King Solomon's Diamonds

23 Like a Diamond in the Sky

Prof. Imru welcomed Purdue amicably as he opened the high gates for the group. “Good to see you again, Mr. Purdue. I hope you have been well?”

“Well, I have been a bit upset in sleep and meals are still not appealing, but I am healing on, thank you, Professor,” Purdue answered, smiling. “Just the fact that I’m not enjoying the hospitality of a prison population is enough to bring me cheer on a daily basis, actually.”

“I would think so,” the professor agreed with sympathy. “Personally, a prison sentence was not our aim in the first place. More so, it seemed to be the MI6 people’s aim to lock you up for life than the Ethiopian delegation’s.” The professor’s admittance shed some light on Karsten’s vindictive pursuits, lending even more credence to the fact that he was out to get Purdue, but that was something for another time.

After the party had joined the Master Mason in the cool beauty of the shade in front of the Temple, an earnest discussion was to begin. Penekal could not stop staring at Nina, but she handled his quiet admiration with grace. Purdue and Sam found his obvious infatuation with her amusing, but they kept their amusement to winks and nudges until the conversation took on an air of formality and seriousness.

“Master Penekal is of the mind that we are being plagued by what is called in mysticism, a Magician. Now, by no means should you imagine this character as a man of trickery and sleight of hand by today’s standards,” Prof. Imru began.

“He is the reason for these power outages, for instance,” Penekal added softly.

“If you would, Master Penekal, please refrain from jumping ahead before I have explained the esoteric nature of our dilemma,” Prof. Imru requested of the old astronomer. “There is much truth in Penekal’s statement, but you will better understand once I have explained the fundamentals. I do realize you have only a certain amount of time to return the Holy Box, so we shall try to make this as quick as possible.”

“Thank you,” Purdue said. “I wish to get that done as soon as possible.”

“Of course,” Prof. Imru nodded, and then proceeded to teach the group what he and the astronomer had put together thus far. While Nina, Purdue, Sam, and Adjo were being informed of the correlation between the falling stars and the wandering sage’s murderous robberies, someone was fiddling with the gate.

“Excuse me, please,” Penekal apologized. “I know who that is. Apologies for his tardiness.”

“By all means. Here are the keys, Master Penekal,” the professor said, handing Penekal the gate key to let the frantic Ofar in while he continued to help the Scottish expedition party catch up. Ofar looked labored, his eyes wide in panic and apprehension when his friend unlocked the gates. “Do they understand yet?” he panted.

“We are informing them now, my friend,” Penekal assured Ofar.

“Make haste,” Ofar implored. “Another star has fallen not more than twenty minutes ago!”

“What?” Penekal raved. “Which one?”

“The first of the Seven Sisters!” Ofar revealed, his words like the nails in a coffin lid. “We must hurry, Penekal! We must make a stand now or all will be lost!” His lips quivered like that of a dying man. “We have to stop the Magician, Penekal, or our children will not live to see old age!”

“I am very aware of that, my old friend,” Penekal soothed Ofar, keeping him steady with a firm hand on the back as they approached the warm, hearty fire in the garden. The flames were welcoming, lighting up the façade of the great old Temple with great announcement where the walls featured the shadows of the present participants and animated their every move.

“Welcome, Master Ofar,” Prof. Imru said as the old man sat down, nodding to the other members of the congregation. “I have now brought Mr. Purdue and his colleagues up to speed about our speculation. They know that the Magician is indeed busy weaving a terrible prophecy,” the professor announced. “I will leave it to the astronomers of the Dragon Watchers of Hermopolis, men who spring from the bloodlines of Thoth’s priests, to tell you what this murderer could be trying to do.”

Penekal rose from his chair, unrolling the scrolls in the bright lantern light from the containers hung from the tree branches. Purdue and his friends instantly gathered closer to peruse the codex and charts.

“This is a star chart of antiquity, covering the immediate heavens above Egypt, Tunisia… basically the entire Middle East as we know it,” Penekal explained. “In the past two weeks my colleague, Ofar, and I, have noticed several disturbing celestial occurrences.”

“Such as?” Sam asked, scrutinizing the old brown parchment and its mind-numbing information in numbers and unknown script.

“Such as stars falling,” he stopped Sam with an objective open hand before the journalist could speak, “but… not those we can afford to have falling. I would venture as far as to say that these heavenly bodies are not just gasses consuming themselves, but planets, small at a distance. When these types of stars fall, it means that they were dislodged from their orbits.” Ofar looked quite horrified at his own words. “It means that their demise could have a chain reaction effect on their surrounding constellations.”

Nina gasped. “That sounds like trouble.”

“The lady is correct,” Ofar acknowledged. “And these particular bodies are all important, so important that they have names by which they are identified.”

“Not numbers after mundane scientists’ surnames, like many of today’s notable stars,” Penekal informed the audience around the table. “Their names are so important, as are their positions in the heavens above the earth, that they were known even to the men of God.”

Sam was fascinated. Although he had spent his life dealing with criminal organizations and clandestine evildoers, he had to concede to the charm the mystic reputation of the starry sky held for him. “How so, Mr. Ofar?” Sam asked with consummate interest, jotting down some notes for himself to remember the terminology and chart position names.

“In the Testament of Solomon, the wise king from the Bible,” Ofar recounted like an old bard, “it is said that King Solomon bound seventy-two demons and made them build the Temple of Jerusalem.”

His statement was naturally met with cynicism from the group, disguised as silent contemplation. Only Adjo sat motionless, looking up at the stars above. With the power out all over the immediate country and other regions not akin to Egypt, the glamor of the stars excelled in the pitch dark space that lurked perpetually over all.

“I know how this must sound,” Penekal explained, “but you have to think in terms of sicknesses and ill emotions, not horned imps, to impress the nature of ‘demons’. It will sound absurd at first, until we tell you what we’ve been observing, what has been happening. Only then will you begin to shed disbelief in favor of warning.”

“I did assure Masters Ofar and Penekal that very few wise enough to grasp this arcane chapter would actually have the means to do something about it,” Prof. Imru told the visitors from Scotland. “And this is why I deemed you, Mr. Purdue, and your friends, the right people to approach in this regard. I have read much of your works too, Mr. Cleave,” he told Sam. “I have learned much of your sometimes unbelievable ordeals and adventures along with Dr. Gould and Mr. Purdue. This made me certain that you were not people who would blindly dismiss the strange and perplexing matters we deal with on a daily basis here within our respective orders.”

Nicely done, Professor, Nina thought. Good of you to butter us up with that charming, albeit patronizing, summary of exaltation. Perhaps it was her power as a female that allowed Nina to pick up on the sweet-smearing psychology of praise, but she was not about to remark on it aloud. She had already caused tension between Purdue and Col. Yimenu, just one of his legal adversaries. It would be redundant to repeat the counter-productive practice with Prof. Imru and obliterate Purdue’s reputation for good, just to assert her intuition on the Master Freemason.

And so Dr. Gould held her tongue while she listened to the astronomer’s lovely narration, his voice as soothing as an old wizard from a fantasy film.