John Schettler - Nexus Point

“Here follows the word of the Lord of Time…” That was the dominant figure in the script. All the other symbols were oriented the same way. He noted how miniature duplicates of the figure he took to be this Lord appeared here and there throughout the text. He struggled with his memory, trying to distinguish the one letter signs from common single word elements. “At the time of great struggle… travail… eternity at rest in… darkness of the beast.” What was this bit here? He rephrased the line in his mind, recognizing the icon of the beast. “Eternity lies in the shadow of the Wolf…”

Very odd, he thought. So Rasil was a messenger. Could this be his charge? Why would he be carrying an old Egyptian scroll? The style of the writing would make this over 5000 years old, and yet… The papyrus was weathered but not nearly that ancient. It could never have survived in this condition all that time. Perhaps this man was moving from one place to another in time, just as he and Paul had jumped forward from the KT boundary to reach their target coordinates in 1917. Yet what was he bearing this for? Did it have some hidden meaning or was he merely retrieving a little souvenir from one of his missions, even as I slipped away to recover Lawrence’s lost manuscript of The Seven Pillars?

He knew he did not have much time to solve the riddle. Rasil could return at any moment. He scanned the document again, taking up where he left off and trying to gain some sense of what was written. The word for time was depicted by a small circle next to a scarab figure that gave it connotation. The circle was the sun, time making it’s daily passage through the heavens. Later he noted squiggly lines that could also indicate the passage of hours in the day—another way to indicate time when paired with some other symbol. This particular icon had been had been grouped in an unaccountable cartouche, which mated it with the symbol for the lordly figure in the center of the script. He took this to mean “The Lord of Time.” Then there was more about this beast…

“The Wolf shall go forward and prey upon the bounty of the lord… If…” He reached for the meaning. “Yet if he be slain for his misdeed…” For his sin, perhaps, he thought. “Then all will be overthrown.”

Humm. He mulled over the meaning of the words, his eye drawn to two lines that seemed to be given great prominence. An ochre line was drawn, as if to indicate ‘therefore,’ and then the darkly traced pictograms seemed to speak some judgment or instruction.

He fleshed out the line in his mind, reading it as: “When the Old Man returns, the Lord’s Army shall come to the Gate of the West.”

Again he struggled to read some greater meaning into the pictograms. “The priest of the hour-temple,” he said aloud. “Could that mean the Temple Priest of Time? Yes… The Temple Priest of Time proceeds with two eyes to the Lord of Eternity.” The two eyes were a caution, and injunction to proceed very carefully, only after examining the issue at hand with two eyes, as it were. Yet, even as he reached this conclusion another, more obvious meaning came to him as well. The symbol he interpreted as ‘proceeds’ could also simply mean to go forth. Seeing with two eyes could just as easily mean a face-to-face meeting—seeing someone with your own two eyes. In that case he had: “The Priest of Time shall go forth and see the Lord of Eternity.”

How odd, he thought. How very odd. The strange mention of Time and Eternity gave him a chill, for this was a message borne by Rasil. Where he was going with it, and what it intended, god only knew. Then he remembered his friend. “Perhaps Paul will know soon enough as well,” he said, the bitterness returning.

Then caution prevailed and he carefully rolled the scroll up and returned it to Rasil’s pack as he had found it. As he did so he spied something that sent his pulse quickening—a phone! He seized upon it, his mind racing as he realized it was a satellite phone. He could reach practically any number on earth with this, but who should he call? Was it possible to use the phone while he was here in a Nexus? He decided to try, and passed a fitful moment struggling to recall Kelly’s cell phone number. He dialed, holding his breath while the phone rang and hoping against hope that Kelly would answer. He caught sight of Rasil, returning up the slope to the mouth of the cave. There was not much time.

Kelly answered, and Nordhausen blurted out a message without giving his friend a moment to say a single thing. He knew that Kelly would be smart enough to locate him here by running a GPS trace on the call. He had just enough time to get the phone back in Rasil’s pack and go rummaging through his own for something to cover his ploy.

By the time the Arab returned, he was fussing with a tin of Earl Grey tea retrieved from the meager supplies in his own satchel.

“Ah, you’ve returned,” he said as Rasil approached. “That was quick.”

“I did not go far. The edge of the Nexus is just beyond the end of the fissure,“ he pointed.

“And your men?”

“I sent them out into the desert. They will camp tonight near the place where you have buried your cargo—What was it you called the thing again?”

“An Ammonite,” the professor repeated, finally getting his breathing under control. “They were very prevalent in this region. It was all just an ancient seabed once, you see. I suppose the city of Amman takes its name from them, or perhaps the other way around. ”

“A seabed? It seems that way even now,” said Rasil. “Only the red sands of Wadi Rumm break round the towers of rock and stone.” Rasil noticed what Robert was doing. “What is that you brew—Assassins tea?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just an expression,” Rasil forced a smile.

“I just thought we might be comfortable,” said Nordhausen. “Who knows how long we will be here.” He was fishing, hoping Rasil would slip out with more information about the likely consequences of Paul’s mishap. “I mean, who knows where my friend has gone,” he continued, “or what change he might work on the Meridian without even knowing it? Going through with some end in mind is one thing. Falling through, without the slightest idea that you have traveled in time at all, is quite another. He could do things, say things, that might have real consequences, and never be the wiser.”

“Very true,” said Rasil. “Real consequences.” He smiled, his face mirroring some inner irony he had taken from the phrase. “Are there any other kind?”

There was fightingin the gray halls of Massiaf that night, and many men died. When the Kadi learned a headless message had been planted in the inner courtyard, he knew the Sami would soon seek his life. Thankfully, he kept a guard of twenty hardy men at hand, close by his chambers. They were all initiates, and every man among them had passed the fifth gate in the secret training of that place. They would not quail at the sight of the head where it glowered from the haft of a deeply planted spear. They would not shirk from the duty he must urge on them now. “The Sami is misguided,” he told them. “His does not heed the judgment of this house, and chooses to take matters into his own hands. It will be dark business tonight. He will send men here to these chambers—undoubtedly the seven he holds closest. Blood will stain these halls before the dawn.”

The Kadi’s prediction held true, and Assassins came to the chamber of greeting in the night, moving like liquid shadow as they slid along the stony walls. Yet when they crept close to their intended victims, bright knives drawn for the work at hand, they found instead only matted straw dressed in courtly robes and nestled in the sleeping room where Paul had quartered. Even as the points of their blades clinked on the hard flagstones in anger, stabbing again and again, black arrows streaked at them from every side, and cut short their cries of surprise and pain.