Grimacing, Ciarán rose to his feet. Lanterns glowed, appearing as opaque halos of light in the eerie fog that cloaked the docks. From one of the ships, voices called out. Évrard’s men. Nearly there. He limped down the wooden dock toward the vessel. As he approached, two figures hurried down the pier from the direction of the city. Ciarán wiped the water from his eyes as Isaac and Khalil ran toward him. Khalil’s sword was blooded.
“On to the ship!” Isaac shouted.
At the entrance to the pier, a cry in Arabic rose up. A score of warriors emerged, led by a huge bearded Moor clutching a recurved bow. From Ciarán’s left came a fierce roar. Dripping wet, the tiger padded down the dock, with the panther following in its wake.
Ciarán’s pulse quickened. Khalil and Isaac backed toward him, just twenty yards from the great cats. Then a cry sounded from the direction of the ship.
“Ciarán!”
Turning, he saw Alais rush down the gangplank from Évrard’s ship. Eli bolted after her.
“Go back!” Ciarán yelled.
At the pier’s entrance, the large Moor drew back his bow, and Ciarán heard the whir of an arrow.
As he watched, Alais fell headlong toward the pier. He dived toward her. She caught herself with her hands, tears streaming from her eyes. He reached for her outstretched hands as another arrow whizzed overhead. Please, God, let her live! He felt for the arrow shaft that must have pierced her flesh. Her fingers tightened around his.
As Ciarán clung to Alais, the tiger bounded toward them. Khalil advanced to face it, sword in hand.
Then an Irish cry challenged the tiger’s roar.
“By Saints Patrick and Columcille, hear me!” Dónall stormed down the dock south of Évrard’s ship. His left arm cradled the open Book of Maugis d’Aygremont, and in his right hand, one of the kettle-shaped Moorish oil lamps glinted in the moonlight.
As the tiger turned toward him, Fae words rolled off Dónall’s tongue—a verse of an ancient song. The Moor, who had nocked another arrow from his quiver, stopped halfway through the pull of his bowstring. Both great cats froze in mid stride.
“Megaera! Alecto! Tisiphone!” Dónall shouted in Latin. “By the power of the Fae and the angels, your masters in heaven, be bound!”
Dónall uttered a final word in the Fae tongue, and blue flames rose around the large Moor and the great cats. A ghastly wail erupted as the air whipped into a howling gale. From the three possessed hosts, the blue fire streaked toward the oil lamp, and in its glow, the reflections of three hideous women screamed in agony as the lamp sucked the fire into itself until it was gone. The huge Moor’s eyes rolled upward in his head, his knees buckled, and he collapsed on his bow. The great cats slunk back on the dock as the rest of the Moors looked on in dread. Dónall mac Taidg stood triumphant in the dying wind. In his hand, the lamp lid clattered against the brass vessel, as if the spirits inside fought to be free.
Ciarán wrapped his arms around Alais. “Where are you hurt?” he asked. She shook her head, her mouth twisted with grief. Then he noticed Eli, slumped behind her with two arrows in his chest. Blood seeped from between his fingers clutching the wounds.
“He pushed me aside,” she said, her lips trembling.
Isaac rushed to the young man, whose eyes stared blankly down the pier. From the ship, Josua cried out, “My son!”
Tears stung Ciarán’s eyes. Then he felt Dónall tugging his shoulder.
“Get up lad! They’re coming!”
Ciarán looked up to see a dozen warriors racing down the pier toward him, swords drawn.
“Hurry!” Dónall yelled.
Aboard the ship, Évrard’s crew were already in action, drawing in the mooring ropes, preparing to let the current pull the ship away from the wharf. Isaac and Josua pulled Eli aboard, and Alais climbed the gangplank, still clutching Ciarán’s hand. He tried to follow her, but his vision grew blurry. Then his legs buckled, and he fell face-first onto the deck.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
THE URIM’S FATE
Ciarán opened his eyes. He stood in a glen of clover, with green hills rising on either side. A bone-chilling mist hung in the air. Was this home?
Through the mist, a group of men approached. All save one wore gray habits. The man in the group’s center had short-cropped hair the color of orange autumn leaves. Niall?
Ciarán blinked. Seven men stood before him, all of them his friends. On the far right stood Senach, his wiry frame leaning on a staff. But instead of his shepherd’s crook, it was a tall, black staff topped with a golden ankh. In the center of the ankh’s loop, a bright gem shone.
“Why are you here?” Senach asked.
Beside him, the twins, Áed and Ailil, watched dispassionately, their habits shredded and muddy. Next to them stood Eli. The curly-haired Jew looked wide-eyed, his chest still slick with blood. In his outstretched palms, he cupped a glittering gemstone. “Take care of her,” Eli said.
On the right stood Murchad, his habit torn and stained where the Frankish blade had impaled him. Next to him, Fintan held a golden chalice as if presenting it for communion. A familiar gemstone gleamed in the chalice’s thick stem.
From the center of the group, Niall stepped forward. A crescent-shaped scar arced across his chest, and his left hand rested on the pommel of a broadsword in a thick leather scabbard. Embedded into the pommel beneath his palm shone another gem. He shook his head, his jaw clenched. “We didn’t die for nothing.”
Then anger flashed in his eyes. “So bloody wake up!”
*
“Wake up Ciarán,” a voice pleaded.
He opened his eyes to see Alais staring back at him. She breathed a relieved sigh and kissed his cheek. The touch of her lips warmed his face.
He was sitting on the deck of Évrard’s ship, leaning up against the mast, beneath a star-filled sky. Alais knelt beside him, next to Dónall, who smiled faintly. With a jolt, Ciarán remembered his dream. “I know what happened to Enoch’s device,” he said weakly.
“Me, too, lad,” Dónall replied. “Sit tight and we’ll tell everyone.”
Dónall left, and here was Khalil, with a bottle of one of Évrard’s tawny wines.
“Drink this,” he said.
Ciarán did. The wine warmed his throat and chest. He glanced at his arms and legs, now wrapped in bandages. He looked around, and Córdoba was nowhere in sight. “You stayed with us?”
“I killed one of Al-Mansor’s men,” Khalil replied. “Where else was I to go? Besides, I want to know what happened to Enoch’s device.”
Ciarán gave a grateful nod. “How long was I out?”
“Two hours, perhaps.”
“What happened to the demons?”
“After we left Córdoba, Dónall had the lamp wrapped in sackcloth and bound it seven times with an iron chain. Then he and Isaac uttered prayers to God and the angels and cast the lamp into the river, where I saw it disappear beneath the water.”
“And Eli?”
Alais’ eyes were red from crying. “In the deckhouse,” she said. “There was nothing they could do to save him.”
Ciarán dropped his head into his hands, wondering if his experience in the glen was more than a dream. Had he stood at the threshold of death’s door—a threshold that Eli had crossed forever?
A moment later, Dónall returned with the grief-stricken rabbi. “Now that we’re together,” Isaac said, “let us pray my family’s sacrifice was not in vain. Tell me what happed to the Urim.”
“The Book of Enoch gave us the answer,” Dónall explained. “The fiery bow and arrow that Enoch sees from the summit was an unmistakable reference to Sagittarius, the prophecy’s symbol for Enoch’s device. What Enoch saw next was a river of fire, great mountains, the sea, and the storehouse of the winds—each a symbol of the four primal elements: fire, earth, water, and air. But it is also a sequence. Since ancient times, the four elements have been embodied by four fundamental objects: a staff for fire, a stone for earth, a cup for water, and a s
word for air. That’s when I understood: in each millennium, the device had taken a different form.”
Ciarán nodded feebly. His discovery in the Chamber of Enlightenment and his vision in the glen confirmed this.
“In the first millennium,” Dónall continued, “the time of Arcanus and Atlantis, the device was a staff, albeit with a jewel embedded in a headpiece shaped as an ankh. By the second millennium, in the time of King David and King Solomon, the device existed in its purist form: as a stone, the symbol of earth. By the next millennium, during its possession by the Zoroastrian magi, it was a golden chalice, taken by the Wise Men, where it likely became known as the Holy Chalice, the cup of Christ.”
“But as I said before,” Isaac interrupted, “the Urim is a gemstone, not a cup.”
“True,” Ciarán said. “But what if the gemstone was embedded in the cup’s stem? I’ve seen a chalice thus adorned before.”
“Perhaps,” the rabbi admitted. “And now?”
“The sequence is complete,” Dónall replied. “In this millennium, the Urim is in a sword.”
Khalil sipped from the bottle of wine. “Do you have any idea how many swords there are in this world?”
“This is no ordinary sword,” Dónall said. “Yet first, we must start with the Holy Chalice, which leads us to the legend of Saint Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph was a Christian who gave his own tomb for the Savior’s body after the crucifixion. When he fled the Romans, Joseph took the Holy Chalice and traveled north to the British Isle long before it became Saxon England. In the few historical accounts that exist, the chalice fades into mystery, but there is an oral account among the Celts that Joseph took the chalice to an isle in a lake—an isle called Avalon, and a home of the Fae.”
“So we’re back to your Fae,” Isaac said. “But what of this sword?”
“I’m getting there,” Dónall replied. “While there are many tales of cups and cauldrons among the Fae of Avalon, there is only one legendary sword. To the Irish, it was called Caladbolg; to the Welsh, Caledfwlch. But to the Romanized Britons, it was known as Excalibur.”
*
A breeze wafted off the river, fluttering the sail. Alais took Ciarán’s hand.
Dónall went on. “The sword was given by the Fae to Merlin of Britain, a druid of the late fifth century but a powerful ally of the Fae, according to the Book of Maugis. Merlin gave this sword to a Celtic warlord named Arthur, who, for a time, united the kings of Britain against the Saxons. But upon his death, the sword was cast back into the lake, where it remained with the Fae of Avalon.”
“The sword and the stone,” Ciarán mused.
Dónall nodded. “In legend, it was the sword that was embedded in a stone. But as we know, the truth is sometimes obscured by the legend surrounding it.”
“So the Urim may now be embedded in this sword?” Isaac asked. “But where is this Avalon?”
“In the Otherworld,” Dónall said with a sigh, “the realm of the Fae. Whether it’s possible to find our way there, I don’t know. But it’s far away, in England. We’ll never get there before the prime conflict.”
A wave of apprehension churned in Ciarán’s gut. Surely they couldn’t have failed already. “Why would Maugis send us on a wild-goose chase?” he pressed. “Enoch’s device is critical to the prophecy, yet Maugis would have us stumble around looking for some mythical isle lost in the mists of Britain? We must be missing something.”
“Does Maugis have any connection to the British Isle?” Khalil asked.
Dónall rubbed his forehead as if he were sifting through the vast trove of knowledge stored in his brain. A moment later, he brightened. “Turpin’s diary contained a brief account of Roland and several of the paladins traveling to Britain to find Merlin’s tomb.”
Ciarán’s mind stirred, quickened by Dónall’s revelation. “Does Maugis ever mention a sword?”
“He had a sword called Flamberge,” Dónall replied.
“The name would translate as ‘flame blade,’” Khalil added.
“Of course!” Ciarán said. “Get the book.”
Dónall shook his head. “There’s no mention of the sword in the book.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time the monks of Reims overlooked something.” Ciarán took the Book of Maugis from Dónall and flipped through the pages to the massive hieroglyph of the prophecy. He scanned the outer ring of zodiac symbols and the larger of the heptagrams. Between the heptagram’s seven points he found them: seven more astrological symbols. Isaac and Khalil now stood flanking Ciarán, studying them.
“Fierabras,” Khalil said.
“The cipher,” Ciarán answered. “Can you read the symbols between the points of the heptagram?”
“I know the cipher,” Khalil replied, “but the symbols are arranged in a circle. Where to begin?”
“The one nearest Virgo,” Ciarán said.
Khalil pointed to each of the symbols, in the order Ciarán directed.
“The first is the sun,” he said, “then Mars and Jupiter, Saturn, the moon, and Venus. It ends with Mercury. Now, the letter for the sun is “R.” Mars is “O,” Jupiter is “S,” Saturn is “F”, the moon becomes “L,” and Venus is the letter “E.” Mercury is “U.”
“R-O-S-F-L-E-U . . .”Ciarán had gone through them all. Full circle, the sun added another “R.” “Rosefleur!”
“By Patrick’s beard, that’s it!” Dónall said.
Isaac looked perplexed. “It’s what?”
“It’s the home of Orionde,” Ciarán explained. “The Fae who tutored Maugis d’Aygremont. He and his companions must have retrieved the sword from Merlin’s tomb. The location of the device was hidden in the book all along!” He turned to Dónall. “What did Maugis say about Rosefleur?”
Dónall replied, “‘In the heart of Aquitaine lies the gateway to Rosefleur, the house of Orionde, the woman in white, savior of queens.’”
Alais’ eyes went wide. “The woman in white,” she repeated. “The savior of queens . . . Queen Radegonde. I’ve seen this woman before.”
Dónall stared at her. “Where?”
“In the Val d’Anglin,” she said. “Near a place called Brosse.”
“Holy Mother . . .” Ciarán’s blood ran cold. To his horror, it all made sense now. “They know.”
Isaac’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”
“Adémar and Lucien,” Ciarán explained. “That’s why they wanted the book, because the hieroglyph contained the location of Enoch’s device. And we let Lucien see it back at Saint-Bastian’s.”
Dónall gave a long sigh.
“What is it?” Khalil asked.
Ciarán’s heart sank. “Our rival, the bishop, implored Duke William of Aquitaine to take his army to Brosse as the winter snows thaw. We can get there in time, but we’ll be heading straight into a war.”
PART V
The first angel blew his trumpet, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were hurled to the earth . . .
—Revelation 8:7
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
BLOOD AND SOULS
Tendrils of fog hovered around the castle of Montrésor, clinging to the stone walls like the webs of some monstrous spider. The fog wafted across the rocky spur on which the castle stood, and filled the narrow valley carved by the Indrois River.
From the battlements of the rugged keep, Lucien peered into the torch-lit courtyard crammed with horse lancers and spearmen. The force numbered a full three thousand men at arms, all hungry for battle yet ignorant of the sacrifice that many of them would soon make.
Beside Lucien, Adémar of Blois surveyed the army with grim satisfaction.
“Will they be enough, my lord?” Lucien asked.
“Yes,” Adémar replied. “And we shall have my legion as well.”
Lucien gulped. The thought of Adémar’s legion both excited and terrified him.
Behind them, the tower door swung open. Fulk the Black, clad in a mail hauberk, stepped out onto the battlement. His
thick black beard hid his relative youth, and Lucien reminded himself that the count had inherited his title before his seventeenth birthday. Only ten years had passed since his brutally successful reign began. Fulk appeared to be in one of his darker moods.
“Are you certain about this, Adémar?” Fulk asked. “William’s army is large, yet you want me to give you six-hundred of my men. I may need them.”
Adémar’s eyes narrowed. “Are they not worth your absolution? Need I remind you, my lord, that the debt of your sins is substantial?”
Fulk winced, and a familiar fear showed in his eyes. At that moment, Lucien knew that Adémar had won, for despite Fulk’s legendary cruelty, he remained terrified of hell. Lucien, on the other hand, had grown far more accepting of such a fate, for they would all be consigned to the lake of fire unless the Dragon’s forces prevailed.
Adémar drew Fulk into a one-armed embrace. “With this single act, my lord, the debt of your sins can be wiped away. For your men shall do the work of God, reclaiming the most sacred relic in all Christendom: the Holy Chalice of Christ! With it, I shall go to Rome and become pope. And you shall become king of all France.”
“And in time?” The count’s rapacious personality quickly reasserted itself.
“Why, emperor, I should think. Reuniting Charlemagne’s glorious empire under a single banner.”
“Yes!” And there was the crafty smile that Lucien had come to expect. “Adémar, I swear by the souls of God that you shall have your men.”
Fulk looked out over the courtyard. Drawing his broadsword, he thrust it above his head. “Warriors of Anjou!” his voice boomed, and a hush fell over the crowd. “William of Aquitaine brings his army to Brosse, believing that this time he will taste the victory we have long denied him. He rides with his army, thinking he will find only Guy of Limoges. But instead, he will find us!”
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