Raymond Khoury - The Sanctuary

Montferrat frowned inwardly, berating himself for even considering the man a kindred spirit, a potential ally. For testing him, probing him, however cryptically.

Yes, he had totally misjudged the man. But, he thought, perhaps this was fate. Perhaps it was time to unburden himself. Perhaps it was time to let the world in on his secret. Perhaps man could find a way to deal with it in a noble and magnanimous way.

Di Sangro’s eyes were locked on him, studying every twitch in his face. “Come now. I had to drag myself out of bed at this ungodly hour just to hear your story, Marquese ,” he said haughtily. “And to be frank with you, I don’t particularly care who you really are or where you’re really from. All I want to know is your secret.”

Montferrat met his inquisitor’s gaze straight on. “You don’t want to know, Principe . Trust me. It is not a gift, not for any man. It is a curse, pure and simple. A curse from which there is no respite.”

Di Sangro wasn’t moved. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

Montferrat leaned in. “You have a family,” he said, his voice now hollow and distant. “A wife. Children. The king is your friend. What more could a man ask for?”

The answer came back with unsettling ease. “More. Of the same.”

Montferrat shook his head. “You should leave things be.”

Di Sangro edged closer to his prisoner. His eyes were blazing with an almost messianic fervor. “Listen to me, Marquese . This city, this paltry boy-king…that is nothing. If what I suspect you know is true, we can be emperors. Don’t you understand? People will sell their very souls for this.”

The false marquis didn’t doubt it for a second. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Di Sangro’s breathing got heavier with frustration as he tried to size up the man’s resolve. His eyes flickered downwards as he seemed to catch sight of something on Montferrat’s chest that piqued his curiosity. He leaned menacingly closer and reached across the table, pulling out a chain-hung medallion from underneath the false marquis’s opened shirt. Montferrat’s hand flew up and grabbed di Sangro’s wrist, stilling it, but the prince quickly raised his gun and cocked back its flintlock. Montferrat slowly released his grip. The prince held the medallion in his fingers a moment longer, then suddenly yanked it off Montferrat’s neck, splitting its chain. He held the medallion closer, examining it.

It was a simple, round piece, cast out of bronze, like a large coin, a little over two digits in diameter. Its sole feature was a snake, which lay coiled around the medallion’s face, ringlike, its head at the top of the circle formed by its own body.

The snake was devouring its own tail.

The prince looked a question at Montferrat. The false marquis’s hardened eyes gave nothing away. “I’m tired of waiting, Marquese ,” di Sangro hissed menacingly. “I’m tired of trying to make sense of this”—he rasped as his fingers tightened against the medallion and shook it angrily at Montferrat—“tired of your cryptic remarks, of trying to read through all your esoteric references. I’m tired of hearing reports about your passing questions to certain scholars and travelers and piecing together what I now believe is true about you. I want to know. I demand to know. So it’s really your choice. You can tell me, here, now. Or you can take it with you to your grave.” He pushed his gun even closer. Its over-and-under twin barrels were now hovering inches from his prisoner’s face. He let the threat hang there for a moment. “But if that were to be your decision,” he added, “to die here tonight and take your knowledge with you, I would ask you to ponder one thing: What gives you the right to deprive us, to hold the world in contempt and in ignorance? What did you do to deserve the right to make that choice for the rest of us?”

It was a question the man had asked himself many times, a question that had haunted his very existence.

In a distant past, another man, an old man whom he had watched die, a friend whose death he had even — in his own eyes — helped bring about, had made that choice for him. With his dying breath, his friend had stunned him by telling him that despite Montferrat’s deplorable and heinous actions, he could see the reticence and the doubt in his eyes. Somehow, the old man felt sure that the valor, the nobility, and the honesty of his young ward were still there, buried deep within, smothered by a misguided sense of duty. In his darkest hour, that friend had managed to find promise and purpose in his young ward’s life, something the false marquis had himself long given up on. And with that came an admission, a revelation, and a mission that would consume the rest of Montferrat’s life.

The choice had been made for him. The right to decide had been bequeathed to him by someone far more deserving than he had ever imagined himself to be.

But he had surprised himself.

He had done his best, tried his hardest, to discover what the missing pages of the codex had contained and wrest the ancient book’s lost secrets.

He’d managed to evade his accusers in Portugal. He’d searched in Spain, and in Rome. He’d traveled to Constantinople and beyond, to the Orient. But he hadn’t found anything to advance his quest.

He had failed.

He’d thought a return to the land of his birth would help him decide on what his next step would be. Di Sangro’s interruption had put pause to all that. And in the fog that clouded his mind, one thing glowed with certainty: that holding the man who was sitting before him in contempt and keeping him in ignorance was a choice he was happy to make.

The rest of the world, well…that was another matter.

“Well?” di Sangro snapped, his hand wavering slightly under the weight of the pistol.

The man who called himself Montferrat leapt out of his chair and hurled himself at his adversary, reaching out and pushing his pistol away just as di Sangro pulled the trigger. The charge exploded in a deafening roar as both men grappled over the gun, its lead ball bursting out of the upper muzzle and whistling past Montferrat’s ear before biting into the paneling on the wall behind him. The two men slammed into the table by the fireplace, still fighting for the gun, as the door to the bedchamber swung open. Di Sangro’s henchmen rushed in, swords raised. Montferrat caught the momentary distraction in his adversary’s eyes and exploited it, hammering the principe with a fierce back-elbow that caught him in the throat. The prince recoiled backwards under the blow, loosening his grip on the pistol just enough for Montferrat to wrest it from him. Montferrat pushed the prince away and raised the pistol, rotating its barrel and cocking its firing arm as he moved away from the first of the henchmen, who was already charging at him, and fired. The round struck his attacker in the chest, causing him to twist sideways and drop to the ground at Montferrat’s feet.

Montferrat hurled the empty pistol at the second attacker and swiftly picked up the fallen man’s sword. The prince had recovered somewhat, and despite being unsteady on his feet, he drew his own sword. “Don’t kill him,” he hissed, inching forward to join his henchman. “I need him alive…for now.”

Montferrat gripped the sword with both hands, holding it up defensively, flicking it left and right to keep his attackers at bay. The two men facing him were impatient, and in his experience, poise was as effective a weapon as a sword. He would wait for them to make a mistake. The henchman was eager to prove his worth and lunged forward recklessly. Montferrat blocked the strike with his sword and kicked the man with all his might, his bare foot catching the man in his thigh. The man howled with pain, and from the corner of his eye, Montferrat noted that the prince had held back mindfully. He decided to stay on his attacker and swung his sword, catching the faltering man’s blade with the full brunt of his own and knocking it out from his hand. The prince screamed in anger and rushed forward, interrupting Montferrat, whose sword was now needed elsewhere. Montferrat managed to kick his first attacker back before quickly spinning to face di Sangro. The henchman reeled backwards, crashing into the table and slipping off it into the large fireplace. Sparks and embers flew out from the hearth as he yelped from the pain in his seared hand, with which he had tried to catch his fall. Montferrat saw the man’s sleeve catch fire just as the lantern, which had fallen off the table, ignited the carpet in a swath of fire.