Memnoch the Devil (The Vampire Chronicles #5)

19

I WAS lying still somewhere, in an open place, on the rocky ground. I had the veil. I could feel the bulk of it, but I didn't dare to reach inside and draw it out or examine it.

I saw Memnoch standing some distance away, in full glorified form, his wings high and stiffly drawn down behind him, and I saw God Incarnate, risen, the wounds still red on His ankles and on His wrists, but He had been bathed and cleaned, and His body was on the same scale as that of Memnoch, that is, greater than human. His robes were white and fresh and His dark hair still richly colored with dried blood, but beautifully combed. It seemed more light seeped through the epidermal cells of His body than it had before His crucifixion, and He gave off a powerful radiance, which rendered the radiance of Memnoch slightly dim by comparison. But the two did not fight each other, and were basically the same kind of light.

I lay there, looking up, and listening to them argue. And only out of the corner of my eye¡ªbefore their voices became distinct to me¡ªdid I see this was a battlefield littered with the dead. It wasn't the same time as the Fourth Crusade. No one had to tell me. This was an earlier epic, and the bodies wore the armour and the clothes that I might connect, if asked, to the third century perhaps, though I could not be certain. These were early, early times.

The dead stank. The air was filled with feasting insects, and even some lowering, awkward vultures, which had come to tear at the swollen hideous flesh of the soldiers, and far off, I heard the nasty argument, in growls and barking¡ªof contending wolves.

"Yes, I see!" declared Memnoch angrily. He was speaking in a tongue that wasn't English or French, but I understood him perfectly. "The gateway is open to Heaven for all those who die with Understanding and Acceptance of the Harmony of Creation and the Goodness of God! But what about the others! What about the millions of others!"

"And once again, I ask you," said the Son of God, "why I should care about the others! Those who die without understanding and acceptance and knowledge of God. Why? What are they to me?"

"Your Created children, that's what they are! With the capacity for Heaven if only they could find the way! And the number of the lost exceeds by billions those few who have the wisdom, the guidance, the experience, the insight, the gift. And you know it! How can you let so many vanish into the shadows of Sheol once more, or disintegrate, or hug the earth becoming evil spirits? Didn't you come to save them all?"

"I came to save those who would be saved!" He said. "Again, I tell you it is a cycle, it is Natural, and for each soul that goes now unimpeded into the Light of Heaven, thousands of others must fail.  Of what value is it to Understand, to Accept, to Know, to See the Beauty? What would you have me do?"

"Help the souls who are lost! Help them. Don't leave them in the whirlwind, don't leave them in Sheol struggling for millennia to gain understanding by what they can still see on Earth! You've made things worse, that's what you've done!"

"How dare you!"

"You've made it worse! Look at this battlefield, and Your Cross appeared in the sky before this battle, and now Your Cross becomes the emblem of the empire! Since the death of the witnesses who saw your Kisen Body, only a trickle of the dead has gone into the Light from Earth, and multitudes have been lost in argument, and battle, and misunderstanding, languishing in darkness!" "My Light is for those who would receive it."

"That's not good enough!"

God Incarnate struck Memnoch hard across the face. Memnoch staggered back, wings unfolding, as if reflexively so that he could take flight. But they settled once again, a few graceful white feathers swirling in the air, and Memnoch raised his hand to the imprint of God's hand which blazed on the side of his face. I could see the imprint of the hand distinctly, blood-red as the wounds in the ankles and in the hands of Christ.

"Very well," said God Incarnate. "Since you care more for those lost souls than for your God, let your lot be to collect them! Let Sheol be your Kingdom! Gather them there by the millions and tutor them for the Light. I say none shall dissolve or disintegrate beyond your power to draw them back into being; I say none shall be lost, but all shall be your responsibility, your students, your followers, your servants.

"And until such a day as Sheol is empty! Until such a day as all souls go directly to the Heavenly Gates, you are my Adversary, you are my Devil, you are Damned to spend no less than one third of your existence on Earth which you love so much, and no less than one third in Sheol or Hell, whichever you choose to call it, your Kingdom. And only now and then by my grace may you come into Heaven, and see to it that when you do you have your angelic form!  "On the Earth, let them see you as the demon! The Beast God¡ªthe God of the dance and the drink and the feast and the flesh and all the things you love enough to challenge Me. Let them see you as that, if you would have power, and your wings shall be the color of soot and ashes, and your legs shall be as a goat's legs, as if you were Pan himself! Or as a man only, yes, I give you that mercy, that you may be a man among them, since you think it is such a worthy enterprise to be human. But an Angel among them, no! Never!

"You will not use your Angelic form to confuse and mislead them, to dazzle them or humble them. You and your Watchers did that enough. But see that when you come through my gates, you are attired properly for me, that your wings are like snow, and so are your robes. Remember to be yourself in my realm!"

"I can do it!" Memnoch said. "I can teach them; I can guide them. You let me run Hell as I choose to run it and I can reclaim them for Heaven; I can undo all that your Natural Cycle has done to them on Earth."

"Fine, then, I should like to see you do it!" said the Son of God.

"Send me more souls then, through your purgation. Go ahead. Increase my Glory. Increase the bene ha elohim. Heaven is endless and welcomes your efforts.

"But you don't come home forever until the task is finished, until the passage from Earth to Heaven includes all those who die, or until the world itself is destroyed¡ªuntil evolution has unfolded to the point where Sheol, for one reason or another, is empty, and mark my words, Memnoch, that time may never come! I have promised no ending to the unfolding of the universe! So you have a long tenure among the Damned."

"And on earth? What are my powers? Goat God or Man, what can I do?"

"What you should do! Warn humans. Warn them so that they come to me and not to Sheol."

"And I can do that my way? By telling them what a merciless God you are, and that to kill in your name is wicked, and that suffering warps and twists and damns its victims more often than redeems them? I can tell them the truth? That if they would go to you, they would abandon your religions and your holy wars and your magnificent martyrdom? They would seek to understand what the mystery of the flesh tells them, the ecstasy of love tells them? You give me permission? You give me permission to tell them the truth?"

"Tell them what you will! And in each case that you draw them away from my churches, my revelations, misunderstood and garbled though they may be¡ªin every case that you turn them away, you risk another pupil in your hellish school, another soul which you must reform. Your hell will be crammed to overflowing!"

"Not through my doings, Lord," Memnoch said. "It will be full to overflowing, but that will be thanks to you!"

"You dare!"

"Let it unfold, My Lord, as you have said it always should. Only now I am part of it, and Hell is part of it. And will you give to me those angels who believe as I do and will work for me, and endure the same darkness with me?"

"No! I will not give you one angelic spirit! Recruit your helpers from the earthbound souls themselves. Make those your demons! The Watchers who fell with you are contrite. I will not give you anyone. You are an Angel. Stand alone."

"Very well, I stand alone. Hobble me in my earthly form if you will, but still I will triumph. I will bring more souls through Sheol to Heaven than you will bring by your direct Gate. I will bring more reformed souls singing of Paradise than you will ever gather through your narrow tunnel. It is I who will fill Heaven and magnify your glory. You will see."

They fell silent, Memnoch in a fury, and God Incarnate in a fury or so it seemed, the two figures facing each other, both of equal size, except that Memnoch's wings spread back and out in the semblance of a form of power, and from God Incarnate came the more powerful, heartrendingly beautiful Light.

Suddenly, God Incarnate smiled.

"Either way I triumph, don't I?" God asked.

"I curse you!" said Memnoch.

"No, you don't," said God sadly and gently. He reached out and He touched Memnoch's face and the imprint of His angry hand vanished off the angelic skin. God Incarnate leant forward and kissed Memnoch on the mouth.

"I love you, my brave adversary!" He said. "It is good that I made you, as good as all else I've made. Bring souls to me. You are only part of the cycle, part of Nature, as wondrous as a bolt of lightning or the eruption of a great volcano, as a star exploding suddenly, miles and miles out in the galaxies so that thousands of years pass before those on earth see its light."

"You're a merciless God," Memnoch said, refusing to give an inch. "I shall teach them to forgive you what you are¡ªMajestic, Infinitely Creative, and Imperfect."

God Incarnate laughed softly and kissed Memnoch again on the forehead.

"I am a wise God and a patient God," He said. "I am the One who made you."

The images vanished. They did not even fade. They simply disappeared.

I lay on the battlefield alone.

The stench was a layer of gases hanging over me, poisoning every breath I drew.

For as far as I could see were dead men.

A noise startled me. The thin, panting figure of a wolf drew near to me, bearing down on me with its lowered head. I stiffened. I saw its narrow uptilted eyes as it pushed its snout arrogantly at me. I smelt its hot, rank breath. I turned my face away. I heard it sniff at my ear, my hair. I heard a deep growl come out of it. I just shut my eyes and with my right hand in my coat, I felt the veil.

Its teeth grazed my neck. Instantly, I turned, rose and knocked the wolf backwards, and sent it tumbling and yelping and finally scuttling away from me. Off it ran over the bodies of the dead.

I took a deep breath. I realized the sky overhead was the daytime sky of Earth and I looked at the white clouds, the simple white clouds and the dim faraway horizon beneath them, and I listened to the storm of the insects¡ªthe gnats and the flies rising and swirling here and there over the bodies¡ªand the big humpish ugly vultures, tiptoeing through the feast.

From far away came the sound of human weeping.

But the sky was magnificently clear. The clouds moved so that they released the sun in all its power, and down came the warmth on my hands and face, on the gaseous and exploding bodies around me.

I think I must have lost consciousness. I wanted to. I wanted to fall backwards again on the earth and roll over and lie with my forehead against it, and slip my hand into my coat and feel that the veil was there.