The Wayward Godking (30 page)

“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.

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“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.

“
A family reunion
.” She let go of him and looked around at them. “Look who we have here, and think about who is at this Villa place you came from Lucio. Think about it! All the people at the Villa were part of Simon’s family. Only Ramsays were in the Seventh Gate. Everyone else related to us was either with us in the Seventh Gate or,” she spun on the Djinni “with you, Lemarik, at your palace.”

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.”

For the second time in a few short hours, they had to restrain the Italian again as he tried to attack first Mark Andrew and then Lemarik. It was Merry who finally got him calmed down again.

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If the elves had been terrified by Queen Ereshkigal, they were horrified at the powerful form of Anu,
Skyfather
,
Lord of the Moon
. They ran before his presence until they were hidden in the forest, unwilling and/or unable to come out again. He walked with casual grace down the green central lawn of his daughter’s ‘Scottish Meadow’. Nergal walked by his side, again dressed in his finest armor, but nothing could compare to the burnished breastplate, the glittering, gem-encrusted helmet and the sparkling weapons adorning the muscular form of Anu. Even his shoes or sandals seemed made of gleaming diamonds as were his gauntlets and greaves. No mortal weapon could penetrate his armor. No modern weapon could pass through the powerful aura around him. The five ghostly Templars, the members of Simon’s family, Sophia and the rest of the Templars stood near the smoking barbecue pit watching them with great curiosity. Only the brave little King, managed to choke back his fear enough to stand with them. Paddy and his clurichaun band and the Boggan guards found themselves inhabiting the limbs of a stout oak tree on the edge of the forest, peering out through the leaves with the greatest caution. Plotius, himself, stood in front of his Queen’s yellow and black pavilion, sparkling in his own armor, rigid with terror.

Nergal escorted his grandfather about the amusements in the artificial world, explaining each of the areas as best he could, though he hardly knew what some of the games and recreation areas were about. Anu listened with great interest, and then finally made his way directly to where the members of Ereshkigal’s extended family stood waiting in silent trepidation.

Anu’s deep blue eyes fell on the smallest member first, as the baby cried softly on his mother’s shoulder and he removed his helmet, handing it over to Plotius. The baby, unimpressed by this regal visitor, was the only member unafraid to vocalize his true feelings.

“Show me the child.” Anu nodded to the baby. His stern face belied no personal interest, but Sophia’s knees almost gave out when Nergal reached for the child. Louis caught Christopher Stewart when he made a move to object. There was no harm in showing the child. Christopher subsided, and they held their collective breaths as the Lord of the Fifth Gate turned the baby around, allowing the blanket to fall to the ground.