Chosen Ch. 07 (Conclusion)

"I'm not an expert. You take a look."

We switched places. "No, that's not from battle. Some of the marks are curvy but it doesn't look decorative. No idea what happened, probably just rough handling over the years." I fished a small mirror out of my pocket and ran it behind the sword. "No markings to be seen on the other side. And not lacquered as well, so in even worse shape." I took pictures as well.

"You seem like experts," the Director said. "So there's no value?"

"You could try a museum," Jose said. "But they will give you very little and it will probably become one of the pieces they let students handle. So some educational value, at least... well. Thank you for your time. I don't want to keep you from the children."

+++

It was my turn to drive. Seville's traffic was unpleasant, but I've driven in Rome, Boston and New York City, so I did not complain.

I sighed, weaving around yet another crazy Spanish driver. "Another dead end. A beat up old sword, too corroded to tell us much."

"No," said Jose. "Father Cruz gave us another lead. We're to wait in the library for a pale haired woman, a blonde, to appear. And visit her the next day. She has the book, Alan. I am sure of it."

"So I get to accost every natural blonde who enters the library?"

"No. You'd enjoy it too much. I will handle it. You're going to visit other libraries and find more about Lucio de Amante."

"A common thief. In other words you want me out of the way."

"I don't think the candle and the girl should meet in the library, and I don't want the candle left alone for very long periods. So you're going to guard it."

"So you think this girl is special, as well as the book?"

"Very special, if I'm right. And you'd scare her off, and she's probably already scared as it is. That is the last thing we need."

+++

Three days of visiting libraries in the afternoons and bars in the evenings got me no insight into Lucio's plight; but since I was off the leash for the moment as regards a priest commenting on my every move, the candle and I and some local girls spent nice evenings. I liked Spain. So many treasures.

On Friday evening, as I was planning to go out, I got a call from Jose.

"Found her," he said without preamble. "She's staying at the Gran Melia. I will pick you up tomorrow afternoon, after lunch."

He hung up.

I looked at the candle, burning steadily.

"I think we'll stay in this evening," I told it. "Tomorrow may be a big day for you."

+++

Jose picked me up just after one. Once at the hotel, I put out the candle, gritting my teeth a little as it began making me notice women even more than usual. The walk past the hotel pool was very distracting. The elevator was a relief.

We stepped out on the seventh floor, and then walked to the room at the end of the hall. Jose knocked, respectfully, on the door.

There was a pause, and then a soft, sweet voice spoke in American English. "Yes?"

Sweet, but there was a shake to it.

"Forgive me, Adrienne Smith," Jose said. "But it is a matter of some importance. We need to speak to you."

The door opened.

She was blonde, and stunning. In the brutal Córdoba heat, even air conditioning had limits, and she wore only a spaghetti string top, a black bra and loose short shorts. Sculpted legs, a toned flat belly, and breasts that were firm and tempted the eye again and again. But her face is what froze my glance. Almond shaped eyes, brilliant blue, and somehow impossibly innocent and wickedly wanton at the same time...

Even Jose was staring, at least for a moment. But he recovered himself.

"I am Doctor Jose Estrella, a historian. And this is my assistant, Alan, a noted researcher into artifacts of Eur-"

"I... don't need much introduction," she said, and the shake was still in her voice. "Come in. I saw you at the library. You're expected... The book told me."

+++

As soon as I stepped in the doorway, I knew I was in trouble. I had the candle in my backpack, unlit. I'd gotten practiced in not giving in to its constant, almost audibly susurrate insistence on seduction and conquest. But she was too beautiful and the candle hammered at me like never before. I grappled with an impossible desire to just let the candle work-

"Jose light it, the candle, light it NOW-"

He pushed me to my knees and dug into the backpack, and now it was in his hand and became his problem; he gave an animal growl as the force of it hit him. But he had the lighter in his hand and I could think again. I took it and lit the candle. Immediately his face relaxed, and he drew a deep breath.

I looked at our host. She was shivering, eyes wide, nipples hard. I hadn't managed to control the candle well enough, in the brief moments I'd had it. But she also drew a deep breath. I tried not to stare on the effect that had on her torso.

"Magic, also?" she said, staring at the candle.

"Yes," I said. "As well as a bell that Jose is carrying. Three magical items, all from the same... source."

"Lucio's excommunication," she said. "I know. Let me see them."

Jose put the candle down on a table, and carefully produced the bell. "Is that the book, on the table?"

"Yes. You must not touch it. It has been very clear. No one else must touch it."

"So it has an account of the excommunication?"

"Sort of. It has been, well... able to speak to me, write to me, and make me see visions. Just sometimes, not all the time... I have to put a drop of my blood in the cup there, and it only wants me to do it when it... asks me to. It wanted that this morning. How do you come to know about this?"

"We don't know much," Jose said. "I was hoping the book had the answers written in it."

"The only writing in it is what Lucio needs me to know. It changes each time. Today for the first time it reached a second page."

"What does it say?"

"No. I must not tell you. But he said I could trust you both."

I gave a slightly ironic nod to the book. Alan St. Laurent, given the seal of approval to be trustworthy with a pretty young girl. This was surely a once and only in my life.

Jose bowed his head, as he always did when given a compliment. "Tell us as much as you can."

"Please sit, over there. I'll get something to drink. Orange juice? It's very tart here, but really good."

We nodded. I tried not to admire how she walked as she moved into the kitchen. I did not try hard. Nearby, the candle flickered.

"No wonder Lucio fought death," I said to Jose. "If she is really Adriana, reborn... I mean that's it, isn't it? This is somehow Adriana?..."

"No one is anyone else, reborn. Everyone is themselves. Consider the possibility that Lucio is evil and has designs on this girl simply because of how she looks."

"So he's a normal male?"

"You will evolve spiritually when you get over this fetish with the purely physical, Alan."

"This is why you didn't get to carry the candle. It's wasted on you. Good gracious, that ass. Can you imagine spanking her?"

"You need it more."

"Sorry. Definitely an area where I believe it's better to give than receive. But... what happens now?"

"I was hoping the book would have all the answers. So let's hear her out."

She returned with three tall glasses of juice, and handed them out. I got a grip on my imagination, and smiled kindly. From Jose's expression, the smile probably still had too much wolf in it.

She sat, and spoke without preamble.

"The book has effects on people's minds. It can make me see visions. It can make me hear his words. It's like a person, a person used to authority. It -- he -- is very compelling. It's done more. There was a woman, Adriana. His beloved. She's... in my mind now. For a few weeks I didn't handle that very well, but I've sort of adopted her memories as my own. She's like a past life now. I remember only little fragments. But her relationship with Lucio is clear. It's unbelievably intense. Love isn't like that anymore."

Jose nodded. Nothing fazed either of us now. "Has the book caused problems for you? The other two items are not at all safe. You must not ring the bell, especially."

"The book scared me, especially at first, and connecting with Adriana... I suppose that's how I'd have to say it... was very confusing. But no. It's taken care of me, made sure I had money when I'd otherwise have been broke, protected me, and there is no doubt he loves me, or at least that he loves Adriana and thinks of me as her. The visions are indescribable but they aren't terrifying."

"And erotic?" I asked. Jose shot me a disapproving look.

"Sometimes... and very intensely when they are. I won't discuss that," she said, reddening.

"Do you love him?"

"Maybe. Yes. I don't know how to answer. I don't know how to love a book. If he was a person... I think courtship must have been different then. He'd simply claim me. I've never known anything like the way he just... pounces. You're not allowed to not react. I think everyone he ever knew must love him or hate him, obey him or oppose him. The Adriana part of me is helplessly in love, and... there is not much distinction left between us."

She reddened more.

"But what does it all mean?" Jose said. "All this... mystery, power. Three items, converging on you, Adrienne. Why?"

"He wants to be together with me. He wants me, purely and simply. And I'm to rescue him somehow, but from what and how he hasn't said."

It was obvious, so I asked. "Where is he buried?"

"I don't know. I know for certain his memory of his own life ends with his death. That happened just a few days after the excommunication. He wasn't buried until after that, I mean of course he wasn't, so I don't know anything about that part. He died somewhere near Andújar. About forty miles away."

"Then he'll have been buried near there. Thieves didn't get a lot of honor in those days, or brought back home for burial," Jose shrugged.

"They get a lot of honor now?" I asked, somewhat ironically.

"The very successful ones in America do," Jose replied. "Your robber barons and Wall street people. They live how they please and get buried where they like. But in Lucio's day, a thief wouldn't get transported back to family lands. They'd bury him cheap, and near where he dropped."

"Tell me about the candle and bell," Adrienne said.

"We don't know much," I replied. "The candle is best described as sexual. If it's kept burning it's harmless, but it just keeps burning and burning forever. Put it out, and whoever has it... I think you felt a little of the effect."

Jose cleared his throat. "And the bell... is about judgment or justice. It is deadly. People who ring it confess their sins and then always try to commit suicide, as far as we know."

"Desire and judgment..." Adrienne said, quietly. "I can tell you this. Lucio died wanting Adriana, and demanding judgment from heaven on the acts of a bad priest."

I stared at the book, bell and candle. "So that it is, then? We have a person existing in three items, and we have brought them together? But how can a person live in an object?"

Jose shrugged. "The Catholic church teaches that the Lord of the universe can be present in bread and wine. It's not impossible to me that a person can likewise exist in other forms."

"Even I can see the flaw in that one," I objected. "God can do as he pleases or he's not God. If He wants to squeeze Himself down to bread and wine, who's going to argue? But this Lucio was by all accounts a rogue and a thief. He's got no magic and why would anyone do him a miracle? This is where it never makes sense: we have three undisputedly powerful artifacts. But they aren't from a saint or any of the usual suspects. They don't heal diseases or do anything you'd expect from ancient myth and legend. They are all very... human... in their actions. I mean the first time I run into real religious artifacts, and they turn out to be nothing like Saint Bartholomew's Toenails."

"Please tell me that's not an actual item you've sold," Jose said, wincing.

"Nope. But I did once sell the skull of John the Baptist... from when he was twelve years old."

Jose opened his mouth and then closed it again, apparently deciding not to dignify that with a response.

"Well, I am going to do the obvious," Adrienne said. "I'm going to put them together and see what happens."

"I... suppose you have that right, if anyone does. But, the bell," Jose said. "There's cloth stuffed inside it. Be careful it doesn't fall out. If it rings, people die."

She carried the candle, and the bell upside down, to the book. She knelt at the little table, opened the book, and put the bell and candle on either side of them. I watched, fascinated.

There was movement on the open page; I could see it even where I sat. Letters, blurring, shifting...

Before I could say anything, she pulled the cloth from the bell and carefully put it down, and then blew out the candle.

Jose took me by the wrist and forcibly dragged me to the kitchen.

"We should watch her," I hissed, angrily. "Who knows what might happen."

"I have a good idea what's likely to happen now that she's blown the candle out, and we have no right to watch," he said, firmly.

"You think Lucio appears and takes her on the floor?"

"No. You had it right -- we have to find his grave - but-"

I heard it at the same time Jose did -- a susurrate windy whisper, a metallic humming, a sound like many voices, but no words...

And then a soft, wet moan. From Adrienne.

I moved to the doorway, overcome with concern for a young woman in danger. Jose locked his hand on my wrist again, pulling me up short.

"She'll be fine. He's just... missed her, and it's been a few hundred years..."

Her next moan was anything but soft.

I snarled at Jose. "I really think we should watch-"

And then she cried out, breath ragged and frantic. "Lucio! Please! Lucio! Oh Lucio you must let me!"

Her cries became incoherent, animalistic...

Jose raised his eyebrow. "Alright, that's a concerning level of enthusiasm, maybe-"

She fell silent, gasping frantically, and then cried out again. "Yes, more! Oh Lucio, make me! Make me again! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

I rolled my eyes. "Does she even remember we're here?"

"Lucio!" she shrieked. "You savage animal! Have mercy! Oh, again! I can't, I- Lucio! Please let me! I CAN'T STOP!"

"Ok," I said. "I got some pretty impressive results with that candle, but nothing like-"

"LUCIO YOU'RE AN ANIMAL, A KING, A GOD AMONG MEN!"

Jose crossed himself. "I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to present this in my next confession."

"Not a problem I can relate to. But what I really want to know is, does... that... count as fornication?"

"NO NOT AGAIN! I'LL DIE! OH FUCK, FUCK YES! RAVAGE ME, MAKE ME YOUR WHORE! YES!"

"All I am sure of is that it clearly doesn't count as rape. Which frees me from the responsibility of walking in there."

"Oh Lucio! Lucio... show me no mercy, make me shamelessly yours until I cannot breathe, do your worst to me..."

The rest was shrill cries and incoherent moaning, slowly growing fainter. When it finally petered out -- over fifteen minutes, with Jose and I staring at the walls out of embarrassment -- I walked in, with Jose behind me.

The candle was burning again. Adrienne was pulling herself together, with shaking hands. I went to the bathroom and brought her back a hairbrush.

"I, um, mentioned the visions," she said, smiling both radiantly and apologetically, and breathing very fast. "Nothing like that one, though. That... yeah."

She started to untangle her hair, smiling.

"You are alright?" Jose asked her.

She just looked at him, and then smiled wider, and rather wickedly. I decided I liked her, a lot.

"With the candle here, he says I no longer need to bleed to make the book work. He'll let you ask questions, through me. He warns you there is a lot he doesn't know, and he will not talk much about his experiences as a book."

She drew a deep breath, and curled on the couch with the book in her lap, eyes half closed. She slipped into something like a trace, staring at the open page. Letters on the page moved again, and I found it better not to stare at it.

Jose spoke. "Adriana was Juanito de Morrilo's daughter?"

"Yes," Adrienne said after a moment. "It is hard to prove such things, he says, but he travelled to northern Spain and asked questions there. Adriana's mother vanished and then de Morillo fled south with the baby, in disgrace. De Morillo spent his life hiding that and other sins and trying to rise in the church. He was mad for power. God meant less to him than to me, Lucio says."

"Lucio. How did you come to be a book, bell and candle?"

"As I lay dying, a priest took pity on me. He heard my confession, gave me communion, and said rites over me... they were not the usual rites and they were in a language I did not know. Something like the language of the Jews, but not the same as that either. He called himself Cruz. I know nothing about him, but the book, bell and candle were on my chest as I died. He also had a small cup and he told me in contained a little of Adriana's blood, and he made me drink a drop of it. He told me I'd be given another chance, to love and live better, but it would take a long time."

Jose frowned. "Do you understand this woman is not Adriana?"

"These mysteries are deep, Father. She is and is not. Her adding her blood to Adriana's in the cup... something happened then. She is more than Adrienne now, she is both. Adriana had no chance to live the life she wanted and deserved. In Adrienne, she will."

Adrienne shook herself out of the trance, and stared at the little cup of blood, by the book. "I didn't know that. That it was her blood. And now he says the blood is no longer needed for the book, and he wants me to drink it."

"No," Jose said. "That is wrong."

"Why?" I asked.

"It's... too pagan. Too much like magic. It's like communion, but wrong. And this mixing of two people... it is already disturbing enough."

Adrienne laughed, softly. "No. You don't understand. I have already chosen to trust him."

Without further preamble, she drank it down. Wincing a little, she followed it with orange juice.

"Oh," she said. "That is... I remember more now. Her whole life, up until this blood was taken. Is it strange that I don't even find that odd?"

She set the cup down. It immediately crumbled into dust. She smiled at the dust, her eyes strangely wide and bright.

"I know the Spanish of her era. Ya sennor glorioso, padre que en çielo estas, fezist çielo e tierra, el terçero el mar, fezist estrelas e luna, e el sol pora escalentar... we sang it endlessly in the orphanage. I know the name of the priest who collected my -- her -- blood. Cruz. I remember the wind of riding with Lucio, his horse's mad uneven gallop, very fast and a good leaper. My muscles are wrong for riding now. But not bad for fighting or dancing. The only odd thing is that I cannot remember Lucio's face. What is wrong my love, is your face too dark or unpleasant to look at, that you hide it from me? I remember he taught me to punch and kick, to steal, and to dance. Dancing was not encouraged at the orphanage. With Lucio there was always lovemaking after the dancing. I was very Spanish, temperamental, a hellcat, for anyone else... but the touch of his hand and I'd be shy and quiet. His hand alone; any other hand that touched me uninvited was in danger of being removed from the arm that brought it. He rarely killed, but he'd maim freely enough. I learned not to mind blood. The Moors hated him. Almost as much as Spanish nobility did... he mostly took jewels. He'd force kisses from their wives, too, as he stole -- simply so the men would hate him more. He favored caves to hide in, he knew dozens all over southern Spain. He believed he was related to El Cid."