Mark Teppo - Heartland

I took a step back from the basin. "No, now you're lying to me." The pictures on the walls seemed to flow, the faces changing into demonic visages wracked with laughter.

"Are you sure?" she asked. "Or is it more convenient for you to believe that I am?"

What do you Know, foolish magus? The faces all danced with mirth. What do you Know?

"I was there," I tried, my voice faint against the raucous laughter ringing in my head.

"Where?" Vivienne asked.

"Portland," I whimpered. "When Bernard activated the Key of Thoth and tried to talk to God."

"Were you?" she asked, pressing the point. Her words came hard and fast. "Not according to the Record you weren't. We had a Witness there. He didn't see you. Are you accusing a Watcher of falsifying a True Record?"

Antoine lied. He lied to protect himself and to elevate himself in the eyes of the Watchers. He hadn't done it to protect me; he had done it to take power for himself. His report gave him control of the situation. Whatever he claimed as the Record became permanent. I had been written out, like the shadow filled with eyes. Smeared into the background and then dissolved. What's gone is gone .

What was I doing now? Was I part of the cosmological rebirth that was coming? Was it my destiny to take up the Cup and drink from it at the Coronation ceremony? To be Crowned, thereby receiving the vision and wisdom of the Hierarch. Me-the untested, untrained, and uninformed magus-who had been given the keys of power by a madman. Or was that part of the lunacy of Husserl's interpretation: to twist me so much that I argued that I wasn't the Hierarch's tool, performed the tasks anyway, and when the end came, was pushed aside because, yes, I really wasn't his tool after all?

I didn't exist. I had died in the river, buried under all that water and flowing energy. There was no Record that I was still alive. Not if the Record was to be believed, and who was I to contradict the Record? To accuse a Protector-Witness of lying? I was a lonely voice in the wilderness, crying out to be heard, to be accepted, to be loved.

But why? Why did I want their affection? Their adulation? Hadn't I spent five years hiding from them, trying to get away from my past? Hadn't I tried so very hard to not be a Watcher? Yet, here I was: running errands for the Architects, killing the competition, and being twisted by the continued admonishment that I wasn't a real player, that I wasn't worthy of being initiated into the secret histories and occult mysteries of La Societe Lumineuse.

I took another step back and collided with the wall. My hand touched the painting and it felt warm and resilient, more like flesh than dried oil paint. A hand grabbed mine and I tried to pull free, the Chorus sparking down my arm and into my neck, but something sharp pierced the top of my skull and the lights went out.

At first, I thought the lack of illumination had simply been a result of the bowl going dark, but when the light in the basin came back, I realized I was sitting down, back against the wall, with no recollection of how I got there. I reached up and touched the top of my head, expecting to find an entry wound, but there was nothing but a tender spot. Nothing was broken. The Chorus buzzed in my ears like angry bees, and my sense of balance was off by several degrees in the wrong direction.

Vivienne crouched next to me, and put her hand under my chin so as to lift my head. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"No," I admitted. "It's been a long day. Couple of days, actually." Now that I was sitting, I really didn't feel like getting up. The thought earned me another buzzing pass from the Chorus. Angry little bees.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I understand. I was a bit abrupt. I could have been a bit-"

"No, no. That's fine," I interrupted. "I. . just. . well, never mind. It's not important." I forced a smile onto my lips. "I get it, though. I'm not the white knight everyone expected."

She pursed her lips. "What makes you think we need one?"

I started to protest, and then wondered why I was bothering. "You know?" I said, "I don't really fucking care if you do." My social filters were low, and I let the words out. I didn't care anymore. "I don't really care if Hildegard foresaw the Ascension Event in Portland. I don't care if it was my destiny to stop Bernard. All I know is that a lot of people died that night, and, really, there's no spin you can put on what happened that will alleviate the moral culpability of the Watchers. You were either Witnesses or participants, and both positions aren't acceptable to me. Both positions are reprehensible."

She looked at my face a moment longer, watching the movement of the Chorus in my eyes, and then she let go of my chin. "Very well." She sat back on her heels, and her hands fell into her lap where they unconsciously folded into a penitential prayer. "You came for the Grail."

I swallowed some of the bile backing up into my throat. "I did."

"You threatened to break into the Archives, to carve your way in with one of the old relics. Do you think you would have been successful?"

"No. I wanted to get your attention."

"Were you trying to impress me?"

A short laugh rattled in my throat. "No. I have a feeling you're far too cynical for me to woo you with a method as unsubtle as that." The worst sort of bull.

"Woo me?" Her hands unclasped and moved to her thighs. "Well, yes, 'wooing' me with the threat of violence is certainly the least effective way to grab my attention."

"Is that why you sicced Nuriye on me?"

She hesitated for a second. "There are two lines of thought suggested by your statement, M. Markham. Both of which are offensive to me and to Nuriye. Would you care to try again?"

I swallowed the rest of the rage, and took a deep breath. Her tone had gotten brittle, and it didn't take the Chorus to read an elevation in her stress level. She was right-it had been an indelicate question-but her protestation of affront was partially a cover. There was some validity to the question.

"Fine," I said, letting go of my indignation and moving on. We had gotten off-track once before, and I knew I could keep pressing her, but what would it gain me? Moral satisfaction? It would be satisfying, but it wasn't what I came for. I actually did need her help in this instance, and her permission.

"One must be invited into the sanctuary in order to approach the Grail," I said. "I know that. Just as I also know that I can't 'steal' the Grail; it has to be offered to me."

"And why would I offer it to you?"

"Because you're supposed to."

She stood and walked away; she walked back to the basin and looked down at the glowing light. "Is that right?" she said finally.

"All this bullshit about Hildegard and destinies aside-this endless argument of Free Will versus Determinism that is the topic on everyone's mind-we were talking about coincidences. You tried to distract me, but it's not coincidental that a Visionary died yesterday to put me on this path, that I had to take the Spear from a Mason, and that a Scryer asked me to bring the Grail to him. It's all part of Philippe's grand fucking plan to re-create the world: it's the cosmological re-creation of the original meeting between the twelfth-century trinity."

"You're reading too much into recent events," she said.

"That's a hollow sounding excuse," I continued. "Bernard du Guyon thought he was playing at God with his little soul harvester, but he's like a kid with his first magic trick compared to Philippe, isn't he?"

Vivienne shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

"Your father wasn't part of the plan, was he? He was a casualty in this war. He wasn't supposed to die." I paused for a second, making sure I had the right answer before I took the next step. Who thought he had Seen his victorious ascension into the role? Who wanted it the most? Who wanted to be Hierarch?