The Belial Ring (The Belial Series 3) (44 page)

Venice, Italy

G
erard walked down the long, white marble hallway. In fact, the whole home was white Carrara marble from floor to ceiling.

Cold and impersonal.
Just like its owner
, Gerard thought as his footsteps echoed around him.

He was not looking forward to this meeting.
He wanted to take a moment to catch his breath. But his presence was already known. Any hesitation would be taken as a sign of weakness.

And that could not happen.
Not ever. He knocked.

“
Enter.”

He stopped in the doorway, waiting for the woman behind the desk to acknowledge him.
Elisabeta Roccorio was in her fifties, but she had the shape of a much younger woman. She had dark eyes and dark brown hair, pulled back in a chignon. Her white suit accentuated her ample chest as well as her olive skin tone, a product of her Greek heritage.

A small pair of reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.
After a few moments, she removed the glasses and sat back.

Gerard was once again struck by her looks.
She was not conventionally attractive. Her nose was too large for her face, her eyes too small and close together. But power radiated from her—and
that
was attractive.

He stepped forward.
“I have news from Tennessee.”

She gestured for him to stand in front of her desk.
“And?”

“
You were right. She’s stronger than Amar thought.”

“
I warned him. The ring bearers, they are always stronger than they are given credit for. You knock them down and they get back up, stronger by tenfold. I warned Amar that killing Jake Rogan was a mistake.” She eyed him. “You should have stopped him.”

Gerard
nodded, although he felt anger at the censure. Still, he was smart enough not to let it show beyond the angry flush he could feel climbing his neck. “We’ve lost our numbers. We’ll have to rebuild.”

She waved away the words.
“Not all of them. Amar and his group were a tiny fiefdom. I still hold the kingdom. And the book? What of it?”

“
I’m afraid it was at Amar’s home at the time of the attack.”

“
McPhearson and her people have it?”

Gerard nodded, tensing.

She stared at him.

Gerard felt a bead of sweat roll down his back.

“
I’m not happy, Gerard.”

“
I know. But there is some good news.”

Elisabeta
’s eyes sliced through him. “He finished the translation.”

Gerard nodded.
“Yes. And you were right. The fifth root race is the key.”

Elisabeta
smiled, leaning back. “And now you have made me happy again. Even without the book, we are ahead. They won’t be able to catch up with us. Not in time at least.”

Gerard struggled not to slouch with relief.

Elisabet
a looked out the window, her eyes on the canal. A gondola drifted by, its oarsmen looking for a fare. “And to think, all of this rests on the knowledge of a child.”

Gerard barely made out the words.
But he knew they were not really for him.

She turned back to him, her eyes focused.
“Now the real fight begins. Nicely done, Gerard. You are dismissed.”

Gerard bowed, careful to back away and not give her his back.
She wouldn’t like that. “Yes, Samyaza.”

FACT OR FICTION?

A
ll of the books in the Belial series come from facts I’ve picked up over the years—facts I string together in a way that, I hope, makes for a good story. So here are some of the areas that might be of interest to you. Some are big components of the story and some just passing details. Facts are placed here in no particular order.

Hypatia.
Hypatia was an actual woman associated with the Library of Alexandria. She is considered the mother of mathematics and was herself a teacher of mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy. She was killed by a mob sometime around AD 415 or 416. As such, she died before the fire that destroyed the library, so I took a little creative liberty there. She is, however, revered as a progressive thinker, if not the last great thinker of Alexandria.

I used a number of sources when researching her and learned quite a bit about her over the years. She’s a fascinating woman, one who was very ahead of her time.
Here's a link for anyone interested in a little more information.

The Library of Alexandria
. The library of Alexandria is well known, but the details of its demise are not. While multiple sources agree that fire destroyed the famed complex, most differ on who lit the match, and there is some debate as to precisely when it was finally destroyed. I decided to go with the 647 date. The details about its beginning are, however, clear: it was established under Ptolemy’s rule in the third century BC. And there is no debate whatsoever as to it being an incredible center of learning in ancient times.

Helen of Troy
. There are still questions as to whether Helen was a figment of Homer’s imagination or an actual flesh-and-blood woman. What we do know is that the name Helen was known throughout the world, well before Homer wrote of her. There were cults to Helen throughout the Bronze Age and later. And many of those most vocal about her affair with Paris were writing hundreds of years after her life. And seeing as how the city of Troy was once believed to be merely a work of fiction—until, in 1870, the city itself was discovered by Heinrich Schliemann—well, it seems fair that I choose to believe that Helen, too, was real.

All of the information in
The Belial Ring
is accurate when it comes to the historical details of Helen of Troy. Or, should I say, Helen of Sparta. For if Helen was indeed a real person, then she was the heir to the Spartan throne. In the Bronze Age, Spartan rule went through the daughters, not the sons.

Helen did have two brothers named Castor and Pollux. Some say they were twins; others not. Helen was said by some to have been born from an egg. It’s been alleged that when she was younger, she was kidnapped by Theseus and then rescued by her brothers.

Was Helen in Egypt during the Trojan War? As explained in
The Belial Ring
, Helen and Paris did stop in Egypt on their way to Troy. And according to the historian Herodotus, a ghost-like doppelganger replaced Helen at this point, and the real Helen never made it to Troy. Instead, she spent the entire war in Egypt.

I used many sources to pull together the information on Helen
, but the most helpful was the book
Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore
by Bettany Hughes. It is a fascinating account of what Helen’s life would have been like, drawing on the historical and archaeological evidence from the Bronze Age. If you’re looking for more information on her, I strongly recommend the book.

Übermensch.
The Übermensch were an actual part of Hitler’s Lebensborn program. In 1932, Hitler began his attempts to create the master race through this program. People with perfect genetic histories were encouraged, or, more accurately,
required
, to reproduce. The result? Forty-two thousand children. Years after the program’s initiation, Hitler instituted a six-foot height requirement. Even taller members—those with a height above six foot six—were considered Übermensch. They received a special medal of honor and were automatically promoted to S.S. officer.

The Serapeum in Saqqara.
A serapeum is a religious center
dedicated to the god Serapis. There are actually a number of serapeums that have been uncovered. In this book, I focus on the Serapeum in Saqqara.

A
ll the information portrayed in
The Belial Ring
about this location is accurate to the best of my ability. The giant sarcophagi are real; they do weigh seventy tons; only three of them have been inscribed; and bones were found in only three of them.

The narrow passages are also real,
and it’s true that archaeologists can’t figure out how exactly the giant tombs were carried into their underground niches.

I used a number of sources
to describe this fascinating site. A few of the more helpful can be found at the following links:

http://www.gigalresearch.com/
http://www.saqqara.nl/saqqara/history

The Ring of Solomon.
The tale about Solomon’s son, Menelik, stealing the Ark of the Covenant is rumored to be true.  :)

The
Chapel of the Tablet in Aksum, Ethiopia exists and does claim to have held the Ark of the Covenant since the time of Solomon. But Menelik himself was not the one who was supposed to have taken it—but, rather, some other young lords who accompanied him back to his home.

Does the ring exist?
That is the question, isn’t it? As with many powerful objects from antiquity, its existence is unclear. As is the power it actually conveyed to the user. Solomon was said to have power over animals, the weather, and demons through a ring. Is that true, an exaggeration, or just a myth? I don’t know.

The War Scroll
. The War Scroll is one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran on the West Bank. The Dead Sea Scrolls were all found in sealed pots, and were all written around the first century AD in various languages, most found on papyrus.

The War Scroll
(whose formal title is
The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness
)
tells of a final apocalyptic battle between the Children and the Sons of Belial. And according to some, that final battle is supposed to occur in Makeda, Israel.

Edgar Cayce
. And, of course, many of my story ideas originated with my readings on Edgar Cayce. Edgar Cayce was an incredibly fascinating man. He was a twentieth-century psychic who did health and life readings. Some of those life readings addressed the creation of man, right down to how exactly we appeared on this planet, as well as our early civilizations, particularly the existence of a place known today as Atlantis. And its destruction.

Alchemy
. Dr. Hantaro Nagaoka was a Japanese physicist who discovered that if you placed an isotope of mercury under paraffin oil and then bombarded it with one hundred and fifty thousand volts of electricity, you get gold. Yup. He figured out how to actually transmute a metal.

Dogon Tribe
. The Dogon people of Mali do indeed exist. Living in West Africa, the Dogon claim to date back thousands of years and today number around one hundred thousand people. They had been largely isolated from modern man until the early twentieth century.

All the information in
The Belial Ring
attributed to them is accurate. They claim to have known about the four moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and the existence of the star Sirius—as well as the existence of the star Sirius B that orbits it—long before any of those facts were established by modern science.

So how exactly did the Dogon know any of this information? The Dogon claim the origins of their knowledge come from a people
who descended from the sky, some time before 3,200 BC. If you have some spare time, look them up. They are truly fascinating.

Animal Experiments
. The animal experiments mentioned in the book are also taken from reality. Back in 1959, Dr. Vladimir Demikhov did indeed surgically attach a second head to a living dog. And the dog survived for months. Sick, yes, but real.

In 2003
, scientists at Shanghai University did successfully merge human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were destroyed after a short time, but the stem cells were harvested. The Mayo Clinic created a pig with human blood, and in Stanford, scientists created mice with human brains. Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

Human Immortality.
So, were humans ever immortal? Believe it or not, that is not an easy question. The Sumerian King List mentioned in
The Belial Ring
is an actual list that dates to the ancient Sumerians. On the list are dozens of kings, some of whom are reported to have ruled for thousands of years. For example, the list says that Alagar ruled for
thirty-six thousand
years.

Cayce
, too, argued that originally humans lived for an extremely long time. So: immortal? Probably not. But early records do suggest the possibility of a much longer life span.