“Burning vapors from hell,” Nergal muttered and dragged his boot across a stone before looking up. Hundreds of Huber’s children were crawling in the rocks above the cavern. His stallion reared and pawed the ground nervously a few yards away. He mounted the horse quickly, and then kicked him to a gallop as he turned for home. Several of the spiderlings leapt from the rocks and he knocked them away from the horse’s neck as they sped toward the open meadow.
(((((((((((((
Mark tossed a handful of grass into the fire that Lemarik had built near the road leading up to the old quarry. No one was left on the island. Not a single inhabitant was found in any of the ruined villages. Almost everything had been obliterated by the flood. It appeared the ocean had washed over the island, but not with the devastating force it could have had. Apparently, the force had been sufficient to either set the islanders adrift in boats or drown them in their beds. The buildings had fallen from their foundations, but they had not been washed completely away.
“I would surmise the quarry may have survived the waters,” Schweikert commented as he chewed on a stick of beef jerky scavenged from the ruins of a small grocery store. “It looks like there are definite water marks about halfway up the walls of the standing buildings. I would also surmise the water simply swelled up, inundating the coast and the island interior like an exceptionally high tide, but not like a tsunami.”
“The forces of nature are always full of surprises,” Lemarik agreed and pulled on the long stem of his pipe. The white smoke drifted into the air above their heads. “If the quarry flooded, it will still be filled with water. A great lake would have formed there. There are some small pools scattered here and there, but most have evaporated.”
“The islanders probably floated away on the tide,” Luke said as he tore into a plastic bag full of dried fruit.
“An extremely high tide, yes. That might be plausible,” Mark agreed and looked up at the brilliant stars overhead. These were not his stars. These were alien to him. He preferred the Northern Constellations. “They must have been terrified.”
“I’m sure they were,” the General murmured. He eyed Luke Andrew cautiously, unsure of whether this one might be friend or foe. He remembered quite well how close Mark Andrew’s son had been with Omar, the Prophet, but his memories of those times were vague, dismembered, bits and pieces. “Have you no idea why we might have come to be here? Lord Adalune thinks we did not come here by accident.”
“I don’t know why you are here.” Mark eyed the general thoughtfully. “But I have a few ideas concerning our presence.”
“It was my mistake, I am sure,” Lemarik told them. “I was in too great a hurry when we left my lab. I had been thinking of our ancestors, I’m afraid.” The purple wizard shrugged slightly and his robe rustled. “And then I shifted my thoughts to Omar too late. Sometimes these things are tricky and, of late, travel has been most hazardous.” Mark smiled at his son’s sing-song voice. “You may attest to the truth of this, my father.” The Djinni’s dark eyes sparkled in the light of the fire.
“What should we do?” Luke Andrew asked as he munched on dried pineapple, dates and raisins. “I don’t like all this jerking around. I’m afraid to try anything else. What if we end up back in the Seventh Gate? Huber’s pests will be everywhere by now, and Kinmalla’s goons will be after me. If you go back there, he’ll nab you… maybe both of you.”
“I am not an elder god,” Lemarik told him confidently. “I am simply a misplaced child. I have no home. I was not substantial when the foundations of the earth were laid.”
“You are no innocent child, son. You have grown past that stage,” Mark chuckled. “Kinmalla sentenced Luke to a few years on the surface of Saturn. I fail to see where you would fare any better. Most likely worse, though it is not for me to say. You would be a better judge of your own actions than any of us.”
“Ahhhhh. Ooooh,” Lemarik nodded. “Then we have come up in the world. I would like to think my actions have been guided by an innate desire to bring goodness and beauty to the world with the exception of eating a few humans even though it was done with the greatest concern for their suffering. There is so much ugliness,” the Djinni fell silent for a few seconds. “I have done wrong… from time to time.”
“Unfortunately, so have we all,” Luke agreed as he shook a can containing salted peanuts and then popped the top. “Peanuts?” He offered the can to Schweikert and smiled wickedly at him. He knew very well that Ernst had no idea what their past relationship might have been.
“Thanks.” Ernst took the can and poured himself a handful of the nuts, never taking his eyes from Luke’s face.
“It is not me you should worry about, General.” Luke took the can back and passed it to his father. “Konrad would be very interested in seeing you again, I think. And maybe Dambretti? You remember Lucio Dambretti, don’t you?”
“I know him,” Ernst nodded. “Not very well, but I know who he is.”
“You were once very close to his… heart,” Luke told him and received a slap on the shoulder from his father.
“Enough.” Mark Andrew tossed the can to Lemarik and glanced again at the stars overhead. They were still not quite right. His knowledge of the Southern Constellations was not that rusty, but he had yet to recognize anything specific. “What do you make of that?” He continued to look up as he directed this question to his other son.
Lemarik glanced up and then shook his head. “You will waste your time looking there, Father.”
“Why? What do you mean?” Mark frowned at the Djinni.
“The constellations have been torn from their traces.” Lemarik waved one slender hand sadly toward the sky. “Actually, the earth has been torn from its traces, but it sounds more poetic to say it the other way round. Our knowledge of the stars will need revision.”
“What do you mean?” Luke repeated his father’s question in alarm. “What are you talking about?”
“We have been tilted on our side by the impact of the last cataclysmic visitor,” Lemarik explained. “While we languished in the underworld, the earth was set on its ear. Borneo is now the North Pole and Bogota is the South Pole… approximately… give or take a few kilometers. I’m afraid we’ve lost all the orang-utans. I was quite fond of them, you know. Some of them were very intelligent. But Antarctica has melted nicely while Malaysia and the Isthmus of Panama have become clogged with ice. The changes are going well depending on your point of view, of course. The earth will right the wrong done by humanity, as well as the gods, in no time and all will even out. I’m afraid that your dear Scotland is in the Southern Hemisphere now. Not too much changed here, you see, but we may receive more rain and grow some palms or trees eventually. The cosmic vortex surrounding this place served it well.”
The Djinni stopped talking and sat looking at his tiny audience expectantly. They were all staring at him in speechless horror. A raisin plunked from Luke’s open mouth onto his lap.
Mark was the first to snap out of the shock his son’s casual revelations had brought them. Here was where Anna had learned her annoying habit of flabbergasting them all with earth-shattering, mind-staggering news, and then continuing with her flower picking as if nothing were amiss.
“We’d best wrap this up and get back to where we might do the most good,” he said after a moment.
“Where is Jasmine?” Luke asked his half-brother. “Is she safe?”
“Of course. I’m glad you asked, brother,” the Djinni told him. “She often asks after your health, and I have wondered that you never asked about hers. It would pain me miserably to think you never thought of her with at least some measure of regret.”
“I think of her more than you might think,” Luke told him darkly.
“Good.” The Djinni merely smiled at him. “I should hope there are no hard feelings between us. She loved you dearly, but she is deathly afraid of you or did you not know?”
“I know.” Luke threw the can of peanuts in th
e fire angrily.
“Enough of this reminiscing.” Mark Andrew held up one hand. “Opening old wounds will profit us nothing.”
“Then we should get some sleep and think on the morrow what best mode of transport we might attempt in order to get home. I have been considering a raft of some sort,” the Djinni suggested and stretched his arms over his head. “I will take the first…” he began and then stopped. He pressed one finger to his lips and the fired died immediately. They were plunged into almost complete darkness under the strange constellations.
The sound of music, very faint at first, drifted to their ears.
“Music!” Ernst whispered excitedly. “Someone is playing music.”
“Shhhh!” Mark held up his hand.
The tune was rather lively and almost childlike in simplicity as if someone were tapping out a two-handed tune on a xylophone made of stones. Luke had seen one once on a New Orleans street corner. The tone reverberated down the slope of the hill from the quarry, and it seemed that the rocks in their immediate vicinity vibrated in conjunction with the haunting melody.
“The quarry,” Mark whispered and stood up, wrapping his black cloak closely about him. “Let’s have a looksee at our entertainment.”
As they made their way quickly and quietly up the road toward the crest of the hill, Mark imagined the very earth beneath his boots was vibrating. Whoever was causing the music had only just arrived. That anyone would come here in the middle of the night to play songs did not bode well. He remembered vaguely something about tonal qualities associated with different rocks and stones, but the Chevalier du Morte was hopelessly lacking in the music department.
At the lip of the quarry, Mark drew the steel sword Sir Barry had loaned him from his collection and motioned the others to stay back. Luke reached for his own sword and realized for the first time that he no longer carried the golden sword of King Ramsay. The rabble in the Seventh Gate had taken it from him before they had sentenced him to burn at the stake.
The music became overwhelming at this point. The tones had taken on a piercing quality, and they could feel the vibrations in their very bones. Schweikert pressed his hands against his ears as he crouched behind a block of broken basalt. Mark moved almost unseen against the dark stones. His sons and the General watched from above as the Knight of Death closed in on the source of the extraordinary music.
They could actually see the musician as she leapt about amidst the tumbled down blocks of the abandoned stone quarry. She wore a short white tunic that seemed to glow in the starlight. In each hand she held a long wooden club vaguely resembling a baseball bat. Her instrument was the quarry itself. The rocks reverberated and rang like the keys of a gigantic xylophone as she skittered from slab to slab, picking out the different notes making up the music. The shape of the quarry made it resound like the best made amphitheaters on earth. The music was no doubt audible for miles out to sea in all directions. And though she did, indeed, appear to be female, she was no ordinary woman. The speed with which she moved belied her true nature as something a little out of the ordinary.
The woman was oblivious to the approaching death behind her as she worked her magick upon the stones. Mark was having a bit of trouble keeping his footing on the oddly vibrating sands between the enormous slabs of quarried rock. The noise within the depths of the quarry was almost oppressive, and he could actually hear it in his bones. Sweat trickled down his face and neck, and the very hairs on his head vibrated as his heart seemed to flutter instead of beat. He caught up with the energetic musician, who stood beating both of her clubs rapidly on a single stone, producing a trill that threatened to explode the rock from within. When he laid the side of the golden sword against her neck, she froze, but the tones continued on for several seconds, unabated as time, itself, stood still for an interval.
When she made her move, Schweikert shrieked and fell back from his position high in the rocks. Lemarik leapt onto one of the flat stones near the roadway, and Luke made a dash down the road to his father’s aid.
The woman turned on Mark with such exacting speed, he did not see the motion before she had his head between the two clubs. His own sword still rested on her neck, but it was now on the opposite side, and she was facing him in the starlight with a fierce scowl on her face.
“Adar?” She asked, but he could not hear her due to the ringing in his ears.
When he did not answer, she dropped the clubs and leaped into his arms. He caught her instinctively as she plied his face with kisses. Luke was the first to reach them as Mark struggled to disentangle her arms from his neck without cutting them both to shreds with his sword. She let go of him and looked at Luke Andrew in wonder.
“Adar!” She said the name again and accosted Luke in the same manner. By the time Mark’s startled son evaded her, Lemarik had arrived on the scene. When she saw him, she repeated the same action, but the Mighty Djinni was ready for her. He allowed the kisses at first, but then took both her wrists in his hands very quickly and spun her away from him, neatly subduing her with one arm wrapped under her chin.
“Great Scot!” Luke was the first to speak as they surveyed the startled creature. Certainly, she was female, but she was much more than a mere mortal woman. She struggled briefly against the Djinni, and then drew up short, frowning at the father and son, who stood looking at her in consternation.
Mark Andrew wiped his cheek once more with the back of his hand and then leaned close to the woman. She had fiery red hair, redder than Corrigan’s golden red curls, but just a shade or two lighter than Lugh. Over-sized black pupils in large, round eyes gave her an almost owlish appearance. Her lips were well-formed, but slightly greenish in tint and her skin was a remarkable cream color covered by an extremely fine layer of red hair. She was certainly not a beauty by human standards, but she was far from ugly or homely as some of the faeries from the underworld tended to be.
“Alanna?” He whispered her name.
“I knew you would show up sooner or later, Lord Adar,” she said and smiled wickedly at him. “Wherever there is trouble, you are never far away. Are you still plaguing my Master?”
“Are you still calling him your Master?” He countered and returned her smile.
“Now and again… sometimes,” she answered and jerked futilely against Lemarik’s hold.
Ernst puffed in from the road and stood looking at them all in astonishment.
“Aha!” Alanna’s smile faded when she saw him. “So there is one human left after all, is there? What did you do with the rest of them, Lord Adar? Did you eat them all?”
Mark nodded to the Djinni and he released her. She went at once to examine Schweikert more closely, much to his discomfiture.
“Who are all these Adarlets?” She asked when she turned again.
“What?” Luke frowned at her and then turned on his father who’d sheathed his sword and sat down a rock.
“What?!” Ernst echoed his question and rubbed at his ears. The General still could not hear them. “What language is that?!”
Mark’s shoulders sagged, and then he motioned the General to sit down and be quiet.
“Now tell us, Alanna, what are you doing here?” He asked and then stepped on one of the bats as she tried to retrieve it from the ground. “Oh, no you don’t. We’ve had enough music for one night.”
“Oh no,” she objected. “I’ve only just begun.”
“You’re finished for now.” Mark flipped the bat into the air with the toe of his boot and Lemarik caught it. “You will answer my question.”
The Djinni went off immediately and began tapping on the various rocks, but much more softly than the captured musician.
“I came to wake up the gods, of course,” she told him petulantly. “I should think you of all people would know that.”
“There’ll be no waking tonight,” he grunted as he fished around for the other bat and pulled it from a crevice in the stones. “We’ve enough problems without adding mayhem to madness.”
<
br /> Alanna seemed to relax a bit as she resumed to her visual examination of Luke and Lemarik.
“Sons?” She asked after a moment. “They have your father’s dimple, Lord Adar. He will be pleased to see them.”
“Grandfather?” Luke gasped and sat down heavily on the rock beside his father.
“I do not wish to be rude,” Lemarik said as he swayed completely around the woman, looking her up and down curiously. “But, wha… who is this woman, Father? What does she know of the Great Anu?”
“She is one of Marduk’s servants.” Mark said and swung the bat around in his other hand, inspecting it closely. It was extremely light and well-balanced. He struck the nearest stone and the rock rang like a bell in the night air. “Remarkable.”
“I really have to be going.” Alanna stood in front of him and held out one hand for the bat. “I don’t have much time. I only borrowed a while and a bit.”
“What are you talking about?” Mark looked up at her. “You’re not going anywhere. We’ll be leaving together… in the morning.”
“No, I’ll be leaving before the sunrise,” she countered calmly. “I do not wish to be burned by its cruel waters. I am a creature of the night, as are you, Lord Adar. You should remember that, if nothing else. The gentle vibrations of the moons caress me while the stars wither my soul.”
“I remember,” Mark nodded. “If you go, you’ll not be taking these with you.”
“Very well then,” she smiled and backed off a bit. “Give my regards to Lord Anu. He will know what to do with them.”
With that last remark, she was gone. Simply vanished.
“You let her go!” Luke shouted and leaped to his feet while Ernst spun around in a circle, looking for the vanished woman.
The Wayward Godking Page 17
