23

WE STOOD NOW within fifty feet of the gates of Charis. I looked back to get a panoramic view of Thuros. I saw the dark city looming in the distance. Grayness and dimness rose from her like smoke from a fire. Even from this far away, I could see the web and the people caught in it, thrashing, stomachs bulging and quivering as the scorpions moved freely within. I heard them cry and moan. I saw shadows move upon the great web that trapped and connected all men, and I heard the screeches of the hell-hawks. Frodo’s gaze followed mine, and as I held him, I felt him quiver. Seen from Charis, Babel had no lure—it appeared as it really was.

I turned away from Babel and looked back into Charis, standing right on its threshold.

Up in the sky far above the city, but headed down to it, I saw someone magnificent, mounted on a great white stallion, a man who shined with the brilliance of a thousand quasars. I didn’t know how my eyes could tolerate the brightness. I beheld the naked glory of the King—or perhaps it was only a faint reflection of his glory.

With his bare hands and a column of wood he had punched a hole in the fabric of the universe and turned it inside out.

Darkness fell so quickly I thought I’d been blinded by the light. But then I saw the stars, and my eyes fixed immediately on the constellation of the Lion, the great red eyes, the six stars of his mane, the two star clusters of his uplifted paws that I had not seen before, and star after star outlining every contour of his great form. Suddenly a great star, a supernova, exploded at the lion’s open jaws. It had appeared once before, long ago, I knew, and this was its encore. He who came once as a pinpoint in a peasant girl, now readied himself to come again with ten thousand galaxies as the train of his imperial robe.

This time I did not hear the tentative bleating of a lamb. Instead I heard the relentless roar of a lion.

A mighty army came from the far end of the cosmos, progressing across stars and planets, through Orion’s nebula. Vast hordes of warriors moved in an explosion of colors. The army advanced toward Thuros—or was it Earth?—in rumbling cadence, shaking me to my very core. They rode great white thoroughbreds without saddle or bridle, proud stallions that seemed to know their mission as well as they knew their riders. Some of the mounts pulled chariots of fire, streaking like meteors across the dark sky.

The warriors’ hands moved to the hilts of their swords, the fire of righteousness in their eyes exploding into infernos. Then I realized that spread among the tall warriors like Marcus were men and women, crossers of the chasm.