The Lost Symbol

Stabbing. Searing. Slashing. Razor-sharp knives piercing soft flesh. Chest, neck, thighs, face. His body tightened all at once, recoiling. His blood-filled mouth cried out as the pain ripped him from his trance. The white light above transformed itself, and suddenly, as if by magic, a dark helicopter was suspended above him, its thundering blades driving an icy wind down into the Temple Room, chilling Mal’akh to the core and dispersing the wisps of incense to the distant corners of the room.

Mal’akh turned his head and saw the Akedah knife lying broken by his side, smashed upon the granite altar, which was covered in a blanket of shattered glass. Even after everything I did to him. Peter Solomon averted the knife. He refused to spill my blood.

With welling horror, Mal’akh raised his head and peered down along the length of his own body. This living artifact was to have been his great offering. But it lay in tatters. His body was drenched in blood. huge shards of glass protruding from his flesh in all directions.

Weakly, Mal’akh lowered his head back to the granite altar and stared up through the open space in the roof. The helicopter was gone now, in its place a silent, wintry moon.

Wide-eyed, Mal’akh lay gasping for breath. all alone on the great altar.

CHAPTER 122

The secretis how to die.

Mal’akh knew it had all gone wrong. There was no brilliant light. No wondrous reception. Only darkness and excruciating pain. Even in his eyes. He could see nothing, and yet he sensed movement all around him. There were voices. human voices. one of them, strangely, belonging to Robert Langdon. How can this be?

“She’s okay,” Langdon kept repeating. “Katherine is fine, Peter. Your sister is okay.”

No, Mal’akh thought. Katherine is dead. She must be.

Mal’akh could no longer see, could not tell if his eyes were even open, but he heard the helicopter banking away. An abrupt calm settled through the Temple Room. Mal’akh could feel the smooth rhythms of the earth becoming uneven. as if the ocean’s natural tides were being disrupted by a gathering storm.

Chao ab ordo.

Unfamiliar voices were shouting now, talking urgently with Langdon about the laptop and video file. It’s too late, Mal’akh knew. The damage is done. By now the video was spreading like wildfire into every corner of a shocked world, destroying the future of the brotherhood. Those most capable of spreading the wisdom must be destroyed. The ignorance of mankind is what helped the chaos grow. The absence of Light on earth is what nourished the Darkness that awaited Mal’akh.

I have done great deeds, and soon I will be received as a king.

Mal’akh sensed that a lone individual had quietly approached. He knew who it was. He could smell the sacred oils he had rubbed into his father’s shaved body.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” Peter Solomon whispered in his ear. “But I want you to know something.” He touched a finger to the sacred spot atop Mal’akh’s skull. “What you wrote here. ” He paused. “This is not the Lost Word.”

Of course it is, Mal’akh thought. You convinced me of that beyond a doubt.

According to legend, the Lost Word was written in a language so ancient and arcane that mankind had all but forgotten how to read it. This mysterious language, Peter had revealed, was in fact the oldest language on earth.

The language of symbols.

In the idiom of symbology, there was one symbol that reigned supreme above all others. The oldest and most universal, this symbol fused all the ancient traditions in a single solitary image that represented the illumination of the Egyptian sun god, the triumph of alchemical gold, the wisdom of the Philosopher’s Stone, the purity of the Rosicrucian Rose, the moment of Creation, the All, the dominance of the astrological sun, and even the omniscient all-seeing eye that hovered atop the unfinished pyramid.

The circumpunct. The symbol of the Source. The origin of all things.

This is what Peter had told him moments ago. Mal’akh had been skeptical at first, but then he had looked again at the grid, realizing that the image of the pyramid was pointing directly at the lone symbol of the circumpunct — a circle with a dot in its center. The Masonic Pyramid is a map, he thought, recalling the legend, which points to the Lost Word. It seemed his father was telling the truth after all.

All great truths are simple.