The Dove (13 page)

“I doubt it.”  The man came very close and squatted in front of him.  He looked very familiar.

“Master?”  He leaned closer.  “Are you ready to travel?”

“OK.”  His vision bobbed as if he was nodding his head.  Luke was beginning to realize what was happening.  Bari and Nicole, along with Sophia and these others had left New Babylon.  They were in the desert somewhere.  Nicole, Sophia, Bari and others?  His father had allies even in the viper’s nest!

“Why are you asking him?”  Bari’s legs appeared behind the Colonel.  “I’m still Emperor, you know.”

“This has been very hard on him, Your Grace.”  The Colonel disappeared and then he was looking up at the man’s back.  “He understands none of this. I was merely concerned about his welfare.  I was not asking permission. 
I
am in charge of this venture.”

“He understands more than you think.  You will do nothing without consulting me!”  Bari was truly angry.  “We will stay here for the rest of the afternoon and then leave at dusk.  I don’t want to travel in the daylight.  It’s too hot for one thing and we can be seen for miles.  Damn it all, McGuffy.  You’re supposed to be the military man here!  You should know these things.”

“I know many things, Your Grace and I know that I would rather follow the Master even if he were deaf, dumb and blind, rather than a fool!”

“Are you calling me a fool, sir?!”  Bari’s voice was full of rage and incredulity.  If the situation had not been so horrifying for Luke Andrew, he would have laughed.

“
Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding
.  I try to live by the Word, your Grace.  A great Master once taught me the way of Truth and Light.  I am his humble servant.”  The Colonel answered calmly.  Luke saw Bari clearly as the Colonel stepped around him and started for the door.

Bari spun around angrily.  “Where are you going? I didn’t dismiss you!”

“
Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge.
Proverbs 14, verse seven.”  The Colonel’s voice drifted back to him.  The light flashed as the Colonel went out the door.

He heard himself… no, his father laughing.  Bari turned around and glared down at him.

“What are you laughing at, you moron?”  Bari’s face was almost purple with rage as Nicole stepped into view, taking his arm.

Another scripture referring to fools popped unbidden into Luke’s mind and he heard his father saying the words for him “
The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious; but the lips of a fool will swallow up himself
.”

Luke saw Bari’s mouth fall open in surprise at the long string of words tumbling from his father’s lips.  Another sickening realization dawned on the son of the Knight of Death.  His father was in severe trouble and didn’t even have his sword with him.  Moron!  Bari had called the Chevalier du Morte a moron! Everything clicked into place suddenly.  Mark Andrew, or at least, the Mark Andrew who was with the Emperor of New Persia, was nothing more than a child… a very young child.  Luke sat straight up in the grass and blinked about at the soft meadow greenery all around him.

He was about to get up and make his way back to the house when he heard the distinctive sound of horses pounding the turf somewhere very near.  Before he could get up, the horses were upon him.  He threw up his arms, shouted in terror and threw himself out of the way of the white stallion’s hooves.  The horse reared and whinnied in surprise, dumping the unsuspecting rider into the grass.  A black horse shot past him and then turned in a tight circle to come back to where the Scot rolled across the grass, trying to avoid the white horse.

Luke caught himself and leaped to his feet, terrified at the near miss.

“Great Scot!”  He shouted and tugged at his disheveled kilt.

“Ohhhh!  Ahhhh!”  A very familiar voice cut through his panicked mind.  “My Brother!!  A thousand pardons!  Did you miss me?”

“Lemarik!!”  Luke was greatly relieved to see his unlikely half-brother hurrying toward him, brushing the grass from his long beard.  “Wot th’ divvil air ye doin’?  Troing t’ kill me?!”

Lemarik ignored Luke’s questions and hugged him tightly.  Luke looked over his shoulder at the black stallion.  There was no rider in the saddle.

“I thought I was too late!”  The Djinni let go of him and brushed grass sprigs from his tartan.  “Are you ready to go?”

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”  Luke frowned.  “I hate to leave, brother.”  He looked about forlornly.  “I’m afraid we’ll never see Scotland again.”

“Do not be disheartened.”  Lemarik hurried after the two horses and caught their reins.  He brought the black horse back for Luke.  “We have faced many such perils in the past and come through victorious.  We can only keep our eyes set on the stars and reach for them when they draw nigh.  If things do not go well for us here, then we will simply find another world to conquer!”

Lemarik swung himself onto his horse, while Luke climbed onto the prancing black stallion.  The Djinni reined his steed about and started back down the meadow.

“Wait!”  Luke called after him.  “You’re going the wrong way, if you expect to…”  He stopped as the sound of more hoof beats reached his ears.  He turned about in the saddle and saw Vanni riding toward him on the red horse. 

Vanni stopped beside him and handed him his backpack.

Luke took the pack and frowned at the Golden Eagle’s son suspiciously.

“Come on!  Time is not on our side, Master Luke!”  Vanni kicked his horse and rode after the Djinni.

“Wait!”  Luke urged the stallion to a trot and caught up with him.  “You’re going the wrong way!”

“This is the right way.”  Vanni told him, pointing toward the Djinni’s back. “And the shortest route.”

Lemarik turned to look back at them.

“Are you coming with us to London?”  Luke was still unsure of what was going on.

“No. No. No. No. No.”  Lemarik’s voice drifted back to him.  “You are coming with us!  The King has commanded it.”

Luke kicked his horse and came alongside his half-brother.

“What King?  Which King?”  He asked in confusion.

“The King of the Center.  Your Royal Brother.”  Lemarik told him.  “We are going to Egypt!”

“Egypt?”  Luke halted his horse.  “I can’t go to Egypt.  They are waiting on me!  I have to…”

“Don’t be silly.”  Lemarik stopped.  “They don’t
need
you!”  The Djinni turned and looked back at him.

“But… the Grand Master… Uncle Luke… we’re supposed to go to London.”  Luke stammered.

“Would you rather go with them?”  Vanni rode past him.  “Selwig is going to Egypt.  Father Simon is going to Egypt.  Your sister is going to Egypt.  There will be big trouble and much to do there.”

“You got that right.”  Luke muttered and looked back toward the stables before kicking his horse again and riding after Vannistephanetti.

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

Nicole pulled Bari away from her father while he struggled against her, kicking at him.  Mark threw up his arms and tried to push himself back out of reach as Sophia came between them.

“Stop it!”  Sophia shouted at the enraged monarch as Nicole directed him toward the door.

She turned to Mark and sat down in front of him.  He looked totally confused and hurt.  He didn’t understand.

“It’s all right, Mark.”  She took his face in her hands and then kissed him lightly on the lips.  “It’s all right.  That was pretty fancy what you said to him.  Where did you learn it?”

Mark shook his head and wiped at the trickle of blood on his lip.

“Here, don’t worry about it.”  She said as she scooted around and pulled one of the packs over against the wall of the mud brick house in which they had taken shelter. 

They had taken shelter in a small, abandoned village built against the banks of an ancient dry river.  “Let’s try to get a bit of rest before we go.”  She patted the pack and then lay down beside him, resting her head on her arm.  He leaned against the pack, and then pulled her other hand to his lips. 

He sat watching the door while she drifted off to sleep.  As soon as he was sure she was asleep, he got up very quickly and quietly, easing her head to the floor and made his way to the door.  He stuck his head out and looked about.  The ATV’s were parked a little further along the riverbed.  This place was completely obscured by the banks cut into the desert millennia ago.  Anyone traveling across the plain would never have known it was there unless they just happened upon it.  That was exactly how they had found it when they had left the highway and cut across the barren landscape after the meteor storm had been left behind.  In fact, they had almost run the vehicles over the bank and into the wash before stopping.  Mark Andrew squinted up at the sky and then stepped outside.  The hot breeze struck his face and whipped his kaffiyeh about behind him as he walked up the narrow lane between the closely spaced houses.

“
I must be about my Father's business
.”  He muttered to himself as he walked along.  “
I must be about my Father’s business
.  What
is
my Father’s business?”

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

Konrad frowned at sight of the brilliant sunlight that suddenly threatened to blind him.  He was sitting on Simon’s stone monument behind the big house, trying to make contact with the missing members of their extended ‘family’.  He had finally worked up enough nerve to try to reach Mark Andrew’s mind.  He had checked on Simon and found him well, somewhere in France.  He and his three companions had been having a quiet dinner in an elegantly appointed dining room.  He had seen no one else with them and had found them wearing the brown robes of monks.  Apparently, they were going as monks, incognito.  The Tuathan healer had been with them, but he’d not seen him, though he had heard his voice speaking quietly with one of the Sinclair-Ramsay brothers.  They had been discussing the possibility of gaining passage by sea to an unknown destination.

He had been with the Golden Eagle when he had caught a huge rat for his supper from a drainage ditch near what could have only been the Nile River in Egypt.  He’d left that behind quickly.  He’d seen enough to know there were no people wherever Lucio was at the moment.  The houses and streets, shops and marketplace he’d flown over before finding his meal, had been completely deserted.  Packs of feral dogs and several cats had fled before the eagle’s low flight through the streets. The carts, vehicles and bicycles in the streets were all covered with layers of dust and sat or lay where the residents had abandoned them.

When he had reached for Mark Andrew’s mind the images had come abruptly, sharp and clear.  The desert landscape stretched away interminably in front of him.  The sun beat down on the rocks and sand.  But the images were less disturbing than the thoughts in the man’s head.  He was awestruck by the vast expanse of nothingness in front of him.  He was watching a scorpion scuttle across the ground with curious wonder.  When he bent to look more closely at the venomous little creature, Konrad almost shouted a warning to him, but when the scorpion raised its tail and turned to meet the challenge of the curious Knight, he had backed away, sensing the danger.  The scorpion rushed away and disappeared under a flat rock. 

He now saw another strange sight.  Several large, pig-like creatures were rooting about in a dry streambed, overturning rocks and pawing at the ground with viciously clawed forelegs.  He could hear their snorts and squeals as they grubbed out the creepy crawlers that lived under the rocks during the day.  Again, he wanted to shout a warning to the Knight of Death as he walked toward the evil looking creatures.  They had large humps on their backs, long, scaly tails tipped with spikes and long tusks. The biggest one suddenly became aware of the approaching man and raised its head, snorting loudly.  The others stopped their foraging and joined the leader as they eyed this new force, sizing him up for either a better meal or something to run from.

The lead animal lowered its head, let go a loud rumbling growl and charged.  Konrad shouted out loud, lost his balance and fell from the monument onto the bricks, losing his connection with Mark Andrew.

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

Mark froze in his tracks as the beast charged him.  Adrenaline kicked in and he spun about in the sand, running back toward the wadi, screaming in terror as the creature bellowed after him.

The Colonel and his soldiers met him halfway up the dry streambed.  Sophia burst from the doorway of the house in which she had been sleeping, running toward him.  He had one hand on his kaffiyeh and was running toward her, screaming her name over and over.  The soldiers stepped aside as he passed and then fired everything they had into the great beast pursuing him.  The thing squealed in pain and shock and then tumbled forward, head over heels in the dirt.

Mark caught Sophia up in his arms and continued running toward the little house before she could stop him.  When they were inside, he slammed the wooden door, smashing it into a million rotted pieces and leaned against it.  His face was white and his eyes were wide.