The Wayward Godking (3 page)

“You’ll not be going anywhere, and especially not until you tell us what is going on,” Edgard said and sat down in the chair behind the desk.

Barry pushed the screen door open and spoke in a low voice to someone outside.

“Send for Meredith,” Edgard called to his Seneschal. “Tell her to come here.”

“She’s gone, Your Grace,” Lucio intervened again. “We were just at her apartment. She’s not there.”

“So he’s just arrived, has he?” Edgard slammed one fist on the desk and the sword sang in response.

“Sir,” Simon stepped in front of Mark “send for some ice and some lemonade. He does not look well to me. He may be in need of food and drink or, at least, rest.”

“I need to get home,” Mark told them again. “Huber! I need to get home. She is in my house.”

“Huber is in Lothian?” Edgard frowned at him.

“No.” Mark shook his head and pressed his hands against his ears. “She is in the Abyss.”

“Sit down,
du Morte
, before you collapse,” Edgard said and waved one hand at the chair in front of his desk. It was as if they had never left this place. Everything was as he remembered from the years before Vesuvius had erupted… before he had
caused
the volcano to erupt. “Sit down, all of you.”

He waited while Barry sent for food and drink and they took seats around the room. Galindwynne came from the bedroom and sat on a footstool near the door, intent upon hearing all about it.

“Now, you say you need to get home to Lothian, but you say Huber is in the Abyss,” the Master began again after a rather protracted, whispered conversation with his son.

“I was in the Abyss,” Mark told him. “I was in the Abyss negotiating with Huber, and then I was here. It is imperative I get back to the Abyss and finish the business. She is bent upon returning here and destroying everything.”

“I believe we’ve all heard of her plan before, sir. But what exactly were you negotiating with the beast and where exactly is
here
?” Edgard raised both eyebrows and then raised his glass to Izzy as he brought iced tea for them.

Mark looked around the room slowly. He was still unconvinced he was no longer in the Seventh Gate. He could feel no power in his veins or in his mind. It was as if he had become hollow.

“Could I get a shirt please?” He glanced at Lucio and the Italian nodded.

He called Vanni’s name and took his shirt when he reached the porch. A rugby shirt with blue and yellow stripes. Mark sighed audibly before slipping it over his head. “Have you tried every means to leave this place? Have you contacted or tried to contact Rome?”

“We are cut off here,” Lavon answered. “All lines into the city are busy, Sir,
all
circuits are busy
,
please try your call again later
,” he mimicked the only voice to be had on the telephone lines and cell phones.

“That’s ludicrous.” Mark’s frown deepened. “Then we are not in Italy at all.”

“That much is certain,” Barry agreed.

“The only place such things are possible is in the Abyss,” Mark told them. “I have constructed such… replicas myself. Reality is quite plastic there. One only need know how to manipulate it.”

“I am aware of that,
du Morte
.” Edgard leaned his elbows on the desk. “Do not forget who I am.”

“I will never forget who you are, Nebo, but I will warn you to remember the reverse is true. I am not one of your grandchildren. You will respect me to my face, or I will leave this place and take whoever is willing with me.”

“Feel free to try,” Edgard replied with some measure of disgust and leaned back again, but seemed to relax a bit. “We should call a truce, you and I,
Lord
Adar. I will tell you honestly I had already decided you were at the bottom of all this. Now I only wish it were so. If not you, then who? Huber?”

“I don’t think so.” Mark shook his head.

“Is she spawning again?”

Mark sat staring at him for too long before answering.

“So, you were
negotiating
with her.” The Master nodded his head slowly. “Where is the rest of your clan, Sir Ramsay? If you were in the Abyss, and we are
still
in the Abyss, can’t you tell us something of what is happening? What is Huber up to? You say she wishes to destroy the world. That was her plan all along. How can you negotiate with a monster? What could you offer such a one as that? Can you tell us what the purpose of this charade might be? Do you have any notion of what Lucifer was trying to say before
we
lost contact with him?”

Mark sat silently staring at Edgard for several long seconds before answering. “Do you pretend to know the depths and heights of the world, Edgard? Do you think I know everything? I may be a Son of Light, but I am not
the
Light. If you want messages of Light, then you would do well to seek out the Lightbringer yourself. I can tell you this much. Huber has produced an army of what she calls her children and she was about to feed me to them. I don’t know how or why I came to be here, but I would hazard a guess that someone far greater than I had better ideas than the queen mother. I have a few people working on it, but I’m not sure what happened.”

“Who do you have ‘working on it’,
du Morte?
”

“Abaddon and Marduk.”

“Ahhhh. What a pair. Now they are working on our side? Surely we are doomed. What of this child Lucifer spoke of?”

“I know nothing of what Lucifer is doing, Sir. The only child I have seen is my grandson, who was born in the Abyss to Sophia and Mark.”

“Father,” Simon addressed his father again on a more personal level, speaking to him in French. “This can wait. Brother Ramsay is in distress, and he needs spiritual counseling. That is my job. Please allow me to do what I can for him before we continue. If you and the others would excuse us...”

Edgard started to speak, but stopped when he caught sight of Galindwynne near the door.

“It
is
rather early.” The Master yawned and then drank another gulp of the cold tea. “Perhaps it would be best to reconvene in the council chamber after breakfast. Would eight o’clock be too early?”

“Not at all,” Simon answered for everyone and smiled as stood up. He turned to Mark Andrew and waited. The Knight of Death stood slowly and looked around the room once more. Lucio stood as well, but Simon shook his head. The Healer escorted Mark from the room and down the porch as quickly as possible. His sons and the rest of the people on the walk fell back and allowed them to pass.

“Where are we going?” Mark asked as they neared the swimming pool.

“The chapel.”

“Good. I need to confess.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“You have to listen.”

“I can listen without confession. I don’t take confessions anymore. They are too destructive. My son will hear your confession, if you like.”

“Then why are we going to the chapel?”

“I believe I may know what is happening here, and the chapel is deserted at this time of day.”

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

“Omar!!” Dunya screamed her brother’s name into the howling wind at the edge of the parapet. The prophet was walking along the very edge of the ornate cap of one of the palace onion domes. The wind whipped about him, blowing his robes back against the cliffs as he pulled off his clothes, one piece at a time, in the pouring rain. “Omar! Come down!” She pleaded, but he paid no attention to her. She grasped hold of the iron railings and began to climb up to him.

The Prophet looked out across the stormy sea. The waves crashed on the rocks at the base of the cliff and jagged lightning streaked from cloud to greenish cloud in the gale. The rain slashed at Dunya’s gown as she struggled up the railing and then climbed the iron trellis leading to the roof. She was soaked to her skin by the time she reached him.

She wrapped her arms around him as best she could and tried to make him stop stripping off his clothes. They tottered on the edge of the roof while she pleaded repeatedly with him to listen to reason.

She had agreed to accompany him to the parapet overlooking the sea in order to help him with the magick he wished to perform. He had been doing well since the exorcism; she had thought everything was all right. Her father had forbade him from practicing his magick, but Dunya understood his anguish somewhat and was very worried about him, but he seemed stricken all over again at the loss of Nicole and Ruth all over again as his memories returned. Not even the presence of his son, Bari, could comfort him. She had carried him his supper in his room and stayed to talk with him, whereupon he had begged her to help him escape from the watchful eyes of his father’s household. Dunya had been unable to refuse her brother’s pleas, and soon afterwards, they had come out of the palace onto the upper rooftop. There he had drawn his magick circle with colored chalk she had provided for him, and there he had conjured several spirits, but learned nothing. The Prophet’s efforts were no more effective than any of the various powers residing in the Djinni’s palace. They were all magickally impotent. Nothing they tried worked. Even Semiramis was trapped here, and she was, by far, more powerful than Adalune. John Paul was still with them as well, which meant even he could do no more than the rest of them.

Now she was regretting her decision to help him, and no one even knew they were up here in this storm. In fact, this storm was a product of her brother’s attempted magick.

“Omar! Come inside,” she said, holding onto him desperately, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her body against his back for balance. The wind threatened to blow her diminutive form completely off the dome.

“I know where she is, Dunya!” He turned around in her arms and wrapped his arms around her. “She is in the Seventh Gate!”

“How do you know? The spirits told us nothing.” She looked up into his face as the rain almost blinded them both.

“They told me more than you think, sister. I want you to go back down to the palace. Tell my father I am going to the Seventh Gate. I have to finish the job.”

“No, please, don’t go.” Dunya would not let go of him. “Stay here with us, Omar. Father and Grandmother will take care of us. We will be happy again like the old days. I have missed you! My heart yearns for you day and night. When will you come home to me where you belong? We are not of these people, Omar. You and I belong together. You know it is true!”

“Dunya, please, you must go.” He disentangled himself from her arms, and then kissed her impulsively.

He looked down at her in horror, and then closed his eyes.

“Why do you persist in this fantasy, Omar?” She asked him. “You and I are one. We came from the same place. We were together.
We belong together
.”

“It cannot be so,” he told her. “It is an abomination.”

“Those rules were not meant for us, Omar. Those are the words of the gods of men. You are not a man! When will you admit it? We are not of the same blood. We are not sister and brother. You know this!”

The lightning struck the rocks very near the upper reaches of the palace and sent chunks of debris flying over them. The wind renewed its attack, and bits of ice pelted them.

“Never!” He pushed her back toward the trellis. Their feet slipped and slid on the slick marble and metallic tiles coating the dome.

“You gave it your best try, Omar! You would have been better off staying with Nicole. At least she was like us.”

“No!” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I brought this trouble upon the world, and it is my duty to correct it.”

“You sound like Sir Ramsay! All right then,” she relented and skidded precariously toward the edge of the roof, but stopped again just shy of the trellis leading to safety. “I’ll go on one condition, and I’ll even give you some time before I tell Father where you have gone.” She looked back at him and steadied herself with one hand against the steep slope.

“What is that condition?” He asked her and then flinched as the lightning struck even closer and the hail grew larger and more stinging than before.

“If you succeed,
if you come home
… you will come home with me to the Hesperides,” she said and blinked against the onslaught of the storm. “Forever.”

He slid over to where she stood and kissed her again on the cheek, holding her chin in his hand for a few seconds as he searched her eyes.

“Swear it!” She shouted at him.

“I swear it!” He answered and then smiled. He knew he would never have to fulfill his oath. He would not be coming back.

“All right then. May the gods be with you,” she said and reached for the trellis. He held her hand while she climbed onto the top of the iron curlicues. When he let go of her hand, she smiled and shouted “I love you, Omar!”

It was the last thing he heard before they were blown from the roof by a violent explosion. A bolt of lightning struck the ornate lightning rod atop the dome, blowing a huge chunk from the metal dome, sending the brother and sister over the edge and out into the night. Omar grabbed her hand and held on with all his might until they struck the cold ocean below the cliff. Then they were sinking in thundering waves and he lost touch with not only his sister, but consciousness altogether for a brief time.