The Jealous God

by Brendan Carroll

  There was a thirteenth position in the room; in the very center of the chamber was a circular depression. Here would be the controlling power’s seat. The head of a mortal man, not a crystal skull, but a link between the mystical powers of the dark past and the world of men. A head, not a skull. A head. Luke had been unable to shed any insight into the puzzle. Bran’s head would not be the one, as Luke believed.

  The crystal skull Simon had sent from the Languedoc had belonged to Merovee, the first king of the Merovingian line. In fact, Merovee was where the line had gotten its name. The depression in its head had not been put there to hold candles as the monks at the monastery had assumed, nor had it been there to hold a crucifix, or as a receptacle for the Holy Blood. The hole was there because the ancient Merovingians, before they had accepted Christianity, had practiced an age-old pagan custom meant to release the soul after the death of the body. The head of Merovee had been trepanned. Someone, probably a priest, had cut a hole in the corpse’ head to allow the soul to escape. A practice, unfortunately, he had most likely started himself in the dark recesses of time. Take the head and release the soul. The primary function of the Knight of Death. Somewhere, somehow the descendents of Abraham had picked up this practice to be used on their most revered leaders, whom they considered of mystical origins or powers.

  Merovee had no doubt been a powerful mystic, an adept in the lost arts. There were records of Merovee’s visit to Rome. The entire Roman populace had turned out to see the great barbarian chieftain when he had rode into the city on his warhorse with his long blonde hair and his brilliant blue eyes. The fact he had been able to attract so much attention in such a dangerous city, full of dangerous people and then take his leave unscathed, attested to the fact he must have exercised a great deal of personal magick. It would have been highly unlikely such a person would have gone unnoticed by the powers of Rome, who were well known for their treacheries and jealousies. Any other man might have found himself assassinated before he made the northern borders.

  Surely, the Romans had seen the threat embodied in Merovee, but they had allowed him to go free. Merovee’s skull would sit atop the fountain in the underworld, providing light to the world between worlds. An honorable and fitting occupation for a great king, and Merovee himself had readily agreed to the task. The view had been much better than the inside of the darkened chapel in southern France. Merovee was an outdoorsy type. The irreverent thought made the Chevalier du Morte smile ironically.

  But Merovee aside, he now had another problem to solve. After his son had left him, he had continued to concentrate his thoughts, as scattered as they had been, on the riddle of the skulls. There was only one head he knew of that might fit the bill. It was male, and it was the head of a mortal man, not a saint or mystic or a wizard. The skull he needed to complete the matrix was still in France. He had become convinced of it. France had been torn apart by the tremendous influx of refugees from this last war in the west. Word was France was falling into a new Dark Age. The King had been unable to hold the country together as the diseases and famine, caused by the overwhelming flood of indigent people from the west, had spread through the countryside and into the cities. The King had taken his royal court and fled to parts unknown, leaving his beleaguered Prime Minister to cope with the problem, promising to return as soon as it was ‘safe’ for his royal head. The remnants of the Catholic Church, that had survived the new Muslim invasion of the early twenty-first century, had become decimated in its attempt to care for the starving and dying. Mark Andrew doubted if there was still a coherent order of any kind left in the country.

  In the midst of this chaos, was the relic he needed. The trepanned skull of King Dagobert II. The last Merovingian King had been assassinated on his feast day, December 23, 679 AD. The skull had been kept in a convent in Mons for years, and he had failed to acquire it for his collection of Holy Relics. But, he had not considered the head of a mortal king a Holy Relic. He had not put twelve and one together. The skull of Dagobert, among others, helped King Philippe the Fair in his attempts to prove the Templars worshipped disembodied heads. The good King had purposefully misconstrued the existence of reliquary objects, such as the head of Dagobert II and the practices of trampling and spitting on the cursed crucifix during the Templar initiation rites, as evidence of heresy in order to make his charges stick against the Order. He shuddered at the thought of another skull or head also resided somewhere in southern France. The alleged head of Mary Magdalene, bride of Jesus Christ! His knees went watery at the memory of the skull encased in silver that the Inquisitors had also tried to associate with a worship of Holy Sophia, which simply stood for knowledge. Sophia was not, as they claimed, the goddess Astarte, but simply Divine Knowledge. Very clever of the King. But, the head of Dagobert II was needed now, and he regretted fiercely, he had not procured it at an earlier date. He’d had the prime opportunity to seize it after the church in which it had been held had been destroyed during the French Revolution, but then, as now, France had not been a healthy place to visit, and he had allowed the opportunity to pass. He would have to send someone after it. Perhaps Lucio Dambretti would be a good candidate for such a mission. He had, after all, managed to steal the head of Santa Lucia! A remarkable feat Mark still wondered about.

  Mark climbed the inside stairs leading to the roof, and then stepped out into the storm that continued unabated. The thunder and lightening had lessened a bit, but the rain still blew across the roof in sheets and the wind whipped ferociously about him, threatened to sweep him from the roof entirely. He was immediately soaked, but he wore nothing other than his black cargo pants, his traditional garb for casting his spells of protection. He’d always found the long, ceremonial robes employed by other practitioners of the Arts somewhat cumbersome and restrictive. Only the dangerous nature of his work often brought unexpected visitors to his circle, prohibited him from foregoing the pants as well. If he’d had his way, people would have had fur or scales or some other natural covering.

  Clothing presented many problems, economical as well as social, he thought the world could do without. But, he had not created man in his image; it had been the other way around… almost. Experience had shown him, the apparitions attracted to his magick usually arrived armed to the teeth and ready for single combat. He touched the hilt of the golden sword that was his only other piece of ‘ceremonial’ garb, and wondered if the time had come when the sword could no longer protect him from what might feel the need to attend his Circle of Power. He hurried across the rain swept roof and rummaged through the oaken chest to find the things he would need for the magick. The rain would preclude the drawing of a circle, and he would not be using the painted circle on the lower end of the roof. He would instead, mark out the cardinal points with stones representing the four elements and place a metal pentacle in the center. He needed to make a new circle in front of the chapel doors and start fresh for this particularly important protection. He stuffed the rocks and crystals in his pockets and clutched the copper pentacle in his hand as he made his way through the blinding rain to the smooth stones in front of the chapel.

  He could discern no lights within the rooftop chapel proper and assumed Catharine de Goth had retired for the night, and even if she had not, he knew she would have the good sense not to interfere with his magick. She had seen him at work before, and she knew the importance of it. He laid out the stones with dead reckoning and placed the pentacle in the center before starting to call upon the powers of the elemental spirits to help him with his spell. The lightning increased again as the powers converged on the circle and an eerie, unnatural glow of greenish light lit up the roof.

  As the storm increased in its fury, he completed the protective incantation and expanded it to cover the entire island of St. Patrick, putting as much energy into it as he could muster. It was no small task, and the effort left him emotionally drained and bone tired. As he got to his feet slowly in the pouring rain and prepared to release the circle, he was almost bli
nded by a flash of green light directly in front of him. Someone or something uninvited had come to the circle. He drew the sword in response to the threat and shaded his eyes against the glare until the light subsided. As the glow diminished, he could see a form taking shape in the dying glow. He drew a sharp breath as he recognized the form that seemed almost a mirror image of himself. The figure stood just outside the protective barrier near the volcanic rock that marked the north cardinal point and held a gleaming sword aloft in its right hand.

  “John Paul?” Mark asked hopefully, but his words were almost consumed by the sound of the rain drumming on the roof.

  “Surely you recognize me, Grandfather?” Jozsef Daniel asked, and smiled at him, and blinked back the water flowing into his eyes. He turned his head about slowly as the lightning continued to flash about the keep in almost continuous streamers. The thunder was one long roll now, booming across the stormy sea and the bailey below.

  “You have come too late.” Mark lowered his head a bit and blinked rapidly as the water obscured and blurred his vision.

  “It is never too late.” Jozsef countered and began to walk about the circle slowly. Mark turned in time with him as the specter moved. “What do you intend to do, Grandfather? That was quite a little show you pulled off in Scotland. Tis a shame you had to kill your two pet monkeys before you made your cowardly escape. Did you tell your brute of a brother, he wasted his time trying to kill Abaddon? Doesn’t he know Abaddon is like you? Doesn’t he know his precious brother, his father, is not a man at all, but a creature of the Abyss?”

  “Just make yur point and be gone withee!” Mark raised the golden sword slightly. There was no use trying to attack the visible form of the Ancient Evil. He was not really there, and even if he had been, he would not have been able to vanquish him with a sword.

  “Oooh, is this how you welcome your own kith and kin, Sir Ramsay?” Jozsef continued his slow circuit about the circle. His voice was full of contempt. His hair hung down in dripping ropes on his back, very long now with numerous small braids in the loose strands, reminding Mark of the ancient Celtic barbarians that had once inhabited Scotland, and Ireland, and much of Northern Europe. The longer the hair, the more braids, the more powerful the individual. He wore the traditional garb the world had come to associate with Omar Kadif. His black boots sloshed in the water on the roof. His baggy pants were stuffed in the top of his knee-high boots. The long, blousy sleeves drooped on his arms under the cover of the overlay in purple and gold. The lightning glinted on many gold and silver ornaments in his hair and on his earlobes.

  “Ye air no kin o’ moine!” Mark told him as his anger began to grow in spite of his concentrated effort to control himself. The power of the incantation was gone and he was beginning to shiver in the cold. The euphoria and accompanying numbing effect of the magick had also worn off, and the rain was very cold on his bare skin.

  “Oh, what a shame you do not remember me,” Jozsef laughed. “But that will make it much easier to kill you. If I thought you might be my grandfather, I might have you stuffed and set in my palace as a memorial to you, and a reminder of where I got my good looks. By the by, I appreciate the gift of your great-granddaughter. She was quite a tasty little morsel, and I’m sure her husband appreciates her company as much as I do.” He tossed his head, and his hair swung about, sending out glistening drops into the rain. “Why do you persist in these futile efforts, Adar? Don’t you know you are outmatched here? Can’t you accept the possibility… no, your god’s truth, for once, you are the loser? You can’t win! You can’t hope to win! I can take everything you have. Your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, your great-great-grandchildren to be. You would do well to abandon this silly quest and join with me before… it is too late! I will make a special place for you. A creature of such talent would be much more valuable to me, than say….a mere semi-mortal man like that weasely little healer or that arrogant bastard you insist on keeping under your wing…oh, perhaps that is the wrong terminology. It seems you want to be under his wing, and under his skin, and under his…”

  “Enough!” Mark Andrew stepped forward and swung the sword in front of him.

  “Yes, quite enough.” Jozsef smiled at the futile effort. “You are simply full of surprises, du Morte! First this, and then that…why my head virtually spins when I think of all the trouble you’ve gone through to preserve your precious Order and your blessed Brothers! All for what? To serve a god that no longer cares whether you live or die? I will offer you one last chance… take my hand, and make a place for yourself where you will be appreciated for what you truly are.”

  Mark Andrew drew himself up, replaced the sword in its scabbard on his hip, and folded his arms across his chest, smiling at the enemy. Jozsef Daniel could not harm him here, or else, he would have already killed him.

  “So be it!” Jozsef bowed his head slightly, and put his own sword away. “Continue casting your little spells. Eventually, you will make a mistake, and I will be there waiting, but you’d best not let your precious Brothers out of your sight, or else I’ll chew them up and swallow them just like I swallowed your grandson and your precious Anna.”

  Jozsef nodded his head curtly and walked back toward the north cardinal point. He stopped in front of the marker and cocked his head to one side. “Oh, by the way, have you seen your daughter lately?”

  Before Mark could react to this last question, Jozsef was gone. He stood staring at the spot where his worst nightmare had stood only moments before as the rain pelted his head mercilessly.

  As he was descending the inner stairwell wearily, after releasing the circle, he was shocked to hear Lucio’s voice calling up to him from the grand hall below.

  “Brother!” The Italian bounded toward the staircase and up the steps to meet him. He was soaking wet and the water was still streaming from his curls. He grabbed Mark on the steps and hugged him breathlessly. “Santa Maria! You’re freezing. Where have you been dressed like that, il dolce mio?”

  Mark frowned at him and the Golden Eagle’s face reddened with embarrassment and he cringed inwardly. He had never addressed the Knight of Death in this manner. The expression had come out of nowhere.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” Lucio made a terrible face and wiped at the water in his eyes.

  “I’ve been on the roof,” Mark told him through chattering teeth, abruptly cutting him off. A terrible feeling washed over him, starting at the crown of his head and running down like the water on his skin. He could hear numerous voices in the hall below and then everything began to fade. Lucio looked up the stairs in confusion, and then caught him as he literally fell down the stairs in complete exhaustion.

  “Louis!!” Lucio shouted down the stairs. “Barry!!” He barely kept the fainted Knight from falling all the way down the slippery, wet stairs.

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  “Did you ever notice this altar faces west?” Catharine asked Lucio as they walked toward the apse in Mark Andrew’s chapel.

  The Knight of the Golden Eagle looked about the sanctuary, frowning slightly. He was no architect.

  “Perhaps an oversight,” he said and shrugged.

  “Hardly,” she replied. “All church altars face east. It has always been so. Even synagogues and mosques are aligned to the east to face the rising sun.”

  “I never noticed.” He shrugged again as they skirted the misaligned altar and entered the sanctuary within the sanctuary. “Perhaps he made a mistake.”

  “A mistake?” she laughed softly as she pulled out the single chair for her guest.

  Lucio declined the offer of the chair and leaned against the desk instead. After helping Barry and Louis get the Knight of Death into bed, he had changed into dry clothes and hurried up here during the ensuing confusion before anyone knew he was gone. There would be meetings and greetings and much ado before anyone looked for him. Mark Andrew had obviously overtaxed himself in his ritual. When he’d seen no wounds or other
signs of foul play, he’d taken the opportunity to disappear. He had wanted to see for himself what Mark Andrew had been up to on the roof and if Catharine had been involved. His suspicions about his Brother were unfounded.

  Catharine had opened the door of the chapel in answer to his knocks, with bleary eyes, surprised to see him there. The floor had been completely dry and her behavior gave no hint she had seen the Knight of Death. Whatever he had been doing on the roof had had nothing to do with her apparently. She had greeted him warmly and commented casually on the storm which had finally subsided, declaring it the worst she had heard since coming to the island. The storm had withdrawn quite suddenly after the bedraggled party had arrived at the keep and now the sun was coming up in almost clear skies. She’d not seen Mark Andrew at all and knew nothing about him other than he had returned and brought his brother with him. Her apparent delight at seeing him made him feel very guilty about his thoughts.

  “He doesn’t often build cathedrals,” Lucio offered another excuse.

  “He may not build cathedrals, but he knows the sacred geometry quite well.” She told him. “If not, how do you explain the pyramid at Giza? Is it not the most perfectly aligned mathematical wonder in the world?”

  “You truly believe Mark Andrew built the Great Pyramid?” Lucio could not believe the story, he had heard from Apolonio concerning what Semiramis had told Merry Ramsay about Mark.

  “Are you saying you don’t believe it?” she asked as she sat down on her bed. She reached for a woven bag, pulled out a heavy hairbrush and began to brush her hair. “He may not have been called Mark Ramsay then, but he was there.”