The Pope made his way around to the semi-private platform he had taken for himself and his aides. It was really no better than any on the same level, just a bit less crowded. He had a fairly large wooden table nailed to one end of the platform and numerous books, papers and maps strewn about. Everything was anchored to the table or decking to avoid being tossed into the bowels of the ship when the ocean ran high. He had a compass wedged in a crack in the table near his chair. They sat down together and he checked the compass again. It had become a habit.
The needle had finally stopped spinning, but it seemed to be pointing south, if the constellations could still be trusted. Several more compasses in the possession of the travelers confirmed what could not be. The compasses no longer pointed north, but south… sort of… maybe. There were no rocket scientists among the troops and even the top ranking officers were at a loss to explain the behavior of the compasses. Whatever had caused this last great flood had surely devastated the entire earth.
They had seen great plumes of smoke on the horizon during the day and evidence of massive fires at night. The surface of the sea was littered with tons of floating debris of every imaginable type, but most of it was pulverized and destroyed completely, virtually impossible to discern what the pieces might have been originally. They were in deep trouble and only the top officers were informed of what they had seen through the ports. The bulk of the men were barred from traversing the ramps, stairs and catwalks in the upper levels. To make matters worse, they were running dangerously low on fresh water and oil for the lamps left behind by whoever had built the monstrosity that had saved their lives.
Ironically, they had found the remnants of the former inhabitants of the vessel to be most revealing. The lower levels had undoubtedly been strictly used for the transport of livestock. In the upper platforms, they had found evidence of modern weaponry, modern provisions and modern military equipment, such as broken belts, shoelaces, watch bands, discarded razors, broken combs, ragged tee-shirts stuffed in cracks in the walls, and most telling of all, graffiti in several different languages written on the wood with a variety of modern writing utensils. The Pope had even recognized a few of the names carved there. Again, the d’Ornan brothers among others had been within this vessel. The Templars. Always the Templars.
It had taken him almost two weeks to get over the fact that the ark, which had dragged them halfway round the earth, was not the Ark of the Covenant, but a replica, it seemed, of Noah’s ark instead. Not only was it not the golden casket containing the Tablets of the Law and Aaron’s staff, the greatest treasures of all time, it was a used ark, possibly even a stinking deathtrap for them. First, it had been an enormous disappointment, and then it had seemed a godsend when the flood came and now, it seemed that it might serve as their floating mausoleum if they did not find land soon.
One of his aides brought a ration of his remaining water supply and poured drinks for them in small wooden cups.
The Pope was just about to comment again on the strange behavior of the compass when a shout from above brought them to their feet, heedless of spilling the precious water.
“Land ho!!” One of Polunsky’s captains shouted again. “I see land!! I see lights!!”
An instant uproar erupted in the vast dimness of the ship as everyone came suddenly awake and upright, clamoring for more information and confirmation of the sighting.
Polunsky looked at his golden pocket watch again.
“Zero-zero-zero-two. Right on time. I knew it!” He smiled and clicked the lid shut on the face of his great-grandfather’s prized timepiece.
By the time they made it back up to the portals, a sizable crowd of officers gathered for peeks at the first land anyone had seen in weeks. They stood aside as the Pope made his way through them and shoved his face out the small opening measuring no more than two feet by two feet. Sergei crowded in beside him.
The land was a darker mass against a dark sky full of strange stars. The unmistakable glow of fires littered the beach and the steep landscape behind the light strip of sand and the breakwaters offshore.
“Those are campfires,” Polunsky affirmed his Captain’s assessment.
“What is that noise?” Paolo frowned and turned his head, cupping his hand around his ear. They concentrated their attention on the sounds outside the unwieldy vessel. They could hear the crash of the waves on the shoals and the whistling of the wind, but beyond that, in the very brief moments when the wind and waves were not overwhelming, they heard another distinctively different sound.
“Drums?” Polunsky’s frown deepened.
“Surely not. Music? Not a high priority if you ask me.” Paolo shook his head in disbelief and they listened again.
“Drums. Definitely.” Sergei nodded slowly as the salt spray collected in his eyebrows and beard.
“But…” Paolo drew his head inside, out of the dampness. “But we should be approaching Greece or southern Italy by my calculations.”
Polunsky joined him and the officers huddled about them.
“But how can you tell?” One of the lieutenants asked. “Our compasses don’t work. We have no charts. The stars are not even right.”
“I tell you it is the work of the devil,” another voice spoke in a hoarse whisper. “We are going to die.”
“Enough of that!” Polunsky’s commanding general snapped at his men. “I’ll horse whip the next one I hear moaning about dying! I’m sick of it, gentlemen. It is up to us to keep the men in hand. If they learn we’ve lost hope, what do you think they’ll do other than blame us, and the next thing we’ll see is the inside of the executioner’s hood?”
“I believe the magnetic poles have switched,” the Pope explained to them. “It has happened many times in the past and the Church has studied it for spiritual significance. It seems there is no connection to things of a spiritual nature, but rather a simple fact of geology. If our compasses now point south it is simply a matter of reversing our thinking. The world is still there. It is only our instruments that have changed.”
“Then where the devil is the North Star?” Another voice ventured a question anonymously from the rear ranks.
“We are at the mercy of the sea presently,” Polunsky answered. “We cannot steer this damned box. It is possible our orientation has simply been askew.”
His answer was met with several disbelieving grunts, but nothing more.
“Besides,” the Pope continued. “Our Sovereign Lord has not seen fit to allow us the benefit of a seasoned sailing man amongst us. We really are at the mercy of the sea, as the Count so says, but we are also at the mercy of God and I assure you, He has a hand in this as well. You can rest assured, gentlemen, we are exactly where we are supposed to be.”
“Then God is about to put us ashore!” An excited voice called to them from the window just as a horrendous ripping sound vibrated through the hull. “We’re going aground on the shoals! Hang on to your asses, gentlemen!!”
The lookout’s shouts were immediately followed by tremendous creaking, cracking and snapping noises and spine-jarring jolts. For a few seconds, all was quiet and then, it seemed the entire ark was screeching and bemoaning its immediate demise.
“All hands abandon ship!!” Polunsky shouted. “Every man for himself!!”
The Pope turned shocked eyes on the Count. Polunsky snarled at him, and then shoved him toward one of the ladders.
(((((((((((((
“Now let me get this straight.” Merry leaned against her husband’s upper arm and frowned intently at the Djinni. “The northern axis flipped over and is now at the equator?”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Lemarik held up his left hand palm up and made a fierce face at the air just above it. Before their startled eyes, a small replica of the earth, replete with clouds, storms and ice caps appeared over his palm. The globe turned slowly on its axis which appeared tilted at the proper angle with the continents all in their familiar places. The Djinni allowed them all to crowd a bit
closer to him as he held the earth up before them. “This is how the earth looked before the cataclysm. Now, behold the change.”
As they watched the earth began to spin faster and faster.
“I will allow the model to reach speeds similar to what would actually be the speed of the orb if the earth were this small,” he explained. “Now you will see what is called the precession of the equinoxes. What some people call the wobble of the physical polar axis. It is similar to the same thing a top does when it begins to slow down a bit. Now watch!”
His audience glanced at each other nodding. The earth suddenly flipped onto its side and the poles traded places with the equator. When this happened millions of tiny lights streaked away from the planet, causing them to pull back quickly to avoid being struck by them.
“You see? The physical axis is still tilted as before, almost precisely, but the land which was at the South Pole is now at the equator.” Lemarik smiled and slowed the whirring globe until the blurred land masses were again discernible. Antarctica slowly circled the surface near the new equatorial belt. The new equator cut across Asia, swept across the Indus Valley at an angle, continuing through China and Siberia.
“My God!” Merry gasped and the others fell silent as the idea sank in on their brains.
“What were all those lights?” Lucio asked.
“Those were satellites, space debris, junk, being thrown off by the sudden jolt. But wait!” Lemarik held up his right hand and placed one finger gingerly into the globe, causing the clouds to build, the oceans to seethe and the land masses to disappear under the thick blanket. “Even though we no longer need worry about space debris, this did not happen without unfortunate side effects. There was much stress placed on the inward quarters of the earth. Many volcanic mountains exploded. Some sank. Others rose. Seas washed over still others, and the face of the earth was changed. The good news is the larger land areas maintained some of their original shapes and, last, but perhaps, not least, there were survivors. Plants, animals, minerals and a few people. Much was lost in my beautiful oceans.”
The clouds subsided and the sparkling blue, white, green and brown world appeared again below scattered clouds and plumes of ash and dust from erupting volcanoes and a few long, fiery crevices in Africa and Asia. The land masses were recognizable, but totally changed in many ways.
Lucio sat staring glumly at the thing as if it mattered very little to him. He had lost his home many, many years ago when Vesuvius had destroyed most of his beautiful Naples. That had been only an omen, a sign of things to come. He now sported a black eye and a swollen jaw from his ambush and struggle with Luke Andrew and Luke Matthew. They had managed to pull him back to reality long enough to explain that the General was not the same man that had paid him a visit in Lothian and almost cut out his heart.
“Did nothing survive of Scotland?” Luke Andrew asked the question on several minds gathered around the fire.
“There should be some remnants,” the Djinni shook his head sadly. “Much has perished.”
“Did nothing survive?” Ernst frowned at the changed face of what had been the European mainland.
“Oh, yes, yes, yes,” Lemarik stopped the globe and showed them how two negative spots of force, as he called them, had remained almost perfectly preserved. When the world turned, two spots on opposite sides of the globe had merely rotated. They had not suffered the great tidal forces exerted at the outer limbs of the globe. “Here,” he pointed to a spot near what might have once been near Iran. “And here,” he turned it around and touched the center of the great blue expanse that had once been the South Pacific. “That is why this particular island was not overly ravaged by the floods.”
“Wonderful,” Mark Andrew muttered and tossed a handful of what appeared to be sand in their fire. The blaze leapt higher and green sparks rose in the air high over head.
“Then we can’t go home, John?” Lily turned her large eyes on him. “Is Scotland lost to us?”
“You never lived in Scotland…” he said and then stopped. “Well, you lived in Scotland long ago, Lily. Your Scotland has been gone for a very long time.”
She looked at the bleak faces around the fire and then buried her face in her hands, weeping openly.
“Brother.” Luke touched Mark Andrew’s elbow. “If you don’t do something for her soon, she is going to die of grief.”
“How can she do that?” Luke Andrew asked and the Dove elbowed him in the ribs.
“Lily?” ‘John’ took his wife’s hands in his and stood up, taking her with him. “Come away with me for a while and a bit.”
The grumpy group gathered at the Djinni’s fire watched as the unlikely couple disappeared into the gloom.
“We need to get out of here,” Lucio told them again for the hundredth time. “Vanni can coach us. Sir Ramsay knows how to dream walk, and I think we can get back to the Villa. If all you say is true, my friend, then we would be better off in the underworld until things settle down a bit in the overworld.”
“That is true enough,” Lemarik agreed.
“I agree as well,” Luke Matthew said as he held his hands out to the fire. “I don’t like it here. I’d like to get back to the Abyss or somewhere… anywhere, but here. If England is gone, we need to gather our families, or what is left of them, and try to make sense of it all.”
“What about your palace? What about the others?” Ernst asked of the Jinn. “We could go back there, couldn’t we?”
“Of course we can,” Lemarik nodded. “I would be glad to take us there, but I can only carry one.”
“We can all go together through the dream fields,” the Dove told them. “The underworld is not far from the Abyss.”
“That is a matter of perspective,” Lucio shook his head. “I don’t think they are that close. In fact, I believe they lie in completely different planes of existence… dimensions, they call them. Else how can we have been in the Villa, noticing no ill effects from the cataclysm while the entire overworld was being destroyed. Did you notice anything amiss in the underworld on your end, sir?”
“I had no idea what was happening until we came here,” Lemarik told him. “As we traveled I observed the effects and made calculations based on the placements of the planets and the orientation of the old constellations. It was quite a shock, at first.”
“I’m sure it was,” Luke Andrew muttered. He missed his kilt. He missed his home in Lothian. They all stood simultaneously when Mark Andrew led Lily back into the firelight. She sat down stiffly on one of the small boulders that the Djinni had provided for chairs and folded her hands in her lap. When she looked up again, she locked eyes with the Dove.
“Well, Mark,” she said slowly. “We are going to have to give you a different name to avoid confusion.”
He smiled at her slightly and she looked up at Mark Andrew.
“We’ll call him Mark,” he told her. “You can just keep calling me John.”
“Good,” she said and returned her gaze to the fire. “Good,” she repeated softly as they all sat down again.
“We need to decide what we are going to do,” Luke Matthew spoke up at once.
“My father is not on this island,” Mark Andrew announced. “I have no idea where he has gone.”
“At least, he didn’t wake up the rest of them,” Lucio grumbled as he looked around at the ghostly statues surrounding them. When he thought of what they actually were, he shuddered in his soul.
“It would have been a hell of a reunion,” Luke Andrew said bitterly.
“Reunion,” Lemarik repeated the word and rummaged in his deep pockets for his pipe. “A grand reunion at that, but speaking of reunions, I miss Jasmine, and I need to find my beautiful son and my beautiful daughter.”
“Reunion!” Merry said the word again and stood up suddenly, startling her husband. She grabbed his arms and shook him excitedly. “A reunion! That’s what this is all about.”
“What do you mean?” Luke Matthew frowned at her.
Everyone sat perfectly still as they tried to assess the validity of her sudden leap in logic.
“Someone is gathering us together in family groups,” she continued after a moment. “We are moving through our dreams. We dream of each other and we change places. Someone is using our dreams to gather us… perhaps to save us, or protect us. Didn’t you say that John Paul and Jozsef and Anna were at your palace? And Queen Semiramis, who is your mother? And Gregory and Nicholas and Bari? And how did Omar get to the Seventh Gate? He fell? Into the sea? Don’t you think the fall killed him? And Dunya as well? They died and slept the sleep of death. They slept. They dreamed, and they went to the Seventh, Gate when they dreamed of Scotland or perhaps even Huber or Sir Ramsay, perhaps. Who knows? What do you think?” She looked about at them.
Lemarik looked at Lucio and a deep furrow creased his smooth brow.
“Forgive me, my friend.” The Djinni placed one hand on the Italian’s arm. “She may be right. I investigated our problem quite extensively before trying to escape the situation. Il Dolce Mio suggested we use the scientific method of investigation and we interviewed each of the people at my palace. Almost all of them confessed to having dreamed of the underworld, or of someone or another of the people stranded there. Quite natural, it would seem. We are all intertwined and intermixed. Even your son and daughter confessed of dreaming before they came to my home.”
“My son and daughter?” Lucio blinked stupidly at the Djinni. “Galen? Galen is in the underworld, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Mark Andrew answered him. “Galen is there, and so are Lucia and Marco.”
The Wayward Godking Page 22
