had it again -- salvation by understanding the divine. In knowing His name.

One could look at it as if the signature were a fractal. Viewed from the utmost heights, the signature was the universe. It contained every bit of information. The resolving power of the human mind was not such that galaxies could really be separated from each other at that scale. Then, one could zoom into the tiniest grain of sand. That speck contained every bit as much information as the universe... it simply was a different perspective on it. In one sense, the signature was part and parcel the fundamental of chaos. Jacob wondered if it should be chaos with a capital 'C'. Chaos, theories based on the manner in which a slight change in initial conditions could lead to unpredictable behavior of a system, followed the four dimensional fractal of the lord's signature. Jacob laughed at himself as he always did when terminology tripped him up. Fractals were fractional dimensions, so what he was saying about four-dimensional fractals wasn't quite valid, but the meaning came across at least.

Allegories were not just a way of meaning one thing by saying another. Their very existence, existence as the word of God, led the mind to see that there were many ways to view creation. That one truth did not necessarily forestall other truths. Methodology was key. The tools and methods one used to pick something apart necessarily helped define the structure of what one found. Jacob had the universe as his data, God was everywhere. What Jacob was searching for now was how to use the universe to name itself. How he could drop into the flow of the fractal edge of chaos and become one with the name so as to be able to speak the name.

Of course, nothing was closer to God than the Word of God. The problem was that it was encrypted in its own meaning. He needed help, ages of help, to show him different methods of clearing a path. That was where his library and his years of study came in.

He had drifted, in that uncomfortably remembered past, from one occult order to another, never certain about what he sought. But he had learned that it was not to be found in magical texts: those were routes to power, no more, blasphemous and rooted in egocentrism so vile as to be impressive. Jacob was not interested in power. He was interested in truth. And he wanted -- needed -- to be close to God. That need drove him, and it had driven him to these books.

His attention drifted hazily over the page as he tried to remember what he was reading. It was late. His fingers were taking in more information from the text than his eyes could, lidded over and fading. Jacob found himself slouching deeper and deeper into the chair, hardly able to feel it through the numbness in his backside. What he needed to do was stand up and stretch, work out the kinks that had colonized the length, breadth, and depth of his body. Apathy snaked its way around his will and dripped soothing venom into his blood. Lethe would lead him straight to the morning and forget for him all his pains. A small part of his mind noted with dry amusement that he'd just about bent himself in half falling into the chair and had lost sensation in almost all of his limbs; only on his chest, beneath the crucifix, where generally the cold metal would remind him of the purity of the lord, he could feel a slow pulsing warmth.

As if sensing this, the darkness amassed itself and struck for the offending talisman. Jacob had no place in this fight. He was not prepared. The shadows slipped through infinitesimal pores, seeking to destroy his charm. The crucifix heated, shadows releasing his stolen energy in the strain of conflict. His chest inflamed with fire and constricted with fear and still he couldn't move. Suddenly the deep black shadows dulled to matte gray and clouded as his vision similarly clouded in the darkness of head rush and his chest went numb.

Limbs skeltered about, he crashed to the floor twisted amongst the chair. He lay there panting, only then realizing that he didn't know how long he'd been holding his breath. Each labored breath brought his chest further back to life, and with it a searing pain that forced him to cast off his robes and search for some salve. The holy symbol had been burnt into his flesh.

Slightly manic, he mocked himself, "And this, Jacob, is why the Hindus are taught to control their chakras before moving such massive energies through them." He touched the burn gingerly. Control. He wasn't up to control at the moment. What he needed was protection. While the crucifix had saved him this time, it surely had been a close thing. He was afraid.



His feet found the chapel by themselves, deeply ingrained motor patterns substituting for thought, and when he noticed himself again he was kneeling and his lips were forming a prayer. He clenched his teeth on it. Rote learning was not the way to the Lord. He painfully formed the words in his mind, their pain matching the blistering hurt on his chest. "Lord. Lord, protect me. Guide me. Save your servant, O my Lord, save me. I am nothing, can be nothing, without you."

At first he noticed that the room was cooling down, the metal of his cross becoming a soothing, quietening touch. He relaxed, feeling safe for the first time in ages, noticing the bright light dim into peaceful shadows.

And then the shadows were around him, looming, fingers of darkness thrust up on every side as though he were kneeling on the palm of some great demonic hand. The chapel fell away in a sickening spiral as he lurched to his feet, gone as though it had never been there, and his cross was an icy leech sucking the warmth from his heart. Jacob gasped and, staggering, pulled the cross from its chain and cast it from him. Somehow somehow the chain had wrapped itself around his fingers and was snaking its was up his arms and Jacob panicked and the chapel was gone and he was alone and prayer was meaningless and his cross his cross was attacking him he had been a fool to mistake the symbol for the Lord and he would die a fool and

No.

Jacob stopped as though his heart was frozen. "Oh, well," he thought calmly, "I've lost. Game over."

No. Fight. You have the power.

His knowledge of the magical arts washed into his mind, along with memory of the most basic weapons.

Swords. The chain fell from his hand, shattered into a hundred shards. The cross bounced dully once, and was still.

Wands. Like the flare of a bonfire, light burst back into the room. Lit, the chapel reappeared, like a haze, like a promise.

Coins. And the room was real. But the shadows still threatened.

Cups. They flinched. wavered. dissolved.

Jacob collapsed into a pew, trembling. To wield such power, the power he despised, was a loss as total as death. He was cast down. He had renounced the Lord's protection and found his own. He had failed.

"I give up." he sighed.



He woke up feeling refreshed. Maybe not all was lost. He couldn't remember his dreams, but they had been pleasant. Not the crazed nightmares of a heretic. He had to honor his faith, but he had to believe in himself as well. After all, we are made in God's likeness, so doubt in ourselves is to some extent doubt in the divine. It's unfair of you to ask for God to do everything for you, Jacob. Especially if this is simply His testing of your own spirit. Whether or not you're worthy of finding his name.

Jacob held back from the monks heading for their morning gruel. He felt rather than heard himself humming, words coming into his mind from long ago: I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand...

Sword. Sword was Air. Well, he didn't have a sword handy, but candles were Fire and Air both. Water...Water was Cups. He had a ceramic cup, and that would cover Earth as well. Convenient. He collected both and secreted them in his robes along with three sticks of white chalk, still humming. He was breaking rules and he knew it, but he had done that before. Jacob was not about to fail a divine test of faith because of some invented doctrine. He slipped soft-footed down a flight of stairs and looked around. Nobody. Good. He entered one of the penitents' cells, closed and barred the door, looked around again. Nothing. Better. Nobody would disturb him, now, and if anything bad were to happen his brothers would probably be safe.

He rejected several designs straightaway. Spirals were silly, if not outright satanic. Playing with the Roman alphabet would likely get him as far as reciting the Lord's Prayer in English or Latin, and he just didn't feel right about playing with the Hebrew alphabet. He laughed. Focus on what you know. God would be a good theme for the ward, for without God he was nothing. Some structure was necessary as well, he'd learned that the previous day. Elements detailed to deal with their like. He scratched his chin. A circle to start with. Centered. He sketched out a circle, two feet in diameter. That was his inner safety. He sketched out another circle, the circumference reaching towards but not quite touching the walls of his cell. That was his outer barricade. Two symbols of god and infinity. Two was too many, or too few. He drew a border on the inside of the inner circle. The Sun. Warmth and life to sustain him in his search. An understood and named phenomenon to boot. Jacob smiled, and then studied the state of his ward. The two circles were unconnected, without power. Although he did feel a strange prickling on the back of his neck.

First, the connecting element. He traced a triangle along the inside of the outer circle. Earth. Grounding. Strength and sturdiness. There was a definite tang of electricity in the air. Between its edges and the outer circle he drew three more triangles, pointing outwards. Air. Water. Fire. Two alert guardians and one sprite of divination. Of a sudden, he knew something was wrong, but not what. He could smell a charge in the room.

It was not enough. It was not connected to him in any way. Christ was his connection to God, the son sent to be the salvation of man. The cross was the remembrance of Christ, and thus the remembrance of the salvation of man and the connection of man with God. The symbol needed a cross. Not outside the circle, for that would put Christ outside of God. Not inside the sun, for that was where he was to be standing. It wouldn't be right for him to stand on the Son of God. Christ could not be placed in the large triangle for many reasons. Aesthetically, it really didn't work. Also, Christ had escaped the earth and been reborn. Fire, water, or air. Air. If for no other reason than the cross had hung him in the air. Jacob carefully applied a cross reaching outwards from Earth into Air. There was his faith and his savior.

He looked up from the design. Before him was a ball of flickering light, a pinprick slowly gaining size, a tense, electric form pushing against the lines of his outer circle, pushing against the outer edges of his mind. Jacob felt fear clamp his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

Jacob, calm down. Do not panic. The voice sounded, quietly, and he latched onto it, frantically seeking serenity. Jacob, don't panic. Calm down. Don't --. The ward was holding, but the ball grew as he stared at it and the ward was not yet complete. It held his mastery, and a symbol of his faith, but it did not hold his faith. Contemplate the ward, Jacob. Contemplate. Burning his eyes on the image of the ball before him, he let the ward suffuse his awareness. Where he stood was the sun. It was a ball of energy, much like the thing that would burn him to a crisp if he couldn't concentrate any better than -- calm down. He felt for the tendrils of energy that lay within the sun, and teased them up. Earth was next to feel the power of the sun. The ward wavered, off-kilter, as the charges attempted to find a balance. Jacob quickly interlaced the three other elements. Air stirred the earth, reducing its ability to drain the sun. Fire added a bit of chaos to the energy, mutability and deadliness. Water tempered fire. Even more off-balance, Jacob struggled to find a way to make them more secure, but he was under attack. There was not much he could do but plunge on and hope.

Light flickered in front of his face, tossing sparks onto his robe. Jacob pictured the energy at each of the six points of the triangles, sparking into the omnipresence of God. The points of the triangles diffused but did not disappear, somehow becoming both nothing and one with everything, infinite and infinitesimal, flowing through Jacob.

He believed. He could feel the outer circle tingle with a resonance. He believed. He could feel faith and its response flooding into and suffusing each of the elements and the sun. Slowly, he drew both up through the cross, and with a shower of sparks connected them. The ball of lightning lost cohesion, sparkling and spewing its dying hatred onto him. With a twitch of a smile, he fed it into the sun. Good.

Jacob contemplated the ward. It was infused with an energy he had never sensed before. It was his magic, his faith, and some third thing. Godliness, for lack of a better word. It was exactly that lack of a word to which he directed his thoughts now that he had created safety. He tried to pin down a color to it, but it was every color. He tried to pin down a flavor to it, but it was no one flavor. Jacob stopped trying to pin it down, and focused on experiencing it. He felt the diffuse focus of contemplation take him over, washing peace over him, and images. [FLASHBACKS]

He placed his self at the each of the points of the Star of David created by the triangles of the four elements. He strived for his self to connect as they had. He strained. And then he let go. He... He... Lost. Himself. For a second. Only a second. An eternal second. Flashed. Flashed, for a second, been one, for a second. His eyes strained to focus.

And then the door of his cell opened -- the barred door of his solitary, private room -- and a man walked in. He was tall, with a full black beard and shoulder-length hair, under a tight-fitting green cap. He wore a billowing, full body robe. Jacob's eyes took in details as his mind froze, and his body broke out in a cold sweat. The stranger's robe was black. Deep midnight black with an emerald green embroidered border. Except that this was no stranger. Jacob knew the symbolism of those colors as well as anyone. Taking a shuddering breath, he reminded himself of his moment of peace and forced his eyes to meet his foe's. He knew what he would see. Dark eyes, deep set, glowing as if lit from within by glowing embers; a craggy, triangular face darkened by flickering shadows. Jacob licked his lips nervously.

"Get thee from me, Satan!" His voice came out as a croak, but the words were clear, and with them Jacob felt a resurgence of faith. He straightened, met the figure's gaze with challenge.

The man laughed. He gave Jacob an avuncular smile and said, "Not quite. Do you not know, even now, what it is that you do? Perhaps I should grant you three guesses." His voice was gentle, smooth, like the flow of a stream off a very high cliff.

Jacob studied him further, wary but overwhelmingly curious. His tongue twisted up within his mouth, allowing his mind an excuse to stop searching for a proper reply. Jacob settled for glaring at the figure.

"Come, where is my warm greeting? We are brothers, after all." He chuckled a deep resonant rumble. "Ah well. If nothing else will make it through your thick and silent skull, I shall be to the point." He paused, as if weighing Jacob's reaction so far. "It is in your best interests for you to stop your silly quest. Especially as it seems that you know not at all what you are messing with."

Jacob's tongue uncurled as he found an entrance to the conversation. "My own best interests, or yours, demon?" He coughed out the last epithet, not sure what to call the figure before him. Demon was as good a name as any, and better than most. It was no name, more of a feeling than a description. If he was to duel this creature, it would be best not to falsely name it. Though if it were Satan...

"I tell you truly that you would be safest to find some other hobby."

"And your interest?"

"When it suits yours, of what matter is mine?"

"A silver tongue and clever mind," noted Jacob. "Can you also quote scripture?"

"Tales made up to keep people from thinking," retorted the figure, sounding tired of the banter. "Heed me. Swear that you shall give this up or be ready to taste your own mortality."

"I will not."

The figure shrugged as if dealing with a stubborn child, and turned back to the door. Jacob's mind raced. Was this the adversary? Was this his test? Was the test over? Had he missed some subtlety in the conversation? If he had missed nothing, the test had been too easy. If it were not the test, then who was that man?

Jacob was startled out of this by a strange rippling of his ward. The rippling became the almost familiar searing of his flesh as his flesh resonated with the ward. He gritted his teeth, trying not to show the pain in his bearing. He had gone through more in his apprenticeships.

Suddenly the pain was gone.

"Hrm. Better than I expected. A good ward for chalk lines traced out of a book." Jacob's ear traced out the edge of a hissing ess. Was this truly Satan? Why could he not tell?

"You shall not have me here, demon. Begone! Leave me be!" Jacob's fear trembled with a tinge of annoyance. His left hand mindlessly counted over a rosary while his right fidgeted with the crucifix hanging from his neck. Jacob could do nothing while the beast hovered in the corner.

"I shall.... not? have you?" A wide grin spread across the figure's face. Two shadows rose and plunged as daggered wings into the edge of Jacob's ward. Smokeless fire trickled along the lines, slowly suffusing its entirety. "I think I shall. What say you, good sir?"

A serpent's form filled the air in front of Jacob as the man's substance faded. Not the serpent of biblical times but the dragon cum Satan of the nights of the inquisition. Was this the true form indeed? What was the truth of religions? How did they intermix? If this were some Druidic lord, what was he doing?

"Say ye naught?"

"Indeed!" Jacob stood his ground. He could not be harmed from outside the ward.

"Indeed." The dragon chuckled. "Indeed." Rough knives, talons? raked across Jacob's forehead. His vision became wet and clouded, his ears rang with the pounding of wings. He screamed.

Jacob's mouth opened in an agony becoming one tortured by the Lord of Pain. He could not hear the roar tearing out his throat. His mind raced in place, "can not can not can not can not can not!!!"

Illusion? Could this be more illusion? Mere illusion? The pain was pushing him back, loosening his grip on the ward. If he were not dead yet, it could only be because of the ward. He'd read nothing of an intact ward being traversed... unless the demon was within the very structure of the ward itself? Could it be so vain as to think it could get away with that?

One question pounded at the ward, pulsing with Jacob's blood, bludgeoning the otherness that had burnt its way in. "Who are you?"

Slowly, the answer came.

It was a whisper to be sorted twixt the roar without.

"Isaiah," spoke Jacob, and the demon's eyes shot wide with surprise. "Isaiah," spoke Jacob again, twisting the inflection to match the echoes that he felt within his bones, and the demon shrank back. "Isaiah," spoke Jacob. The demon fell to the ground.

"Thricely I name you, thricely I bind you, thricely you're made, thricely unwound." Rotes flashed through his mind, teachers and books muddling their ways in his thoughts into a single powerful voice that intoned through him. "By your name I take you. By your name forsake you. By your name unmake you."

The figure, two bodies, fading into eachother, chuckled hoarsely, fizzling into the air, "Now... you see... now, you begin to see..."

"To see? What can I see?" Jacob bit his lip, and pain anew shot up. "I suppose I have already damned you, so it's almost silly to bite off that curse." He shook his head and tried to clear his mind. One battle had ended, but his peace had not been made. He hoped he had passed his final test.

Slowly, he spread out his energies to call forth that being which he had spent decades trying to find. Truth was on the tip of his fingers, tingling his every layer. He closed his eyes and lost himself, but remained connected to the ward.

Slow.

Patience.

Love.

Infinity.

God stood there, clean and stately, completely unphased by the proceedings. He looked around the cell with some curiosity, and spoke softly with infinite grace, caring, and wisdom. "Well done, my son. A blessing for your travails. Now, I shall be going." Carefully watching the victor, he turned around and made as if to walk away.

Seeing the salvation he had fought so hard for deserting him, Jacob cried out above his pain, "No! My Lord, wait, please!"

The paternal figure of eternity stopped dead in his tracks. He turned back reluctantly, as if forced, to face the monk who so called out to him. "What is your will?" he asked with resignation.