symbols anew. Her eyes flicked between the upwards arrow symbol for the Citadel on the second line and another on the third which was its exact opposite.
She looked over at the fountain of water in the centre of the pool, forming an elongated ‘V’ in the air. The symbol was the fountain. The symbol was this place.
She looked back at the second and third lines again, searching for other points of comparison.
The moon sign appeared in both, linking them to the same time frame, and the T was there too, encircled in the first line and beside a circle in the other. She looked down at the perimeter fence surrounding the compound below her and understood now why she felt so strongly about not locking the gate. This place was meant to be somewhere the Sacrament was free, outside the circle not in. It had to welcome everyone and spread as far as the horizon if it needed to. The water had already begun this process, flowing out through the links in the fence and bringing the land back to life.
‘Not a fortress but a haven,’ she whispered.
‘What was that?’
Liv looked up and saw Tariq standing nearby.
‘Nothing,’ she said, aware that everyone was tired and the plan she had just hatched would keep. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
Gabriel was wheeled into the Abbot’s private quarters at the head of a procession of equipment and medical personnel. The rooms had been left largely unused since the Abbot’s sudden death and the subsequent spread of the blight. Elections had been planned but the disease had ravaged the electorate before they could be held and since then, in a dark twist of irony, the only thing truly running the mountain was the very thing that had derailed the electoral process in the first place.
‘This is the main living room and office,’ Athanasius said, moving across the large space. ‘There is also a bed chamber through here that could be turned into a laboratory.’ He opened a thick, metal-studded door onto another cave containing a wooden bed, an ottoman and several smaller pieces of furniture. ‘And in here is a washroom giving you all the running water you should need.’
Gabriel surveyed what he could of the new surroundings from the fixed viewpoint of his bed while everyone else started to unpack. His mattress had been raised at one end to render him upright and the bindings that had held him so tightly and for so long had now been loosened, but not removed. Dr Kaplan had advised that they stay in place for the time being until they were sure he wasn’t going to suffer a relapse. He wasn’t allowed to walk either, which was fine with Gabriel. He was so weak that even keeping his eyes open was an effort.
He took in the room, this comfortable prison that would be his home for who knew how long. There was a huge fireplace as tall as a man that dominated one wall and a stained-glass window set into the rock, its ancient, hand-blown panes of blue and green glass forming a peacock motif that distorted the world beyond.
‘How are you feeling?’ Athanasius pulled a chair over and sat down as behind him the room began to be shifted around and dismantled.
‘Like a condemned man.’
Athanasius smiled and ran his hand over the smooth dome of his head. ‘I think we all feel that way to some degree, though I know you have suffered more than most.’ He leaned in closer and lowered his voice so only Gabriel could hear. ‘I sometimes wonder whether all this could have been averted – that if we had just left things as they were, left the Sacrament in place and not challenged the old traditions, all this pain and suffering, all this death would not have come to pass.’
‘You really think that?’
‘I have considered it. One does what one thinks is right, but sometimes we do the wrong thing for the right reasons.’
Gabriel closed his eyes and let his head fall back on the bed. He had been plagued with similar thoughts. He had lost so much as a result of the sequence of events he had helped set in motion. ‘Setting the Sacrament free was the only right thing to do,’ he said.
‘So you are happy with the apparent consequences of our actions?’
He shook his head, ‘Of course not. I feel personally responsible for every single person who has died from this blight or is still suffering now. I feel guilty that I may have helped spread it beyond these walls by leaving here, guilty that my mother is dead and my father too, but most of all I feel guilty that I abandoned Liv and left her alone in the desert. I was forced to, I was infected. I left her for all the right reasons, but it did not bring me happiness. And despite all of that I would rather never see her again than risk harming her.’
Athanasius nodded. ‘I just wish, when I see how you have suffered, that I could do more myself.’
‘Maybe you can. When I last came here I was searching for something.’
‘The Starmap.’
Gabriel nodded. ‘I thought it was the only thing that could lead us to Eden in order that the Sacrament could finally be returned to its rightful place. But in the end we found it another way – and we discovered the Starmap was already there. It had directions carved into it that used the stars as a guide. But it had something else carved on the reverse, another part of the prophecy.’
‘And what did it say?’
‘I don’t know. It was written in a language I didn’t recognize. But from what we already know doesn’t it strike you that everything that has happened was predicted – Brother Samuel climbing to the top of the Citadel and making the sign of the Tau with his body; the release of the Sacrament and its restoration to its original home. It was outlined in a series of prophecies, first in the Heretic Bible and then on the Starmap. When we first started looking for it we only had my grandfather’s notebook to go on and a photograph my father had sent him. But the photograph only showed one side of the stone. When I found it and saw it for myself I realized there was much more on the other side. If we could read it now, in the light of all that has happened, we might discover that all of this was predicted too. We might even learn how it could end or what we might do to influence it. There must be more experts in ancient languages here in the Citadel than anywhere else in the world. If the stone can be deciphered anywhere, it’s here.’
‘There are, or at least there were. Many of the scholars have succumbed to the blight, though there are still a few remaining. I myself have studied many of the lost languages. If the text on the stone is written in one I am familiar with then it should be easy to translate. But how could we get to see it?’
Gabriel smiled. ‘I took photographs and sent copies to a police inspector in Ruin.’
Athanasius sat up in his chair, his eyes alive. ‘Give me his name and I shall send a message immediately.’
