Abaddon chuckled his peculiar laugh again as he made a pillow by gathering the moss into a lump under his head.
“I am the Angel of the Bottomless Pit. The original one,” he said tiredly. “I hold the Key of Life and of Death. I am hunting the Ancient One recently escaped thence.”
“Abaddon!” Meredith’s eyes widened with surprise. She had glimpsed him only briefly from a distance when he had ascended into the air over the city of New Babylon just before the flood. “You look… different. What happened to your feet? Did she do this to you?”
“No, I wish it were so. Then I would have someone else on whom to lay blame,” he said and turned onto his back. “I am afraid that I did it to myself trying to escape from my benefactor. Such is the irony of life. You have heard it said ‘do not cut off your nose to spite your face’.”
“That’s awful,” Meredith sympathized, relaxed a bit and resumed her seat on a rounded boulder near the pool. “Does it hurt? Is there anything I can do to help you? To repay you for saving me?”
“You really are a jewel, Meredith Ramsay,” he laughed again and the sound made her want to cry. “Come and sit by me at least. It is more comfortable than the stone and I will not harm you, nor will I touch you. I am a chaste being, though you may not believe that. My love is only for one, and you are not the one. Perhaps, we may share some sweet dreams together. I should like to change your perception of me. You think me cruel and so that may be true, but I am unsympathetic to the plight of mankind. Their troubles do not affect my heart. They are none of my affair and have wrought great havoc upon the earth. They are cruel and undeserving of the Grace they receive. I serve the gods; they do not.”
“But…” she looked about the cavern and then up at the entrance far above her head before considering his form again. He was not an ugly beast, but neither was he handsome. What she knew of his methods and deeds made it impossible to trust him. Here was the Prophet’s general. The same, who had unleashed his hideous scorpions of death upon the gentle elves of Il Dolce Mio’s kingdom. The same, who had killed Louis Champlain and then tortured him mercilessly in Switzerland. The same, who had cut Lucio from stem to stern and held his heart in his hand. No, she could never trust him, no matter what he did or said, but his words seemed sincere enough, and he professed no lies or excuses for himself.
“Come and rest and we will talk,” he patted the moss again. “You have nothing to fear from me, my Lady. You are above me, and I would fain touch your hand, nor let fall a single strand of hair from your head. Your Lord Adar has granted me a second chance, and the ability to avenge my honor. Please…”
Meredith complied slowly, but stayed as far from him as possible when she sat on the mossy bower.
“Tell me what you meant when you said you cut off your own feet to escape your benefactor,” she said.
“It is a long story with roots in the beginning of history,” he answered sadly.
“Sometimes the retelling of tragedy lessens its hold on us,” she said softly. “Sometimes it is good therapy to simply relate them to the ears of others.”
“Hmmmm.” Abaddon closed his eyes and she thought he had gone to sleep, but after a few seconds, he began to speak, and she listened in fascination as he told her his story from the beginning. He’d not progressed far before Adar showed up in his story, and she learned that the dark angel’s life was completely entwined in the life of Mark Andrew. They’d had run-ins again and again and always, Abaddon had come up on the short end of the stick. Lord Adar or Ninnib or Uriel had always been much more powerful than the dark angel and his meetings with Mark Andrew had never ended well. By the time he brought her up to the present time, she was weeping openly with him. She had learned a great deal more than she wanted to know about her beloved Mark Andrew, Marduk, Inanna and other familiar names. But the new knowledge assuaged her fears of the dark angel, and her own feelings of guilt at having hurt Mark lifted just a bit more. John Paul had never told her the story of Abaddon, but then she had never asked him. She wondered how many more such creatures had stories of the great Adar.
When he finished his story and invited her to rest with him again, she did not hesitate, nor did she flinch when he spread one of his soft wings over her against the chill in the cavern.
“There is much to be said of dreams,” Abaddon whispered close to her ear. “In dreams we may learn truths we never expected. Sleep in peace, Meredith, and I will watch over you here and in your dreams. Tomorrow, we will continue our searches.”
(((((((((((((
“I say she is right,” Jasmine spoke up from the far end of the banquet table. She rarely offered any sort of input in these debates, but in the absence of her husband and the fact that the debate was mainly concerned with his disappearance, and that of the King of the Center along with General Schweikert, she felt she had some measure of interest in the outcome.
Semiramis nodded briefly to her and focused her bright eyes on John Paul, who sat directly across the table from her.
“I am tired of sitting around here, John Paul,” Semiramis continued. “I must be getting home. Diana will be frantic by now. How is this possible? Tell me? Where has my son gone? Where is Lord Adar? What happened to him, and where is his son, the little King? I tell you someone is controlling these disappearances from the Abyss. One moment these people are with us then they are gone. For that matter, where is Armand de Bleu and the Knight, Christopher Stuart? Surely we should have heard from them by now, one way or another.”
“I completely understand your concerns, Your Grace,” John Paul raised one eyebrow at the irate queen. “I am very concerned about our missing members. Believe me, if I could do something, I would have done it by now.” He turned his gaze toward his son, Jozsef and his daughter-in-law, Anna. The Djinni’s granddaughter sat twirling a strand of her hair between her fingers absently. “Anna, have you tried the passages to the Abyss lately?”
“I try them every day, Grandfather,” she said. “The passages have become like mazes. Dead ends appear where none were before. The caverns seem almost alive, and I am unsure whether it is reality or illusion that makes them so. One moment you are here” she waved one hand about the table “and the next you are coming out somewhere else, but always you are returned here to the center.”
“Papa,” Jozsef spoke up. “I would request Anna not be sent out to investigate the caves again. I am worried about her safety. I would not want to lose her. If she is to go, then I want to go with her.”
“I don’t want to lose either of you,” John Paul grimaced.
He did not want to lose Jozsef, but he actually had more confidence in the Djinni’s granddaughter than he did his own gentle-natured son. “She doesn’t need to go any longer. We know some tremendous power is preventing us from leaving this place. And yes, I agree with Queen Semiramis. I believe much of what plagues us is illusion. Lemarik told me Sir Ramsay left the palace by way of one of his magick robes. If we, perhaps, make a concentrated effort… together, we might be able to do something about it, or at least, learn what is causing it.”
“Not what, but who,” Bari added his own grim words. “I truly believe the Queen Mother is behind it. She would take my father, if she could. As far as Aunt Dunya, if she were with him when the abduction occurred, she would take her as well. She has no feelings. She is nothing but evil.”
“We don’t know Omar was abducted, Bari.” Nicole picked up her glass and sipped a bit of water from the heavy crystal. “He was suicidal, in case you didn’t know. He could have jumped.”
“I don’t think so,” Bari objected. “He knows he cannot commit suicide. It would be fruitless.”
“He hasn’t exactly been in his right mind now, has he?” Lucia asked the son of the Prophet. “I tried talking with him only two days ago, and he was totally delusional.”
“I believe that problem was solved by Lord Lucifer,” Jasmine interjected. “I am told the Prophet was infested with several demons.”
“And that brings up a question I have wanted to ask.” Anna’s face lit up and she looked around the table at the curious faces gathered there. “Where did the demons go? I would not wish to run into them in the woods or along the beach.”
“They didn’t hang around,” Nicole told her. “They were creatures of the Abyss. That is where they went.”
“How do you know?” William von Hetz asked. “If we are stuck here, then how would screaming meemies get through where we cannot?”
“I know they are not here. Trust me.” Nicole repeated.
“She’s telling the truth, William,” Semiramis agreed. “They are no longer here. I went out looking for them, and they are not to be found in this plane.”
“In that case,” Bari perked up “then it would stand to reason we, too, should be able to leave this place.”
“I propose some of us should ride out and see if the passages are blocked to Lothian,” Marco Dambretti suggested. He sat next to his sister, Lucia. His presence here was something he deplored more than most of them. He wanted nothing more than to return to the First Gate, where he had long ago set up a nice existence for himself overseeing the work of the faeries assigned to earth’s rainforest jungles.
“No!” Lucia grabbed his arm. “Why would you want to go there, Marco?”
“Because it was my home after all,” he said and frowned at her. “I wouldn’t mind having a look around there if it might help us here.”
“We don’t belong there, Brother,” she hissed under her breath.
“What about Papa?” He asked her. “Don’t you have the slightest desire to see him again?”
“I thought you wanted to go home,” Lucia asked him in frustration.
“I do, but…” Marco stopped as John Paul caught his eye from across the table. The Lord of the First Gate had a hard time keeping these two in line. As long as they were in the First Gate with their mother, they were fine, but this situation was almost unbearable. He could not allow them to go back to the overworld…
“William,” John Paul stood up and addressed Konrad’s eldest son. “You and I will take Gregory and Nicholas and try to learn what is amiss in the caverns.”
“You mean you haven’t looked?” Bari stood as well.
“I haven’t gone there physically, no.”
“I’m going with you,” Bari told him.
“I’m going, too, Papa.” Jozsef stood with them.
Within the space of a few minutes, the small troupe scaled the stairs up the cliff side and rode away across the plain in front of Armand’s castle. They waved to Selwig, the Tuathan healer, as he sat dangling his legs over the crumbling outer wall, weaving dried herbs into long braids for his store of healing supplies. The powerful stallions carried them easily across the meadow and into the woods.
John Paul led the way with Jozsef, Nicholas and Gregory close behind him. He’d barely gotten them all inside the covering arms of the dense forest before they saw a rolling wall of inky blackness rushing toward them under the trees.
“Back!!” John Paul shouted at the top of his lungs and reined his steed about brutally, but there was nothing they could do. There were many more shouts as the darkness overtook them, and then, the sounds of stumbling horses, crashing bodies and cries for help as the riders and their mounts were completely and utterly lost in a darkness so complete, absolutely nothing was visible.
(((((((((((((
Mark lay on the small hospital bed with the rails up on both sides and the head raised just slightly. His hands were folded over his heart and his eyes were closed. The dim light in the room and the quiet sound of air conditioning made Lucio’s heart falter. This was the same infirmary ward in which he’d almost died when his appendix had played host to the damnable rock his Brothers had fed him. And here was the very same leather arm chair the Knight of Death had occupied, impatiently waiting for him to die. But no one was dying here now.
None of them were even sick as they surrounded the narrow bed. Mark Andrew had volunteered to try the method described by the d’Ornan brothers. Reuben planned to coach him through while the others stood witness to what occurred when he took a walk through the dream fields. Simon wanted to know if his body would remain with them, or if it would simply disappear. The Healer also wanted to make sure one of the elder members of the Order knew as much as possible about the process before they all tried it together.
Vanni sat behind Sir Barry’s drum set, playing out a haunting rhythm Simeon had showed him how to play. The son of the Golden Eagle picked it up quite easily and was now playing it even better than Simeon and Reuben put together. The brothers had explained that the boy, Johnny Bluesky, had taught them the drumming and neither of them had ever come close to replicating the wonderful sounds produced by the Shaman. Vanni, on the other hand, was immensely talented in the drumming department. Mark had protested that he needed no such props to effect the process, but the others had insisted.
Now he lay taking long breaths through his nose and exhaling through his mouth under Simeon direction. Reuben, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his hands folded together in his lap, telling the tale of a soaring eagle and a great bear, who wanted to fly. His soft voice had almost put Lucio to sleep several times already. Lucio already knew everything one could possibly know about flying… with or without wings.
Mark decided to focus on his eldest son, Lemarik, as he had last seen him in his lab in the underworld. If Lemarik could not be reached, he would attempt to find Konrad von Hetz with whom he had once shared a strong connection. If Konrad was unavailable, he would try to find Luke Andrew, then Luke Matthew and so on and so forth until he could find someone sleeping. As these thoughts were again playing in his head, he missed the transitional state between consciousness and dreaming. The sensation of falling made him snap his eyes open. Then he was drifting, no longer falling, slowly moving through a cool dark space. The air was fresh and smelled quite pleasant like a spring breeze on a clear morning at the shore.
A metallic zinging noise came softly to his ears and he recognized it as the very same noise that always accompanied his trips into death. At first, the noise almost made him panic, but he forced himself to remain calm. He was not dead, nor was he dying, though he was becoming aware of walking toward a bright orb of light that seemed slightly elevated, though not far away. The zinging continued until it began to break into a number of chords and then finally, a harmony of wondrous proportions replaced the monotonous sound. This, he did not recognize. The orb of light, which had been initially white, divided into the various colors and hues of the entire spectrum of visible light and seemed to be receding from him. The music continued to grow in pitch and timbre until it reached a comfortable volume. He walked a bit further, and the colors suddenly separated into forms vaguely resembling stylized doves or birds, which flew off in every direction.
This development startled him, and he stopped. Looking down, he could see velvet blackness below him as if he walked on perfectly transparent glass. In the darkness, endless cosmic forms stretched away with dizzying effects.
He closed his eyes and tried to gain some sort of perspective.
Reuben had warned him the initial walk might be very disconcerting and even nauseating at first. These were the dreams of others the two brothers had warned him would look like planets, stars and galaxies, depending on the personage. He opened his eyes and looked up this time. Again, he saw nothing, but the vastness of space and billions of stars, nebulae and planetary systems stretching away into infinity.
The music changed and voices added to its beauty. Mark was mesmerized by the sound of the angelic voices, but there were no angels in sight. It seemed the stars themselves were singing, but he could not fathom the words or the language. Every star was a son of God and these stars were the dreams of the sons of God.
“Great Scot,” he muttered and was surprised to hear his own voice. “How will I find anyone I know?”
In answer to his que
stion, his entire being was drawn quite suddenly toward what appeared to be a nearby planetary system with twelve planets and a golden yellow sun. He whirled past each planet and as he came near each one, he saw images of his Brothers appearing on the surfaces of the spheres. Depending on which of the Knights he saw, the number of satellites around them corresponded to the number of children, spouses, grandchildren or close relations. The outermost planet had no satellites, and he saw the face of Christopher Stewart shimmering in ghostly hues on the barren surface of the rocky sphere. Next, he saw one of Simon’s sons, but he passed by so quickly he had no time to fully recognize him before he saw another of the d’Ornan brothers. He came upon Lavon de Bleu surrounded by his uncle Armand, his aunt and his triplet nephews. He saw Konrad von Hetz around whom a ring reflecting Lucia’s likeness circled, and inside the ring, he saw William and Apolonio and Michey and a number of significant others in Konrad’s family. A very thin outer ring reflected the dim figure of Konrad, senior. The sight made Mark shudder. If Konrad knew that Lucia was in the underworld at the Djinni’s palace… but where was Konrad? No one knew. He came upon Louis, Simon and Barry along with their families, and then, at last, he was hurtling directly toward the great yellow ball at the center of the system. With a slight jolt, he realized this would be Edgard d’Brouchart at the center. Edgard was sleeping and all this was somehow a part of his dream world. Mark did not want to visit d’Brouchart’s dream, he was searching for Konrad. Konrad.
Just as he thought he would crash into Edgard’s ‘surface’, he veered aside and found himself back in the empty spaces between the dreams. Konrad was not asleep. He focused his thoughts on Lemarik, but continued to drift aimlessly. Perhaps Lemarik was not asleep either. He went down his list of persons. Luke Matthew, not asleep. Simon, not asleep. Louis, not asleep. Oriel, not asleep. Sophia, not asleep. Sophia’s Mark, not asleep. He stopped thinking forcefully. He’d played out his preferred list.
The Wayward Godking Page 12
