Sanctus Read Free Page B

preparation. Its pages had been made from similar stone, their surfaces crammed with symbols carved by a hand long since rendered to dust. The words he had read there, a prophecy in shape and form, seemed to warn of the end of things if the Sacrament became known beyond the walls of the Citadel.
    He looked out across the city, the morning sun catching his green eyes and the high, sharp cheekbones beneath them. He thought of all the people down there, living their lives, striving in thought and deed to do good, to get on, to move closer to God. After the tragedies of his own life he had come here, to the wellspring of faith, to devote himself to the same ends. Now here he knelt, as high as it was possible to get on the holiest of mountains –
    – and he had never felt further from Him.
    Images drifted across his darkened mind: images of what he had lost, of what he had learned. And as the prophetic words, carved in the secret stone of the heretical book, crawled through his memory, he saw something new in them. And what he had first read as a warning now shone like a revelation.
    He had already carried knowledge of the Sacrament this far outside the Citadel; who was to say he could not carry it further? Maybe he could become the instrument to shine light into this dark mountain and bring an end to what he had witnessed. And even if he was wrong, and this crisis of faith was the weakness of one not fit to divine the purpose of what he had seen, then surely God would intervene. The secret would remain so, and who would mourn the life of one confused monk?
    He glanced up at the sky. The sun was rising higher now – the bringer of light, the bringer of life. It warmed him as he looked back down at the stone in his hand, his mind as sharp now as its jagged edge.
    And he knew what he must do.

Chapter 7
     
     
    Over five thousand miles due west of Ruin, a slim blonde woman with fine, Nordic features stood in Central Park, one hand resting on the railing of Bow Bridge, the other holding a letter-sized manila envelope addressed to Liv Adamsen. It was crumpled from repeated handling, but not yet opened. Liv stared at the grey, liquid outline of New York reflected in the water and remembered the last time she’d stood there, with him, when they’d done the touristy thing and the sun had shone. It wasn’t shining now.
    The wind ruffled the lake’s burnished surface, bumping together the few forgotten rowing boats tethered to the jetty. She pushed a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and looked down at the envelope, her sharp, green eyes dry from staring into the wind and the effort of trying not to cry. The envelope had appeared in her post nearly a week previously, nestling like a viper among the usual credit-card applications and pizza-delivery menus. At first she’d thought it was just another bill, until she spotted the return address printed on the lower corner. She got letters like this all the time at the Inquirer , hard copies of information she’d requested in the pursuit of whatever story she was currently working on. It was from the US Bureau of Vital Records, the one-stop store for public information on the Holy Trinity of most people’s lives: birth, marriage and death.
    She’d stuffed it into her bag, numb with the shock of its discovery, where it had been buried ever since, jostled by the receipts, notebooks, and make-up of her life, waiting for the right moment to be opened, though there never, ever could be one. Finally, after a week of glimpsing it every time she reached for her keys or answered her phone, something whispered in her mind and she took an early lunch and the train from Jersey to the heart of the big anonymous city, where no one knew her and the memories suited the circumstances, and where, if she lost it completely, nobody would bat an eyelid.
    She walked now from the bridge, heading to the shoreline, her hand dipping into her bag and fishing out a slightly crushed pack of Lucky Strikes.