The Apocalypse Script (2 page)

“
From who, Lady?”

“
Her,
” whispered the woman. But then
her eyelids slowly closed and her body went limp in his
arms.

“
She has had a hard time of it,”
said Vedeus. “Her mother, a lady, was brutally killed shortly
before we began our ascent. She was unwell even before that, and
the lack of food and warmth this past week has put her into a state
of delirium. Until we reached this place she uttered hardly a word
to me.”

“
She will be cared for,” replied
the Peth lord. “The queen has sent me to retrieve her. Bring the
horses. I will carry the woman through the gate.”

The traveler took the reins of
both animals in one hand and began following the other man through
the opening in the wire. There were tall trees on either side of
the road and the two men trudged into their shadows.

“
Shall I not hand over my weapon?”
asked Vedeus, seeing two figures in white camouflage emerge from
the trailer and fall in behind him. Both wore black masks across
their faces and carried high-tech carbines with laser
sites.

“
That will not be
necessary.”

Not necessary? I am stranger
carrying a shotgun…

The road on which he found himself
zigged and zagged upward and the many abandoned cars parked on it
formed a maze of sorts. The entourage walked for another ten
minutes in silence. Vedeus began to worry that he not been disarmed
because he would not be traveling as far as his escorts - that a
bullet might find its way into his head at any moment.

“
What shall be done with me?” he
asked at last, looking over his shoulder at the men with
guns.

The figure ahead said, “Don’t
worry, Vedeus. The Fifth Kingdom is in need of soldiers like
you.”

The emaciated warrior jerked his
head forward and said with astonishment, “The Fifth Kingdom
stands?”

“
The
true
Fifth Kingdom, yes. Here, in these mountains, and below. Our
spies have been watching you for some time. Tell me, what was the
name of the man you spoke to in the ruins of the city before you
began your journey here?”

“
He did not give me his name, or
else I do not remember it. I found him tending to the girl and her
mother and he insisted I bring the girl here.”

“
Why would you acquiesce to such a
request?”

Vedeus had asked himself that same
question a million times. Since he did not know the answer, he told
the man ahead what he had begun to tell himself. “He spoke the
secret tongue and I felt pity for the woman.”

“
I see,” said the Peth lord
without inflection. He walked another ten paces and said, “You will
be examined by our medical team, fed, and allowed a chance to wash
up and sleep. After that we will talk. I believe roasted turkey is
on the menu. Does that suit you?”

Here, at last, Vedeus broke down.
Icy tears streamed down his chapped red face and onto his filthy
and matted beard. “Suit me?” he croaked. “To lick the pan it was
cooked in would be a feast.” His growling stomach prompted him to
ask, “How far is it to your camp?”

The other man laughed. “Camp?
Vedeus, you have reached
Steepleguard.
”

“
I do not know the name,” admitted
the Peth. “The man in the city told me only to seek refuge at the
top of the mountain. You have a fortification, then?”

“
Of a kind.”

The group had reached a bend in
the road. As they turned and began a sharp ascent up a wide path
cleared of snow, Vedeus came to an abrupt stop. Perhaps a hundred
yards in the distance was a hill on which had been constructed a
building of monstrous size. It was a city unto itself, four stories
tall and as wide as a football field. Stone towers marked its
perimeter. Each of its hundreds of windows was aglow with a warm
yellow light. Smoke rose from a dozen chimneys.

He thought he could hear music and
he smelled….
oh gods, is this
possible?
Somewhere, in some unseen
kitchen, bread was being baked. As the scent wafted over him he
thought his knees might buckle.

With the unconscious girl still in
his arms, the Peth lord turned to face the new arrival. “Welcome,
Vedeus, to the Fifth Kingdom of the Nisirtu.”

Part 1 - September 21
^st
, Final Year of the First Era

“
My son, why do you hide your face
so anxiously?”

“
Father, do you not see the Elf
king? The Elf king with crown and tail?”

“
My son, it’s a wisp of
fog.”

- Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe,
Der Erlkönig (1782)

A young man in a black silk suit
with expensive hair opened the ornately carved double door. “May I
help you?”

The man on the other side handed
him a business card saying, “My name is Ben Mitchell. Miss Stratton
is expecting me.”

The servant carefully examined
both the card and the man who proffered it. The visitor was
unusually tall, about six and a half feet in height, and was
dressed in black slacks, an inexpensive white shirt open at the
collar, and a wool blazer that strained to contain his broad
shoulders. His hair was groomed to something approaching military
standards and his brown eyes were alert.

At length the servant nodded, recognizing the
visitor as the man in the photograph his employer had shown him the
day before.

“
Yes, sir,” said the servant,
stepping aside. “Miss Stratton is in the music room. Please follow
me.”

He led the newcomer down a long
corridor adorned with ancient but carefully maintained Persian
tapestries and stopped at the doorway of a spacious, round room.
The room’s walls were Zebrawood, the floor checkered marble, and
the ceiling a dome perforated by a skylight that admitted a copious
amount of light into the space. In the middle of the space was a
grand piano, a harp, and a dazzlingly beautiful woman playing a
violin, her eyes closed in concentration.

“
My name is Mr. Fetch,” the
servant whispered to the guest. “Would you like something to
drink?”

“
No, thank you, and please don’t
disturb Miss Stratton. I’ll wait for her to finish.”

“
As you wish, sir,” replied the
servant, promptly exiting the room.

Mr. Fetch?
Ben had almost laughed but caught himself when he saw that
the servant hadn’t so much as cracked a smile. The guest wondered
if there was a
Mr. Driver, a Miss
Gardner
and a
Mr.
Weedwacker
wandering the estate,
also.

He turned his attention to the
woman. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, a bit taller than
average and perfectly proportioned. She wore a knee-length red silk
dress and two strings of pearls. Her blond hair was elaborately
coifed with a jade pin.

The composition she was playing
was complex and she was completely absorbed in the manipulation of
the violin’s strings. At some points she attacked the strings while
at others she caressed them. While he was hardly an expert in the
field, he thought Lilian Stratton might be what some called
a
virtuoso
.

When the last movement of the bow
was complete, the room became eerily quiet and the woman opened her
eyes. They were a brilliant emerald green.

“
Thank you for coming, Mr.
Mitchell. I apologize for not meeting you at the door.”

“
Not at all. What’s the name of
that piece?”

“
Ernst’s
Grand Caprice on Schubert’s Der Erlkönig.
”

“
Der
Erlk
ö
nig.
The Elf king?”

She lowered the violin and smiled a million dollar
smile. “That’s right. You speak German?”

“
A little.” He was trying to
identify her accent, which was slight. It certainly wasn’t
German.

“
It was inspired by one of
Goethe’s poems,” she said. She retrieved a violin case from a
nearby chair and began fiddling with the clasps. “In the poem a man
is riding through a gloomy forest cradling his young son in one
arm. The child, who is facing the forest’s edge, sees the king of
the elves and his underlings watching him from the shadows. The
elves call out to the boy, promising him games, flowers, and music
if only he will abandon his father and join them.”

She gently placed the violin in
its case. “The son is terrified and warns his father that the elves
are trying to take him, but the father sees nothing, of course. He
tells his son the elves are mere wisps of fog, a figment of the
boy’s imagination.”

“
These do not
sound like
Christmas
elves.”

“
No, far from it. These are evil
creatures that crawl up from the cracks of the earth. When the boy
refuses to join them, they get angry and grab him. He wails,
telling his father the elves are hurting him. Disturbed by his
son’s cries, the father spurs his horse to go faster, but to no
avail. When he reaches his home he discovers that his son has died
in his arms.”

“
I see. The hallucinations were
brought on by a fever.”

The woman closed the case and
perched it on a table behind the piano. “That’s one
interpretation,” she said circumspectly. “Let’s go to the patio,
shall we? It’s a dazzling morning and we have important things to
discuss.”

The woman led him back into the
corridor and ultimately through a set of French doors that opened
onto a patio at the rear of the mansion that overlooked a garden.
The patio, constructed of a pinkish terrazzo tile, was
appropriately sized for the edifice adjacent to it. Around its oval
perimeter were immaculately pruned plants of every kind in a
blinding array of colors and shapes.

In the middle were a wrought iron
table, painted white, and four matching chairs. A silver tea and
coffee service had been positioned next to a vase of tulips. Mr.
Fetch appeared and seated Lilian Stratton before gently placing
Ben’s business card on the table next to her. The cool morning air
was fragrant with the scent of gardenias and invisible birds
chirped in the distance.

Looking up, his hostess asked, “Coffee or tea, Mr.
Mitchell?”

“
Coffee, please. Black. And
please, call me Ben.”

As she filled the porcelain cup,
she said, “Very well, Ben, and you may call me Lilian.” Without
raising her head, she said quietly, “Mr. Fetch, you’ll please wait
inside. I’ll ring if I need you.”

The servant bowed slightly and
retreated. The woman handed Ben his coffee and then poured herself
a cup of tea. Taking a sip, she picked up the business card that
Mr. Fetch had placed on the table and began reading it
aloud.

“
Ben Mitchell, Ph.D., Epigraphist
and Researcher, Ancient Languages and Writing Systems, Hittite,
Sumerian, Akkadian, Cuneiform…well, the list goes on and on. I
don’t know what most of this means. I’m surprised you could fit it
all on a business card.”

He smiled. “Anything is possible
with the right font. So what can I do for you, Lilian?”

She returned the card to the
table, saying “A close family friend by the name of Ridley, who has
an estate in the mountains, has some stone tablets bearing
inscriptions that he would like your assistance with. He says to
tell you they are quite ancient and that this something of an
emergency.”

Ben swallowed his first sip of
coffee before saying, “The translation of ancient tablets is rarely
an emergency.”

“
And yet,” the woman replied,
“Ridley assures me that is the case. He is, you see, very elderly
and is cataloguing his estate in preparation for the inevitable. He
believes the tablets are valuable and wants to ensure they end up
in the right hands.”

“
They’ve never been examined
before?”

“
Not by an expert.”

“
Interesting. What can you tell me
about them?”

In a banal tone, she replied, “Ridley says they
contain the oldest human writing system ever discovered.”

Ben coughed, cleared his throat.
“Excuse me. That is…well, a rather spectacular claim,
Lilian.”

“
Is it?” she asked, as if it meant
nothing to her. Seemingly out of nowhere, his hostess produced a
large manila envelope sealed with red wax, which she extended to
him. There were odd imprints in the wax. Cuneiform, the man thought
immediately, but then saw he was wrong. The characters weren’t
quite right.

“
A few photographs,” she
explained.

Ben broke the seal with his
fingers and peered into the envelope. There were about a dozen
portrait-sized color photos inside. He withdrew one and placed it
in his lap. It was of a black stone tablet, perhaps a foot square
in size, inscribed with thousands of densely packed lines, swirls,
and irregular shapes in a variety of colors. The individual
inscriptions appeared no more than a millimeter or two in width. He
couldn’t determine from the photographs what gave them their
colors.