Thoth, the Atlantean

by Brendan Carroll

  “We have all had a hard time with the ladies, Brother,” Simon told him sadly. “I do not think looks have anything to do with that.”

  “You are probably right.” Lucio nodded.

  “Here.” Simon got up and crossed the room. He handed the paper to the Italian. “You call her.”

  “What?!” Lucio shoved the chair away from the desk. “No! No! I can’t do that!”

  “Why not? You can be my intermediary,” the Healer pleaded with him. “My break icer.”

  “Break icer?” Lucio frowned at the paper on the desk. “You mean ice breaker?”

  “Yes. Yes. Whatever. Just do this for me, Brother. It will be better.” Simon’s expression was irresistible. The Italian could not remember the last time the Healer had asked him to do something for him. He was trying hard to remember it… anything… anything other than the ride on his horse as a very small boy. Nothing!

  Lucio leaned forward and looked at the number. No doubt a cellular phone number, but who could tell these days? Too many numbers were floating around in the world.

  “Give me the phone,” he said and regretted it immediately as Simon thrust the cold, plastic phone into his hand. “Do you want to speak to her?” He looked up at the Healer.

  “No! Yes! No, no. Not yet. Just inquire about her health and the message she left with Louis Champlain. She knew him. She had to know him. How else could she have called him?” Simon was speaking more to himself now than to Lucio and he was edging toward the door as Lucio punched in the numbers and stifled yet another yawn.

  A man answered the call. Lucio almost dropped the phone before speaking into it. He lowered his voice and spoke in French.

  “Hello, Monsieur de Goth?” The blood drained from his face. He did not want the man to recognize his voice.

  “Oui`. Who is this, please?”

  “I have a message to call this number in response to a call from Mademoiselle Catharine de Goth.” Lucio slapped his open palm on his forehead. He was really screwing this up. Now he had identified himself as Simon.

  “Really?” The man sounded amused and Lucio's cheeks burned with embarrassment.

  “Oui`! Is the mademoiselle in?”

  “Oui`, the mademoiselle is in.”

  “May I please speak with her?” Lucio knew that his French was not good enough to pass himself off as a Frenchman.

  “One moment please…. May I say who is calling, Monsieur?” He sounded as if he would laugh.

  Lucio fell silent. He had not thought this part out sufficiently.

  “Monsieur, are you there?”

  “Oui`! I am here, Monsieur! Please put the Mademoiselle on the line. I believe she will know who is calling.”

  “One moment.”

  Lucio slumped in the chair and then turned to motion to Simon that he had gotten through. The door to the library was standing open and the Healer was nowhere to be seen.

  “Santa Maria!” he muttered and then shook his head.

  “Hello?” A very hesitant female voice came on the line.

  “Mademoiselle de Goth?”

  “Monsieur Apolonio?”

  Lucio choked and coughed and almost dropped the phone.

  “No! No, I am a friend of Simon,” he said and his voice had gone up two octaves above his normal voice.

  “Simon?” She sounded doubtful.

  “Yes, a mutual friend of both Simon and Louis.”

  “Ahh. Did he receive my message?” she asked and he almost swooned at the sound of her voice. The fall down the stairs must have given him brain damage.

  “Si`! I mean, oui`!” he reverted to French.

  “Are you sure you are not Monsieur Apolonio?”

  “Quite sure. My name is… unimportant,” he told her.

  “Is Simon there? May I speak with him?”

  “He asked me to call because he wanted to verify your identity.”

  “Ahh. And how will we do that, Monsieur?”

  Lucio could see her face in front of him now. He felt he could almost touch her cheek, smell her hair.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but instead, he began to repeat an ancient bit of Egyptian poetry. He could hear his own voice speaking the ancient tongue of the people of Ra.

  “Thou beautiful one! My heart’s desire is to procure for you your food as your husband.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “My arm resting upon your arm. You have changed me by your love.”

  “Monsieur?”

  “Thus say I in my heart, in my soul, at my prayers: I lack my commander tonight, I am as one dwelling in a tomb.”

  Lucio clamped his hand over his mouth. What was he doing? What was he saying? He spun the chair about. He was still alone in the room. He clamped the phone against his ear painfully and was amazed to hear her speaking in the same language.

  “Be you but in health and strength, then the nearness of your countenance sheds delight, by reason of your well-being, over a heart, which seeks you with longing.”

  He sat speechless as she quoted the last lines of the ancient poem.

  “How are you, Lucio?” she asked him in perfect Italian.

  “Melodia,” he used her other name and his heart fell to his feet.

  “Where is Simon?” she asked him.

  “He is here with me, well, not exactly with me, but he is hereabouts,” he spoke to her in Italian. “How did you know?”

  “I know many things, Lucio,” she said wistfully. “I know that you miss me.”

  “Oh, I was just toying with you.” He laughed nervously. “One has to be careful about mysterious messages sent by mysterious ladies to equally mysterious men under mysterious circumstances.”

  “You are trying to protect your Brother.”

  “I would do that if I thought it necessary.”

  “But surely the jig is up as they say.” She laughed. “We do not have to play games. How are Mr. Andrews and his brother?”

  “They are well.” Lucio stared at the open door. If Mark Andrew caught him talking to this woman, he would surely die a slow death over an open flame.

  “I am looking forward to seeing you again, Lucio,” she told him. “When my son is ready to speak with me, please have him call me. Goodbye, my love.”

  The connection was broken abruptly. Lucio sat holding the phone as if frozen in place. The instrument began to squeal in his ear and he dropped it. He got up slowly and went in search of Simon. Mark Andrew would kill him and then Simon would kill him and then Edgard d’Brouchart would kill him again and after that, Mark Andrew would kill him again and…

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  Catharine flung the cell phone on the bed and hugged herself like a little girl, spinning around in the room from sheer joy. She had not felt such emotion in so long that she had forgotten that the state existed. Her son! He would call. She would see him. And her grandchildren. And the Italian. Lucio! A surprise, to learn that he would protect her son personally, but the call was not unexpected.

  She had known that she would see him again, somewhere, somehow, but their flight to Germany and subsequent endeavors to make the old castle into the semblance of a home had dragged her down again as they once more went into hiding. She was sick of hiding. Her phone call to the Villa had epitomized her desire to be found at last, for better or worse. The cell phone could be easily traced. If the Templars wanted to do so, they would already know exactly where she was and who was with her, Aristoni, but no Knight of Death had appeared at the door. Instead, she had succeeded in killing two birds with one stone. She had made contact with her son and Lucio without dying for her troubles. Of course, there was still the possibility that, when Edgard made his final decision, she might face a terrible fate; there were worse things than dying!

  She stopped twirling about and gripped the bedpost to steady herself. Her head was spinning. He had quoted from the ancient tomes in the ancient language to her. He knew! And she had made the right choice. Finally, things were going her w
ay.

  Leaving her packing undone, she rushed from the room on her way to the far side of the gloomy old estate. Aristoni had stationed himself in another wing, preferring solitude for his work, hoping that the separation between them would be sufficient to allow one, if not both of them, to escape should danger come to the castle. Her bare feet made no sound on the cold stone floor as she ran along the corridors and stairs toward her brother’s rooms. He was not there. He had gone to make the arrangements for their passage to Scotland, but he would not leave her alone for very long.

  She pulled the key to his door from the chain on her neck and inserted it in the brass lock. The room was stuffy. He had left a large log burning in the fireplace. Aristoni preferred warmth to cold and the heat inside his apartments was oppressive. She left the tall doors open to allow some cooler air in as she looked frantically about the messy room for the object of her desire. A brass urn of exceptional beauty sat on a pedestal near one of the tall windows. A dried bouquet of lilies drooped from the top of the vase.

  Catharine carefully removed the wilted flowers and laid them on the floor. She reached into the urn and pulled out the linen wrapped bundle secreted in the bottom and sat down on the floor beside the flowers. She would have to hurry. This was a most reckless endeavor. Always before she had planned these little secret communions with much more care, but she had to make haste or lose the connection she had forged with the Italian. She had to act while his voice was still ringing in her head and his face was still clear in her inner vision.

  She unrolled the object in the cloth and placed it in front of her on the worn rug. The hollow eyes gleamed dull red in her presence. It knew she was there… as always. She placed both hands on its smooth surface and closed her eyes, thinking only of Lucio Dambretti.

  “Thou art beneficent in decree and speech, the favored one of the Great Company of the Gods, and the beloved of the Little Company of the Gods. His sister hath protected him, and hath repulsed the fiends, and turned aside calamities. She uttered the spell with the magical power of her mouth,” she recited passages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

  “Her tongue was perfect, and it never halted at a word. Beneficent in command and word was Isis, the woman of magical spells, the advocate of her brother. She sought him untiringly, she wandered round and round about this earth in sorrow, and she alighted not without finding him. She made light with her feathers, she created air with her wings, and she uttered the death wail for her brother. She raised up the inactive members of whose heart was still, she drew from him his essence, she made an heir, she reared the child in loneliness, and the place where he was not known, and he grew in strength and stature, and his hand was mighty in the House of Keb. The Company of the Gods rejoiced, rejoiced, at the coming of Horus, the son of Osiris, whose heart was firm, the triumphant, the son of Isis, the heir of Osiris!” The image of her beloved rose before her vision like a statue of marble.

  “O, my beloved, hear my call and lend your ears to my words. I come to thee in the dark of night and in the light of day I will behold your shining face and we will embrace in the bonds of love eternal and everlasting. Your Kingdom to my Kingdom and my Kingdom to your Kingdom. Remember me, my love and watch for me!” When she had finished the invocation to Isis and added her own invocation to Lucio Dambretti, she felt quite satisfied that she had made a connection to the Italian that would guide her to him wherever he might go. She put everything away carefully, arranging the flowers so that her brother would not be suspicious and went back to finish her packing. Now she would have to think of some way to relieve herself of her brother’s company when they reached Scotland in order to make her appearance without his presence to influence the outcome.

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  Il Dolce Mio sat atop his castle, staring up at the stars above his head. His small face still remarkably childlike yet filled now no longer with wonder, but with knowledge. His forehead crinkled into a slight frown.

  “So!” he said after a moment of contemplating the heavens. “You believe that the son of your son is the great beast spoken of in our father’s books?”

  “Yes. Yes. Yes.” Lemarik nodded his head vigorously. His beard waggled on his chest.

  “The beast of the Apocalypse?” Il Dolce Mio lowered his head and looked at his brother from under his dark brows.

  “Yes, my brother.” The Mighty Djinni raised both eyebrows and then produced a roll of parchment paper and a long goose quill from the sleeve of his purple robe. “I have been doing some research on the subject.”

  “Ahh. Research. Yes! A scholarly approach to such a problem as this,” Il Dolce Mio said gravely. “And what have you learned?”

  Lemarik unrolled the paper. It was covered with numbers and letters. Blocked and laid out in columns. “You will see that I have employed the ancient numerology of the Hebrews to decipher the meaning of these names. First, I used the Hebrew equivalents of the names and came up with…” He pointed the tip of the quill to a morass of scratched out lines and scribbles. “Nothing. Then I applied the same method to the name using the more modern letters ascribed to it. And again… nothing.” He moved the quill to a second mass of scratched over letterings and numbers. “Then I used the ancient spellings of the second name and, alas, nothing again!” He pointed out a third mistake covered by bold striations. “As you can see, I was becoming quite aggravated by then. But, look! When I applied the second name in modern letterings with the ancient numbers, I found that the name Joel Isaac Grenoble equals 666. The number of the name and the number of the beast, just as prophesied in the ancient text.”

  “Ahhh.” Il Dolce Mio leaned over the paper. “I see, but is this all you have to designate your grandson and my nephew as the beast? Surely, you are making a great leap in logic. Many such letter and number combinations could be found in other names of other people.”

  “That is true,” Lemarik agreed. “But you have not met this one, my brother. He is not what he appears to be. My son is convinced that it has been his separation from his mother and father and the association with the Ancient Evil that has made his mind muddled. I am not ready to believe this. I think that he knows exactly what he is doing.”

  “Ahhh.” The King nodded. “And what led you to that conclusion?”

  “He has knowledge that he should not have. He knows of things to which he has no connection. If he has been isolated, which he has, from his parents and from the rest of us, he simply should not know these things. Even my beautiful son, Omar, had to study and read and reflect in order to know things. He is not old enough to know what he knows.”

  “And what does he know?” The King narrowed his eyes.

  “Many things. I have come to tell you of this because I know that you are concerned with the affairs of our father’s life in the otherworld. As above, so below.”

  “Yes! The words of the Great Hermes!” Il Dolce Mio nodded. “Is it true that my father is going on a long journey to recover the words of the Great Hermes?”

  “Yes. Where did you hear this?”

  “I saw the Lord of the First Gate in the wood last night,” Il Dolce Mio told him in a low voice. “I was quite frightened out of my wits. He is a wonderful creature indeed.”

  “Ahhh. Yes. Ohhh. Nanna. The Lord of the First Gate! He visited the overworld last night as well,” Lemarik affirmed. “I came upon the revelries in the wood. A most curious spectacle. And there was my brother and my uncle and the son of the Golden Eagle and the granddaughter of the Healer. Mmmm. The Healer.” Lemarik closed his eyes and hugged himself, shuddering to his toes. “It was most exhilarating, but I did not show myself.”

  “Vannistephetti was there?” Il Dolce Mio frowned.

  “Yes. Yes. Yes.” Lemarik drew his robe about him.

  “That would explain why he asked me about the virgin and the Anu!”

  “He has seen Nanna before,” Lemarik agreed.

  “It does not bode well that the watchers are wandering from their p
laces! If all of them are gone, who will watch the Abyss?”

  “That is a good question, my brother,” Lemarik said and his dark eyes glittered in the light of the moon. “A very good question.”

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  “Are you telling me that you found all of this on the Internet?” Barry of Sussex rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and frowned at Lavon de Bleu wearily.

  He had been having a very hard time with Nicholas and Gregory Sinclair-Ramsay and Michey had called him half a dozen times complaining that Apolonio was staying at Lucio’s apartment and would not come home. Gregory was being suppressed by his older brother. Nicholas did not want Gregory to attend the masses and refused to attend himself. Mark Andrew and the Grand Master had told him to be patient with Nicholas and allow him some time to adjust. They were sure that the older of the two sons of John Paul would come around eventually, but Barry thought otherwise.

  Nicholas argued with the instructors concerning everything from world history to mathematics. He had his own ideas and most of them were quite foreign, if not totally shocking to the Templars at the Villa. He was adept at Geometry, but had no use for Algebra. He told the instructor, one of d’Brouchart’s Templars imported from the Isle of Ramsay, that only Geometry mattered and all else was superfluous fluff. He told them quite adamantly that their entire view of ancient history was completely wrong. He was also affecting the other boys that Barry had recruited to fill his scanty classrooms in astounding ways. Nicholas was developing a cult following right in the midst of the Templar headquarters. It could not be tolerated! But what was worse, he had taken to physically subduing his brother whenever the younger Sinclair-Ramsay showed any inclination to attend the services at the chapel. Barry had found Gregory actually tied in his bed on this particular morning. Nicholas had admitted that it had been the only humane way to keep his brother from being corrupted by the teachings of the Catholic Church. When Barry had reminded him that his late father had been a priest and prophet, Nicholas had laughed and told him that John Paul had certainly been a priest and prophet, but not of Catholic faith!