King Solomon's Diamonds

10 Cairo

Under the warm skies of Cairo there was a stirring of souls, not in the poetic sense, but in the sense of the devout feeling that something sinister was moving through the cosmos, preparing to burn the world like a hand holding a magnifying glass just at the right angle and distance to scorch mankind. But these sporadic collections of holy men and their faithful followers kept the odd shift in axial precession of their stargazers between themselves. Ancient bloodlines safely secured within secret societies had maintained their status amongst their own, preserving the ways of their forefathers.

At first, the people of Lebanon suffered the darkness of a sudden power failure, but as technicians were struggling to find the problem, the news broke from other cities in other countries that the electricity there had failed as well, creating chaos from Beirut to Mecca. It was not a day later when reports came in from Turkey, Iraq, and parts of Iran that inexplicable power outages were causing havoc. Now in Cairo and Alexandria parts of Egypt were darkening as well, rushing two men from the stargazer tribes to look for a source other than the grid of a power station.

“Are you sure Number Seven has gone off orbit?” Penekal asked his colleague, Ofar.

“I am one hundred percent sure, Penekal,” Ofar answered. “Look for yourself. It’s a monumental shift, and only stretching over an amount of days!”

“Days? Are you mad? That is impossible!” Penekal replied, dismissing his colleague’s theory outright. Ofar raised a gentle hand and waved it calmly. “Come now, brother. You know that nothing is impossible to science or God. The one wields the wonder of the other.”

Contrite for his outburst, Penekal sighed and motioned for Ofar to forgive him. “I know. I know. It is just so…” he gasped impatiently. “It has never been scribed that such a phenomenon has ever taken place. Maybe I’m afraid that it’s true, because the thought of one heavenly body changing orbit without any disturbance in its fellows is downright terrifying.”

“I know, I know,” Ofar sighed. Both men were in their late sixties, yet their bodies were still very healthy and their faces carried hardly a sign of the weathering of age. They were both astronomers and scholars of the theories of Theon of Alexandria primarily, but they also welcomed the modern teachings and theories, keeping track of all the latest astro-technology and news from global scientists. But apart from their modern accumulative knowledge, the two old men kept to the antique tribes’ traditions, and as they faithfully studied the skies, they would keep in mind both science and mythology. Usually the hybrid consideration of the two subjects gave them a wonderful middle ground to overlap wonder with logic, something that aided in forming their opinions. Until now.

With his hand quivering on the tube of the eyepiece, Penekal slowly pulled back from the small lens he’d been peering through, his eyes still fixed ahead of him in astonishment. Finally, he turned to face Ofar, his mouth dry and his heart sinking. “By the gods. It’s happening in our lifetime. I cannot find the star either, my friend, no matter where I seek it.”

“One star has fallen,” Ofar lamented, looking down in sorrow. “We are in trouble.”

“Which one is this, according to Solomon’s Codex?” Penekal asked.

“I already looked. It’s Rabdos,” Ofar said forebodingly, “the lamp lighter.”

Distraught, Penekal wandered with a labored pace to the window of their vantage room on the 20^th Floor of the Hathor Building in Giza. From up there they could see the vast Cairo metropolis, and below them the Nile snaked like liquid azure through the city. His old, dark eyes floated across the city below and then found the hazy horizon, trailing along the dividing line between the world and the heavens. “Do we know when it fell?”

“Not exactly. From the entries I made it must have happened between Tuesday and today. That means Rabdos fell in the last thirty-two hours,” Ofar noted. “Shall we say something to the elders of the city?”

“No,” came the swift negation from Penekal. “Not yet. If we say one thing that brings to light what we really use this equipment for, they could easily disband us, taking millennia of observations with them.”

“I see,” Ofar said. “I’ve run the Osiris Charter program on the constellations from this observatory and the smaller one in Yemen. The one in Yemen will keep track of the falling stars when we’re not able to here, so we’ll be able to keep track.”

Ofar’s phone rang. He excused himself and left the room while Penekal sat down at his desk to watch the screensaver image propel through space, giving him the illusion that he was flying among the stars he loved so much. This always calmed his demeanor and the hypnotic repetition of the stars passing had a meditative quality to him. However, the disappearance of the seventh star in the perimeter of the Leo constellation was sure to give him sleepless nights. He heard Ofar’s footsteps come into the room at a faster rate than they’d left the room with.

“Penekal!” he wheezed, unable to master the rush.

“What is it?”

“I just got word from our people in Marseille, at the observatory atop Mont Faron, outside Toulon.” Ofar was panting so hard he was momentarily unable to continue. His friend had to pat him lightly to take a breath first. Once the hasty old man had caught his breath, he continued. “They say a woman was found hanging in a French villa in Nice a few hours ago.”

“That’s awful, Ofar,” Penekal replied. “It truly is, but what does it have to do with you, such that you had to get a phone call about it?”

“She was swinging from a rope made of hemp,” he wailed. “And here is the proof that it is of great concern to us,” he said, taking a deep breath. “The house belonged to a nobleman, Baron Henri de Martine, who is known for his diamond collection.”

Penekal caught on to some familiarities, but he could not quite bring two and two together until Ofar finished his account. “Penekal, Baron Henri de Martine was the owner of the Celeste!”

Rapidly abandoning the urge to utter some holy names in shock, the thin old Egyptian covered his mouth with his hand. Those seemingly random facts had a devastating implication on what they knew, what they followed. Quite honestly, these were the alarming signs of the advent of an apocalyptic event. It was not written, or believed in, as a prophecy at all, but it was part of King Solomon’s encounters, written by the wise king himself in a hidden codex only familiar to those of Ofar and Penekal’s tradition.

This scroll mentioned the important precursors to celestial events that carried Apocryphal connotations. Nothing in the codex ever stated that this would happen, but upon the accounts of Solomon’s writings in this instance the falling star and the subsequent catastrophes were more than coincidence. Those who walked in tradition and could see the signs were expected to save mankind if they realized the portent.

“Which one was dealt with spinning ropes of hemp, again?” he asked loyal old Ofar, who was already paging through the writings to locate the name. After jotting down the name under the previous fallen star, he looked up and revealed it. “Onoskelis.”

“I am completely stunned, my old friend,” Penekal said, shaking his head in disbelief. “This means the Freemasons have found an alchemist, or the worse scenario — we have a Magician on our hands!”