'... things fall apart, the centre cannot hold...’
Now Orli was alone. She walked up to the statue of Justice and looked up at her weathered face, reaching up a hand to touch her fingers to the stone trail of her gown. She and Orli were sisters under the skin, or once were. Orli did not know whether she would ever speak with her master again -- after so many years of such constant contact, everything was gone. The world had no edge any more.
The siren wailed louder and the cloying darkness was split by the headlights of some manner of police car. Then it was gone, it passed her by and screamed off into the night.
It occurred to her that she could either stay here and indulge in a certain amount of selfish pity or find something more productive to do. She should meet Josh; she should think about how she would make a start on this curious investigation. The sky was overcast but as she glanced up she noticed that the rain had finally stopped, and pushed wet strands of hair behind her ears she turned her face back towards the lights and the voices and walked towards where there were people. She felt somewhat as though she was seeing these places that she had thought she knew well with new eyes. A couple of men pass her on the other side of the street, late night revelers rolling home in the small hours.
They were singing something off-key and one of them called out and asked her if she'd like to come back to their place. She laughed and told them maybe some other time, and they waved and were gone.
When she got to the wine bar, she pushed the door open and noticed that everyone inside had stopped talking to turn and look at her. Orli could not imagine what she must look like, silhouetted against the street lights outside. It was a fairly regular crowd; a few of the printers whose faces she had known, a couple of red-nosed old hacks who preferred to stay out all hours than return to dreary unkempt flats, various members of the proprietor’s family. She smiled at the ones she knew, made some small talk, and found a seat. Josh broke the silence by waving her across to his table and everyone turned back to their conversations.
"You survived OK then?" she managed a smile for him. He laughed, a little too loudly -- she guessed that he had been making good use of the drinking time he had spent waiting for me here. He seemed about to launch into a long story so she waved it away, it could wait until morning. The landlord looked her over and informs her that she looked like a drowned rat and must be in need of tea.
What was it about tea? She accepted it anyway, and cupped her hands around the mug, feeling the warmth spread out from it and into her.
There was definitely something of he order of hard spirit in it somewhere, probably brandy. I smiled up at the man and feign amused surprise that his license ran this late, as I am fairly sure that it did not. He shrugged with a mischievous grin and told me this wasn't selling drinks, it was simply medicinal. In that case, Lynne told him, let me buy a round of medicinals for everyone. Unsurprisingly, suddenly everyone was her friend. If she was drawing any strength from this place it was not from the drinks but from the people around her, and she could feel herself begin to untense. Not everything was changed.
It must be drawing towards 4am when they finally pile out of the door, and she suggested to Josh that she get him home. He was looking somewhat glazed and leaned against her shoulder as they waited for a cab.
"I just want you to know, Lynne," he said. "I'm not drunk."
"Of course you aren't," she agrees, taking the weight.
His flat was small and neat, and she had been there before which made the navigation easier. She suggested to him that he get changed whilst she made some coffee, but by the time the kettle was boiled he was already asleep, sprawled out across the bed. Lynne breathed in the acrid fumes gratefully and watched him sleep for a while, before the first bright tendrils of dawn crept across the edge of the night sky. From the window here, she could see the sunrise and was heartened.
A faint shimmering chord came with the dawn, a lingering moment of harmony, and essence once more flowed into Orli.
She had time now to reflect on which way she would go now. She could not ask anyone for the assistance of a cherub or the aid of a celestial who knew the celestial song of tongues, which she never could get her head around -- so she would simply have to search Raphael out the hard way, with all the legwork involved. She thought perhaps today she might make a start and seek out a servant of destiny - 'he serves the one who serves destiny' were her Master’s words, and with them Orli decides she will begin.
Lynne left the house early, and went in search of servants of destiny in the British Library. On the pretext of trying to get a look at a rare book, she infiltrated the librarians easily, and found one thing of interest.
It seemed that there was an old librarian who had been there for as long as anyone could remember... a cantankerous old lady who apparently had something to do with handing out fines. Lynne asked to see a photo, and recognized her immediately. She is Apseph, Seraphim of Destiny. She recalled three thousand years ago, meeting her in the library of Alexandria. Orli was looking for a scroll of a law that could have bearing on a case at the time. Apseph was efficient, helpful and untalkative.
"Poor Mrs Apseph, what a terrible thing." said the young man Lynne was speaking to. He was processing her request for the Malleus Maleficarum.
She asked about what exactly had happened.
"Well, one minute she was fine, working in her office, you know, then there is a terrible scream. Next thing we know, the ambulance arrives and they take her to the Queen Victoria hospital."
She prompted for more details.
“To be honest I am not sure. She is so old, poor thing, it was probably her heart."
Hospital? Her own heart froze and she nodded mechanically along with the librarian -- tragic. That should never happen to a vessel. Reflecting back on the events of the previous night she didn't recall having felt particularly unwell herself; uncomfortable perhaps but not any physical pain. Whatever had transpired in the cathedrals of Heaven, it seemed that the earthly effects may not have been limited to servants of Judgment. But... destiny? She had a foreboding, even before the phone buzzed in her pocket, demanding attention.
It was Josh.
"Well, we have more work that we could possibly get through in a week on our desk. I have never seen such a mess of things to look into. Every paper in town and every television station are swamping us. It seems that last night every mad man and thief in the world got set loose. To compound it we have a dozen major vehicle accidents, and suicides. What in hell was going on last night?"
The librarian watched her curiously as he finishes the paper work.
She listened in silence to the damage report -- somewhat stunned. Perhaps she should have been expecting the effects of such a radical shake-up to have been felt in such waves. She hoped that 'what in hell was going on' is not a literally appropriate choice of words, although... in a literal sense one had to wonder. Would the infernal be celebrating this morning?
She told him she'd be right back and gave him a long list of places to call, keeping her voice down and turning away from the issue desk.
Thieves released? He could check that out -- how many have been released and what reasons given? Did the authorities have any plans to do anything about it? She commented that she would be phoning round hospitals herself to get details of how many casualties were admitted last night and suggested he not stress too hard to find a blanket explanation -- she was more interested in how widespread the 'disaster' seemed to have been, and checking foreign headlines would be handy also.
Josh responded that he will work on it and keep her updated. He sounded harried and hung over upon reflection, but seemed to be holding up well.
Could all those suicides and accidents have been connected with celestials who suffered the same effects as Apseph when their hearts fell? Could all those released criminals have had their judgments revoked when judgment was cast out? The concept of such a thing horrified her and she closed her eyes briefly and she flicks the cover back on the little phone and slid it into a pocket.
The librarian cleared his throat and asks her politely to respect the quiet of the library. He directed a meaningful look at the mobile and commented that they had been considering asking people not to bring phones in recently as it could be quite distracting.
Astounded and perhaps a little amused that someone can have their priorities so confused she gave the man a devastating grin and apologized profusely, "Sounds like a great idea. I think you should definitely ban them!" then ruined the effect by telling him to save the book for her and dashed out of the library. As she left, he returned the exact same expression, and shook his head.
She paused on her way to the tube station to examine her reflection in a shop window, absently taking out a comb and running it though her hair whilst she prioritized. Then she palmed the mobile again and dialed directory inquiries, and then the Victoria Hospital. Initially she inquired about the seraph, claiming to be a friend who was expecting the woman round for tea the previous night.
Then shakily she found a more businesslike tone and asked for details of how many casualties were brought in the previous night, how many were fatal, especially heart-related and whether staff felt it was an unusual amount.
The response was that the hospital is certainly very busy at the moment, but with a wide variety of cases. Certainly there had been many heart related incidences, but they were drowned out in the sea of other misfortunes and mishaps.
Some discrete inquires to the hospital revealed that Mrs Apseph had been taken to the emergency ward and was listed as critical but stable. With a flash of a pass and some rapid speaking, Lynne convinced an orderly to let her onto the level where they were keeping the woman. After several more brief encounters, she located the room when the seraph was being kept. She discovered that Apseph was in a state of catatonia, but does not learn any more of the specifics of her condition. It was impossible to get in to the actual area without being accosted by someone who would know that she was not supposed to be there, so Orli stood to the side of a visitor's waiting room, alone on this morning, and Sung into the ether.
There was a chord of pure light and sound, and a resonance reaching out towards a silent mind, finding and linking them together.
And Orli remembered Apseph.
The Seraphim were the hardest to understand of her celestial brethren. Their minds were as pure, straight light, unpolluted by the complications and curves that blend myriad colours in the minds of mortals or even other angels. The world to them was structure, and order, and white and black.
Apseph could not be deceived. Her purpose was in assisting the maintenance of records. She never liked the people who used books. People were undependable things, and always returned things in worse condition than they borrowed them.
Apseph's mind, while not harsh or confronting, as it became revealed to Orli, was shocking. The purity of thought, the knowledge of what would be, the understandings of the Names, was all gone. In its place was shade, conflict, fear, and Doubt. It was like looking at a perfect Crystal chalice that, since the dawn of time held clean pure water, that had suddenly had blood, petrol and bile poured into it and lit to flame.
That crystal tried to hold the vitriol that now filled it, and cracked.
Fragments of words and images came to Orli from Apseph through the symphony.
"... wOUnDs fIlLed WIth flIES oPeN To LeT oUT thE shaTTerEd SoUNd oF cHilDreN wEEpINg foR thIEr LosT pAREnTs ... Hurl'd hEaDloNG fLamiNG FroM Th'EthERiAL SKy / WiTH HideOUs rUIn anD COMbustiOn dOWN / tO bOTTomLEss PerDItION ... gEnEsiS ExOduS LiVitiCus NumBERS DeTUroNomY JosHUa JUdjEs RutH ... tHE terrIBLe SoUND Of SILENCE ... wOUnDs UnHEaleD ... NaTHaNiEL! WhAT HaS BEcoME oF YOu? YoUR brIGht WinGS cOloUR ReD WiTh The BloOD YoU SpiLL! fALL! faLL! ... wHO touchES thE VoiD of MInD? I cANNot sEE yOU ... noT wiTH a bAng bUT wiTH a wimper ..."
Orli fought to unweave her own thoughts from the wild images that assailed her for long enough to take stock and found that her hands were clenched so tightly that her nails had left painful red marks on the skin. She felt faintly nauseous.
The sun shone in through a window to her right, throwing a shaft of light across a pile of old magazines which must have been kept here for visitors; a nurse walked briskly past her and down a corridor, pausing to make a brief mark on a chart. He glances through the window at the prostrate form before continuing. They knew she should be in intensive care, but not how broken she was. Broken is the only word that springs to mind and it worries her deeply. What had she seen?
Orli took the mental equivalent of a deep breath and took up the mental link again, trying to project a calm presence. It was clear to her that she had no way to improve the seraph’s condition and even if she could she had a duty which came first. Still, she was reluctant to seek deep contact with this mind again -- it felt almost contaminating, desecrating.
'I am here. You're not alone.' She projected, rather unnecessarily. Out of the tangle of words there are glimpses which made her wonder -- who was Nathaniel? Who fell? Has any of that even happened yet? Suspecting that continuing these trains of thought would only set off a huge over-reaction in the broken seraph, she tries to avoid thinking about them too overtly, but with this manner of contact it was very hard to keep thoughts concealed, especially from a Seraph if indeed she still can be said to be one.
On cue, the connection returned, and each thought that passed through Orli was absorbed into the chaos that was the Seraph's mind. At the thought of the name Nathaniel, she received a sudden image of a face, and a church in flames, with a multi-headed dragon ephemeral in the background. Orli remembered the face: he was an angel of her own Choir, a servant of Laurence. She met him in the second Crusade. He and her were on opposite sides. Nathaniel was always a preacher, whether from the pulpit or on horseback leading armies. He had always served, first Uriel, then Laurence, with distinction and loyalty. Orli had a vague memory that Nathaniel had some kind of job in New York, but was not clear on what it was.
The image of him falling was without time, but was clear. His wings burned to flame, stained with the blood of mortals. As Orli knew, only the mercurian servitors of Domenic could perform such an act without consequence. And even then it took toll upon the soul.
Orli could not help feeling how much easier it would be to calm a confused mortal -- perhaps some of the Most Holy really were too alien in mentality to be safely assigned to the material plane.
Trying to elicit what use she could from the situation, she concentrated on those things which are in the forefront of her mind. 'I need to find Raphael.' Orli told her, mind to mind, repeating the name. She could feel herself shiver, even though the room was warm. 'Is this destiny?'
Orli made some rational connection, and followed it through to the end in the damaged mind.
"... NOt aLONe buT JoiNEd tO AlL of thE SaME We FraCTUre As thE BooKS BurN ... DEStiNy Is FAte! FaTE Is DEStinY! BoTH FaLL! ... cAn An anGEL oF hEALinG bIND a wOUNd sO DeEP aS tO REnd thE VeRY sYMphONy Of CREaTIOn? ... rAPHaEL sPEaKs TO tHE TetHEr ... nOtRe DaME And NeW YorK ... THE cHurCH oF sT sebasTIon ... wHaT LigHT CoMEs wiTH ThE lIgHTbrINGer? IS It hOPE oR DispaIR, thE fIRst oR ThE laST? ... He WalKS tHE SanDs Of bAbylON, aND RamSeS SpeAkS FoR THE sEConD TiME IN a ThOUsaNd YearS ... tHe wOUndeD PrOteCTor GivEs Her HEARt tO A MoRTal, aND So When ShE DieS ComES BaCK ... rAphAeL TaKEs UpoN Him/HerSelF tHE WounDs oF ThE WorLD buT CAnnOT ChooSE tHE RigHT OnEs To HEAl ... THE LIBRAry ... SeeK THe LIbraRY ..."
Finally, she could no longer suffer this stream of half-digested pain and confusion, and she withdrew quietly and stood gazing out of the window, a heavier weight on her shoulders than when she came in.
Lynne returned listlessly to the office and tried not to think too hard about it by sinking into the workload there. Although her sympathy for the human condition didn't stretch as far as wanting to absolve them from the consequences of their own actions, she relented enough to pick up a pack of headache pills from a pharmacist for her servant on the way back -- there is no real question but that he would be expected to work the same hours that she did now.
She sought and found her servant, who was still searching through many papers and books. He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. "It is everywhere. Australia: A mass murderer set free by accident killed again. Greece: A truck carrying hazardous chemicals overturned in Athens. Los Angeles: a killer struck at a family home and also at the neighbour who stumbled upon his get away. It is not just local. And I have no one place to begin. It is just so much..."
Lynne cast her eyes over the pile of folders, faxes and other debris which seemed to be doing a passable impression of Mount Vesuvius on her desk as he was talking. Even on the few words which catch her eye, she gets a rather larger picture of the scale of this crisis. It was like a tidal wave, she thought, when
Apseph saw the symphony as being broken she may not have been far wrong.
She sank into her seat and stared at the pile, unseeing, as Josh ran through the headlines. He sounded drawn, and was hoping she might have answers, she thought.
All Lynne has are questions though.
"It is too much," she agrees, lighting up an emergency cigarette. She catches his eyes briefly and he just shrugged and meets her gaze.
"You weren't wrong," She told him finally, "Something did happen last night; something strange and worrying that I have never seen before. I've been out trying to find out more about it, but it seems that.. all these things are symptoms. It’s always tempting to try to make one big issue where there are really several separate ones, but in this case..." This time Lynne shrugged and took a long drag on the cigarette. It was a dreadful habit, of course.
He rubbed his eyes, "So.. what are we going to do?"
Lynne closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the taste. She could hear footsteps, voices, telephones, the office was buzzing with people.
"We /are/ going to do something, right?" He sounds suspicious Lynne thought, either that or worried.
"Well," She breathed, "It may be that there is nothing much that we can do, except our jobs here of course. Sometimes you need to know when things are just too large to tackle." The smoke curled upwards, it was vaguely hypnotic.
Lynne could hear his chair scrape as he stood up, pushing a lock of hair slowly away from his face. "I can't believe you said that. When has anything ever been too large? I thought that was the point!"
Lynne watched him through lidded eyes. How was she supposed to say that this time she was afraid; she didn't have an archangel to cover her back; she didn't want to be shattered like a mirror in the way Apseph was? Instead she slowly smoked her cigarette, tapping ash into the plastic cup which still held about an inch of cold coffee in it. Josh threw up his hands and made more tea. He was tired and concerned, and it made him more irritated.
"Do you want to press on with this then?" Lynne asked him quietly. "It might be dangerous, more than you can imagine."
She flicked idly through the papers on her desk as he poured steaming water into a cup, noting the names and the places -- it was too much. Far too much.
Josh sat down and just looked at her for a moment. "Yes," he said, "we can't just let it lie." He thought Orli was testing him, in reality perhaps it was more the other way around. Lynne recalled that mortals had to live with this uncertainty on a permanent basis.
She told him that she thought it may involve some traveling.
Unfortunately, all she had to go on was Apseph's ramblings, she said that Raphael spoke to the tethers, which did sound plausible to me. Although Notre Dame was much closer - we could be there and back in a day - she also mentioned New York, where Lynne thought Nathaniel also was. That could not be a coincidence. She thought she was decided that it may well be that she needed to go there, and find this Church of St Sebastian. She had been thinking about this library but was at rather a loss which one Apseph might have meant. The library she had first met her at millennia ago was at Alexandria, and was long gone -- or so she had thought. The only other large library she could think of was the library of Congress...
She told Josh it needed to be New York without trying to explain why. Since this event seemed to be worldwide she had no doubt they would be able to get an article about American reactions, and maybe even find some conspiracy theorists to talk to about it there. He grinned, although every line on his face rang with tiredness, and said they should talk to the editor about it.
Lynne had never had many problems with her editor, he was a sleaze in some ways but did harbour a core of conscientiousness, although she was not certain that it applies to anything other than professional ethics. He was also sounding harassed by the weight of news today. Josh whispered to me that he was probably upset because there was so much violence and so little sex, which was what sold papers.