it was said he was over a hundred and thirty years old, Moses sat with all the ease of a youth like Elezar on the hard, rocky ground. Elezar sat facing him.
“There are things you must understand, Elezar.”
The young man could no longer hold silent. “It is wrong that you cannot enter the Promised Land. It is wrong that you must die for such a small error when so many of our people have made larger ones and lived! Why can you not offer an atonement sacrifice? Why is the Lord being so harsh with you?”
Moses listened to the protests, smiling a little all the while. “My time to leave has come. I am no longer needed here. But I do not want these people to feel abandoned.”
Elezar knitted his brow, sensing there was something behind those words.
“Child, do you know your lineage?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you know the line of your mothers?”
Elezar hesitated. “I know best the line of my fathers.”
“You perhaps do not know then that you are descended from my line, as well. My daughters and their daughters married your fathers many times over. You are a Levite, but you are also mine.”
The news caused a trembling in Elezar, like a leaf disturbed by the wind. “It has not been told to me.”
“It was as I wished it. Until now. There are things you must understand, mysteries you must learn. These mysteries were once the pride of Egypt. They were set down on a sappir gemstone, written by Thoth himself, and discovered by my brother, Pharaoh Akhenaten, when we were but children. We studied the stone throughout our youth. And Akhenaten was the first to fully understand it. Thus he began the worship of the One True God… Aten…our Lord. The stone was once in the Ark. Now…”
Moses opened his leather bag and showed Elezar a polished sapphire pyramid, so small that it fit in the palm of the hand. A blue pyramid that seemed to hold as much depth as the night sky. Elezar gasped, amazed as he thought he saw shapes dancing within the stone. But he could not imagine such a thing, that Moses would steal from God himself.
“Relax, my son,” Moses said, reaching out to pat Elezar’s shoulder. “As I said, this is not the tablet of the law. This is far older. And far too powerful to leave in untrained hands. The Hebrews are a great people, but too stiff-necked for their own good sometimes. A knowledge such as this, in the hands of a people preparing to make war, would be…horrifying. But I have left them the Urim and the Thummim, which will be enough to aid them.”
“What is this power?” Elezar asked. “Is God not the only power that exists?” He felt his world reeling.
“There is only one God, and he is our only God.” Moses opened a small pouch and from it poured a fine white powder. “Manna,” he said. “The Hebrews think it came down from the heavens. In fact, it is a recipe from this stone, and El Shaddai showered it upon us at night as we camped near the foot of the mountain. Eat some, my son, for it will give you long life.”
Gingerly, Elezar reached for the powder, allowing Moses to pour some into his hand. He tasted of it and found it not unpleasant, though not exactly savory. It had the slightest hint of honey to it. The climb had dried his mouth and throat, making swallowing difficult, but he had brought a water skin and was able to wash it down. Moses, too, ate of the powder.
“Now,” said Moses, “the people will think I have died. You will descend the mountain and tell them I have gone to my fathers, and then you shall cleanse yourself as the law requires after touching a corpse. By this they shall believe I am dead and that you have buried me.
“Then, by night, you shall return to me. We must go to the place where your real training can begin. The mysteries must pass down, and you will be their messenger.”
Elezar’s jaw had fallen. “I am to lie?”
“It will not be a lie, for I am returning to my fathers. And as far as my people are concerned, I will be dead and gone. As will you. It will be years before you re-enter the world, Elezar, and when you do, you will be a man much changed, for you will know the secret teachings of El Shaddai.”
El Shaddai. The Lord of the Mountain.
2
Guatemalan Highlands, Present day
Father Steve Lorenzo had no idea of the carnage spreading around the world on that Christmas. His goal in life had become very simple: to keep himself and his flock alive. For the past fourteen months, he and his Quiche companions had wandered these mountains, hunted by both the Guatemalan police and the rebels. His once smooth chin now sported a bushy beard, and he could hardly remember the sensation of a hot bath.
And yet it was Christmas, and most of his friends were still alive to celebrate it.
He had no vestments. His cassock had long since given way to peasant clothing offered to him by his friends, who could hardly spare even that. He wore sandals one of his flock had made from vine and sections of tire rubber.
And never had he felt closer to God.
When life seemed its worst, as it had often since the police attack on the village of these people, he found a deep well of spirituality that reminded him of the early days of Christianity, when to hold faith in Jesus brought persecution and often demanded flight. Those early Christians had possessed little more than his tiny flock of survivors. In this time he lived as the early martyrs had lived, and it refreshed his faith even as it wore him out.
But his little band was well versed in the skills needed to survive in these mountains. The food might not be as reliable, nor always as familiar, as their rich fields of maize and their herds of sheep, but the forest was bountiful in its own right, and his friends knew how to use everything it provided.
This Christmas morning he celebrated Mass yet again on an altar made of fallen trees, with tortillas made of corn flour he had managed to purchase—along with beans—from a village they had passed a few days ago, with the few quetzals remaining in his pockets. The women had made the tortillas, patting them back and forth to flatten the balls of dough with an expertise that came from lifelong experience. They had been lightly cooked on a rock set amidst the burning coals of a fire. A nearly smokeless fire. Steve was still amazed that they could manage that here in the jungle.
He used the chalice and paten given him on his ordination so long ago by family and friends. The years had burnished them, and now when he touched them he remembered the faces of all his loved ones. Yet he was determined that when the time came, he would sell them without regret to keep these people alive.
It had been a long time since he had even thought of the Kulkulcan Codex, or the reason he had been sent to these people. The Church’s concern was so far away now, so remote.
He smiled into the faces of his flock and lifted a tortilla for all to see. Esto es mi cuerpo. This is my body.
This was all that mattered.
Fredricksburg, Virginia
Earlier that morning, FBI agent Miriam Anson was in church with her husband, Terry Tyson, a D.C. homicide detective, when her pager began to vibrate insistently. She had been tempted to ignore it entirely until after the service—this was Christmas,
