Eric Lustbader: The Testament

He looked up into the face of his enemy, absorbed his vicious blow, saw a vulnerable spot and, as Jordan drew his fist back to repeat the blow, used the points of his stiffened fingers to jab Jordan in the spot between his sternum and diaphragm. Bravo struck hard and true, disrupting the important nerve bundle.

Jordan reared back and Bravo rose up, shoving him hard so that his head struck the rock wall. He toppled off Bravo, fell forward, pitching over Bravo's head, down into the chimney.

Bravo flipped over, reflexively reached out in an effort to catch him, but there was no chance, there was never any chance. Jordan was gone.

Jenny grabbed him as he crawled out of the rock passage.

"Jordan?" she asked.

He shook his head. He felt light-headed, his hands cold and bloodless. He reached for her, as a drowning man reaches a line thrown overboard. She winced, bit her lip so as not to cry out, and through his own pain and misery, he realized that she, too, was hurt.

"Jenny, what happened?" Then he saw the tourniquet she'd tied around her abdomen. "You're hurt."

"A flesh wound, that's all. Nothing to worry about."

But her blood-soaked shirt told him otherwise. "We've got to get you to a hospital, or at the very least a doctor."

She nodded. "But first, there's something I have to show you." Leading him over to where Camille lay, she lowered herself gingerly until she was squatting, then she went through Camille's clothes until she found what she was looking for, which she displayed in her palm.

Bravo knelt beside her. "Your knife."

"Not quite." Jenny drew out her own small switchblade.

"They're identical." He looked at her. "She had a duplicate made. That means-"

"She found my knife."

"At the hotel in Mont St. Michel, while you were unconscious. I went to the bathroom, left her alone with you. I didn't want to leave you, but she assured me it was okay."

"Of course it was, she was poring through my things."

He looked down at Camille's face, pale, porcelain-beautiful even in death. "She slit Father Mosto's throat, not Cornadoro. She jumped me in the corridor outside his office."

"I wonder how much she enjoyed it," Jenny said bitterly.

"Jenny-"

"She must have enjoyed tearing us apart."

Bravo nodded sadly. "That was her plan all along, I can see it now."

With a soft groan, Jenny rose. "What a supreme bitch."

A gorgon, Jordan had called her. In this, too, he wasn't wrong, Bravo mused. But she had been even more than that. He rose at last to stand with his arm around Jenny, looking down into the face of the devil seen and recognized by Father Damaskinos.

Sunset shrouded them in its cool embrace. The sky was on fire, layered with tiers of pink clouds. It was a relief to be free of the cavern, of the horrors that had awaited them there.

"The cache," Jenny said. "What happened, Bravo? Did your father lead you astray?"

"On the contrary," he said. "I never read you or Camille his last cipher, because he warned me against it."

"What do you mean?" In the soft swirl of shadows in the small meadow, she turned. "Wait, he knew you wouldn't be alone, didn't he?"

"Well, it was a supposition, one that makes good sense when you think about it," Bravo said. "You see, the moment the Knight attack began, he'd taken the precaution of moving the contents of the cache out of its original container. But he was adamant that if I was with anyone-anyone at all-I go to the original burial site. This way, I could draw out whoever was against me. Over the centuries, the power of the Quintessence has had the ability of corrupting even those who thought themselves steadfast. My father was told that it was the origin of all the traitors within the Order."

Jenny looked at him with the sun in her eyes. "He was told? By whom?"

"Fra Leoni."

An early evening wind had sprung up. All around them, the wildflowers bobbed, bent their heads as if in obeisance.

"He's still alive." Jenny's voice was an awed whisper.

"Against all logic, it would seem so."

"Logic has nothing to do with it," Jenny said. "It's all about faith."

He nodded. "I understand that now."

"It's here," he said, kneeling by the Cauldron, the sacred spring of the Orthodox Greeks. From the reddish earth in front of him rose the cracked plinth of an ancient pillar. Jenny leaned on his shoulder as she lowered herself beside him. Bravo cleared away a layer of pine needles and leaf mold. Beetles and centipedes scuttled for safety. The smell of decay that fed new life rose up to them like the aroma of a cool morning.

"Are you all right?" Bravo asked. "You can do this?"

She smiled, and all the pain was erased from her face. "I can do this, I have to do this."

Together, they dug down, lifting handfuls of earth, piling it higher and higher until there appeared beneath the worked stone plinth a small wooden chest. Painted with primary-colored boats, fish and birds, it was wholly unlike the original container she had unearthed in the cavern.

Bravo sat back on his haunches and laughed. "It's the toy chest I had as a kid."

"Oh, Bravo." Jenny put a hand on his shoulder.

Silently, reverently, they went back to work, brushing the last of the earth off the top of the chest, digging out the sides. At last, it was revealed, and they lifted it out.

As Bravo reached out to open it, Jenny said, "I don't think-" Then her eyes rolled up and she collapsed. At once, he laid her flat, listened for her breath, took her pulse. She was alive, but his hand came away covered in blood. Quickly now, he took off his shirt, ripping it into strips. With a rising sense of urgency, he unwound the tourniquet she'd fashioned out of her own shirt. He was appalled to see the wound. He wiped away the blood seeping out of it. There was no doubt, the wound was far more serious than she'd made it out to be. He bound her again, using two of the strips he'd made of his shirt, making a double layer, tying them both tighter in an effort to cut down on the rate of blood loss. He looked around. Of course there was not a soul in sight. It was at best a kilometer to the Sumela Monastery, and from there a twenty-minute ride to the clinic at Macka. He took her pulse again and was alarmed to discover it slower than it had been before. If it became erratic… Even so, he might not get her back to civilization in time.

He wiped his sweating face, turned to face his toy chest. He knew what lay within. With a trembling hand, he opened the chest. Here were the secrets the Order had been amassing for centuries-documents, secret treaties, clandestine histories, suppressed memoirs, incriminating financial records. And there, among them, was the Testament of Jesus Christ. He touched it, but did not pick it up. Funny, now that he had found it, he had no time to read it. His attention was elsewhere: the small clay phial with its stone stopper.

The Quintessence.

All he had to do was open it, apply the tiniest amount to Jenny's wound. She would be healed, her life saved. How could he not do it? He picked it up, cupped it in his two palms. It was almost without weight, as if its contents were lighter than air, like angels' wings.

Open it, apply a small amount to her wound. She would live-absolutely, no question. If he didn't, there was only faith to go on, faith that he could get her to the clinic, that he could save her.

His fingers curled around the stopper.

And then what? What would happen to her afterward? Would she live to be 150 years old? two hundred? four hundred, like Fra Leoni? Would she want that? Had he the right to do it, to change the natural order? Surely, his father had had the same agonizing decision to make when Steffi grew gravely ill…

And then his father appeared beside him.