The Wayward Godking Read Online Free PDF Page A

let him answer it.
     
     
    “These things were once here under the chapel.” Simon swept one arm around the torch lit room. “My father and the Ritter collected them from all over the world.”
    Mark Andrew was amazed. Many of the artifacts in the store rooms below the Villa’s chapel were the same artifacts he had collected himself in another reality. He’d never come to these rooms before. This had been the sanctuary and business of the Order’s priests and chaplains.
    “Whoever set this place up, used memories, plans or blueprints from a past age, before the eruption that buried the Villa,” Simon continued. “Everything is still here. I was surprised to see them to say the least, and I assumed we had either entered a time distortion, or else we were all dead and dreaming. After I got over the initial shock of being trapped here… by the way, when you see Meredith again, please relay my appreciation to her. She saved me from myself once again,” he ducked his head slightly and then pulled a velvet cloth from a golden cask. “After I gathered my wits and counted my blessings, I began to explore the Villa, looking for clues or anything we could use to help solve this mystery. I found these things and began to examine them in depth. This…” he opened the cask and lifted out a smooth, oblong orb of amber colored crystal. “… is something very similar to the orb atop my father’s baculus.”
    Mark watched in fascination as the Healer removed a golden stand from the cask and set the stone in the ornate circle made to look like four pairs of human hands.
    “A crystal ball?” Mark asked and then walked around it slowly. “I have seen many of these things. They are nothing. Just oddities and amusements.”
    “Not all of them,” Simon shook his head minutely. “This one belonged to Solomon, the Wise.”
    Mark’s mouth fell open slightly.
    “It was buried beneath the Temple in Jerusalem alongside the Ark of the Covenant. The founding fathers of the Order, my father included, dug them out and transported them out of the Holy Lands to the Languedoc during the crusades.”
    “Ahhh, so Edgard told you about Hugh de Payans? Did he tell you about Ambrosius?” Mark’s eyes twinkled. He had been the one who had found the artifacts under the Temple not de Payans.
    “Yes, he told me he had used the name himself from time to time, but no, he did not mention anyone called Ambrosius.”
    “Hmmph. It figures. So, does it work?” Mark placed one hand on the orb and then jumped back as static electricity snapped up to his elbow.
    “Quite well.” Simon nodded and stared at the crystal, which glowed of its own accord after the contact with the Knight’s hand. “I did not tell my father about it… that it was here, I mean. He is changed, and I cannot think of him as my father any longer.”
    Mark nodded. He could understand that. Simon could no more accept Edgard as his father than Luke Matthew could accept himself as his father. The curse of immortality. Edgard looked even younger than Simon at the moment. The only reason Simon’s sons accepted their ‘Poppi’ without question was because he had actually raised them from infancy and never left them. They had grown larger and older than their father, but it had been a gradual thing, and the Order was ever in front of them, guiding them, whereas Simon and Luke Matthew had grown up under very different circumstances.
    “What have you learned?” Mark asked him.
    “I have seen things here I cannot describe.” Simon admitted as if confessing and looked up at the Knight. “Wonderful things. Horrible things. I know now what Michel de Nostradame felt like. I saw you in the Seventh Gate, Brother.”
    “When?”
    “I would assume recently, judging from your appearance when you arrived here,” Simon murmured and looked away from him. “I saw you were in trouble.”
    “With Huber,” Mark said. “It is regrettable we are never far from prying eyes, be they