Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [71]
“It's I who've come to stop you!” I responded. “It's I who've come to reveal that your despair is a fraud! I'm here to tell one and all that you are no Ruler, and never were, that in the great scheme of things you are no more than a filthy brigand, a thief on the margins, a scavenger circling in impotent envy the camps of men and women! And I will destroy your Fabled Rule, as I destroy you—as I drive you out, stamp you out, blot you out—and not with hulking armies in baths of blood, not with the raging smoke and terror you so crave, not with swords and spears dripping with broken flesh. I will do it as you cannot imagine it—I will do it by family, by camp, by hamlet and village and town. I will do it at the banquet tables in the smallest rooms and greatest mansions of cities. I will do it heart by heart. I will do it soul by soul. Yes, the world is ready. Yes, the map is drawn. Yes, the Scripture goes forth in the common language of the world. Yes. And so I go on my way to do it, and you have struggled here once more—and forever—in vain.”
I turned and moved forward, my feet finding the sure ground as I left him, and in a great sweeping wind, I was blinded for an instant, only to see the familiar slope emerge, the slope on which I'd walked when he first approached me, and below, for the first time, I saw in the far distance the misty streaks of green that marked the river's progress.
“You'll curse the day you refused me!” he shouted behind me.
I was sick. The hunger ate my insides. I was dizzy.
I looked back at him. He was still holding the illusion, his lovely garments gathered in graceful folds as he pointed to me.
“You take a good look at these soft clothes!” he shouted, mouth quivering like that of a child. “You'll never see yourself dressed in this manner again.” He groaned. He doubled in pain as he groaned. He shook his fist at me.
I laughed and walked on.
He came up suddenly to my shoulder.
“You'll die on a Roman cross if you try to do this without me!” he said.
I stopped and faced him.
He stepped back, and then he fell back a great distance as if pushed by an invisible force. He scrambled for his balance.
“Get behind me, Satan,” I said. “Get behind me!”
And in a great gust of wind, and rising sand, I heard him cry out and then the cry became a howling scream.
Now came the sandstorm in earnest. His howls were part of it, part of the relentless wind.
I felt myself fall, truly, and the cliff rose up in front of me, as the sand scraped my legs, my hands, and my face.
I twisted, and tumbled downwards, faster and faster, rolling with it, my arms drawn around my head. Down and down I fell.
My ears were filled with the wind, filled with his distant howls, and then softly there came that sound I'd heard at the river, that soft rush of wings.
I heard the flapping, the fluttering, the muffled beating of wings. All over me came the soft touch as if of hands, countless gentle hands, the even softer brush of lips—lips against my cheeks, my forehead, my parched eyelids. It seemed I was lost in a lovely weightless drift of song that had replaced the wind without true sound. And it carried me gently downwards; it embraced me; it ministered to me.
“No,” I said. “No.”
It became weeping now, this singing. It was pure and sad, yet irresistibly sweet. It had the immensity of joy. And there came more urgently these tender fingers, brushing my face and my burnt arms.
“No,” I said. “I will do this. Leave me now. I will do it, as I've said.”
I slipped away from them, or they spread out as soundlessly as they'd come, and rose and moved away in all directions, releasing me.
Alone again.
I was on the floor of the valley.
I was walking. My left sandal came loose. I stared down at it. I almost fell. I stooped to pick up what was left of it, this scrap of leather. On and on I walked, into the heated breeze.
23
THIS WAY AND THAT I listed and wandered, leaning on the wind, then righting myself, forcing myself to go forward.
Shapes appeared on the wavering horizon.
What