by Bob Mayer
The sun was setting on the grey day, lanterns being held by some of the crowd along the shoreline, excited about the arrival of the second vessel. The six Centre Suisse were on the quay, waiting. The Pinta was only a quarter-mile away and closing in.
“Where has the Pinta been?” Geert asked. He was beginning to get twitchy, the Guard’s threat resonating his fear. Mac suspected Geert actually was a monk, with little military experience despite his bravado earlier about life or death.
Mac wished his headache would go away. A figure pushed his way through the edge of the crowd and it parted, allowing free access. Dressed in a brown robes, the white haired Franciscan even managed to get the Swiss Guard to step aside. He held up a crucifix in his left hand as Columbus’ small boat bounced up against the rocks of the quay. The priest’s right hand moved in the sign of the cross, blessing the explorer. He had a leather purse at his side, the strap over his shoulder.
Columbus stood, a bit unsteadily, one of the rowers reached out and grabbed his leg to keep him from falling over. Columbus gave a slight bow in the direction of the Franciscan and climbed out of the boat.
A loud splash diverted everyone. The Pinta had just dropped anchor.
Such was history, Mac thought. If the Pinta had arrived first, perhaps Martin Pinzon would be celebrated at the discoverer of the ‘New World’. It was rather amazing that separated by the storm for weeks, both ships had managed to arrive at the same place, on the same day, just hours apart.
The Swiss surrounded Columbus as the crowd surged forward, asking, begging, demanding information about loved ones.
Columbus could care less. Protected by the Swiss, they bulled their way to the main avenue leading to the Friary.
No one followed, their focus on the ships. Boats were being launched from shore, heading to both, rowed by locals.
“Go after him?” Geert asked.
Mac had no clue. The last mission had been easy: either Raleigh’s head got chopped off or not. This one? What was the variable? Columbus’ report? But the word of the discovery was already out; the two weeks stay in Lisbon had done that. Columbus wasn’t that important any more, now that the Pinta was here. Pinzon knew how to navigate to the—the download popped up some information about Pinzon causing Mac to re-evaluate.
Mac had started out in the Army as EOD: Explosive Ordnance Disposal. A job in high demand. He’d gone from EOD into Special Forces as an engineer, more commonly referred to as a demo man. He’d been the best but that hadn’t been the only thing that had attracted the attention of the Nightstalkers. Yes, he could take apart IED and booby-traps and he could build even better ones, but the key to both emplacing them, or finding them, was understanding the target. It was why he was the best: he wasn’t as smart as Eagle, but he was analytical.
Geert was antsy. “Once Columbus is in the Friary, it will be very hard to see him.”
“He’s already back,” Mac said. “He’s written his report. We can assume he’s already told King John everything he discovered in the New World. Here, now, the Swiss will take the report to Rome where it will be published. That’s a done deal. The New World has been discovered.
“Then why are we here?” Geert wanted to know.
Mac was staring at the priest on the quay. “Who is that?”
“Friar de Cisneros,” Geert said.
“Why didn’t he go back to the Friary with Columbus?”
Geert shrugged. “To bless the rest of the sailors as they come ashore, I suppose.”
De Cisneros was looking at the Pinta. There was something in the way he stood, his demeanor, which stirred Mac’s personal demons.
A piece of the download concerning the significance of this return from the New World finally clicked into place.
“What is it?” Geert asked, sensing the change.
“When you look at Friar de Cisneros,” Mac asked, “what do you see?”
Geert was puzzled. “A Franciscan. What do you see?”
“Guilt.”
Thermopylae, Greece, 480 B.C.
“IT IS CONSIDERED WISE TO BE leery of strangers bearing gifts,” Scout said. “I’d say you top that list of strangers.”
Pandora had a wooden box in one hand. The box was square. Roughly fifteen inches to a side. In the other hand she had the Naga. The storm raged offshore, occasionally lighting the field of death, but it was stalled.
“Ah, some say it of me,” Pandora said, “but the Trojans truly learned it almost a thousand years ago.”
“That was just a wood horse,” Scout said. “You unleashed horrible plagues on mankind.”
“You’re wrong,” Pandora said, as she put the box down on the armor covering the chest of an Immortal. “There is a very important distinction to be made. I did not open the pithos. It was a man who opened it, even though he had been adequately warned. That is where the blame should lie.”
“Splitting hairs,” Scout said.
“Hah. You want to split hairs, as you say? Then who invented the plagues that were unleashed? Not I. Shouldn’t the blame fall there? To the originator of all?”
“God?”
Pandora shrugged. “In this age, they believe in more than one God. Which makes more sense than a single one. Gives people someone to blame regarding various things. Someone to pray to for various things. More complex, yet simpler in a way. Rather than jamming everything into one. That gets confusing, don’t you think?”
“You’re supposed to be molded by the Gods themselves,” Scout said.
“As was Adam. But then Eve came from him; just a rib. In the faith in that book, women aren’t even given the honor of being direct from God, but rather are just an offshoot of man.”
“Enough theology,” Scout said. “You’re going to show me what’s in the box, otherwise you wouldn’t have brought it. So show.”
“I told you I would bring a token of good faith,” Pandora said. “But not yet. Patience. I told you I would also teach you. You could not see me the last time we met. But I could see you. Do you wonder at that?”
“You own a pair of night vision goggles,” Scout said.
“I don’t know what that is,” Pandora said. “I see with the Sight. You can too. You just haven’t been taught how. It comes and goes for you. Much like the lightning. But if you master it, you can see all the time. Feel the disturbances around you.”
“Like you?” Scout said.
Scout was startled as Pandora’s voice whispered from behind, close to her ear. “The time for humor is long past, my dear.”
Scout started to turn, but a hand was on her shoulder.
“You didn’t see me move, because there was no lightning,” Pandora said. “You didn’t hear me move, even though there was no thunder. But I moved. The sight is not the eyes. Hearing true is not the ears.” The hand slid up to Scout’s neck, shockingly cold, as if no blood ran in Pandora’s veins.
Scout tensed, remembering Luke’s embrace and how he tried to choke the life out of her. But the cold hand continued up her skin until it rested on the back of her head. She felt Pandora’s fingers squeezing.
“Here.” Pandora’s voice was seductive. Not a mother at all; more intimate than a lover. “Here is where you see. Where you hear. From the inside out. Not from the outside in. You reach out with the Sight. To all around you. You are part of it. Part of the world around you.”
Scout tried to hold on to Nada, to one of his Yada’s, but this was far beyond what he’d ever faced, even in death.
Pandora’s voice continued, enticing, the words no longer coherent, but going into Scout, into the place where Pandora’s hand cradled her head. A small, tiny part of her that was still Scout realized that Pandora was no longer speaking aloud. That the words, more than words, were flowing into her from the hand, from the essence of Pandora.
Scout’s knees grew weak and buckled. Only her grip on the Naga staff kept her from collapsing.
Pandora abruptly withdrew her hand and Scout gasped at the disconnect. She fe
lt a hole inside herself, one she hadn’t even known was there.
Pandora was once more in front of her, standing behind the box. “Enough for now. Are you beginning to understand?”
Scout took several deep breaths. “I don’t—” she paused. “Someone is coming.”
“Good,” Pandora hissed. “Very good. You see him before he can see you. Very good. Who is it?”
Scout closed her eyes, confused. “A sword? A dagger?”
“Good. He is called Xerxes Dagger,” Pandora said to Scout. “A dangerous man. An assassin.”
Lightning flashed, illuminating a slender man, weaving over the bodies, feet lightly touching down, approaching at a run. He halted ten feet short of the two of them.
“Curious,” he said. Not an inch of skin was revealed, his body, his head, wrapped in black cloth. He wore no armor. Just a sword on a belt on the right side and a long knife on his left. His eyes peered through a narrow slit in the cloth. “The King wonders where you have gone,” he said to Pandora, but he was looking at Scout.
“I gather information,” Pandora said.
“And in the box?” Xerxes Dagger asked. He was known by no name and no other title in the court. When Xerxes gave him an order, it was considered completed as soon as it was uttered. And the orders always involved killing someone.
“A present for my friend,” Pandora said.
“And your friend? Who is she?”
Scout didn’t like the way he was looking at her. She realized she wasn’t a person to Xerxes Dagger. There were no other people to someone like him. Everyone and everything was just part of a game in his mind, existing only for his amusement. His reality was himself.
Pandora ignored him. “Are you my friend?” she asked Scout.
Scout fingered the haft of her Naga. She wished Nada were here. Or Roland. Or Moms.
“Yes,” Scout said.
Xerxes Dagger asked once more: “And in the box?”
“You know what’s in the box,” Pandora said. “Else you would not be here.”
Xerxes Dagger shifted his gaze from Scout to Pandora. “You have been troublesome ever since you arrived in Court. You’ve made a few good guesses. But your map of the pass was wrong. And I wonder about what you did in that town we sacked in Macedonia. The King fears intrigue. He has men searching for the baby you saved.”
Scout turned from him to Pandora. “What baby?”
“Hush,” Pandora said. “They will never find him,” she said to Xerxes Dagger.
“When this battle is over and the King releases my leash, I will find the baby. Your efforts will have been in vain. No one escapes me.”
Pandora sighed. Despite the dark, Scout could clearly see her now. She was older than she’d looked in the lightning glimpses. Their eyes locked. A hint of a smile on Pandora’s cold face.
Scout spun to the right, bringing the Naga up and level, blade swinging toward the Dagger.
Except he wasn’t there. Moving faster than her blade, he ducked low, drew his dagger and lunged, the blade pointed straight at her heart. Scout fought to counter-act her own momentum, knowing she was going to be too slow, that she was going to die, just as she’d killed those two—
Pandora’s Naga sliced down through the Dagger’s arm.
The blade, and severed hand, dropped, but the Dagger wasn’t stopped so easily. He twisted, falling to his side, rolling, pulling his sword out with his surviving hand.
And then both Naga’s pinned him to the ground. Blood frothed on his lips as he struggled.
“Hold him,” Pandora said, withdrawing her Naga.
Scout leaned on the haft of her Naga, the blade through the Dagger, through the corpse underneath him and into the ground. He reached up with both arms, forgetting he was missing a hand. His one hand grabbed the shaft of Scout’s Naga and he pulled himself up several inches. If he’d have had the other hand, Scout believed he would have come all the way up and strangled her.
Pandora knelt next to him, a finger on his chest, halting his upward progress. “You are not human. You are an animal. Your kind is the scourge of worlds.”
Xerxes Dagger tried to spit blood at her, working his jaws, his mouth, but he died before he could finish the task. His body slid back to the ground.
Pandora stood.
Scout did the same. “You used me to distract him.”
“Yes. We have skills, you and I, but he had skills too. Animals like him? One on one? Direct combat? I’m not sure I could have taken him. The Sight doesn’t work on his kind.”
“And what kind is he?” Scout asked.
“There are those,” Pandora said, “who have a different kind of sight. Who are not of any world or time.”
Scout looked down at the body. “Is he from the Shadow? I’ve fought those before.”
“Those were amateurs,” Pandora said.
Scout’s head snapped up. “How do you know that?”
Pandora held up the hand in which she’d cradled Scout’s head. “I saw things in you. I saw you kill in that other time. But you almost failed. You let them get close.”
“Not big on compliments are you?” Scout asked. “Reminds me of my mother.”
“Ah, poor dear.” Pandora shook her head. “You know nothing of your real mother.”
Great, Scout thought. This was getting worse than Luke, I am your father.
“That’s good news,” Scout said. “Always hoped I was adopted. Since you want to teach me, tell me of the Shadow.”
“You’re not ready.”
“You don’t know what the Shadow is.” And Scout sensed the flash of anger from Pandora before she could suppress it.
But Pandora was already moving on. She leaned over and opened the lid of her box. Then reached in and lifted a head by the hair. A savage red line indicated where it had been severed from the body. A stump of white protruded from the bottom; the spine.
It was not as shocking as it might be in another scenario, given they were standing on a field of dead.
“Anyone I should know?” Scout asked.
“Good question,” Pandora said. “I don’t know what you know. Do you know who is to betray the Spartans later this morning? Lead the Persians around them on a goat trail in the mountains?”
Scout knew, but if she revealed she knew, then . . .
“I assume it’s the head you’re holding,” Scout said. “How did you know?”
Pandora dropped the head into the box and kicked shut the lid. “He went to Xerxes last evening. Ephialtes. A local. Wanted a reward. Told mighty Xerxes that he knew a path. A narrow path. Through the mountains and then back to the coast. Behind the Spartans.”
That was the name in the download. Ephialtes, a goat herder, who went to the Persians with word of the trail. Like Quisling, Benedict Arnold, and others, his name would become synonymous with traitor in Greece for future generations.
Apparently not any more.
Scout felt a tremor and for a moment thought earthquake, but realized it was inside her. A ripple. Had she already failed? History had already changed in this detail, inside this bubble, via this severed head in the box.
“The Persians will win regardless,” Pandora said, as if sensing her thoughts. “Even without—” she tapped the box with the tip of her bloody Naga. “It’s simply a matter of time.”
“But time is short,” Scout said.
Pandora smiled as lightning flickered. “Perhaps it’s already too late for you? I can tell you are upset by this.” Once more she indicated the box. “Which means you thought Ephialtes would lead the Persians to envelope the Spartans. That it’s the way history records events in your timeline.”
“What do you mean?” Scout asked. “You’re not of this timeline?”
“I told you,” Pandora said. “I am timeless. You could be too.”
I’m outta here soon, Scout hoped. She had to hold on to that.
“The Persians will win regardless,” Pandora repeated. “The battle. But the war? No. They wil
l lose. Leonidas and his men have held long enough. For both the Greeks and for you. And for me.”
“How is that?” Scout asked.
“I told you,” Pandora said. “I’ve already accomplished my mission here and now.”
“The baby.”
“Yes.”
“Who is it?”
“That’s not important,” Pandora said. “It’s who comes forth from the baby’s lineage in one-hundred-and-twenty-four years according to the Prophecy.”
Scout had never particularly cared for math, and given they were B.C., not A.D., Scout took a moment to figure it:. “356 B.C.,” Scout said. “Alexander the Great was born that year.”
“And who is that?” Pandora asked. “It sounds as if the Prophecy in this regard was quite on target. The Great? What will he do that is so great? Will he stop men like that?” She indicated the Dagger’s body. “Will he stop war? Will he put mankind on a better path?”
Not exactly, Scout thought, shutting down the spigot on Alexander’s various conquests. All of which ended up accomplishing what exactly in the long run, except etching his place in the history books? His empire did not last past his death.
“And what of your mission here and now?” Pandora pressed. “What will it accomplish?”
“I don’t know,” Scout answered honestly.
Pandora pointed at her box. “Perhaps I’ve done it for you?” She looked to the left. “Dawn beckons. Despite this,” once more she indicated the box, “your Spartans die today. But then the Persians lose anyway. How futile. Take your King back to his home. Let him, at least, live.”
Pandora faded back into the darkness, leaving Scout alone in the field of the dead. She went back, climbing the wall, not bothering to sneak in. As she clambered down, Leonidas was waiting for her, his sword drawn.
Scout didn’t react as Leonidas pressed the edge of his sword against her neck.
“Speak the truth.”
“I don’t know the truth,” Scout said.
