Nexus Point (Meridian Series) (33 page)

       “Here we go,” he smiled as he
read aloud.
“Archeologists unearth strange find in hidden archive.
It’s
a newspaper article.  How’s that for a headline?”

       “What was it?” Maeve asked as
she paged through a file on her terminal.

       “That’s odd,” said Kelly. “Hey
it came up under that last keyword you threw in, the Assassins. Listen to this:
‘A team of Harvard based scientists rushed to the site near a ruined
medieval castle in Syria today as construction crews working on a restoration
project for the Aga Khan Foundation unearthed a hidden vault in a cave near
Masyaf. A sealed iron strongbox there contained a number of items, most
significantly, a copy of the Holy Koran, believed to be well over a thousand
years old. That in itself would make the typical historian’s day, but an odd
find, hidden behind a sealed leaf of the volume, had researchers quite
perplexed. It was a portion of a laminated playing card from a typical modern
deck—the King of Diamonds, to be precise.”

       Maeve gave him a frown. “We’ve
got to hit the event data harder than that, Kelly. Come on, will you?”

       “Well this file had a super high
anomaly rating,” said Kelly. “Sure, it sounds ludicrous. It probably migrated
down from the construction crews—a typical example of site contamination.” He
glanced at a few more lines of the article and saw something that jarred him.
“Workers
at the site insist the box had remained locked and undisturbed before the
researchers arrived. ’We have no idea how a thing like this could be
authentic,’ said Professor Sims of the Harvard-MIT institute, ‘unless, of
course, the occupants of this library were fond of playing poker or bridge in
their spare time.’ The site was the location of the nefarious group known as
the Assassins, a cult of fanatical fundamentalists who terrorized both Muslim
and Christian interests alike during the twelfth century, AD.
” They even
have a picture on file—” Kelly cut himself off, leaning forward suddenly to
squint at the screen. “It can’t be…”

       “You
will
be if you don’t
get down to some serious work, Mister.” Maeve protested again from the next
terminal.

       Kelly said nothing. He was
fishing for something in his wallet, his face furrowed with concern. Maeve
turned to see him holding something up to the monitor screen. “Weird!” He
exclaimed. “It’s a perfect match! The King of Diamonds—or at least the top half
of it.”

       Maeve gave him a frown.

       “Look,” said Kelly. “It’s the
top half of a laminated playing card.“ Kelly was shaking his head, the bill of
his baseball cap swinging back and forth, but slowing as he continued to stare
at the screen. “We cut the damn thing in half years ago,” he whispered.

       “What are you talking about?”

       “The card. It was our Red Arrow.
I’ve carried this thing around for over two decades and…”

       Maeve was looking at him like
she was about to reach for something sharp, but he held up a warding hand,
begging her forbearance. “Remember your Tolkien, Maeve? Gondor sent the Red
Arrow to Rohan as a sign of great need. It was only to be used in the last
extreme—a call for all the muster of Rohan to ride to Gondor’s aid.”

       “Kelly,” Maeve nearly shouted at
him. “The whole world is spinning out of control and you’re wasting valuable
time here.”

      
“You don’t understand,” Kelly defended himself. “Paul and I had this
ritual. We took a playing card, the King of Diamonds, and cut the damn thing in
half. He kept one half; I kept the other. We made a promise that if we ever
received the other half of the card in the mail, it would indicate dire need.
It was a token of our friendship, and a summons to render immediate aid—our Red
Arrow.”

       “Lovely,”
said Maeve. “Truly endearing.” She gave him a withering look that said her
patience had finally run out.

       “Well there’s the top half,”
Kelly pointed at his screen. “And I’ve got the bottom half; laminated too… a
perfect mate to the card shown in this article!”

       “That’s impossible.  It’s got to
be coincidence.”

       The argument was suddenly
interrupted by Kelly’s cell phone ringing. He craned his neck toward his
briefcase, worried that another alert was coming in from the Golems, but this
time it was his green cell phone, jutting from his jacket pocket on the next
chair. He reached for it, flipping it open while Maeve folded her arms with a
disapproving glare as
Kelly listened, his
face registering surprise and dismay, then outright shock. He pulled the phone
away from his ear and stared at it with a perplexed look on his face.

       “That was
Nordhausen,”
he
said. “He sounded really strange. Here, listen to the playback!”

       He handed the phone to Maeve and
she pressed the  replay message button, raising the receiver to her ear.
“Kelly?
This is Nordhausen. I’m in trouble. No time to explain. It’s Paul! He’s shifted
in time! I’m not sure how, but he’s gone. Look up something called the Gate of
the West. Can’t say any more. Rasil is back —“
The message cut off abruptly
and the two of them locked eyes, the surprise and shock flowing from Kelly to
Maeve.

       Kelly held out the bottom half
of his playing card and, for the first time, Maeve looked at the image on the
screen.  It was a perfect mate.

Part X

Ghost In The Machine

“He shall give his angels
charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”

Psalms 91:11

28

Jabr leaned close,
his dark eyes searching
Paul’s face with a look akin to longing. “Tell me, Do-Rahlan, are you a king; a
lord of many lands?”

       “What? Why would you ask a thing like that,
Jabr?”

       They sat in a hidden chamber within the
sanctuary of the library, and Jabr had fired coals in a low iron brazier to
heat water for coffee and a meager meal. Jabr had rubbed warm
oil
on a few scratches
Paul had suffered in his fall. His left shoulder and back had taken the worst,
but it was nothing that would not heal in a few days time.

       “Would you wear rich robes in your homeland,
and place a golden crown upon your head?” Jabr’s eyes brightened with the light
of discovery, his head cocked to one side, bent by curiosity.

       “You’re really are serious, aren’t you?”

       “And would you wield a great axe in need,
the bane of all your enemies? Tell me, is it so? Is that why you were chosen to
pass the Well of Souls?”

       Paul smiled. “Jabr, I’m afraid that you are
as much a mystery to me as I may seem to you most of the time. To answer you
truly, no, I am not a great king. I have no lordly robes and there’s never been
much of anything on my head but this unruly mop of hair. Why would you ask such
things?”

       Jabr, hesitated, as if he were trying to
decide what to do. Then his expression warmed and he spoke. “Because of the
token you carried.” His voice lowered and he turned his head, watching the
entrance of the room with suspicion.

       “Token? What are you talking about?”

       “Forgive me, Do-Rahlan. I have done a thing
that may be cause for my death.” He reached in his robes and drew out a small
object, his hand unsteady as he handled it, as though he was afraid it would bite.
Paul leaned forward to see what he held and a broad grin crossed his face.

       “Well I’ll be…Where did you get that? You
found that in my pocket, yes?”

       “I do not know what possessed me,” said
Jabr, his voice laden with contrition. “It is written that all clothing and
effects of the Walkers should be gathered and burned in the forge of purity.”
Again he cast a sidelong glance at the arched doorway. “I was bearing these
things away and this object must have slipped from the bundle. I came upon it
in the corridor an hour later, and thought it very strange. Indeed, I should
have taken it to the fire at once, but…something gave me pause. I stared at it,
as though charmed, and saw it was the image of a lordly king with a golden
crown set upon his head. He was dressed in finery of many colors, and his eyes
were fixed fast upon a great red diamond where a hand reached to grasp it by
his shoulder. Behind the king’s head was an axe with a sturdy red haft.” He
handed the object to Paul, his hand shaking visibly now.

       Paul took it with a smile. “And you believed
it to be some token or talisman, did you? You thought this was my image on the
card?”

       “It was forbidden to withhold such a thing,”
said Jabr, “but it was so alluring that I could not bear to cast it away. Is it
magic?”

       “Magic? No. It’s just the King of
Diamonds—or half of one. My friend Kelly has the other half. We cut it in two
and laminated the halves so they would last longer. It was a sign of our bond
to one another, and the promise of our friendship.”

       “Then this friend of yours was a great
sorcerer! I have never seen glass worked to such a thickness. It bends, but
does not break!”

       “Glass? You mean the plastic lamination?”
Paul realized that Jabr would not know what he was talking about and changed
his tack. “Yes, he is quite the wizard, my friend,” he said. “I would surely
like to see him now, Jabr, because I think I’m in a bit of a fix here. I’m
still not exactly sure how I got here, but yet, here I am…and there you are,
and Taki ad Din is riding south in the night.” He folded his arms, a vacant
expression on his face. “I don’t belong here, Jabr. You understand? I’m out of
place, lost, and I don’t know how I’ll get home.”

       Jabr’s eyes mirrored the forlorn expression
on Paul’s face. “Then you know what lies ahead,” he said softly. “You know the
fate that awaits you?”

       “Me? My friend, I know the fate that awaits
many, all of us, in fact. If I thought about it long enough I could quote you
chapter and verse—all the history yet to come, the wars, the famine, the great
deeds of kings, and the soaring muse of poets and scholars. I could tell you
stories for hours on end, of all that might be—a regular Nostradamus.” Paul
sighed heavily. “But my lips must remain forever sealed,” he said sullenly. “I
cannot speak a word of the things I have seen; the things I know. My very
presence here is an insult in time, an offence, a great transgression…”

       He suddenly had a cold thought that his fate
was darker than that of a simple man marooned in another time, destined to live
out his days there alone. No! He was right in what he said just now. He was not
supposed to be here. His fall was an unaccountable accident, a quirk; mere
happenstance—and yet here he was!
Something in that
fall had sent him tumbling into the past.

       Now his own theory emerged in a chorus of
doubt and fear. He didn’t belong. Time would not bear this insult, and Paradox
would have its way with him sooner or later.

       “That’s it,” he said aloud. “I’ve been in a
Nexus Point all this time! That’s why I’ve been able to sustain myself in this
era, but I must have done something to change things somehow. My simple
presence here was the knock that has opened some great door, and all the world
is swinging on the hinge.”

       Jabr’s eyes were wide as he listened, not
understanding much of what he heard. But one thing came through the words, and
he could sense the distress and emotion of the stranger. He touched Paul on the
knee, gently, yet with an inkling of fear. “So you know,” he said quietly.
“Those who come through the well often speak in such words. They see things,
and hear things beyond our ken. We have thought them to be Angels sent from
Jibra’el himself to work divine will upon the land, but they are only men;
gifted men to be sure; men of great vision and skill, but doomed to die, as we
all must. I am sorry that your time is running out, Do-Rahlan.”

       Paul was lost in his own internal reverie,
but he heard the emotion in Jabr’s tone as well and focused on the meaning.
“Running out?”

       “It is the seventh day,” Jabr said solemnly.
“All those who come through the Well of Souls have but seven days to walk among
us. Then they are called home to the place that was prepared for them.”

       “Called home? Yes…” It all made sense to
Paul now. The Nexus could only hold them safe and secure in this milieu for a
given interval. Then they would be called back, just as he and Nordhausen were
extracted from the mission in 1917 that started all this. The sand in the
half-life clock ran out, and the  retraction scheme was ready and waiting to
rescue them from the mystery of their experience in the past. It found the
pattern signature taken from them in the Arch and brought them home to the
world where they belonged.

       “But I am so sorry, Do-Rahlan.” Jabr’s eyes
were glassy as he spoke, his voice unsteady. “It was said that you were not
prepared. There is no home for you now, and the time is running out. A Walker
has but seven days, and when the moon sets tonight, the end will come for you,
I fear. My only hope is that peace will be upon you, and the wolves of
misfortune will seek your spirit in vain.”