My faith ain't been
No friend to me
And the way I sin
Is hanging off of me

Her skin looks golden in the candlelight, but that's because everything real looks golden here, filtered through the lens of the cracked plaster, the rust-stained walls, the concrete floor that bears the watermarks of a thousand floods and tides. She moves like a symphony, like the piccolo line: graceful, flowing, quick and reedy like a hummingbird, each gesture rapid and yet unrushed. He watches her: long, dark spill of her hair over her shoulder as she turns her head and breathes a blessing over each candle in turn, coaxing it to life with the tiniest of magics to avoid bringing the violence of striking match or flint and tinder.

There is nothing in the room that was not made by hands alone. The room itself is small, cramped, squalid; filth has permeated down to its very bones, as though no amount of scrubbing could ever send it clean, but it's empty of everything save for candles, brazier, herbs. Chalice and knife. He was there for the making of each of them, watching to make sure no shortcuts were being taken. He doesn't trust anyone he can't keep an eye on. Easier that way. Safer.

When she finishes the room is bathed in warm glow; it's almost enough to blur over the rank edges. She steps back, away from the edge of the circle of luminaries, and tips her head to one side, watching him with those dark eyes, assessing every inch of him from tip to toe. "Casi listo," she says, the words rolling from her tongue, thick like honey.

It took him a long time to learn these words; they aren't the ones engraved deeply into him, sleeping underneath his heart and coming to his lips so quickly that sometimes he wonders whose soul is speaking through him, that he should answer without thought. But he learned them. "No. Todavía no. Necessito otro minuto."

She smiles a little, the barest hint of it touching the edges of her lips like breath, and nods her understanding. No more than that. She is content to wait for as long as it takes. He isn't paying her for her time, that's outside the rules and manners her tradition and his both follow, but there is a quiet and unspoken understanding that when they are done, some of his wealth will redistribute itself into her cupboards and pantries, without anything so crass as bills changing hands. He couldn't have handled this alone, not and still had the strength necessary to do what he's going to have to do. Besides, she's the one who knows this path onto the Road. He's never shied away from a bit of syncretism, not when it does what he needs it to do.

But waiting isn't going to do him any good, and the more he waits, the more he builds it up in his head, the worse it will be when he finally goes. "Ahora," he finally says, and slides the shirt from his shoulders, letting it pool at his feet, baring his skin to the damp air. He steps over the lines of the candles, kneeling in the center of the circle, and closes his eyes to listen to his heartbeat.

He can hear her footsteps, hear the hiss of resin as she tosses a handful of frankincense and myrrh onto the charcoal disk of the brazier, hear her voice, low and measured, reciting the prayers. "Santa María, Madre de Dios," she murmurs, "ruega por nosotros los pecadores ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte." Even though he is expecting it, the flick of cool drops of water across his face, across his chest, comes as a shock. More for what they carry with them than for their own sake.

He bows his head, eyes still shut. He has promised he will not watch; her tradition forbids practicing in front of strangers, in front of those not bound by the same oaths she swore. She had questioned him for a long time about the nature of his own oaths and eventually come to the conclusion they were similar enough for her not to be foresworn, but he had offered this compromise and she had accepted eagerly. If he'd had a little more time, he would have found another way. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, and so he listens to her footsteps and wonders as to the gestures she is making, the lines she is drawing, as she chants. "Santa Madre de Dios, Santa Virgen de las vírgenes, Madre de Jesucristo, Madre de la divina gracia," she murmurs, and he fills in the response after each line, familiar in its litany if not in its language, mouthing it silently, no breath or voice behind it: ruega por nosotros.

It seizes him between espejo de justicia and trono de sabiduría, settles around his neck and shoulders like a mantle, and then picks him up by the scruff and shakes him like a dog might worry at a bundle of rags. He has but a moment to think perhaps I should have taken the familiar road after all before he is somewhere else.

*

When Lance was eleven, he'd gotten out of bed one night to get a drink of water from the bathroom and heard voices from downstairs: his mother, his father, with the sharp bite to the indistinct words that said they were arguing. He knew he shouldn't listen, knew that Stacy would have turned around and gone back to her room without a second thought, but instead he crept down the stairs enough for the voices to become clear, not so far as to be seen.

His mother had sounded tired: later, when thinking back on it, that would be the one thing he remembered above all else, the way she had sounded not angry so much as weary and hopelessly resigned. "We agreed," she said. "You would take care of Lance's religious education, and I would take care of Stacy's. We agreed, Jim. You can't undo that now."

There had been something ugly in his father's voice, something completely unlike the loving tones that voice carried in the daylight. "I agreed to let you teach your daughter that nonsense because it was the only way I could get you to agree that I would be able to teach my son the truth. And if you want to teach her your garbage, you can, but I'm telling you, I want her to be baptized. I know you're waiting for -- for your something to wake up in her. But you have to respect my beliefs, too."

"I do," his mother said. "Jim, I do. I know that what you believe is true, in the same way that what I believe is true. We're all in equal service to the Name. Can't you see that? What you're teaching Lance is the same as what I'm teaching Stacy, once you strip away all the details and get right down to the core of it. And when it wakes up in her, what she receives will be the same as what you received when you were baptized. More so, really. But putting her through that now would be --"

"And what if it never wakes up?" his father demanded. "What if you're wrong, and whatever thing you have skips her?"

Lance drew his knees up to his chest and leaned his cheek against them. He felt as though he were listening with his whole body, hearing things they never would have told him but he needed to hear anyway. It felt like this was the grownup world, the part they waited until he was safely tucked away in bed to talk about.

His mother, down in the living room, had sounded uncertain for a minute. Just a minute, as though she'd considered the possibility and long ago discarded it because she didn't want to think about what she would do if it were true. Maybe Lance hadn't been able to hear it then, but he'd remembered how she sounded, and later on, when he thought about it, he remembered the tiny hitch in her breath before she spoke. "It can't. It never has skipped a generation, not once in my family. Firstborn daughter. I told you. I told you before you proposed, and you said you understood, and you said it didn't bother you."

There'd been another pause. "I know," his father said. "I think I didn't realize I might not be telling the truth."

Lance remembered turning his head, suddenly certain he was being watched, and seeing the faintest glimmering of something right at the corner of his eyes. It was happening more and more often. At first he'd wondered if everyone could see it. When he'd realized it was just him, he started seriously considering the possibility that he was simply crazy.

*

When he opens his eyes, he is standing on a featureless grey plain. The sky is grey too, like an overcast, cloudy day: luminous, numinous, vibrating with a diffuse light that has no source or direction. Thick, grey mist or smoke billows around his ankles, rising from nowhere and drifting to nowhere.

At least this much is familiar.

He knows this place, knows it as well as he knows the inside of his own head. The litany whispers through the back of his mind, in his own voice this time, echoing the words he knows are being spoken in another place and in another time: causa de nuestra alegría, vaso espiritual de elección, ruega por nosotros. He brings his palms together at his chest, feeling the low deep thrumming of his heartbeat against the sides of his hands, and whispers his own version: Ateh, malkuth, v'geburah, v'gedulah, l'olam. His words rush out from him, sending eddies through the fog, cutting their own passage as though they had weight. Amen.

He takes a moment to draw the signs in mid-air: warding, protection, blessing. The irony of calling on those sigils -- here, now, in this place and under these circumstances, with this task lying ahead of him -- is not lost on him, but he cannot take the time to give it the appreciation it deserves. Dimly, he wishes he could share this with Chris; Chris has, perhaps, the finest sense of irony of anyone he's ever met. But Chris doesn't know about this part of things. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

He can see nothing to indicate where he is supposed to go, but he's never let that stop him before. He closes his eyes again and swings his paired hands down so his fingertips are no longer pointing at his chin but out at the world he faces, then turns, slowly, in a circle. He stops when it feels necessary to stop, when the tips of his fingers feel warm and he can feel the potential blooming across his face like sunlight against his cheeks. Then takes a step forward.

When he opens his eyes again, he is standing in a desert. It is mid-day, and the sun beats down on his head, relentlessly, as though it is trying to drive him away by its very concentrated malice. He squints against the brightness and fumbles for something to draw up over his face against the scouring sand carried on the winds. Though he stripped himself near-bare before entering the circle, he is not surprised to find he is wearing a burnoose, light wool wrapped around him to shelter him from the sirocco, reaching up to cover his head and shield it. He draws a fold of it across his nose and mouth, breathing shallowly to avoid inhaling any more sand than he already has, and takes stock of his surroundings.

It is hot, brutally hot, and so dry he can feel it deep in his nose, down the back of his throat. He swallows and coughs, once, a quick rasping sound. The sand pools around his feet like the mist did, shifting and ebbing, whipped by the punishing wind. Just as he is wishing he had water, he realizes there is a weight at his side, and he lifts the skin to his lips and sips at the water it contains. It is warm, brackish, but it washes away the dust and grit.

He is facing west. He squints against the horizon, bringing one hand up to shield his eyes, but sees nothing save for endless dunes. He re-caps the skin, carefully, for he does not know how long the water will need to last him, and begins walking. The wind erases his footsteps behind him.

*

When Lance was twelve, his mother found him playing with the things made out of air and light, the things nobody else could see. She took him inside and sat him down at the kitchen table and told him straight through, from beginning to end. He got the feeling she was leaving a lot of it out, but when she finished, he looked at her and told her to take it back.

He heard them arguing again that night, when he should have been asleep and couldn't bring himself to close his eyes, and made his way to the stairs again to listen. "You said it would be Stacy," his father said.

His mother had sounded desperate. "I thought it would be. I didn't know. It hasn't shown up in one of the men in the family for generations."

There had been a long pause. Lance could imagine the way his father looked: eyes closed, fighting for some measure of control, fighting to understand. Even then, he'd known his father wasn't a bad person. Just a little too used to being in charge of things, a little too used to being able to dictate when and where things would happen. "I'm trying to understand this, Diane. I'm trying. You've never told me much, and I've never asked questions, because I didn't want to know. Tell me this isn't going to hurt him."

"It's not like that," his mother said. "It's not -- it's not some kind of great burden. It's just something we need to do. Like holding doors for people, or saying please and thank you at the dinner table."

When Lance had crept back up the stairs, heading back to his room, he found Stacy standing in the door of her room. Her eyes were red, as though she'd been crying. Looking at her, he wondered what his mother had told her, what kind of secrets she'd been given to prepare her for something that would never happen. She lifted her chin and stared directly at him. "It should have been me," she said. Her tone was low and angry. "Mom said. It should have been me."

"You can have it," Lance said, and crawled back into his bed to pull the pillow over his head.

His mother talked herself hoarse for a few days, trying to dismantle everything he thought he knew and replace it with the groundwork for what she had to teach him, and he finally couldn't stand it anymore. He asked her while she had her back to him, up past her wrists in dish-suds and whistling quietly while she worked. "How come you let Dad teach me all of that stuff, if you knew it was wrong?"

Her shoulders jerked, then relaxed. When she spoke, it was even. "It isn't wrong, baby. Just a different way of looking at things. Your dad believes one thing, and I believe another. We get to the same place in the end, we just take different ways of getting there."

He studied her for a minute, then looked back down at his history homework spread across the table. "One of you has to be lying to me," he said. "And I really hope it's you." He could feel how ugly the words were even as he spoke them, but he didn't really care.

*

He hadn't expected it to be this hard. The backs of his thighs, the fronts of his calves, are burning with the effort it takes to walk over sand and not fall. He has a headache from the reflected sunlight, harsh and punishing like nothing he's ever seen before. He'd thought Florida was bad enough, and he'd had sunglasses then. Here, it just reflects down on him from the cloudless sky, up at him from the bleached-white dunes, an assault from every direction. The sky isn't blue; it's that kind of bone-thin silver he's only seen once or twice before, as though all the color has been drained away, like the way CD covers go pale and faded when you leave them in the sunlight in the car for too long. He is the only color he can see for miles; the red blossoms over the backs of his hands, fading in over his exposed skin like a slow-developing Polaroid. He doesn't want to think about how bad his face must be, what color is spreading across his cheekbones. The wind lashes at him, scouring him with each breath bringing more sand, more grit.

He knows this isn't real. It's a manifestation of something else, something mystical, the same way it always is when he walks this world. Usually he can change it, rewrite the universe around him by thinking it different, but this time he's got a specific destination and the world around him doesn't want him to get there. It's not supposed to be easy to get here. If it were easy, anyone could.

He thinks longingly of winter, of water dripping down from gutters and freezing into icicles before it can hit the ground, of snow spread across lawns and driveways and the dank wet slush of the roads making driving difficult. He thinks of cold things: of ice cubes, ice cream, other things that start with ice and chill. His lips crack and he licks the taste of blood away carefully, heavy iron on his tongue, unwilling to waste even that much moisture. His waterskin is half empty by now, and he doesn't know how much further he has to go. Drink only when you need to. Wait until you feel as though you will die without it, and then wait a little while longer.

The human body can survive for two days without water, but this isn't his body, and he doesn't know what the rules are, here.

He had expected to feel lost, expected his heatstroke-numbed brain to insist he was going the wrong way, the wrong direction. He doesn't. If the wind did not erase his steps nearly as quickly as he made them, he knows he could turn around and look behind him and see them stretching out behind him in a ruler-straight line, back to the beginning, back to the point where footsteps came out of nowhere as though he'd stepped through a gate or a door. It's like something under his skin, tugging him in the right direction, pulling him on to where he's supposed to go. He just wishes he'd been able to get closer. He's starting to wonder if he'll make it there before his body gives out on him. Or not his body, really. His collection of will shaped into the form he's used to wearing as a body. Easier just to think of it as a body. Simpler that way. Even if it does run the risk of oversimplifying his metaphors.

God, he's so thirsty. He takes it for granted, really, the ability to reach out a hand and open the fridge and take out a plastic bottle full of water, drain it down and throw it away, not even bother to refill it. Just pull out another. The ultimate in disposable goods, waiting for him to dispose of them, so ubiquitous he doesn't ever even realize how ubiquitous they are. It's hot here, hotter than Orlando in summer, hotter than Mississippi afternoons, and the next person who apologetically says "at least it's a dry heat" when he's mopping the sweat off his face in Las Vegas is going to get a stern talking-to, because there's nothing of kindness in this dry heat. It's so dry -- he's so dry -- that he's stopped even sweating, and he knows that's a sign he's not drinking anything close to enough water. He would, if he had enough water to drink. There isn't even any water in the air, here. Usually he can smell it, but all he can smell here is the warm metal of sand so hot it should be boiling.

When he sees the first bumps on the unrelenting line of the horizon, at first he thinks they are hallucination. They shimmer like a mirage, and he has to laugh at himself, because landscapes like this are where that word came from. He gives himself one sip from the waterskin -- one sip, no more, and the taste of it, even stale and fetid, nearly makes him weep. But even if it's something his mind is conjuring, some imaginary ghost-flutter of a brain far too taxed to be trusted, it lies on the compass-straight line he is walking, and so he puts one foot down in front of the other as though there's nothing else in the world he could choose to do and keeps walking.

They are rocks when he reaches them, dry red rocks rising from the sand like they were planted there by an unknown hand at the dawn of time, left to grow in this hellish garden. They have bred more, dotting the world in front of him, breaking up the monotony of sand and sky. He's been walking for what feels like days and the sun hasn't budged a finger's-length in the sky, still directly overhead. The rock gives no shade. He leans against it anyway, for just a minute. Not so long as to make him remember what it was like not to be walking. If he remembers, he'll never begin to move again.

*

When Lance was thirteen, his mother said to him, "You have to stop fighting it."

He'd looked up at her, sullenly, knowing it was immature of him and not caring in the least. "I don't even know why we're supposed to be doing this."

She sighed and put down the book she'd been reading to him out of. "Because there are things that go wrong in this world, baby. There are people out there who do bad things to good people, and there need to be people who are going to stop them. There are policemen to take care of people who do bad things to people like steal things or shoot people, and there are people like us who take care of people who do bad things with magic. We're here to get rid of the people who do bad things."

"I'm not two," he muttered, kicking at the leg of the table. "You don't need to talk to me like I'm some kind of idiot."

"Stop that," she said to him, sharply. "Yes, I should have prepared you better for this, but I didn't know you would be the one. You have this power, and you have to learn how to use it. You have no choice. You can't give it back once you have it, and you can't give it away to someone else. You were chosen for this for a reason, and you're going to have to learn to accept that."

He dug his fingernails into the tops of his thighs, because the sting distracted him from the sting at the back of his eyes, the hot heavy lump in the back of his throat. He missed his real mother, the one who made him hot chocolate after Sunday school and told him to pick up his dirty laundry when he left it on the floor. He didn't know who this hard-voiced stranger sitting across the table from him was. "I don't want to be chosen," he said. "I want to be normal again."

She sighed again and rubbed a hand over her eyes. "Sweetie, nothing in this world is normal. Come on. We need to teach you this Hebrew."

*

The rocks are growing more and more frequent now, larger and larger. He picks his way through them, detouring from his path only when one rises up directly in front of him, and it makes his skin itch whenever he feels like he's going the wrong way even for the few minutes necessary. He's making his way steadily upward; sometime in the endless noon the path in front of him began to slope, and now he can no longer see the horizon. Just more rock, and more sand, and more sky. He's beginning to think he will die here, his task left undone, nothing more than a heap of bleached bones to lie upon the landscape forever. At least the wind is no longer as brutal, as punishing. The rock breaks it, leaves only little fingers left of the huge smashing hands.

"These fragments I have shored against my ruins," he says, testing to see whether his voice still works. It does; cracked and dry like the rest of him is cracked and dry, but it still sounds true in his ears. He's been thinking of the poem for a while, trying to remember as much of it as he can, but he's never been much for poetry.

His internal compass-sense leads him to one of the rocks, just before the plateau he's been steadily approaching. He can't see over it. For a second he wonders if this is it, if this is where he's supposed to be going, if the garden of rock bones is all that's left of -- but then common sense reasserts itself. He steps around the side of it. It's huge, about the size of his garage, which is about the size of some people's houses. There's something almost parodying shade in its lee, underneath one of its outcroppings, and he sinks down to his knees and rests his cheek against the stone, fumbles out his waterskin for another drink. He'll only stay a minute. Catch his breath. Rest his feet.

The wind shifts the sand a little next to him and he realizes he isn't the only one who thought this would be a good place to stop for a few moments.

Bones preserve well, in this weather. He doesn't know how long the skeleton has been there; long enough to have every last glimmer of flesh bleached away from covering them, that much is certain. He runs his hands through the sand next to the flawlessly-kept hand bones, trying not to disturb what little peace they have found but still needing to see if there's anything nearby. He knows this place; nothing is presented to him without a reason. He realizes what that reason is when he feels metal beneath his fingertips, barely avoids slicing open his skin. He brushes away the sand, finds the hilt of the sword, lifts it and tests the edge with a thumb.

Not bad for having been buried in sand for nobody-knows-how-long. It's a short-sword, light and fairly well-balanced, its heavy counterweighted pommel bringing the point of balance further back toward the guard. The hilt is covered in scraps of what used to be leather, but it's so worn and dessicated he just picks it away, leaving bare steel. "Thank you," he says, to the bones at his side, and wonders if perhaps he can come back and bury them properly when he's done. He doubts he'll be able to, though, so he holds a hand over them and says, with as much conviction as he can muster, however inappropriate the words might be: "In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem." It won't do much, but it makes him feel more comfortable about robbing the dead.

The tugging feeling is back under his skin, unseen compass leading him to his final destination, and he struggles up to his feet now before he gets too comfortable (although there is little comfort here) and join whomever it is he just borrowed his sword from. He is so tired he can barely bring himself to lift the blade, swing it back and forth a few times, trying out its heft and weight. It's a fine piece, despite its age. Even he, who only picks up a sword when there's no other alternative, can wield it without much trouble.

It's warm beneath his hand, almost like a lover's body would be. He uses it as a staff as he climbs. The incline is getting sharper, and more than once he puts his foot down wrong and slides back a few inches, arms pinwheeling for balance lest he go down and tumble further. The further up he gets, the more often there is a patch of bare rock beneath the sand, bedrock peeking through, and when this is more common than the sand he turns back once to realize the desert has bled seamlessly into this near-mountain while he was not paying attention.

It's all right, he thinks. Revelations happen on the tops of mountains.

He keeps climbing. When he starts having to scale the face of the rock, he uses the sword to slice off two strips from the hem of his robe and ties the sword around his waist, at the small of his back. It bangs the back of his knees as he ascends, and once or twice he thinks it might have sliced through his robes to draw blood.

*

When Lance was thirteen, he tried to block it, tried to stop it, until he couldn't block or stop it anymore.

"Again," his mother said, patiently. Lance let the shield drop and closed his eyes; he was tired, so tired, but he'd finally given in. After the attack, after the humiliation of having had to be rescued from the thing that had found him, drawn to his power by the knowledge he couldn't defend himself, he'd finally given in and stopped fighting the training. The danger had snapped through the last of his protests. If he still wished it had been Stacy instead of him, he wished it a lot more quietly after that.

"You have to know the forms," his mother said. "It's not enough just to have power. It's not enough just to want something to happen. You have to be able to guide the magic the way it's supposed to be guided; you have to know the spells to make it happen the way you want it to. You've got a lot of power, Lance." He was getting tired of hearing that; she seemed to trot it out as an excuse, so often, for why he should do exactly what she wanted him to. And then he'd catch sight of her, looking at him when she didn't think he was watching, and think: she doesn't know if she's going to be enough to teach me. He didn't know where the thought came from. He was starting to think that he was growing up way faster than he should have been. Or maybe not fast enough. Or both.

"You've got a lot of power," she repeated. "But just power isn't going to help. You need control, too. Because if you don't have control, you'll never be strong enough to use that power. And control means knowing all the spells, all the forms, all the sigils. You need to know the component bits of magic before you put them together in different ways. Which means you need to study. You'll thank me someday, when you need to do something big and powerful without any advance notice, without any time to research first." She held up her hands. "Come on. Build the shield again."

Lance set his jaw, lifted his hands to press them up against hers, and started the spells over again. If he got through them to her satisfaction in time, he might have time for half an hour of television before bed.

*

When he finally drags himself over the final cliff on the mountain, battered and sore and bruised and scraped in places he doesn't want to think about, he is somehow unsurprised to find that he is lying with his face on a field of grass.

It smells like springtime: fresh, new, crisp and clean. He hooks his fingers in it and revels in the lushness beneath his wind-bruised and sun-burned skin. The memory of the desert is receding; he does not turn around and look back. He's always been bad with heights. This landscape is impossible, of course, but this does not stop him from untying the sword and then rolling over onto his back, staring up at the sky and just breathing for a little while.

It can only be a momentary respite, though, and he levers himself to a sitting position, then to his knees, then his feet. His bones creak and crack as he goes. He wonders how long he's been here, wonders how close he is to draining away and fading down to nothing. Too close, he suspects. He'll have to move carefully.

Not far, not far the direction-sense chitters at him. He hefts the sword in his hand and sets off again: west, still west, ever and always onward. The sun is gentler now, less relentless. He pushes back the hood of his burnoose, no longer needing the protection from the sirocco, wanting to feel the breeze. It's gentler now, too. More playful. More peaceful.

He can smell the four rivers, off in the distance. For a few minutes he considers going towards one of them. He'd like to see the Pishon or the Gihon; they no longer exist in his world, dried up and filled in sometime after this handful of space was pulled out of his world and tucked away here for safekeeping. He could use a drink, too. But the insistent pull tugs at him, and he swings the sword idly as he walks.

It's beautiful here. He hadn't thought it would be ugly, but he hadn't thought it would be like this, either. The trees stretch high and proud in front of him; the ground leading up to them is carpeted with foliage. There are a thousand shades of green everywhere he rests his eyes. He never thought there could be so many. He can see small bits of movement out of the corners of his eyes: animals, insects, birds, he presumes, but every time he stops to look, there's nothing there.

And at the edge of the forest, of the garden, there is a creature, tall and pale and beautiful and terrifying, and it is holding a flaming sword.

He's been walking west, endlessly west, west for longer than he could possibly have been expected to walk. And now he has reached the eastern edge of the garden, and there is a sword in his hand, and he is facing an angel, and nothing could have prepared him for this. The angel is beautiful, of course. But beauty is just the surface of terror; he can feel the power radiating from it, feel the strength and the implacable endless sense of presence. It's written across the angel's face, luminous and whole and he can barely keep himself on his feet; he feels dirty, grubby, human beneath this relentless assault on his senses and all he wants to do is throw himself on his face at the angel's feet and beg it to have mercy.

It is beautiful and it is magnificent and more than that, it simply is, eternal endless presence, every line composed of everything and nothing but sheer existence. He can see Creation written across its face, the touch of firstborn-ness. Heartfelt permanence, undying, unchanging, the irresistable moment of dawn. There was a time, he thinks, with the one portion of his brain not occupied by trying to lure him away and back over the cliff and down the mountain and through the desert and away, when angels appeared to men, stooped their shoulders and entered through the door of a tent, wrestled by the side of a river until dawn first brushed its rosy fingers across the sky. Men must have been larger then.

It sees him, and raises the sword.

He takes a deep breath and raises his own.

Later he will not remember much of the battle. The human mind cannot hold that sort of sheer terror for long; it burns out, boils away, slips through the cracks of memory like water pouring downhill. He is clumsy with a sword, and untutored. The angel has had nearly all of Creation to practice. He is exhausted, filthy, worn down to nearly nothing, but he is possessed of a fierce and burning determination. He will win this battle, or he will die trying; there is no third option. And he is not yet ready to die.

Strike. Step. Block. The sword he was given is balanced beautifully, resting in his hand like an extension of himself, but even the most perfect weapon can only do so much to grant skill that was not placed there by endless hours of practice. He is tired, tired down deep beyond the simple layer of sleepiness that comes at the end of a long day; tired like he's spent a month or a year or a decade crossing a desert, climbing a mountain. He falters once, nearly misses his block, stumbles as his ankle nearly gives. Before he can recover, the angel's sword is upon him, slicing him open from the far corner of his right cheekbone, down his cheek, narrowly missing mouth and throat, cauterizing as it burns. The only thing that saves him is that his chin was tilted down; the sword-stroke does not cleave his jugular, does not part his neck. It wedges itself in the hollow of his left shoulder. He thinks it might have severed muscles, tendons, for his left arm is suddenly a useless claw of limp meat.

And something deep within him, something he doesn't understand, something that rises to control his body from time to time when he needs it to, stirs. Takes advantage of the fact the angel's sword has slammed up against bone. Takes advantage of the moment when the angel is off-balance. And drives his sword straight through the angel's breastbone, directly through its heart.

When it is over, when the last of that glorious light has faded from the angel's unearthly face, when he has dropped to his knees with his chest heaving and tried not to smell the stink of his own flesh cooking, tried to control his stomach from disgorging its contents, tried to think past the blinding aching pain, he picks up the angel's sword. Its flame has gone out with the death of its owner, and his own is buried in the angel's chest. He uses it as a crutch to struggle to his feet, his left arm hanging listlessly at his side. He casts a glance over his shoulder, into the Garden, tempted for a moment to go inside. There are more trees in its depth than just the two, after all, and he knows one of them will bring healing. He even thinks he could find it readily. But he turns his back on it, because there are some temptations he knows he should not risk, and waits.

He doesn't have to wait for very long.

*

When Lance was fifteen, his mother said to him: "There are some rules we always have to follow. Don't take without asking. Don't do anything to change someone without their permission. Don't steal. Don't kill. Do what you have to do to repair the situation, and nothing more."

He didn't think of it at the time, but later on, he wished he'd thought to ask her: what happens when repairing the situation means you have to break one of those rules?

*

He thought he had known what terror was. He hadn't. Mikhael spreads steel-grey wings and brandishes a sword twin to the one he is still leaning on. When Mikhael speaks, the sound of it feels like it should be enough to rupture eardrums, enough to flatten cities. Angels are terrifying things.

"We will grant you a moment to make your peace with the Name, human," Mikhael says. He does not know what language Mikhael is speaking. He hears it in his ears, but more than that, he feels it in his brain, slicing through his linguistic centers, cleaving its own path through his consciousness.

He knows he will have to talk fast. He leans on the sword, tries to think through the pain. "I'm not the one who needs to make peace with the Name," he says. "Tell me, commander of the Heavenly Host, what penalty Isiael earned for bargaining with a human mage to permit that human entry to the Garden and to the Tree?"

For a moment, he thinks: oh, so that's what it looks like when an angel is startled. Then the surprise passes and Mikhael raises the sword again. "It could not be," Mikhael says. "If it were, we would know. The very heavens would shout of such blasphemy."

He struggles to avoid closing his eyes, giving into the exhaustion that's lying over his shoulders like a cloak. "I think your warning system needs its batteries changed," he says, and reaches a hand into his burnoose. The scroll is underneath his fingertips, the way he knew it would be. He gives silent blessing to the way he learned, years back, how to carry replicas of earthly things into this unearthly overworld when needs must. He's doing a pretty good job at not giving into the corner of his mind that's gibbering and shrieking in terror, but he doesn't want to push his luck; he tosses the scroll across the distance between them in an easy underhand. Mikhael plucks it out of midair almost reflexively and unrolls it.

Angels can be startled. They can also be shocked; at least judging from the expression on Mikhael's face when he unrolls the scroll, sees the terms written out across its face in angelic script, sees the glyph and signature at bottom.

He files away the expression for future reference, if there is a future, if he wins free of this. It is not often one sees an angel speechless.

It is best to press one's advantage while one has it. He risks putting a little more of his weight on the sword and hopes this does not last long, one way or the other. He'd very much like to get home. "I took that scroll from a man who had, in a box, in his backpack, the fruit of a tree from this Garden. It was not the fruit of the tree of life. But it could have been, and when the man completed the duties Isiael had set him to, it would have been. Isiael betrayed his task. His life was forefit. My teacher sent me here, to repair what had been broken."

Mikhael looks up from the scroll. There is no word for the color of his eyes, the ferocity which lies there. "Perhaps," Mikhael says. "But it was not well done for a child of adama to claim it. Such things should be handled by the Host."

"I tried," he says. "I tried to reach you, but I was turned aside, and I could not find my way to Aziluth. There was no way for me to send a message."

Mikhael frowns. The fury he had displayed has ebbed away, turned to another purpose and in another direction. Perhaps this might work out after all. "This is not right," Mikhael says. The pronouncement is simply stated. He is beginning to grow nervous again, frightened of what Mikhael finds not right about the situation, when the angel continues. "It is not right for a Magus to come begging for spare scraps. You shall have a Word of entry."

He frowns too. He's heard the title before, whispered behind his back when no one thinks he's paying attention, when his mother is speaking to the various people who drift in and out of their lives, when he stops to introduce himself to the local practitioners in the hundreds of towns he's drifted into and out of. He knows what it means. He's been too frightened, or perhaps too modest, to ever think it could apply to himself. But it's different, hearing it from an angel. "I'm not supposed to be anyone special," he says.

Mikhael's frown deepens, and he takes a few steps forward, bringing him closer. It's like a furnace of concentrated angelic presence.

He's never wanted to run away from something more in his life, and he's wanted to run away from some things quite badly. He holds himself still. It takes a great deal of concentration. Mikhael lifts one hand; it feels like there should be trailing light behind it, ribbons and streamers of crackling lightning. And then Mikahel puts that hand on his shoulder, right over the spot where Isiael's sword came to rest, and whispers a single word that contains sounds human ears should not be able to hear.

He is on fire. He has been set ablaze, and he is being consumed, eaten away from within. It spreads from his shoulder down his arm, not pain, not precisely, but like tiny needle pinpricks under his skin. Like the angel's touch is setting off each nerve, one by one, in turn, making it fire again and again in false alarm after false alarm. He does not scream, not out of any desire to maintain his composure but because it has caught him so unawares he does not have the spare fraction of a second necessary to take breath.

When it is over, Mikhael is staring at him with the twist to his lips that in a human would be impatience. He looks down at his shoulder; the wound is still there, faded to what looks like a long-healed scar, raised white line visible through the tear in his burnoose. It has been joined by raised, reddened skin, a perfect handprint standing out against his shoulder in sharp relief. He wonders how long he will bear these marks.

"Come," Mikhael says, and turns around, nearly striking him in the face with the tips of his wings. He strides into the Garden as though it is his own. Appropriate, really. Mikhael was the first to stand guard at its border.

He hesitates just at the edge, just before crossing the line he cannot see but can sense as readily as he can sense the ground beneath his feet. "I thought we were never supposed to return here."

Mikhael snorts. "Your supposed wise men have told you many things that are not true. We say for you to follow, and follow you will. Come."

With no further protest, he follows. He does not let himself look around as they walk; Mikhael is moving too quickly, particularly for leading one who has crossed a desert of unknown breadth and then climbed half a mountain before fighting an angel, and he does not wish to be left behind. Not here. But also, he does not particularly trust himself. He knows there are things here, gifts without price. It's better for humans to avoid the temptation entirely.

Mikhael comes to rest, finally, in front of a tree that stretches halfway to the heavens. The tree shouldn't be this tall, he thinks. They don't usually grow so high. Mikhael stretches out a hand and plucks a pomegranate from the lowest branch, twists it open with nothing more than two strong hands, and holds one half out to him.

"Eat," Mikhael says.

He holds out a hand to take the fruit; dimly he notices that he reaches with his left hand, the arm that had been useless, the arm Mikhael had touched. He teases out a handful of seeds with cautious fingers, watching those fingers stain red the moment the juices touch them. Something makes him look up before he brings fingers to mouth. "Which tree am I eating of?" he asks.

Mikhael does not answer, simply repeats, "Eat."

He looks down into the pomegranate half he is holding. The seeds cluster like pearls, like fractals, rich and red and wine-dark. He can smell them; they whisper of change. He could refuse this, whatever gift or curse it might be, whatever thing this creature of beauty and power and might has offered him. He could refuse this, and fight his way back home, and continue on as he has.

He tells himself this because he always prefers to think that he has a choice.

They taste nothing like pomegranate seeds; they are crisp and tart and cool the way pomegranate seeds are, but they taste of something wild and untamed, like the breathless heady feeling of falling in love, like the reckless restless dash from dressing room to stage, like driving too fast or running too hard or the way it feels when you kiss someone for the very first time before you drown. He stands there for a moment, waiting for something to happen, waiting for something to change or something to explode behind his eyes or something to rise from the ground and devour him or to be told that he will now have to spend six months out of the year in Heaven or Hell or something, anything, but nothing changes.

Nothing changes.

"This is your Word," Mikhael says, and he prepares himself to listen, to record what Mikhael says with the eidetic recall he trained himself into having, but Mikhael keeps speaking in normal tones and he realizes the angel did not mean "word" literally but Word, not graphos but logos, and that's when he can start to feel it, underneath his heart, burning in the pit of his stomach like a firebrand. "You will find what else you have been given as the time comes, as the need makes itself known. You have not been given anything you would not have come to, in time, but perhaps you will not have time. Use it with wisdom. You will not be waiting for your wisdom overlong, we suspect."

"I don't understand," he says, even though he almost does.

Mikhael studies him like he is a pattern inlaid into amber, like he is a manuscript in a language no one understands anymore. "We do not have time for this," he says, neat and clipped and precise. "You brought yourself here. You involved yourself in matters of the Host. You did this because you felt it was the proper thing to do. If you are to involve yourself in such tasks, you will need to be properly prepared. Your teaching has been adequate for what you have done until now, but what you have done until now is but a pale fraction of what you will do in the time to come. Every action has a consequence, son of adama; we have simply provided you the tools which will permit you to bear your consequences with greater ease."

He doesn't like the sound of that, but there is nothing else he can do, so he nods.

"Return now," Mikhael says. "We have much to do here, but you need not be part of it. You will grow weak, should you remain here much longer."

He takes a deep breath and prepares to call up the words he knows will bring him home, and then stops. "Is it worth it?"

Mikhael seems to stop and think, then finally says, "If you need to ask, there is no meaningful answer we could give."

He nods, and turns to make his way home.

*

When Lance was sixteen, she said to him, "There are some people you can always trust. Anyone who keeps the same oaths you've sworn. Any messenger of God."

Later on, he realized that what she should have said was: there are some people you can trust more often than you can trust the others. But it took him a very long time to even begin to understand that.

*

Danielle is still snoring lightly when he makes his slow and cautious way back from the bad side of town back to the resort they're staying at. If he has to have a girlfriend for photo opportunities and publicity -- and he's never quite understood why having a girlfriend is important to prove his availability to their mostly-adolescent fanbase, but he isn't the one who makes such decisions -- he's got a good one; she never questions his sudden impulses for vacations that aren't really vacations at all, never wonders why he comes home from taking walks looking pale and drawn and exhausted, never manages to shake off the sleeping spells he places upon her when necessary and never attributes her grogginess the next morning to anything other than a need for another cup of coffee. He adjusts the air conditioning down a little and takes his cell phone out onto the balcony.

She answers on the second ring, even though it's well past the middle of the night and creeping on to dawn. "Did it work?" she asks, her voice only slightly sleep-blurred. She's used to coming awake and hitting the ground running.

He chooses not to answer the question. "Why did you never tell me to my face I was a Magus?" he asks instead.

He can hear her slight catch of breath, even through the static. The cell reception here is terrible, but there are some calls you can't make from the hotel phone. She doesn't hesitate. "Because I wasn't sure. Not so young. It's something most people have to grow into."

"I'm not young anymore," he says, even though he knows it's only true if you squint and look at it in the right light. "It's tough, isn't it. Being my mother and my teacher all at once."

"Yes," she says, and then falls silent.

He nods, even though he knows she cannot see him. "From now on," he says, "you can go back to just being my mother again. I can handle finding the teachers on my own."

The phone begins ringing again the minute he snaps it shut. He thumbs it to silent and goes inside to shower the stink of magic off his skin.

*

When Lance was seventeen, just before the phone call that changed his life for the second time, he asked his mother, "Does it ever get any easier?"

She'd been chopping up vegetables for dinner. Her hand stilled, and she didn't look up at him, but when she spoke, her voice was bright. "Of course it does, baby. Of course it does."

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