The Tower A Novel (Sanctus)

9





Liv chose a spot a good distance outside the perimeter fence and led by example, working by hand now the earthmovers were no use,

breaking through rock and dirt baked hard as brick. It felt good to disappear into mindless work after all that had happened to

her. Her previous life seemed like an abstract collection of memories now, something she could as easily have read in a book, not

experienced herself. It was hard to imagine herself as that person now, the career journalist, subway-surfing through the morning

rush hour with a skinny latte in one hand and a smartphone in the other, on her way to yet another assignment, another deadline,

flicking through the IKEA catalogue and the Sunday supplements at the weekend. It was an existence she had spent a lifetime

building, only to have fate dismantle it in a matter of days.

They finished digging the graves as the afternoon sun was dipping low in the sky and carefully placed the bodies in the bottom of

the hole, enemy next to enemy, united in death – all but one. While most of the men had been busy with the communal grave, some

of the riders had dug another a little way off and it was to this that they now carried the body of their leader, the one they

called Ash’abah – the Ghost. They laid him to rest, said their silent prayers.

After the graves were filled, most of the riders left too, taking their horses and melting away into the desert.

Liv stayed by the grave of the Ghost. She had known him for less than a day and yet in that short time he had taken considerable

risks on her behalf and ultimately laid down his life to protect her and Gabriel. She looked down at the mound of dirt and felt a

rush of terror at the oblivion of it all. She looked around for something to mark the grave, anything that might signify that

someone noble and important had died here. The larger grave was marked by a pile of broken rocks taken from the ground during the

digging but she wanted something more distinct for the Ghost, something that had clearly been put there by man, not nature. She

tried to think what Gabriel would do and when she re read his note she had her answer.

‘You OK?’ The voice surprised her and she turned to find Tariq close by, his AK47 assault rifle resting across his crossed legs.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Come with me. I might need your help.’

The Operations Room had been looted since the last time she’d been there. The large topographical map still filled the back wall

but all the smaller maps and anything else portable or valuable enough to take had gone. The solid block of carved black granite

where she had found Gabriel’s note lay where she had left it, half-buried in discarded paperwork and scrolls of seismic data

printouts. Liv swept them aside, revealing the carved letter T in the centre of the stone with smaller symbols surrounding it: the

dots outlining the constellation of Draco; a symbol of a tree; a simple human figure. Someone had taken a rubbing of both sides of

the stone and she was momentarily distracted by it, picking up the curl of paper and staring at the dense symbols lifted from the

other side of the stone. There was something in them, something calling to her like a distant voice. She folded the sheet, slipped

it into her pocket and grabbed hold of the chipped edges of the stone, hauling it across the table with arms that were already

exhausted after an afternoon of hard digging.

‘Let me,’ Tariq said, taking it from her and hugging it to his chest.

‘Thanks,’ Liv said, ‘follow me.’

The Starmap thumped down onto the Ghost’s grave, the weight of it pressing into the loose earth, the carved T-shaped cross

standing out in the centre of the stone. It seemed appropriate somehow, marking his grave with the Tau, a religious symbol from

before the great religions had even been born. There would be no mistaking the significance of this grave now, or the importance

of the person who rested here.

‘I need to go and see to the horses,’ Tariq said. ‘You should come inside the compound, it’s getting dark and it’s not safe

for you out here.’

‘I’m fine. I’ll just be a minute.’

Tariq nodded and drifted away, leaving Liv alone by the grave.

She stared down at the stone. Most of the text was on the other side of it, but she reached into her pocket and pulled out the

rubbings she had found in the comms room, her eyes seeking the sheet containing the symbols that were now hidden.

The text was written in two languages. One was the lost language she had been able to understand when she was carrying the

Sacrament. She concentrated on the symbols and discovered that, even though the Sacrament had left her now, she could still

understand it:

The Sacrament comes home and The Key looks to heaven

A new star is born with a new king on Earth to bring order to the end of days

She frowned and felt a coldness creep over her. The first line was clear enough because she had lived it: she was the key that had

unlocked the Sacrament, carried it out of the Citadel and brought it home to this lost place in the desert. But that was where her

understanding ended. The second line suggested something else entirely, something still to come – something ominous that would be

heralded by the arrival of a new star. She looked up at the evening sky, still too bright for the first stars to show. All the

other prophecies, the ones that had brought her to this place, had outlined the future in ambiguous terms and with various

possible outcomes. This one seemed too absolute, a star would appear and that would be it, the end of days – whatever that meant.

There had to be something else here, something in the second block of symbols.

She studied them now, strange icons that looked like no language she had ever seen with the lines of different constellations

weaving in and out of them: Draco, Taurus, the Plough.



The symbols were crude and simple but when she concentrated on them the strange facility she had with language, her parting gift

from the Sacrament, did not reveal their meaning. Instead, her head filled with impressions of things and feelings, some of them

hopeful, some of them disturbing. She considered each symbol individually – a river, an eagle, a skull – trying to link them

together into some kind of narrative, like piecing together fragments of an ancient truth she had once known and now forgotten.

But though she felt she understood something of what each symbol individually represented, their collective meaning continued to

elude her.

She spent a long time studying the symbols, but in the end, the earth turned, the sun set and the symbols faded to darkness before

her eyes. And though Liv had not pinned down anything close to a translation, the emotions they had summoned remained. And the

overriding thing they had left her with was a sense of foreboding. Whatever was coming, whatever was written on the ancient stone,

she could feel its power and she feared it.