The Key

62

The Citadel

Dragan experienced a moment of pure panic as he entered the chapel of the Sacrament and saw the door hanging open, the needles exposed, the cross empty.

He fell to his knees before it, but not in any act of worship. After the exertions of his spectacular return to the Citadel he felt mortally weak. The single thing that had driven him on was his desire to be near the Sacrament again and resume the ritual of communion that suffused all those who partook of it with its sacred force and energy. Only the Sacrament could restore health and strength to himself and the mountain — but the Sacrament was gone.

As he looked around the empty chapel he caught sight of himself reflected in one of the shining blades on the walls. How could God taunt him so? How could He ravage his body like this and offer him the chance of salvation, only to pull it away again? Then he shook his head and felt ashamed. This was not the work of God. It was the Devil’s doing he was witnessing here.

Dragan reminded himself of Saint Job and the trials he had endured after God removed his protection. Satan had taken away his prosperity, his family and his health to test his faith and make him curse the Lord’s name. But Job had refused, cursing instead the day he was born. And had not Job been rewarded for this faith and ultimately been blessed with even greater prosperity and health than before? Dragan knew this was what he must do now. He had to keep his faith strong, though his body was weak and the way ahead uncertain. Only then would the Citadel be returned to its former strength.

Bowing his head, he prayed to the empty cross, confessing the sins he had committed since last he had stood here. He asked forgiveness for his lack of faith and for the strength to do God’s bidding. Finally he said a prayer of remembrance for the departed soul of the priest who had been sent to take his life and had ended up losing his own. He believed that everything happened for a reason, that each step was preordained and each man merely an instrument of God’s greater will. As he thought now about the sequence of his own passage back to the Citadel, he began to see God’s work even in that.

First he had sent him the nervous orderly, always in such a hurry to leave that one day he had left a scalpel behind. Then he had sent the priest who had died by the edge of that same blade as he tried to smother Dragan with a pillow. These things were not accidental; they had each been purposeful and ordained.

When he had finished his prayers he bent forward, lying full length on the cold stone of the chapel floor. He stretched his arms out either side, making the sign of the Tau with his body, abasing himself before the altar in an act of total subjugation and humility. He lay like this for a long while, praying that God might show him a sign to guide him further, until his aching body could stand it no more and a coughing fit forced him upright.

He stood stiffly, using his hands to brush away the dust that had collected on his cassock. A long, thin strand of gold twisted away in the air, caught by the flickering candlelight. He reached out and caught it in his hand, the fine gold thread standing out starkly against his blackened skin. He was surprised that such a thing was present in the chapel. Unlike the high church beyond the walls of the mountain, the holy men of the Citadel wore no ceremonial gowns of gold or silk. Even the Abbot and the Prelate wore the same rough cassocks as everyone else, so it was a mystery how a gold thread could find its way in here.

He held it up to the light, stretching it out to get a better look, then realized what it was. It was not a golden thread but a long strand of blonde hair, lighter at the tip and darker at the root. Bleached hair — female hair. He thought back to the woman who had been evacuated from the Citadel. He had seen her image on the news, even glimpsed her himself when they had first been admitted to hospital. Her hair was blonde too, the same colour and length as the strand he now held in his hand. She must have been here, inside the chapel. And she was a woman, a sacred vessel with the power to carry living things inside her.

Dragan turned and left the chapel with a renewed sense of purpose. He moved swiftly along the tunnel towards the top of the stairs then turned right into one of the ancillary passageways. A set of narrower steps carried him down a few levels to one of the deserted sections of the mountain where a series of abandoned cells fed off from the main tunnel. He entered the first door and saw what he was looking for, carved into the wall opposite. It was a loophole, a narrow window cut into the rock of the outer wall of the mountain; beyond it was a clear uninterrupted view of the sprawling city of Ruin.

He hurried over, reaching into the pocket of his cassock to pull out the mobile phone he had taken from the dead priest. Ordinarily, entrance by the Ascension Cave involved each new arrival stripping naked; a symbolic rebirth, but also a practical measure to ensure nothing from the outside world could be smuggled into the mountain. In the unusual circumstances of his own re-entry these customs had been ignored and the phone had remained undetected in his pocket.

He turned it on and the display lit up. As he had hoped, his elevated position and clear view provided him with a full-strength signal. His stiff black fingers moved over the keys as he navigated his way through the menu until he found the caller logs. There was only one number listed, with several calls in and out over the last few days. Text messages had also been received from the same number. He read through them, smiling as he came across the one that had ordered his own death. He selected the number it had come from and pressed the call-back button.

As he looked out over Ruin, waiting for the phone to connect, it struck him that he was standing in the same cell Brother Samuel had been taken to after he had failed his initiation. This was where he had escaped from and started the chain reaction that had led the Citadel to its current crisis. How sweetly ironic it would be if his sister’s return completed the circle and put things back as they were. She must have carried the Sacrament out of the mountain. Only she could bring it back again.

The phone rang.

Dragan waited.

Then, just as God had ordained it, someone picked up.