Now that she knew who the Sartan were, she felt ready to apply this knowledge to the text he had named after them, even if she hadn't yet figured out his exact angle and personal affinities. Perhaps these other things would become clear as she studied the Verses. Also, all that talk of runes and sigils had put her in an arcane mood.
The first page opened with "Matthew 16:4".
A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah.
Below, she found her first coded passage.
Bid ísh nín thunafnab bav Assyriasek thunafnan kue irdu. Jonah íb bid lhobla tavhafh an Lubhu dherr tosedáb ék huv sovdas en.
***
She saw fingers on every side and of every color, all of them pointing at her. Snarling mouths, glaring eyes, shaking fists. People she had previously known as friends were among them, eyes glowing red and fangs growing out of their mouths. An ear-splitting din filled her head: the shrieking and cackling of an ever-growing host who wanted nothing more than to watch her suffer for eternity. She wanted to cry but knew that she couldn't, for at the first sign of weakness they would close in for the kill and gorge themselves on her blood.
The outstretched fingers became spears and halberds, poking and slashing. All seemed lost until a column of light enveloped her. Thunder ripped through the enemy host like a shockwave, knocking them off their feet. Invisible hands swatted them back and forth as a cat would a mouse while they tried to get back up. Shaken but not wounded, she walked past them into a dimming sunset.
***
Where had that come from? It was so vivid, so personal...and yet so alien! It reminded her of the Sartan and Patryn languages in the books, which were supposed to conjure just such things in the mind of the hearer, but that wasn't possible! Or at least she thought it wasn't...
Nah, she was imagining things. She had to be. Still, she supposed it wouldn't hurt to refresh her memory of the Book of Jonah, since it was mentioned in the text.
She remembered that God told him to go to Nineveh, of course. She also remembered that he fled to Tarshish and was swallowed by a fish. What she didn't remember was that when Nineveh repented and was spared, Jonah bitterly complained that this was precisely why he didn't want to go in the first place--because he knew that God would spare the Assyrians if they repented, and he didn't want that to happen. She also didn't remember that when he said this, God told him off, even going so far as to call his right to be angry into question.
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. Then said the LORD, Doest thou well to be angry?
So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city. And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.
Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?
A part of her wanted to rage at that passage, to question its authenticity. Jonah was a victim! How could God be so callous as to not merely force him to do the one thing he wanted least but follow up with a sharp rebuke when he complained? What kind of God would defend the notoriously brutal Assyrians against one of their victims? Another part of her answered, The same kind who would give me a chance to repent, even though I don' t deserve one.
Her memory drifted back to that disturbing vision from earlier and she shivered. That experience had definitely not been hers. So whose was it? Elimination suggested Lazarus, but that wasn't possible! In addition to being dead, he was both white and male, at the very top of the food chain as she understood it. Beneficiaries of such double privilege as that couldn't possibly have feelings like those. Not without a generous amount of pure malice to gin them up as justification for itself, at the very least. But there had been no will to harm--only pain, made all the more intense by the fact that people she loved and thought she knew had turned on her, presumably seduced by the mob. There had barely even been any will to fight! If that had been her position, she would've scrambled for a weapon of her own and swung it like a berserker. Sure, she would've gone down, but at least she would've done so in a blaze of glory. This poor creature in whose shoes she had found herself could barely summon the will to survive.
She had felt a certain grim resolve but she had also felt despair, a corrosive burning sensation in her chest that argued it might be better to just close her eyes and go under, become a martyr and go home to God, who would make all the pain go away. She shivered again. She must be hallucinating. Time for bed. She'd get back to it when her mind was rested.