Max Quick: The Bane of the Bondsman (Max Quick Series Book 3)

by Mark Jeffrey

  Tears spilled from Ninti’s eyes. “Enki. Always making trouble. Even right up to the very end.”

  “And there you go,” Enki said. “Accusing me of things already. I am dying, woman. Have you no pity?”

  Ninti laughed and even more tears rolled down her eyes. “Pity? For you Enki, I have anger, perhaps. Annoyance, certainly. And love, always. But never pity.”

  “Ah. Why did we wait so long?” Enki said with pain.

  Ninti shrugged. “Why do we ever? I don’t even recall the cause of our last argument any more.”

  “Well, I am certain it was my fault,” Enki said. “It usually was.”

  “Oh, that is true,” Ninti said. “But I came nevertheless when I received your distress call.”

  “It took you long enough,” Enki said with a smile. “I’ve only been a prisoner for several days.”

  “I had to arrange transport,” Ninti said, with a mock-offended expression. “That is hard to do when one lives in the deeps of the Amazon jungle.”

  “Oh, that’s where you were?” Enki said.

  “Yes. This world of the Bondsman is a noisome thing. I needed to withdraw even further than usual just to maintain my sanity. But even deep within my beloved rain forests, a whiff of Archontic stench and theurgy intruded now and again. There is no complete escape anywhere in the world, it seems.”

  Enki nodded and said, “So. What do you think of our children?”

  “Children? We have no children, Enki.”

  “Of course we do,” Enki said, nodding to Logan, Cody, Casey, Sasha, Maurice and Ian.

  “Oh. Those,” Ninti said. “Yes. Adapa’s heirs. And Padma’s.” She regarded them with a fondness. “Overall, we did well, I think. I am pleased, on the whole. Yes.”

  “Sorry,” Casey said. “I just want to make sure I have this straight.” She turned to Max. “How do you mean … ‘caged’?” Logan, Ian and Maurice had joined her by now and eagerly awaited this answer as well.

  Max quickly explained the nature of the Bondsman virus — and how he and Enki had created a Mi to contain it. “So as long as that Battle Throne right there exists,” Max said, “the Bondsman’s caged. He’ll never be a problem again.”

  Casey nodded, but looked shaken. Max rose and pulled her aside. “Case. What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head. “You. You look … different.”

  “Different how?”

  Casey stared at him with astonishment, trying to put it into words. “You seem … clear. Like really clear. And brighter. Like your face is shining or something. I dunno. You’re sort of … gleaming.”

  The battle with the Bondsman had definitely changed Max in some fundamental way. Ian saw this as he spoke. Gone was the internal conflict, the gnashing and thrashing of memories. Max stood there, perfectly poised and calm. Ian had never seen him so at rest; Max had always seemed like he was running to or from something.

  Now, Max was content to simply be. He was completely poised, serene as a saint.

  It was unnerving.

  And when Max’s eyes came to rest on him, Ian was immediately startled. There was a sort light that shone from them … a familiar light.

  It was only after a few seconds that Ian realized that he now resembled Mr. E or Enki — Max’s gaze now had that same quality of ‘angel eyes that could incinerate with a glance’.

  Max shrugged. “The battle … it forced me remember everything at once, all the thousands of years of my life — and accept it, the good with the bad. There was nothing left hidden or repressed. It was all out in the open — even the times where I behaved like the Bondsman myself. And when that happened, all my self-doubt sort of melted or burned away. Hard to explain. I knew what this fight would do to the Bondsman … but I never thought about what it might do to me.”

  “I was so wrong about you,” Casey said in barely a whisper. “I’m so ashamed. I mean … I tried to shoot you, for crying out loud.”

  “Casey,” Max said. “You had every right to be suspicious of me. You had plenty of good reasons. You only did what you thought was best.”

  “No,” Casey said adamantly. “That’s not enough. I suspected the absolute worst of you. I thought you were the Bondsman! I really did! And man was I wrong about that. I can’t apologize enough. You beat the Bondsman, exactly like you said you would. And I was no help at all — in fact, I made it harder for you at every step of the way.”

  Max shook his head and reached out for her hand. “You can’t beat yourself up,” Max said, squeezing her palm now — which seemed to surprise her. “You were the one who helped both Enki and I figure out what the Archons actually were, remember? Your defeat of Blackthorne paved the way for me to defeat the Bondsman. Even my failure with the Machine ultimately helped here. I needed that failure and what it taught me in order to win today.

  “Besides, there is no way you could have understood what I was going to do. Even if I told you it would have made no sense. And there’s no way I could have survived it without Enki’s help. I knew how to defeat the Bondsman … or rather, to dispel him. But perfection of the container, the Writing, to cage him like that, so that he couldn’t come back … well, that was all Enki.”

  “Yes. We have contained the Bondsman,” Enki said with a half grin. “I can feel it. His warping of this world is already less than it was.”

  “Yes,” Max said with tears in his eyes.

  “But much is left to do,” Logan White-Cloud said. “The wetiko of the Bondsman still smokes this world. It cannot be removed simply by his defeat. It will have to be dismantled.”

  “That’s true,” Max said. “And I have an idea about that.” Max took the Bondsman’s gold mask from Casey’s hand. “Here. I’m going to need this.” Casey only nodded mutely and surrendered it.

  “And so at long last, I must die,” Enki said, still smiling. “And in dying, I recall now the secret that Enlil hid from me. But you already know what that secret is, do you not, Max?”

  Max nodded. “Yes. That there is another world beneath this one. There are no planets. The sun is cold, and the moon is a perfect fit in an eclipse for a reason. Yes. And I even know why Jadeth had to come to earth during an eclipse. I know all of it now.”

  “That is good. What will you do?”

  “Well, first thing I have to do is hide that thing,” Max said, looking up at the inscribed Battle Throne for the first time. “Put it somewhere safe, where nobody can get at it.”

  Enki nodded. “That is wise.” Then a fit of coughing took him. “Farewell, Max Quick … Damiz … my brother. You have done well.”

  With that, Enki moved no more.

  After hundreds of thousands of years, the Old One was dead at last.

  NINTI SURPRISED them all then by suddenly lifting the body of Enki off the floor. Whether she was physically just that strong from her years in the wild or she employed some theurgy to assist her, none of the company could tell. But she carried Enki all the way to the front of the Pyramid, and then outside into the monument complex.

  The company followed silently.

  The sky had become a great deal less gray with the caging of the Bondsman. And with Max’s newfound clarity of mind the void-vortexes had likewise ceased to exist, vanishing in a harmless swirling mist.

  All was sharply calm.

  The sun and moon — both far larger than they should have been — had separated and ended the eclipse. Both resumed their weird wandering, meandering about the sky with no clear path or progression.

  Logan White-Cloud pointed to a stone slab. It appeared to be an altar — and was located centrally amidst the monuments. “Here, Mother.” he said to Ninti, seeming to guess her purpose. When she nodded and set the body where Logan had suggested, Max could only conclude that this was indeed the case.

  “The largest monument complex in the world,” Ninti growled. “Intended by the Bondsman to be an edifice to celebrate his majestic ego in solitude. Now, I will put it to better use. Behold!” Ninti raised her arms
and a whirlwind of sand appeared out on the desert plain. It approached.

  Ian fidgeted nervously as it drew near. For a moment he feared Ninti was mad with grief and meant to bury them all with Enki. But mercifully, the storm compressed downwards and focused: the sand imploded on the stone slab and Enki.

  Ninti nodded to Max, who also raised his arms. A conflagration of white fire covered Enki, but not in immolation. Instead, it bathed the sand, shaped it, heated it. It crackled as it burned and fused. Ian marveled: Max seemed to be wielding his power with an exactness he had only seen displayed by Jane Willow when she employed music. His control as an Imaginal had found some new maturity.

  Crystal grew around Enki, encased him. When it was finished, a great clear diamond slab entombed him. He was thus visible for all to see him — perfectly preserved in death forever.

  “Here lies Enki,” Ninti said, and the words appeared etched directly in the diamond sarcophagus as she spoke them. And then she let her power drop. “And now, this place will serve to honor the death and life of one who truly deserved such a thing.”

  Reverently, the company all paid their last respects in silence. And then one by one, they started to drift away to be left alone with their own private thoughts.

  HOURS LATER, it seemed, the company began to huddle up in groups and start talking again. Sasha began distributing food and water. Max conferred briefly with Jane, and then approached Maurice.

  “I think I can take care of that knee for you now,” he said. Maurice nodded his assent. Max rubbed his hands together and they lit into a soft blaze — again, with exact and precise control. He placed them on Maurice’s kneecap for all of a moment. Relief flooded Maurice’s face — and he stood instantly, laughing and dancing around in wonder. One by one, Max tended to the wounds of all the company in the same way.

  Logan White-Cloud shook his head and smiled in admiration. “You have surpassed me, my friend,” he said to Max.

  Max replied with a small grin, “Well, this sure beats you blowing smoke in everyone’s face.”

  Then Max and Jane left the company and went off a short distance, while Casey watched, trying to figure out what they were talking about.

  Every once in awhile, Ninti would turn her attention to the north and throw up a small sandstorm. When Sasha enquired what she was doing, she replied, “Fell Simon and his men are still out there. I’m keeping them boxed up in the mountains until Max decides what he wants to do with them.”

  Max returned to the company. “Okay everyone. Come with me. I have one last thing to do — and something to show you. Especially you, Casey. You’re going to want to see this.”

  MAX STOOD before the archway. Its boundary was cracked, split, just as he recalled. He smiled to himself. The last time he had been here was with Johnny Siren and Appius centuries earlier.

  “This is a portal to Nibiru,” Max explained. “There’s another world beneath this one. That’s what that always meant. And Casey, this is the place Johnny Siren stepped through — and where he got those scars of his.”

  “What, that there’s a — a — a stargate or whatever? Underground, here on this island? A transporter between planets?” Ian asked.

  Max laughed. “No. There are no planets. Right, Maurice?”

  “Right!” Maurice said enthusiastically, giving him the thumbs up and looking like a wide-eyed madman.

  “See?” Max said, teasing Ian some more. When Ian refused to be baited, Max said more seriously, “There really aren’t. There are no planets, not even earth. Look. Let me explain.

  “Do you remember the Tale of Enki? The one he told us at the Isle of the Dreamtime, during the Pocket?” Ian, Casey and Sasha all nodded. “Well, he left one part out — because he didn’t remember it. He couldn’t: Enlil made him forget. And this one last piece is the cincher, what ties everything together.

  “Well. Here goes. Remember that map Siren had back at that Colorado house of his? The crazy map with all those different continents on it — including the ones here on earth? Well. That is the real world. That’s the way the world really looks.”

  “But … that map is flat,” Casey said.

  “Yes,” Max said. “That’s the because the real world is flat. It also has a lot more continents that just seven.”

  “But we — no. No! We live on a sphere! Everyone knows that! Planes fly around it every day!” Ian protested like his sanity was slipping away.

  “Yes, our world behaves like a sphere, that’s right,” Max said. “And there’s a reason for that. It’s because a region of the real, flat earth was ‘pinched off’ if you will. The part we live in. It was pushed up, into a sort of spherical bubble — with only a tiny region still connecting our bubble with the rest of the real, flat world. And this island, right here beneath our feet, is that connector. This is the stitch point. This is where the two realities are still attached.”

  “So that Archway … that goes to the ‘real world’. The flat world we saw on that map with the hundreds of continents,” Sasha asked, numbly.

  Max nodded.

  “But we’ve been to space!” Ian protested. “We’ve —”

  Max smiled. “Let me finish.” Ian nodded, barely able to contain himself. “After the whole business of the Wild Men and Women, Enlil got a little bent, if you recall. He gets crazy where humans are concerned: he’s afraid of them eventually coming to Nibiru and overthrowing it. So Enlil commanded Enki to ‘bend the roads of the world’ where humans dwelt such that they all circled back on one another. He didn’t want humans to be able to leave their assigned region of the True Earth. And Enki had no choice but to obey. Through his arts — and his power — he caused space to curve back on itself so that when you reached the end of one side, you simply found yourself on the other — which creates the illusion of a sphere. And only inside these lands of bent roads were humans allowed to live.

  “There was only one place where the roads did not bend — and that was the stitch point. Enki couldn’t sever our world entirely from the True Earth — that was impossible. Hence, this island. This place is the only passage between the worlds.

  “This Arch is what you use if you want to travel by foot. But Sky Chambers usually pass through that volcano at the sound end of the island. And every once in awhile, artificial stitch points created by certain conditions — like an eclipse, which is not really a moon obscuring a sun, that is, it’s not really astronomical in nature. It’s merely when the stitch point occasionally stretches its region of influence and touches other parts of the earth. That’s why Jadeth needed an eclipse the first time she came to Starland during the Pocket — the other side is guarded by Enlil’s goons, she didn’t want to deal with them. So she waited for the stitch point to stretch, for another passageway to appear. That eclipse over Starland gave her what she needed.

  “So now, getting to Enki’s secret …. when Enki grew restless on Nibiru and decided he wanted to help his new race of humans grow up, Enlil allowed it — but only if Enki would consent to the modification of his own memory, such that he could not reveal to the humans how to get to Nibiru, even inadvertently.”

  “Ahh. That’s why Enki got angry every time we asked where our guns came from,” Casey said. “Because he got them on Nibiru. His anger was an unconscious defense mechanism, to shoo us away from that line of questioning.”

  “That’s right,” Max said. “And I’ll bet beneath the surface, those guns are much more than just guns.”

  “How do you mean?” Casey said.

  “There are no guns on the True Earth. There is another world beneath this one. Guns don’t work there. Physics works differently there. Hell, everything works differently there. It’s the classical world — there, everything really is made of earth, air, fire and water. It’s not molecules and atoms. Science works here, but not there.”

  “But I thought we live in this ‘pinched off region’,” Ian said. “Even if I buy that — which I don’t, by the way — the laws of physics between the two
worlds have to be the same, right?”

  “No,” Max said. “Or at least — yes, at first they were. And if you look at ancient earth texts, from Plato on down — our reality was the same way at first. But there’s been drift since then — considerable drift. Remember: minds create reality. And these two regions and the minds living inside them have been developing in isolation from one another for a very, very long time. Each reality reflects the collective minds of its inhabitants. And both groups have gone in very different directions.

  “In this reality, the earth you all know, there are billions of people — all of them in a big hurry. Which makes sense, in a way — the average human lifespan was always a lot shorter than the average Niburian’s. As a result, humans naturally tried to cram more, well, living, into the already short lives they had.

  “But this mindset had an effect on their bubble of reality — Time itself became more frantic, faster as well. And that’s why Time on ‘planet earth’ moves differently than Time on Nibiru. Humans are more rushed, on the whole. Niburians are slower-minded. And there are less of them. Everything for them is on a longer, bigger scale — like the True Earth they inhabit. So as a result, earth moves in ‘fast time’, while Nibiru moves in ‘slow time’. Time is different for us than it is for thee, as Jadeth said back the in Starland Museum of Antiquities.

  “And that’s not the only difference. In our reality — that of ‘planet earth’ — the belief in science has taken hold. Over centuries we’ve ‘discovered’ the laws of science. And these laws now work consistently because everyone believes they do. But in reality, it’s just a big mirror, reflecting back to us when we expect to find. These ‘laws of science’ have become very, very deeply ingrained in our reality, reinforced by billions of minds over time. So they appear to exist objectively. But they don’t, not really. You’ll notice we bend them all the time — when we whoosh, when we moved around in stopped time in the Pocket, for starters.”