Christopher Moore - Lamb - The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“I’ll take it from here,” I said to Pea Pods. I didn’t want her to be involved any further in case things didn’t turn out well.

“When?” asked Pea Pods, meaning when would I attempt to open the door.

“Tonight, when you have all gone to live in the world of pleasant dreams.” I tweaked her nose affectionately and she giggled. It was the last time I ever saw her in one piece.

At night the halls of the fortress were lit by the ambient light from the moon and the stars that filtered in from the windows. Everywhere we went we carried a clay oil lamp which made the serpentine curves of the passageways seem even more like the inside of a huge creature as they swallowed up the dim orange light. After several years with Balthasar, I could find my way through the main living quarters of the fortress without any light at all, so I carried an unlit lamp with me until I had passed the girls’ quarters, stopping at the beaded doorway to listen for their gentle snores.

Once I was well away from the girls’ door, I lit my lamp using one of the fire sticks that I’d invented using some of the same chemicals we used to make the explosive black powder. The fire stick made a soft pop as I struck it on the stone wall and I could swear I heard it echo from the hall up ahead. As I made my way to the ironclad door I could smell burning brimstone and I thought it strange that the smell of the fire stick had stayed with me. Then I saw Joy standing by the door holding an oil lamp and the charred remains of the fire stick she’d used to light it.

“Let me see the key,” she said.

“What key?”

“Don’t be foolish. I saw what was left of the mold in the room of the elements.”

I took the key from where I’d tucked it in my belt and handed it to Joy. She examined it by lamplight, turning it this way and that. “Pea Pods cast this,” she said matter-of-factly. “Did she take the impression as well?”

I nodded. Joy didn’t seem angry, and Pea Pods was the only one of the girls skilled enough in metallurgy to have done the casting, so why deny it?

“Getting the impression must have been the hard part,” Joy said. “Balthasar is fierce about guarding this key. I’ll have to ask her what she did to distract him. Could be a good thing to know, huh? For both of us.” She smiled seductively, then turned toward the door and pushed aside the brass plate that covered the keyhole. In that second I felt as if a frozen dagger had been dragged over my spine.

“No!” I grabbed her hand. “Don’t.” I was overcome with a feeling of revulsion that wrenched my insides. “We can’t.”

Joy smiled again and pushed my hand away. “I have seen many wondrous things since I came here, but there has never been anything that was harmful. You planned this, you must want to know what is in here as much as I do.”

I wanted to stop her, I even tried to take the key away from her, but she grabbed my arm and pushed into a pressure point that made my whole left side go numb. She raised an eyebrow as if to ask, “Do you really want to try that, knowing what I can do to you?” And I stepped back.

She put the dragon key into the lock and turned it three times. There was a clicking of machinery finer than anything I had ever heard, then she withdrew the key and shot the three heavy iron bolts. As she pulled the door open there was a rush of air, as if something had moved by us very quickly, and my lamp went out.

Joshua told me what had happened later and I put the timing together myself. As Joy and I were opening the room they called the house of doom, Joshua and Balthasar were camped in the arid mountains of what is now Afghanistan. The night was crisp and the stars shone with a cold blue light like loneliness or infinity. They had eaten some bread and cheese, then settled in close to the fire to share the last of a flask of fortified wine, Balthasar’s second that evening.

“Have I told you of the prophecy that sent me in search of you when you were born, Joshua?”

“You spoke of the star. My mother told me of the star.”

“Yes, the three of us followed that star, and by chance we met up in the mountains east of Kabul and finished the journey together, but the star wasn’t the reason we went, it was only our means of navigation. We made the journey because each of us was looking for something at the end.”

“Me?” Joshua said.

“Yes, but not just you, but what it is said was brought with you. In the temple where we travel now, there lies a set of clay tablets—very old—the priests say that they date back to the time of Solomon, and they foretell the coming of a child who will have power over evil and victory over death. They say he will carry the key to immortality.”

“Me? Immortality? Nope.”

“I think you do, you just don’t know it yet.”

“Nope, I’m sure,” said Joshua. “It’s true that I have brought people back from the dead, but never for very long. I’ve gotten better at healing over the years, but my back-from-the-dead stuff still needs work. I need to learn more.”

“Which is why I have taught you, and why I am taking you to the temple now, so you may read the tablets yourself, but you must have the power of immortality within you.”

“No, really, I haven’t a clue.”

“I am two hundred and sixty years old, Joshua.”

“I’ve heard that, but I still can’t help you. You look good though, I mean for two hundred and sixty.”

At this point Balthasar started to sound desperate. “Joshua, I know that you have power over evil. Biff has told me of you banishing demons in Antioch.”

“Little ones,” Joshua said modestly.

“You must have power over death as well or it does me no good.”

“What I am able to do comes through my father, I didn’t bargain for it.”

“Joshua, I am preserved by a pact with a demon. If you do not have the powers foretold in the prophecy I will never be free, I will never have peace, I will never have love. Every minute of my life I must have my will focused on controlling the demon. Should my will fail, the destruction would be unlike anything the world has ever seen.”

“I know how it is. I’m not allowed to know a woman,” Joshua said. “Although it was an angel that told me, not a demon. But still, you know, it’s hard sometimes. I really like your concubines. The other night Pillows was giving me a back rub after a long day of studying, and I started getting this massive—”

“By the Golden Tenderloin of the Calf!” Balthasar exclaimed, leaping to his feet, his eyes wide with terror. The old man began loading his camel, thrashing around in the darkness like a madman. Joshua was following him, trying to calm him down, fearing he might have a fit any second.

“What? What?”

“It is out!” the magus said. “Help me pack up. We must go back. The demon is out.”

I stood cringing in the dark, waiting for disaster to fall, for mayhem to reign, for pain and pestilence and no good to manifest, then Joy struck a fire stick and lit our lamps. We were alone. The iron door hung open into a very small room, it too lined with iron. The entire room was just big enough to contain a small bed and a chair. Every span of the black iron walls was inlaid with golden symbols: pentagrams and hex symbols and a dozen others I had never seen before. Joy held her lamp close to the wall.

“These are symbols of containment,” Joy said.

“I used to hear voices coming from in here.”

“There was nothing in here when I opened the door. I could see in the second before the lamp blew out.”

“Then what blew it out?”

“The wind?”

“I don’t think so. I felt something brush me as it passed.”

Just then someone in the girls’ quarters screamed, then a chorus of screams joined in, primal screams of absolute terror and pain. Instantly Joy’s eyes filled with tears. “What have I done?”