Thoth, the Atlantean

by Brendan Carroll

  The Knight of Death, taken completely off-guard landed hard on his back and grappled with the Grand Master, kicking and shouting frantically as the man threw his not inconsiderable weight into holding the slippery form beneath him.

  “What did you do, du Morte?!” D’Brouchart shouted in his face, but wrapped his big hands around Mark’s throat, making it impossible for him to answer the vague question.

  “Why?!” The big man shouted at him. “Why?!”

  Mark coughed and sputtered and squirmed out of his grasp. He scooted away quickly while the Master scrabbled clumsily to his feet, using the rocking chair for support.

  “Whattar ye doin’?!” Mark finally spat the words and clutched his bruised neck.

  “I should have killed you when I had the chance!” D’Brouchart advanced on him.

  “Ye canna kill me, Edgard!” Mark backed around the bed.

  “I can make you suffer, you unbearable imbecile!”

  “Now, Edgard, ye shud calm down and tell me wot is tribblin’ ye!” Mark realized he was on the wrong side of the bed… away from the door. He leaped onto the mattress and bounded across the springy platform. The Master turned and flung himself at him bodily. Mark stepped aside just in time and Edgard’s momentum took him crashing into the nightstand. Vases, glasses, water pitcher, lamp, clock, everything imaginable, exploded in all directions as the Master’s body splintered the antique furnishing. He wound up on the floor flailing about on the carpet.

  “Please! Your Grace! Whattar ye doin’?!” Mark asked him again and looked about in panic. He had no weapon and the Grand Master had a dagger, a Scottish dirk that Mark Andrew had only recently, unfortunately, presented to him as a gift.

  “It is too late for you to beg, du Morte!” Edgard climbed to his feet again. He was still between the Knight of Death and the door. He pulled the dirk from the scabbard. The blade was over a foot long, carved with splendid Celtic designs in brass on steel. It had no guard at the silver studded black handle and was razor sharp on both sides. Mark could already feel it entering his flesh as the Master advanced on him again with an insane gleam in his light blue eyes. “I’m going to gut you and cut you in half and then you will know how it feels!”

  “’ow wot feels?!” Mark Andrew shouted at him to no avail.

  “How it feels to lose half of yourself!” The man bellowed.

  “I dunna understand!” Mark backed toward the window. It was a long way to the ground, but preferable to a good old-fashioned disemboweling of a bright summer’s day. He felt the window ledge behind him and gripped the window frame in both hands. The breeze chilled his wet body.

  “But you will!!” Edgard perceived what he was about to do and ran at him, pointing the blade at his stomach.

  Mark put one foot on the window sill and flipped himself out into the ether. His one thought was to get his feet down and his head up. His legs would grow back, but his neck would not.

  He heard himself screaming and then felt a terrible jarring crash that took his breath away, but it was not the bone-crushing blow he had expected to drive his spine into his brain, but something rather more comfortable.

  “Owwww!” He ended the wail and opened his eyes. John Paul stood holding him in his arms like a small child.

  “Papa!” The Knight smiled at him brightly.

  “John!” Mark Andrew smiled at him in return. “I’m roight glad t’ see ye!”

  “Mark Andrew Ramsay!” Meredith’s voice made him turn his head to look over John Paul’s shoulder. She stood behind her son, holding the reins of two white horses. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Meredith!” He grinned at her idiotically. “Tis a pleasant surproise!”

  “Top o’ th’ mornin’ t’ ye, Andy!” Paddy jumped up into view, tipping his bowler to him at the same time. Selwig came running joyously across the lawn to greet the clurichaun. He paid no heed whatsoever to his new Master’s odd predicament.

  The answer to Meredith’s question bellowed out the open bedroom window above them.

  “Great Day in the Morning!!” D’Brouchart’s voice drifted out across the serene meadow, startling a covey of doves and family of partridges. Two does grazing in the thick grass looked up at the disturbance and bounded away toward the forest.

  Finished.

  Quotations taken from the King James Version Bible, the New Testament and the Old Testament, the Revelation of St. John, Jude, Mark, Luke, Matthew. The Testimony of the Mad Arab and the Necronomicon. The Emerald Tablets of Thoth, the Atlantean.