Category: Fantasy Publisher: Createspace
ISBN-10: 1451531656
Type: Fiction
Pages: 298
Copyright: April 7, 2010
ISBN-13: 9781451531657
Five years later, 2055, and the Chevalier du Morte’s exile is complete. It is time for him to come back to the Order of the Red Cross of Gold, but he is reluctant. Life has gone on, as well as death, and he must return. The Knight of the Golden Eagle is on the verge of collapse. Simon’s life has come unglued with the birth of his twelfth child, but Mark still has something he must do before he can be readmitted and restored to full status as a Knight of the Council of Twelve. He must return the Secret of the Wisdom of Solomon to his beloved Chevaliere Sinclair. All is well and good until they decide to do a little ‘experimentation’ with the Mystery. The results are disastrous and not only puts Meredith’s life in danger, it allows the Djinn to take control of the imprisoned Queen of the Abyss and the dragon in one swift move. Meanwhile, an unexpected guest gets himself into a world of trouble, when he goes tramping around in the Underworld.
In the tenth installment of the Assassin Chronicles, the Knight of Death reluctantly returns to the Order after five years of exile in a remote monastery on the Agean Sea. His homecoming is bittersweet in light of Simon's tragic loss, but life must go on. His reunion with the Chevaliere Sinclair should have been a wonderful experience, but something very dark has awakened in the Knight's soul and an evil addiction is about to steal any joy he might have expected in his return to his beloved Scotland. His unspeakable, unconfessable sin leads to a rather destructive descent into the pits of hell, but his solution has even more dire consequences for the Order of the Red Cross of Gold.
Excerpt
“Ernst! You idiot! Wake up!” Konrad William kicked at his friend’s leg. The boy lay on the rug, face down, snoring softly, drooling on his mother’s expensive tan and peach colored Ziba rug.
Ernst raised his head and looked around blinking. His head pounded and his vision was blurry. He had to stop doing this! His grades were slipping and Konrad had no mercy on his hangovers. In fact, his ‘friend’ seemed to enjoy the fact that he suffered so much afterward their little escapades, while he, Konrad, seemed never to be affected by any of the things they tried. Ernst sometimes suspected that Konrad didn’t really try the stuff at all, but just used him as a guinea pig and then sat back and watched him suffer.
“Here, drink this,” Konrad ordered and shoved a glass at him. It was full of thick red liquid and smelled awful, but even poison would have made him feel better.
Ernst sat up slowly and pulled himself up to the bed. He took the glass in shaking hands and then held his nose before drinking it down. He sat straight up when it hit his stomach and then bolted for the bathroom.
“You’ll feel better in a minute!” Konrad laughed and called to him through the door. Ernst was heaving up last week’s schnitzel. It was summer recess and he was making the most of his friend’s availability, gullibility and stupidity to try out some new concoctions. Ernst was such a fool, but he had something Ernst did not have… an empty, fully-furnished Alpine chalet with maid service and money, plenty of it.
The boy came from the bathroom holding his stomach and frowning a few minutes later. He burped loudly and then made a terrible face as he unscrewed the cap of a mineral water bottle. Konrad waited patiently while his friend downed half a bottle of water in a vain attempt to wash the taste of the concoction from his mouth.
“How do you feel?” Konrad asked from where he sat in front of his father’s Alienware Area 51 X980 computer.
“Better,” Ernst lied and pulled up a chair. At least the headache was gone and he could see again.
“Good! Look. I’ve found him… finally,” Konrad said smugly and tapped the glass computer screen. “I knew daddy’s computer could do it. He’d better get me one of these before I have to abscond with this one.”
It looked dark and ominous to Ernst.
“Who?” Ernst squinted at the screen.
“The King, you idiot! King Adar. Who have I been searching for five years?” Konrad shook his head and then brushed back his long, dark hair.
“Oh,” Ernst blinked and shook his head, causing the room to swim. “What’s he doing?”
“Meditating,” Konrad said as he folded his arms over his chest.
“Mediating? There?” Ernst looked closer at the screen. The sky was dark gray and full of low, heavy clouds. The only figure in the picture stood on the edge of an extremely high precipice overlooking a rough sea, hundreds, perhaps thousands of meters below. He was dressed in a long, black robe of some sort and wore a tall, funny-looking hat with a flat top on his head. His arms were folded inside the loose sleeves of his robes and the wind blew back his hair and split his beard on either side of his shoulders. “How do you know its him? He doesn’t look the same.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Konrad smiled. “But look.”
The picture zoomed and they could see his face clearly. He was squinting against the wind, but his deep, blue eyes were stunningly recognizable and his hair flapped in the stiff breeze coming off the sea. They could hear seabirds and the sound of the wind whistling among the rocks and the thundering waves crashing on the shore below.
“Sound?” Ernst looked at Konrad in amazement. “How’d you manage it?”
“You just have to know what you’re doing,” Konrad told him. “But the sounds are not the point. Look at his hair.”
The boy could see a long white braid entwined in the darker locks with silver ornaments attached to it.
“Aha! That’s him all right.” Ernst was feeling much better now. Almost normal, but he was hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good meal.
“Yes. That’s King Ramsay or Adar if you prefer,” Konrad nodded slowly. “He’s been hiding out.” The picture zoomed out again.
“Where is that exactly?” Ernst asked him. He had never seen a wilder place. It looked like something out of someone’s imagination. Tall spires of rock, rising above the ocean like giant fingers. Some of them were flattened on top and the outlines of manmade structures built miraculously balanced atop of them were clearly visible against the gray sky.
“That’s the Aegean Sea. He’s been lurking around those old monasteries up there,” Konrad explained and tapped the screen with a long stylus, causing the picture to jump from one structure to another. A series of dangerous looking stairs and walkways connected the buildings.
“What are you going to do?” Ernst asked him.
“Nothing right now,” Konrad told him. “I have to come up with a good plot. Besides, he doesn’t even have the golden sword with him.”
“Why not?” Ernst was surprised to hear this. The King always carried his fabulous golden sword with him.
“They took it from him. The bastards took everything from him,” Konrad snorted in disgust and shook his head. “They actually ex-communicated him. They were going to beat him, but his friends took the beating for him and then they kicked him out of the Order for five years. They took all his property in Scotland and down on the coast, too.”
“Wow,” Ernst nodded. “I wish I could be a Knight of the Order!”
“Please!” Konrad leaned back in the chair and looked at his friend in dismay. “They have some very interesting rules that I don’t think you would appreciate, Ernst. Besides, you would never be a Knight unless one of them died. And they are very hard to kill off.”
“How’s that?” Ernst watched the screen intently as the solitary figure continued to stand motionless on the high precipice overlooking the sea.
“They’re immortal. Haven’t you been listening to me at all?”
“Come on now, Konrad!” Ernst tore his attention from the screen to look at Konrad as if he had lost his mind.
“And so am I,” Konrad told him proudly.
“Yeah, sure. How do you know?” Ernst asked and laughed nervously. He had seen this same look on Konrad’s face before. His friend was not joking.
“How else would I know? I killed myself and here I am, none the worse for wear,” the slender boy said and held out his arms for inspection.
“Konrad!” Ernst gasped and stood up, backing away from him. “You have lost your fucking mind.”
“Oh, no I haven’t,” Konrad stood up and stretched his arms over his head. “I’ll prove it to you. You name the method and I’ll do it. Anything but decapitation or a broken neck or something like being lost at the bottom of the sea.”
“No!” Ernst objected and his blue eyes widened in fear. “I’m not fucking around like that, Konrad. No.”
“Why not? Are you afraid?” Konrad narrowed his eyes at his companion and smiled wickedly. “I’ll tell you what! You kill me. That would be a twist, wouldn’t it? Haven’t you ever wanted to kill someone, Ernie?”
“Konrad,” Ernst’s voice took on a pleading tone as he continued to back away until Konrad rushed to take him by the collar.
The taller boy pulled a wicked, double-edged dagger from his pocket and pressed it against the smaller boy’s neck.
“I’ll make a deal with you. You kill me or I’ll kill you,” Konrad said as he pressed the knife a bit and blood ran from the shallow cut.
“Stop it!” Ernst shouted at him. “Stop it! All right! Let me think!”
Konrad let go of the boy and went back to the computer. He leaned down again to look closely at the Knight of Death, who still stood gazing out over the sea. “I’ll get back to you, old friend.”
He clicked the mouse and turned to his friend. “Choose your method, sir. And make it good. Remember, if you fail to kill me, I get my chance at you.”
Ernst blinked at him in consternation. Konrad had lost his mind and he was in the middle of nowhere with him in a secluded vacation home that belonged to Konrad’s adoptive parents in the mountains of Switzerland. Ernst knew Konrad well enough to know that once he had made up his mind, nothing short of death would stop him from doing what he said he would do. Ernst would have to kill him or die. And no one would ever believe it!
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