Inanna shoved Abaddon behind her, and then threw herself at Mark’s feet.
“Lord Adar, I beg you to spare his life,” she pleaded with him. “He has suffered mightily. Cannot his sins be forgiven?”
Mark helped her to her feet.
“You injure me with your supplications,” he said. “Is this what I have become to you?”
“You were always there,” she said. Her simple statement could have taken a thousand different ways. Abaddon preferred not to consider it. His life was already a disaster.
“Lord Adar,” he stepped between them. “This is entirely my fault. I dreamed her. I did not mean to detain her here and endanger her. I take it you have come to speak to her on my behalf? If so, then my gratitude is endless, but as you can see, I have made my own way with her. She has accepted my apologies and has graciously consented to spend these last hours with me.”
“Last hours?” Mark frowned, but the act did not diminish his form in any manner as it would have a mortal. “What do you mean?”
“I am nothing more than a shade, my Lord,” Abaddon shrugged slightly. “I am in the lair of a dragon simply waiting to become her next meal. This is my dream.”
Mark’s frown disappeared only to be replaced by a surprised look.
“If you would permit me,” he took Inanna’s arm and drew her away, toward the rocky pool in the midst of the garden. “I would have a few words with Inanna and then you both may make your own way.”
Abaddon bowed his head slightly and Inanna tripped after him.
“What are you doing?” He asked her as soon as they were out of sight.
“I have to be sure that he is sincere, Adar,” she smiled. “You know I would not want to make another mistake. Is he truly changed, Adar?”
“Have you not revealed yourself to him?” Mark was astounded. “You toy with him?”
“And why not? Certainly it is no worse than what you did to him.” She raised her chin slightly. “To us. You took him from me, and then you cast me aside. I would have moved heaven and earth for you, but you were rash. Jealous! A tyrant.”
“Me? I don’t remember that.” He looked truly hurt.
“And how could anyone who professed love in his heart, exile his love to the dark depths of the cold sea?”
“Ahhh. That. Well said,” Mark nodded. “But you deserved that little punishment.”
“Yes, but I never asked to be separated from my Abaddon,” she reminded him.
“Point taken,” he acceded. “At any rate, you must leave here at once. It’s time to reveal yourself to him. Your lair is in a dangerous place. I have heard rumors and murmurs from the deep. You should take him and go North. That is, of course, if you still want him.”
“You would let me have him? Just like that?” She asked.
“His freedom would have a price, Inanna,” he said and looked away from her.
“And what is this price? It is something I could pay for him?”
“No,” he said took her arm again and led her back to where Abaddon leaned on a mossy tree-trunk.
Mark stood directly in front of him with Inanna behind him. The dark angel pushed off the tree and eyed him curiously.
“I will release you from my service, Abaddon,” he said simply. “On one condition.”
“What is your wish?” Abaddon closed his eyes briefly, expecting the worst.
“You must take back your gift.” Mark raised both silver eyebrows.
“I don’t understand.” Abaddon shook his head.
“You must take back your gift,” Mark repeated.
Abaddon said nothing. He stood perfectly still as Mark approached him. The Knight of Death placed his right hand on his forehead and looked into his eyes.
“You understand what I am giving you?” He asked and Abaddon nodded.
Mark kissed him lightly on the lips and then turned away. Inanna rushed forward to catch her lover as he fell. Mark did not look back, but disappeared into the trees.
A few moments later, Mark woke up in the cramped sleeping quarters inside Leviathan. Ashmodel sat cross-legged on the floor looking at him in wonder.
“You were sleeping and I could not wake you,” the angel said at once.
“I heard you calling me.” Mark sat up and rubbed his arms. They tingled as if they had been asleep as well. His feet also felt the prickling sensation of returning circulation.
“Where did you go?” Ashmodel asked him.
“Why was I not privy to the divine plan, Ashmodai?” He asked instead of answering. “Why was I not informed? Was I not an archangel? Did I not serve the Father well enough? I did his bidding. I worked against the evil. I collected the mysteries. I gave them out again. I did as I was told, Ashmodai. They toyed with our hearts and our minds. Were we so very ignorant? So naïve?”
“We were celestial creatures, beings of light! Sons of our father and our mother,” Ashmodel frowned at him. “We had no thought of our own. There was nowhere we could have gone. Nothing we could have done. If we had never strayed, we would never have learned anything, Uriel. That was the plan. To teach us lessons. To show us what is beyond the light.”
“Why? What more could we need? Why would we want it? Why would we need it?”
“Why ask why?” Ashmodel stood up. “Did this have something to do with Abaddon?”
“You know Abaddon?” Mark stood as well and straightened his shirt.
“Of course. He keeps the Keys of Death and so on and so forth,” Ashmodel talked with his hands as he walked. “Everyone knows him.”
“Of course they do,” Mark said to himself and then sighed. His visit to Inanna’s dream had been very disturbing, but he had more or less known what to expect when he had found the two incongruous sleepers in the lair under the desert sand. At first he had been elated to learn, she had not eaten him, and then he had felt a familiar twinge that hadn’t troubled him in years. Since the days of his troubled relationship with Meredith Sinclair, he had put such petty grievances completely out of his mind and thought them forever gone. But then had come moments of doubt and mixed emotions as Andrea Larmenius and now, Innana and Abaddon? Jealousy. He’d thought it impossible for him to feel such a totally human emotion, and the feeling had outraged him; something else he thought he’d learned to control, his temper. The sight of Abaddon and Inanna had not only brought on these two familiar old friends, but had released a flood of memories from the deeply buried past. Now he wallowed in self-doubt and recriminations. Not the best of conditions when there was so much more to be done. He had taken some steps to clear some of the clogged passages in the flow of time, but there were many things left to do yet.
He turned a dark eye on the angel. “Let us go and see what more damage we may undo.”
(((((((((((((
The screams were hideous. The chaos, a scene straight out of Dante’s inferno. Falling bodies, men and horses. The horses’ death knells could not drown the blood-curdling screams of the soldiers, and the shrieks and wails of the Templars, and yet, the fall went on. Every rider was unseated, unable to remain on their tumbling mounts as they fell into darkness. Not one of them was capable of a single coherent thought for the first several seconds. When their lungs had run out of air, they had breathed in, almost in unison, those who unmercifully retained their consciousness, and screamed again until the air was again gone, and still they were falling. Free falling into a yawning black pit. Lucifer was the first to regain his senses, turning himself in every direction, trying to assess their immediate problem. The silvery light of the mottled lake of mercury into which they had plunged was rapidly disappearing above them. Below them, a red glow was slowly growing closer.
Much of the noise abated as many of them succumbed to shock or lack of oxygen in their lungs or loss of vocal ability in stripped larynxes. The horses had ceased to squeal, and the bodies falling in his immediate vicinity were inert. Some of them may have been dead from heart failure, he could not tell. He caught hold of the
nearest arm and spun the body around like a parachutist might do and locked arms with him. It was the Mystic Healer, Simon of Grenoble. A thin trail of blood traveled up the side of his face and the impact of the wind blew his beard and hair straight up, half opening his eyes. Unconscious. Lucifer held onto his arm and then dodged a boot that narrowly missed his head. He grabbed the boot, and pulled down the hysterical King of the Brits; Luke Matthew was fully awake. He grabbed the angel’s arm and held onto him for dear life. Lucifer tried to speak to him, but his words were pulled away and left behind as quickly as he spoke them. Another body drifted near and they dragged in the lifeless body of one of the six soldiers with whom he had been traveling. Lucifer’s endeavors seemed to calm Luke’s panic by giving him something to take his mind off of what was happening, and soon they were maneuvering about awkwardly, linking up with everyone they could find. The increased bulk slowed their fall, and the bodies already below them sank further faster. Lucifer disentangled himself from the knot of arms and legs and plunged straight down, neatly plucking Izzy d’Ornan and then Zebulon. Izzy was awake. Zebulon was not. Lucifer managed to make motions to the frightened Knight enough to make him understand what to do. He flattened himself and held onto his fainted brother, slowing their fall long enough to make contact with the larger group above. They were performing aerial acrobats like clumsy, amateur skydivers.
Lucifer fell again and snagged Edgard d’Brouchart. The Grand Master was furious, but well. He fought with his beard as he tried to shout something to Lucifer. Lucifer caught another of the soldiers, and shoved him into d’Brouchart’s arms. He gathered three more bodies and then d’Brouchart seemed to be drifting slowly up to join the crowd and still, yet, they fell. The air was hard to breath under the tremendous free fall velocity. Lucifer continued his maneuvers until he had gathered everyone he could find. The last body was that of Ernst Schweikert. The general was very much awake and attempting to use his parachuting experience to break his fall on his own. Lucifer locked arms with him and motioned upwards toward the clutter of bodies falling above them. Schweikert shook his head no. He would not join the mass.
Lucifer let go and drifted slowly back up to the main body where he found d’Brouchart again. He twisted and turned and pulled and pushed until he had Edgard above the central portion of the mass. Here the wind was blocked somewhat and speech was possible.
“What were you doing out there?!” The Master shouted at him. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know, Nathanael,” Lucifer answered him. “It seems the lake was not a lake at all.”
Edgard looked down at the tangle of men below him. The conscious members struggled to hold to the unconscious and dead members. It was beyond horror. Was this their hell? Would they fall forever now? Would they learn to take turns crawling up here in order to breathe and hear? Or would they soon begin to kill each other in an attempt to remain on top of the heap? It was fantastic and the thoughts in his head were equally bizarre.
“What were you doing out there?!” He shouted again for lack of anything else to say.
“Lo, I bring glad tidings of great joy. To you this night is born a babe who will be a sign and testament. I have come to bring a message of peace!” Lucifer’s face lit up with unspeakable peace and joy. “You will find the babe lying in a manger.”
“You’ve lost your bloody mind!!” D’Brouchart shouted at the angel and then reached down to drag Louis Champlain on top of the heap by one leg. The Frankish King was bloodied and terrified. Not a pretty sight.
“Sir!!” Louis shouted in his face. “What is happening? How can we fall so long?”
“It is the work of the devil,” Edgard eyed Lucifer suspiciously. “There is enchantment here. It may be just an illusion!”
“I should hope so.” Louis adjusted someone’s head to a more natural position. If they could manage to keep their necks intact and make a relatively soft landing… in water perhaps, or snow, or….
“What are you doing here?!” Louis turned his attention to the angel. The wind whistling through the open spots in the living raft made an eerie sound. The only light was from the red glow that was very slowly growing below them. The silver circle above had long since vanished.
“Lo, I bring glad tiding of great joy.” Lucifer smiled at the king.
“Don’t get him started, Louis,” Edgard shouted. “He’s lost his bloody mind.”
Something flashed in front of his face and he grabbed at it instinctively, but missed. Another white flash and Louis snatched it from the air.
“What the devil?” Lucifer asked as he peered at the small white rectangle in Louis’ hand.
The thing was an envelope with something written on one side. It was too dark to read the words.
“Came out of someone’s pocket, no doubt!” Edgard shouted.
“No doubt,” Louis agreed.
“Grandfather!!” A plaintive voice called from below them and Edgard tried to reach down through the tangle to one of his grandsons, who was obviously injured and in distress.
Chapter Six of Sixteen
his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are
thrown down by him
Lemarik had adjusted his calculations three times already. The growing crowd bent upon going into the Seventh Gate had caused him a number of problems, but he was at last ready to make the journey. He bade his wife and daughter goodbye, sat beside his beautiful son, Omar, for a short period in the company of his mother, and then, the party assembled in one of the lower rooms of the palace.
Here was a strange place indeed, filled with bubbling bottles of colorful liquids, spiraling tubes filled with condensate and vapors, and kettles steaming and blooping and giving off noxious odors. Copper and bronze cauldrons lined the walls and a rather large cast iron pot chugged cheerfully on an open fire pit, spitting little clouds of yellow steam into a glass coil. This was the Mighty Djinni’s version of Mark Andrew’s lab. Everywhere they looked was something even more wondrous than before. Items of inexplicable beauty taken from the deepest mines and the deepest crevices in the earth. Magnificent specimens of coral, dried sea fans and sponges, urchins, sand dollars, starfish and upon one wall a terrifying collection of jaws filled with razor-edged teeth. These were not the jaws of sharks or any other predator known to modern man, but things further removed from the present time, things prehistoric or perhaps, hereto-fore regarded as mythical.
“Here, here, here,” Lemarik said as he bobbed back and forth through the lab like the quintessential mad scientist. “Up here. Everyone, up here. And be careful. There is very little room.”
The nineteen members of the search party crowded onto a raised platform made of hexagonal purple tiles.
“It was originally designed for only four,” he explained and apologized as he squeezed in between Gregory and Luke Andrew.
“Now what?” Armand asked from somewhere inside the crowd. “Don’t we need Scotty to beam us up?”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Lemarik answered him. “All we have to do is close our eyes and think of the Seventh Gate. On my mark. One, two, three, think!”
(((((((((((((
“What do you suppose he was doing down here?” Nergal looked cautiously from behind the haystack. “This looks like the place he was so fond of in Britannia. Cold, dark and foggy. A grand place.”
“Quite so,” Marduk agreed.
“Where is this Britannia, Master? Is it friend or foe?” Zaguri asked and peeked cautiously from the other side of the piled stacks of newly harvested hay. The sweet smell permeated the heavy night air, and above them, the full moon glowed weakly, partially obscured by thick patches of ground fog.
“It is neither, Zaguri, retract your claws,” Marduk warned his companion. “We are merely here seeking information.”
“Then we should follow them, perhaps,” Nergal suggested and pointed toward a well-armored knight carrying a heavy burden and robed and hooded figure, walking quickly through the mist.
They watched until he had passed, and then Marduk glanced at Zaguri’s ugly profile.
“Get rid of the theatrics, Zaguri. We want to learn what is going on here, not frighten them to death,” he hissed and then waited while his servant complied with the command. He was not much better when the transformation was complete. He looked awful. Stubbly hair on his chin, bushy eyebrows, deep-set, dark eyes, a broad mouth full of yellowed teeth. His forehead was rounded and his domed, bald head was spotted and convoluted as if he had no skull and the skin simply followed the contour of his brain.
“Hopping hobgoblins!” Nergal swore when he saw the new look.
Marduk narrowed his eyes at the Lord of the Fifth gate.
“You’ve become quite the comedian lately, my friend,” he muttered as they stepped out of the cover of the haystack.
They followed after the Knight for several yards, and then Nergal stopped.
“Come!” Marduk stopped to urge him along.
“Wait,” Nergal hissed and started off in the opposite direction. Marduk and Zaguri hurried after him.
“Where are you going?” Marduk asked when he caught up with him. A low, dark hulk loomed out of the fog in front of them.
“I heard something,” Nergal told him in a low voice.
Marduk did not like this development, but Nergal would not be turned. He was almost running, in fact. The structure was a barn and inside, the flickering light of an oil lamp gave off a yellow glow, casting monstrous shadows on the walls. Their entrance startled the roosting chickens and the sleeping cattle and sheep. The animals set up a cacophony as the intruders burst into their sanctuary. Nergal was undeterred by the bleating, lowing and squawking. He headed directly for the rear stall where the lamp sat on an upended barrel.
The Perfect Sun Page 12