Templar's Code

CHAPTER 82

“All is lost!”

“Do not give up hope,” Mercurius beseeched, trying to calm his distraught amoretto. “We have come far together. Be strong, Saviour. Much is at stake.”

“But the archimalakas has the relic!”

“I know. . . . Let me think.”

You must always remember, little one, that you were named for the Bringer of the Light.

Do not fear the Light, Merkür. For it will lead you to your life’s purpose.

Though he did not know it at the time, being only five years of age, Osman and Moshe had entrusted him with a momentous responsibility—to bring the great work that they began to fruition. To fulfill their vision and liberate the anguished masses from this hideously flawed creation. This godless earth where we are daily force-fed the hypocrisy that misery is a blessing in disguise and suffering an ordeal that must be endured in order to enter the kingdom of God. Not even Moses dared to pass that canard off as “truth.”

The Light did work in mysterious ways, man unable to fathom cause and effect until after the fact. More than forty years ago, in Amman, Jordan, he’d uncovered a single word embedded in the text of the Copper Scroll. Akhenaton. That single, startling word implied a connection, however tenuous, between the Hebrews of the Old Testament and ancient Egypt. Frightened by an anonymous act of vandalism, he’d never published his findings. Instead, he cowered in silence.

But when the Greek crone unceremoniously thrust a loose-leaf manuscript at him seven years ago, Mercurius had been given an unbelievable gift. One bequeathed to him in 1943. The true history of the Hebrew tribes and their connection to the pharaoh Akhenaton.

Within days of that miraculous encounter at his childhood home, he’d been given yet another gift—the beautiful young man, Saviour Panos. Firmly grounded in the material world, his amoretto was the dark to his light. Together, they made a perfect whole. Old and young. Cerebral and visceral. Eromenos and erastes.

Cause and effect.

The two of them would give a great gift to a world at war with itself. A gift that had the power to engender a spiritual awakening of mankind’s collective soul. A gift that would bind up all the wounds. A way to usher the victimized inhabitants of this planet to the Lost Heaven. The only true utopia. Paradise regained.

He was the Bringer of the Light. It was his sacred duty to see that it happened.

But he had to acquire the Emerald Tablet. Without it, the Luminarium was just empty words. In the same way that the Emerald Tablet was worthless without the encryption key contained in the pages of the Luminarium.

Cause and effect.

Now was not the time to cower in silence. For evil is birthed in silence. How many stood silent while Osman and Moshe were led to the waiting train? A scene repeated thousands of times across the whole of Europe.

Now was the time for action.

He’d vowed that no man would ever profit from the Emerald Tablet. Clearly, the Brit intended to do just that. To sell it to the highest bidder. Why else would Caedmon Aisquith have gone to such lengths to find the sacred relic? And now that he’d unearthed the sacred relic, what lengths would he—

Yes! Of course! The path was so clear . . . so brilliantly illuminated.

Excited, Mercurius tightly clutched the phone. He would atone for his sins after the Emerald Tablet had been retrieved.

“Amoretto, you must listen very carefully. There is a way to retrieve the sacred relic.”

A deadly way, to be certain. But with so much at stake, he refused to stand silent.