Baal

ZARK COILED HIS WHIP around his hand. He looked over at Michael. "What did you say?"

"I said," the other man replied, "that we are not going back to Avatik."

"Where then?"

"The sea. I want you to take us to the frozen sea."

"What?" Zark asked. "It'll take us at least two days to reach the coast. I don't want to travel with that man."

"Don't be afraid," Michael said. "You need not be afraid so long as you do as I ask."

"Why the sea?" Virga asked.

"Because it suits my purpose. That's all I'll say." Beyond Michael, Baal was watching them, his eyes glaring across the ice.

There was still hesitation on Zark's frost-crusted face. He shook his head. "I don't understand this. I don't understand that man you call Baal, nor do I understand you."

"You don't have to understand. Just trust me and do as I ask."

Michael held Zark's gaze for a few seconds. Then the hunter nodded and said, "All right, dammit. The sea. But just to the coast and not onto the ice. Why not kill that man here and now?"

Michael didn't answer. He purposefully turned his back and neared Baal so as to shield the other men from him.

Zark cursed and cracked the whip over the heads of the team. The dogs started, pulling heavily at the sledge with its damaged runner. Virga saw that the sledge was leaving a deep, crooked track.

"I don't like this," Zark said to Virga. "We should kill that man here and leave his body. He deserves to die."

Virga said nothing. He was haunted by confusion and insecurity; now, finally facing Baal, he wasn't sure that even Michael could control him. The sudden burst of panic he'd felt when Baal had glared at him still gnawed at the pit of his stomach. He would see those terrible red eyes forever. He couldn't even venture a guess as to why Michael wanted to reach the sea. He had the unshakable feeling that Baal's power was always on the verge of breaking wildly free, of turning on them all and reducing them to cinders. And at that point even Michael couldn't help them. He shivered though the sweat of fear burned on his face. He felt alone and helpless, wrenched from his life at the university, destined never to be the same again. And there were so many questions he wanted to ask, things that whirled around his head and left him staggering...

"You sonofabitch!" Baal was shouting at Michael where they walked off to the right of the crawling sledge. "You fucking bastard!"

Virga rested his chin on his chest and grabbed hold of the sledge for support, trying to shut his mind to the awful obscenities that now poured from Baal's mouth. They did not stop but instead grew in both intensity and vulgarity. Baal was shrieking in Michael's ear and Virga wondered how the man could stand it. Then Baal's voice changed in pitch, changed from a low hoarse shout to the piercing scream of a small child: "You cocksucker! You priest-sucking bastard! I'll kill you! You'll rot before you destroy me!" And then, incredibly, the voice of a young woman. Virga turned his head and Zark made an effort to keep his attention on the ice plain ahead. "Your eyes will fall from your head, you sonofabitch! I'll command you to go blind! Goddamn you! Goddamn you!"

Virga put his hands to his ears.

Zark whirled around. "SHUT UP! SHUT UP!"

And the voices, Baal's voice, quieted. The laugh that reached them across the ice was low and lazy, gratified and pleased, as if from a man who has just won a game of chess.

The dogs strained, whimpering, on their leads; the sledge was dragging ice. As he walked Virga was aware of the hiss of runners on the snow, the grind against outcropping rock, the hiss, the grind, the hiss, the grind until his head was pounding with those alternating sounds. He could distinguish hard-packed snow and smooth ice plain, rocks the size of a fist and rocks with razor edges that could slash the paws of the team, all without opening his eyes, just listening to the sounds they made underneath the runners. Once, testing his newly developed abilities, he fell asleep while walking. When he jerked his eyes open he was looking to the right, toward Baal. With an effort he looked away, his nerves screaming alarm and new sweat freezing into his eyebrows.

When Virga stumbled and fell Zark halted the team. He helped the man to his feet and called to Michael, "We've got to rest. The fatigue will kill us."

Michael considered the request. After a moment he said, "Very well. We'll rest here."

Zark staked down the bearskin tent and crawled through its opening. Virga, his joints throbbing and his face a mask of painful cold, followed him and lay slumped against a wall, his breath coming in harsh gasps. Outside the dogs whined anew as Baal and Michael passed. Michael entered first and waited for Baal to crawl through, then he deliberately sat between Baal and the others.

Zark opened his package of walrus meat and cut a slice for Virga, who tore into it ravenously. He offered a piece to Michael, who refused it, and then cut a piece for himself before wrapping it away. Taking out his pipe and lighting it, Zark leaned back against the tent's firm wall, closed his eyes, and smoked.

Virga curled up for warmth and laid his head down.

Michael did not attempt to sleep. Baal's gaze was burning into the back of his neck. He sat cross-legged and watched the two exhausted men as they drifted toward a deep, empty sleep.

And suddenly the tent was filled with a terrible rising scream that made even Michael's flesh crawl. His eyes bloodshot, Virga wrenched himself up because he thought he'd heard Naughton screaming from the shadows of an evil-smelling hall. Zark's eyes came open and in a blurred instant he had grasped his rifle and hurtled through the opening in a flurry of snow.

Virga shook his head when he realized where he actually was. The tent reeked of rancid breath. Baal laughed quietly from his corner, his teeth bared, his eyes coals.

In another few seconds Zark burst back in, his eyes rimmed with white and his beard ice-caked and dirty, and said, "There was a bear outside! I heard it! Damn me if I didn't..." He stopped, hearing the mocking laughter, and his face flamed with rage. "You sonofa-bitch!" he shouted, reaching across Michael for Baal. "I'll kill you!"

Michael grasped Zark's arm.

The laughter abruptly stopped.

Baal said, "Touch me. Go ahead. Go ahead."

"Sit down," Michael said.

"I'll kill him." The breath clouds were fumed from Zark's nostrils and mouth. "I swear I'll kill him!"

"Sit down," Michael repeated, his voice sharp. He tightened his grip on the man's arm and Zark's eyes slowly cleared. Zark fell back against the wall and sat, motionless and drained.

"You won't sleep," Baal whispered. "If you try, the same thing will happen again. And soon your nerves will be shot and you'll be jumping at my every breath. Go ahead." He grinned at them. "Close your eyes."

In Virga's frost-numbed mind was still the image of Naughton, lying on his back in a littered chamber, whispering something, whispering...

"Kill him now," Zark muttered. "Now."

What was it? What had he said? What had he said?

"There is only one way. You! Eskimo! No, don't turn your face away. I need you. You and I together will leave this place... we'll leave both of them out here and we'll get back to Avatik. I'll let you sleep once we've left them behind. Listen to me," Baal hissed. "Listen to me!"

Michael reached over and clamped his hand firmly about the hunter's thick shoulder. "Stay where you are," he said softly.

"You can't continue without sleep. You'll never make the sea. You'll fall dead in your tracks."

Virga was trembling. He saw Naughton's mouth opening, opening, opening...

"Let me go," Baal hissed.

Naughton whispered, "Re..."

"... venge," Virga said.

Michael looked over at him, his eyes blank and incurious. Baal was silent.

Virga said, "What did you mean by that? It was something both you and Naughton said to me when I asked what Baal's purpose was. You said the word revenge."

"Naughton?" Baal whispered from the corner. "You found Naughton? Bastard! Cocksucking traitor! We should have torn out his eyes and tongue before we left him to die!"

"But," Michael said, "you didn't." He said to Virga, "Yes, that was what I said. That is the truth."

"Your truth, perhaps. But beyond my understanding. And there are things here so far from my understanding that I'm afraid I'm losing my mind."

Zark said, "We should kill that man here and now." He lapsed into a low, coarse muttering.

"I told you from the beginning," Michael said to Virga, "that there would be things beyond your understanding."

Virga said, "I want to know. I have to know."

"Then know one thing first. You can never go back; you can never be what you once were. You'll be hung between life-in-death and death-in-life. If you choose to speak no one will ever listen; you'll be branded a madman."

"I can never go back now," Virga said.

Michael paused for a moment, searching the man's eyes relentlessly. Behind him Baal breathed like a beast in heat.

Michael said, "You'll listen to what I'm going to say, but you won't hear. It will be beyond your comprehension. Do you believe in Jehovah?"

The question startled Virga. He said, "Yes. Of course."

"And then you also believe in Satan?"

Virga said, somewhat more uncertainly, "Yes..."

"The great powers. The light and the dark. One patient and tolerant, the other reckless and cruel; but both of them warriors. Between them is a mixing of the elements, the All. There is a completeness in the combination of good and evil. Do you see? Without one the other could not exist - that is a Law. And balanced on that Law of All is the cosmos; to tip the balance of power would result in chaos and madness. It would result in what you see taking place at this moment."

"Dog!" Baal whispered.

"Satan has never been a secondary power; he is the equalizing darkness to Jehovah's light. At the beginnings the cosmos was created by both Jehovah and Satan. The cosmos was, and is, a combination of celestial and demonic energy. Your ancestors were part of that energy. You are part of that energy. Baal is part of that energy."

"The pagan god this man has named himself after," Virga said.

Baal laughed quietly, a rumbling in the throat.

Michael said, "No. What you see is a human body, but the entity itself is a formless mass of energy. He is Baal, within a form to make himself visually acceptable to those he wishes to influence."

Virga sat motionless. Beside him Zark had closed his eyes and was breathing harshly.

"The light and the dark were not always enemies. As I've said, Satan is reckless. He is concerned only with the accumulation of power. If the Law of All is destroyed he is destroyed as well, but like a spittle-mouthed dog he cares only for the moment. At the beginnings the creation recognized only the god of light and the god of darkness, each equal. But Satan saw advantages in increasing his strength through the use of demons as pagan gods. Baal was one of the most successful; he was already strong, with an unreasonable lust for power and grandeur. Under Satan's influence Baal became a Canaanite deity, urging the sacrifice of children, sodomy and prostitution, the sacrilege of the temple. Satan was pleased with the result: he urged more and more of his demons to claim themselves as gods before a creation now confused and tormented. It was the only way Satan could claim more power than Jehovah. All these things Jehovah endured until Satan began to influence the Hebrews, Jehovah's chosen own, into darkness and black sorcery. The balance was overthrown. As an example He turned on Baal, the most successful of Satan's vanguard, and with the aid of the Israelites drove Canaan into the ground. His wrath was furious; He ordered His celestial armies to burn the wicked cities to ash, that the land should be fiery rock and nothing should grow. The idols and temples of Baal were destroyed; those who had worshipped the demon entity were wiped off the face of the earth. Baal was a combination of both powers, the light and the dark, but he'd betrayed one and now sought refuge in the other."

"Lies," hissed the figure behind Michael. "Liesssss."

"The damage was done. Satan had tasted blood. And so began then the battle that would determine the continuation or destruction of the Law of All. It rages here and now. Satan uses Baal to throw havoc into the creation; Baal seeks his own revenge, destruction of the Israelites who destroyed his kingdom of Canaan. He has existed in many physical forms, before this moment. And in each incarnation he's come a step closer to achieving both his goal and the goal of his master. Baal is a mad god, possessed by the forces of darkness."

Virga was trembling. He was aware of it but he couldn't stop it. He tried to concentrate on stopping it. He said in a halting voice, "Baal is a man... he's only a man..."

"Have it as you will," Michael said softly. "You asked, I answered."

"Let me go," Baal said in the voice of a child.

"We must continue. Can you go on?" Michael gazed at Virga.

Beside Virga, Zark had opened his eyes and was rubbing his neck and shoulders, working the blood.

"I don't know. I don't know. I'm so tired."

"That's not what I'm asking. Can you go on?"

"They can't continue, Michael," Baal said. "Give it up. Let me go. Join me."

Michael looked over at the hunter. "Can you travel?"

Zark rubbed his hands together. He looked from Michael to Virga and back again. "Yes," he said.

"Good. Dr. Virga?"

He didn't know. It seemed difficult to breathe. He said, "I'm so tired."

"I warned you. Didn't I warn you?" Michael said. "We must reach the sea as soon as possible. You have two choices. You can continue with us or we will leave you here."

Virga looked up, startled at the ultimatum. He ran his hands over his face. "That's not a choice. I'll go on."

Michael nodded. "All right. Baal and I will crawl first through the opening. Then you and Zark."

The bearskin tent was lashed away and the dogs, curled in tight balls against the cold, were urged to their feet by Zark's insistent whip. The team strained against their leads, the tautening ropes sending ice flying, and the sledge again began to wind its ragged way across the wastes. They walked as they had before, Zark and Virga close to the sledge and Michael shielding Baal far to the right. The cold ripped across Virga's ravaged face. It didn't serve to keep him alert but instead aggravated his exhaustion, and soon his chin was lowered to his chest again. He staggered on without knowing where he was.

Moments - or hours - later, someone whispered, "Virga."

He shook his head. He was dreaming. In the snow his boots sounded a continuous unbroken tattoo. He hung between sleep and wakefulness, fearful of both.

"Virga," someone whispered.

He opened his eyes.

Zark stood at the front of the sledge, his back broad and bearlike in his furs. The dogs moved at their rhythmic pace, ice whirling beneath their paws. Virga slowly turned his head to the right, toward the two men walking in the gloom beyond. He couldn't see their faces. He narrowed his eyes.

Baal's red eyes were glowing fiercely over Michael's shoulder. The other man hadn't seen. Virga felt himself spinning, spinning, spinning down a great distance.

The red eyes, like terrible siren beacons, flashed.

"James," she said. "James."

He called out, "Who is that?" but he knew the voice and it choked him inside as if he were gagging on something lodged in his throat. His heart pounded with a violent intensity. I want to hear your voice, he told her. I want to hear your voice.

"James," she said again, only now it was a pleading voice that almost killed him. Tears sprang to his eyes and he wiped them away before they could freeze. "I'm here beside you. Can't you see me?"

"No," he whispered. "I can't."

"Here. I need you, James. I don't want to go back."

"Go back? Go back where?"

"Where I've been," she replied, almost sobbing. "A terrible cold place with gray walls. I don't understand this, James. I don't I remember falling; I remember a hospital and people standing over me. Then nothing. Everything faded... everything turned to gray like the walls of that place. I can't go back. Please don't make me go back."

He strained to see into the distance, but there was nothing. He couldn't see her. The bite of the cold reminded him that he was still awake but he moved across the ice sluggishly, as if it were turning into a vicious paste over the tops of his kamiks. It was her voice, yes, incredibly her voice. But where was she? Where was she? Her voice. Yes. Her voice.

"Answer me, James," she pleaded. "Please let me know you hear me."

"I hear you," he called. "Where are you?"

"Here beside you. I'm walking beside you but something separates us and I can't quite touch you. Oh God, you're so close. Why can't you see me?" The voice was on the edge of panic; it ate into him.

He turned and thrust his arms out in all directions, flailing, flailing, finding nothing. He choked back a bitter cry of rage and frustration. "There's nothing here!" he said.

She began to cry. The tears overflowed and ran down his own face. "I don't want to go back! I don't want to go back!"

"Then stay! Help me find you! Reach out and touch my hand! Can you?"

"Almost. I almost can. Something is between us. Help me!"

"How? How can I help you?" He looked around feverishly for her. The tears froze on his face, left thin crusts of ice in the lines around his mouth.

Her voice, moaning for him, died away. With a new determination he searched the darkness, his fingers grasping for a form that had seemed to be speaking just to the right of him.

And then she said, sobbing, "They want me to go back, James. They say I have to and that I can't stay. Touch me. I don't want to go!"

His breathing was harsh and ragged. He cried out, "I can't find you!"

"I do want to stay. I do. Help me!"

"Yes. How?"

"That man," she said, her voice almost cracking, "walking ahead of you. He keeps us apart. As long as he is there I can't reach through. If he were gone then they would let me touch you..."

The images of her were flashing kaleidoscopically through his brain. There was a roaring in his head; a tremendous weight was pressing down on the back of his neck. "If he were gone... ?" he asked weakly, a voice not his own.

She sobbed. "Around your shoulder. The rifle..."

"Where are you?" Virga cried out. "I don't see you!"

"The rifle... Oh God, they're calling me back!"

Virga was weak and off balance. He was afraid he would stumble. He saw the offered target of Zark's back only a few feet in front of him. The man was crude and cruel, a beast, a killer. Why should he live and make her suffer? Why should he live?

"The rifle," she said. "James..." Her voice began to fade.

"No! Don't go... not yet!" He hefted the weapon up with his injured hand and placed his finger on the trigger. The bastard was making her suffer! He was torturing her!

"James," she said, calling from such a distance now that it made new tears course over his cheeks.

He took no aim. From this distance he couldn't miss. He squeezed the trigger.

Someone wheeled in front of him and wrenched the barrel toward the sky. The explosion of the shot deafened him and rocked him back. Flame exposed, briefly, Zark's incredulous face as the hunter dodged down to avoid a bullet that whizzed over his right shoulder into the darkness.

"Christ!" Zark said.

Michael wrenched the rifle away from Virga, his golden gaze unflinching. Virga felt his knees begin to give way but before he could fall the other man caught him and lowered him gently. Beyond Michael, Baal stood without moving, arms chained before him.

"Has he gone crazy?" Zark said. "That almost took my head off!"

"She was there," Virga whispered to Michael, the hot tears of shame and regret already freezing down his face. "She was standing right beside me all the time and I couldn't even touch her..."

Michael said softly, "She was never there."

"She was! I heard her! She tried to touch me!"

"No. She was never there."

"She was..." he began, and the terrible sound of his pleading voice stopped him.

Slowly, with a hesitation born of deep and awful emptiness, Virga let her go. Her voice had been swept away by the rifle's blast but her image remained in his mind. Now, as he blinked away the tears, as he remembered who stood over him, he saw the beautiful face lose its color and life. The light, gleaming softly from the eyes he remembered through a thousand dim nights alone in his apartment, that place that smelled of musty books and useless pottery and rancid smoke, faded until it was only a hollow shade of reality. And now she was receding back through a gray wall of mist and he felt the fear of losing her again throb at his temples.

He reached out a hand for her.

Michael grasped his wrist. "She is dead."

"No," said Virga, begging. "No."

And beyond Michael, Baal laughed like the shriek of a woman.

Michael's eyes blazed. Virga instinctively cringed from the fire that seemed to glow from the man's face. The younger man rose up, up, towering as he walked across the ice, finally standing with his face inches from Baal's. There the two men, like cunning animals, weighed the possibilities of battle.

Michael's hands were curled into claws at his sides.

"Do it," said Baal, grinning. "Do it and destroy yourself too. You'd destroy yourself forever for the sake of an old man? No, I think not. Like me, you find this incarnation suitable."

Michael's teeth clenched. A muscle spasmed in his jaw. Where the gaze of the two men met the air seemed to glow white-hot.

"Do it," Baal whispered.

Michael turned abruptly and disdainfully and walked back to Virga. He helped the man to his feet and gave him the rifle again. "I want both of you walking side by side," he told them. "I want you to know always what the other is doing."

"Coward," Baal said over Michael's shoulder. "You stupid bag of scum. You priest-fucking bastard."

"You're all right now?" Michael asked Virga. "You can continue?"

"Yes. I think I can."

Zark said, "For Christ's sake, watch him. I don't want a bullet in my back."

Virga could now fully recognize his surroundings; he could remember why he was here. For a black instant he'd been caught in an amnesiac solitude. He felt weakened and drained as he'd never been before.

"You're very certain?" Michael asked.

Virga bent down and gathered up a handful of snow. He rubbed it across his eyes, then wiped it away with his sleeve before it could freeze his lids shut. His skin felt raw. "I'm all right," he said, "but I swear before God I heard my wife speaking to me."

"If you hear her voice again you'll recognize it for what it is. If you'd killed Zark, as Baal wished you to, we would have no guide to the sea."

"My God," Zark breathed. He glanced over at Baal. "What kind of man are you?" He immediately lowered his eyes, remembering Michael's instructions.

"A better man than any of you," Baal said. "You think you're going to stop me, Michael, contain me, kill me? You know you can't do that. If anyone falls it will be you." His eyes swept toward the other two men. "And what will you do then? When I finish with him, where will you hide? Hear me well. There is nowhere on this earth you'll be able to go. I'll find you, and I have ten million eyes to help me search."

Virga shivered. The man's voice cracked through the darkness and stung him.

"I've got a gun," Zark said. "You remember that."

"On the contrary. I won't forget."

"Move the team on, Zark," Michael commanded. "Remember, I want both of you walking side by side. That's right."

The sledge continued its ragged course. The dogs seemed tired and Zark stopped repeatedly to feed them hunks of dwindling meat. Michael thrust his hands inside his furs for warmth and watched the men at the sledge for any sign of trouble.

"I won't be stopped," Baal said. "I've come too far. I've never been this strong before."

"And that is exactly why I must stop you. You're on the verge of overpowering me. I realize that. And for that reason your time must come to an end."

"I warn you," Baal said very quietly. "Watch yourself. You've thought all along you could master me. Me - one to whom hundreds of thousands have proclaimed their loyalty. And there will be more. And more. And then I will crush my enemies and take the place that was meant for me. You stupid cock-sucker, you filthy piece of shit, you overstep your bounds."

"I overstep mine to force you back over yours."

"Too late," Baal said.

"We'll see."

"Damn you!" Baal spat at him. "Hiding behind a cross of shit! You hope to win, knowing you cannot. You meddle with the future."

"No. I preserve it. Their wars will come, yes. Their famines, their droughts. Their crops will turn to dust and their flesh will dry beneath a burning sun, but it will not be by your hand. You've begun the decay. I will not allow your power to warp them beyond all redemption."

Baal's eyes burned, mirroring an insatiable greed and lust. He said mockingly, "My master and I offer them hate. They take it gladly. They murder and loot and spit on everything you hold sacred. They take our hand and not yours. They praise our name and not yours. They are ours and not yours."

"Be silent!" Michael said.

Baal laughed coldly. "Ah. You smell the stench of truth."

Michael didn't look at him.

Ahead the ice plains stretched to the lip of the sea.