The Wayward Godking (8 page)

Mark dragged a chest from under a table covered with a moth-eaten lace table cloth and sat down on it.

“I’m sorry, Brother,” he said as he pressed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I didn’t expect to see him. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Of course, you didn’t hurt me,” Simon said, wiping the blood from a cut on his forearm and brushed off his sleeves. He sat down next to the Knight and perused two fingers that were rapidly turning black and blue. “I’m not a little girl, you know.”

“Sorry,” Mark shrugged.

“Now, tell me about this Keenmoll.” Simon plucked his pen and pad from the floor. He’d been making notes of everything Mark Andrew saw in the stone. He had over six pages of scribbled notes to sort through. “How do you spell that?”

“I have no idea.” Mark sighed and picked up his water bottle. They had taken a break, ate a quick breakfast and brought some water and recording materials with them, including a defunct tape recorder that wouldn’t work after much struggling and cursing. “He is the judge and Lord over the gods… the Elder Gods. He was given the power to see to it they behave themselves. Invoking his name usually was enough to make them back off. There were covenants and agreements, rules and regulations… a Code of Conduct, if you will.”

“Fascinating,” Simon whispered and his pale blue eyes lit up. “The gods must be crazy. Rules? I thought they were pretty much able to do whatever they liked.”

“That would have been very dangerous.” Mark smiled and drank deeply from the water bottle. “All things must be ruled by some form of restraint. Think of it, Simon, even the dust motes are ruled by the laws of physics, just the same as the galaxies. Same rules for both. People have laws written by men and God. Animals, minerals… plants have laws written by nature who
is
God. Simple.”

“So what does he do?” Simon stopped writing and looked up at him.

“He passes judgment, pronounces guilt or innocence, and metes punishment,” Mark told him.

“Where is he? Did you see? What was he doing?”

Mark frowned and then stood up.

“I don’t know,” he stared at the stone. “I was afraid he would see me.”

“Why? You’re not an Elder God, are you?” Simon chuckled and then fell silent.

“Marduk must have called him.” Mark swallowed hard. Marduk had come to his aid and he was no longer there. Marduk would not know what happened. Perhaps Kinmalla had taken care of Huber. “I sent for Marduk when I was in trouble. I apparently left before he came.”

“You sent for Marduk?” Simon’s mouth fell open and the pad slipped through his fingers onto the floor. “But I thought you were more pow… I thought that you and he were… at odds.”

“He made a fair showing at New Babylon,” Mark acceded and closed his eyes. Never had he ever thought to speak well of his arch-rival. “I have been forced to change my perspective on many things, Simon. One thing that bothers me most about all this coming out now is the change in your own attitude toward me. I always saw to your welfare. You must know that. I have regretted what happened to you, not once, but twice and both times, I tried myself and found myself guilty. There were circumstances, of course, beyond my control. Even still, I should have made a better showing. Especially, the second time around.”

“Some things were meant to be, Sir.” Simon looked away from the Knight of Death. “We cannot… I mean,
man
cannot expect to change the will of God. Even the gods cannot change the will of the Creator. We are His for His pleasure, not ours.”

“Surely you can’t mean to say you believe that God would allow such pain for His pleasure.” Mark frowned slightly. “I don’t even believe that, though I’ve accused Him time and again. We bring on our own pain, Simon.”

“And so you have answered your own doubt, Mark.” Simon picked up his pad from the floor a second time. “Whatever happened to me, happened because it needed to happen or else Simon of Grenoble would not have been Simon of Grenoble. He would have been someone else.”

At that analysis, Mark had to laugh.

“I believe you’re right, Simon of Grenoble. But I have to take another look in there. If what you say is true, if we are dreaming each other in and out of existence, then I may know where Meredith is.”

“Oh, really?” Simon raised both eyebrows.

“I dreamt of her twice just before I found myself on Lucio’s doorstep,” he shrugged. “Lucio had dreamt of me. She may be in the Seventh Gate.”

“But I dream of her too!” Simon blurted and then looked rather pale.

“Then you should dream of her more often.” Mark clapped him on the shoulder. “It is entirely permissible to dream of our angels, Simon, even if they fall short of our expectations.”

Mark got up and approached the stone again.

“Place your hand on the stone, Simon, and have a look.”

Simon hesitated, but Mark insisted taking the Healer’s hand and laying it on the stone next to his own. They jerked their heads slightly when the stone’s power struck their minds. “The double contact will muddle the image we present here,” Mark whispered.

They both looked into the stone at the same time. Mark saw his sons, Luke and the Dove… No, he saw Luke Andrew and Omar and with them, Meredith and Dunya. In front of them sat the dark Lord, Kinmalla.

“Listen,” Mark breathed the word to Simon.

“… ibn Adalune ibn Adar ibn Anu, you stand before this court accused of multiple crimes against humanity. I find you guilty of the charges levied against you. A recess of forty-five glimmers will be taken while punishment is considered.”

They heard a loud banging and Mark watched as the judge left the ruddy glow of the chamber. The vision wavered and he saw Dunya’s terrified face. Then Omar popped into view as he pulled his sister to him and hugged her tightly, trying to comfort her once more.

“There is no need to worry, my love,” the Prophet whispered to her as she cried against his white and gold tunic overlay. “He has nothing to levy against you.”

“Uhhhh that might not necessarily be true, Omar.” Luke Andrew appeared in the vision. “He pronounced Nicole’s charges intermixed with mine. When I challenged him, he said that we… Nicole and I… are one and the same in the eyes of God. I shudder to think what that means, but I believe it is because we were twins. You and Dunya are also twins.”

“Omar.” Dunya pushed her brother back and looked up at him. “It is exactly as I told you. We are indivisible. Nothing you do can change that. Wither thou goest, there go I. You have always known this. We belong together, Omar, and whatever he does to you, wherever he sends you, there I will go as well. I would not have it any other way.”

Luke Andrew frowned at her and then at Omar.

“I’ve heard this before, Omar!” Luke backed away from them. “It’s all the same with them. What is wrong with you, Dunya? Has Nicole been talking to you? What about William? Where does
he
fit in?”

“You know perfectly well what I’m talking about, Luke Andrew Ramsay!” Dunya scowled at him darkly. “You’ve always known it. You and Nicole are at odds just as Grandmother and Lord Marduk. They are one and the same, parts of one whole, and yet, Semiramis refuses to admit it. You are like Semiramis. You see something in Nicole that frightens you and so, you reject her. She loves you more than her own life, Luke, and you tear out her heart and trample it. When are you going to stop parading around as a man and accept your destiny? Accept the truth! You are
not
a man. You never were a man. You will never be one.”

Mark Andrew broke the connection and pulled Simon’s hand from the stone.

The Healer looked at him in silence.

“It seems the gods are in trouble, Simon,” Mark said after a moment.

“Then you should get back there and straighten it out.” Simon shrugged, but seemed about to bolt. “I have a hard time dealing with this. In fact, I don’t want to deal with it at all. I try to forget what you are… what Meredith is.” Simon pressed his hands to his ears. “What I am.”

“Simon, please…” Mark reached for him and he backed further away, bumping into a stack of books, sending them every which way across the floor.

It was the same problem that had surfaced when Simon had finally realized that Mark Andrew was, indeed, what his own father had accused him of being. And since then, Simon had been forced to acknowledge that Edgard d’Brouchart through the most profound hypocrisy he had ever witnessed was exactly the same thing as Mark Andrew. How the Grand Master could have been so duplicitous, was beyond his comprehension, but at least the truth had explained many mysteries to the healer. “Simon, you are my friend foremost and my Brother. If I could make things easier for you, I would, but it has never been easy for even ordinary mortal men to accept destiny, to accept fate or whatever you want to call it, when they find that, ultimately, they are not masters of their own lives. Have I ever done ill to you? Do I owe you some apology? If so, name it now, and I will beg for your forgiveness. Your friendship is that important to me.”

“You owe me nothing,” Simon retorted. “It is I who am unworthy of your company, let alone your friendship and brotherhood. It is I, who am nothing.”

“That’s not true.” Mark sat down on the chest again. “Simon, do you remember when we vowed to kill each other before we went in search of Meredith?”

“I remember that foolishness, yes.” Simon leaned against a marble table and crossed his arms over his chest.

“You know you never really explained why you stole her from me,” Mark said. “You’ve admitted it, regretted it and yet, permitted it to remain between us as a festering wound. Why… Why Meredith? In your role as a son of Israel, you knew she was already married to me. Tell me why you did it, and I will tell you why I saved you from your father’s knife on Vesuvius.”

Simon straightened slightly and then slumped again in defeat.

“I took her because she was with me in the underworld. Day after day and night after night, we lived together, slept together, ate together. It was as if
we
were married. I had never known any woman in such a setting. I had never thought it possible. And even in spite of the danger we faced every night, I fell in love with her. I had no choice in the matter. It simply happened. I have done some investigation concerning first loves, Brother. I am no different in that respect than any other. Though I knew I could not really be her husband in every sense, I fantasized there were no nightly battles, no dire circumstances surrounding our captivity in the underworld.”

“During the day, I pretended we simply lived there in the cottage because we wanted our privacy, because we wanted to be far from the Order and everything associated with civilization. It was my own little invention, my own idea of what it must have been like for Adam and Eve in the garden… before their eyes were opened. When the elves cured me, I was appalled, horrified at the new feelings I had for her, and I was ashamed, just as Adam was when God came calling, and I hadn’t even done anything. It was all right here,” he slapped his heart and then his temple. “In my heart and in my head. I had committed the ultimate sin with her in my imagination. After a while, I learned to live with it and then, like any other man, I began to work it all out in my own way, making all sorts of excuses, blaming her, blaming the elves, blaming God, Himself. At last, I thought I had come to terms with it. If God had not wanted it to be so, I said, then it would not be so.”

“A little Dambrettish, I suppose, but it worked and then, when it was time for me to go to Jerusalem, I needed a wife. In my mind, I had already had her and therefore, it was just a matter of formalizing the marriage. The only way I could do that was to deceive her. I am, after all, the serpent. My heritage offered a number of precedents for such actions. I erred. You have to admit such errors were committed by even the greatest kings, not only the common man.” Simon had to smile and in smiling, that he was still proud of the accomplishment.
Pride is a sin
. “The company of women… you know the rest. Secondly, I took her because I am a thief. I have always been a thief. I stole the Ark from my father, not once, but twice. I stole your braid and your Dragon’s Blood. I stole my first wife from you. I stole my second wife’s life through selfish love, and I lost my third wife to a thief and my twelfth son’s life was stolen from him by my foolish cowardice. I took my fourth wife from my brother. If I could steal my way to Heaven, I would be there now.”

Simon paused and waved his hands about the room. “I said that my father collected this stuff, but most of it I stole.”

“That is a touching story.” Mark nodded. “Quite believable. In fact, I
believe
every word of it.”

“I said I was a thief, not a liar.” Simon looked up at the dark ceiling of the vault. “Now tell me why you saved me from my father’s knife.”

“First of all, I don’t believe in human sacrifice,” Mark told him. “I never did and many have learned that the hard way. Ironically, the sacrificer became the sacrifice. But I also saved you for another, more personal, more selfish reason. You are a son of Israel. A direct descendent of Jacob, I believe?”

“Supposedly so, but I don’t know how my father fit into that line exactly.”

“The human bodies he occupies from time to time have lineages, Simon. Even if Nathanael or Nebo wished to take human form and become David’s son, Solomon, he had to have a vehicle. He either entered Solomon before he was born or shortly after. There are a number of ways to accomplish such a feat. It was much easier in the olden days. It is entirely possible Solomon was not David’s son at all.”