Anvil of Fate (Meridian Series) Read online

  Meridian IV

  The Anvil of Fate

  By

  John Schettler

  Book IV in the Award Winning Meridian Series

  Awards and Recognition For Meridian

  ForeWord Magazine’s

  S I L V E R M E D A L W I N N E R

  For Science Fiction

  “Book of the Year”

  2002

  &

  “Honorable Mention”

  Writer’s Digest

  Genre Fiction

  “Book of the Year”

  2002

  THE MERIDIAN SERIES

  Book I: Meridian, A Novel In Time

  Book II: Nexus Point

  Book III: Touchstone

  Book IV: Anvil Of Fate

  Book V: Golem 7

  Meridian IV

  The Anvil of Fate

  By

  John Schettler

  A publication of:

  The Writing Shop Press

  Kindle Edition

  Meridian IV, Copyright 2011, John A. Schettler

  ISBN: 978-0-9833542-8-4

  Discover other titles by John Schettler on Amazon.com

  Science Fiction Time Travel

  Meridian - Meridian Series - Volume II

  Nexus Point - Meridian Series - Volume II

  Touchstone - Meridian Series - Volume III

  Anvil Of Fate - Meridian Series - Volume IV

  Golem 7 - Meridian Series - Volume V

  Science Fiction

  Wild Zone - Dharman Series - Volume I

  Mother Heart - Dharman Series - Volume II

  Historical Fiction

  Taklamakan - Silk Road Series - Volume I

  Khan Tengri - Silk Road Series - Volume I

  Mythic Mystery

  Steamboat Slough - Mythic Mystery

  Mailto: [email protected]

  http://www.writingshop.ws

  http://www.dharma6.com

  Dedication

  With gracious thanks to Richard, Mark, and Candace

  For being the friends they are to me and

  For inspiring my Kelly, Robert, and Maeve.

  Meridian IV:

  The Anvil of Fate

  ”I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised.”

  — Inscribed on the shine to Athena, Sais, Egypt

  Stirrings of unrest…Heed them not, or the mighty host flees before the enemy, and many will die… Plunder taken…the road becomes the path of Martyrs. For he who would be slain must live…The weave undone…A loose twine…where horses were brought to gather By the water….Hold them fast…those who drink the wind…lest they trample thy endeavor and the host is made to flee…For the unseen one that comes in the dusk shall unseat all....

  ~ Translated from the stela unearthed at Rosetta ~

  by R. H. Nordhausen

  Meridian IV~ The Anvil Of Fate

  By

  John Schettler

  Part I - The Dawn

  Part II - Retraction

  Part III - Hammer of God

  Part IV - The Lost Sheep

  Part V - Martyrdom

  Part VI - The Road

  Part VII - The River

  Part VIII - The Rogue

  Part IX - Anvil of Fate

  Part X - Outcomes & Consequences

  Epilogue

  Glossary of Time

  From Dorland’s Theory

  Part I

  The Dawn

  “I seek refuge, with the Lord of the Dawn,

  From the mischief of created things;

  From the mischief of darkness as it overspreads;

  From the mischief of those who practice

  Secret Arts…”

  Sura CXIII – Koran

  Chapter 1

  The Archive, Somewhere East of the Nile, 10,500 B.C.

  Kelly awoke, the sweat and torment of his nightmare still shaking him. It was the same dream again, echoing in his mind and dogging his sleep for three nights now. He had been working late at the USF Harney Science Center Arion system to finalize the numbers for their planned Time jump. They were going to see a Shakespeare play, the Tempest, but the news he heard on the radio as he drove back across the Bay Bridge changed all that.

  Then he stopped near that 7-11 store when he got to the East Bay. Unable to find his cell phone, he was going to make a call to warn the project team. At that moment he thought he saw an old man in a gray trench coat stepping boldly in front of his car, but he blinked and no one was there. Kelly got out and, an instant later, a car came cascading around the street corner, skidding on the rain slick pavement. He was hit, and thrown against the metal pole of a nearby street sign, falling in a daze to the ground.

  He could still remember the sound of music playing from the open door of his car…“Never stop the car on a drive in the dark.” Porcupine Tree: Arriving somewhere, but not here. He knew the music well, and it echoed now in his mind at the edge of that fading dream. An odd sensation of déjà vu came upon him, woven amid the guitars of the band. The lyric seemed to mock him: “Ever had the feeling you've been here before?”

  He shook himself awake, chasing the dream from his mind. The pre-dawn light had awakened him, as always, and he was suddenly driven with great urgency. He had to get up and greet the dawn for morning prayers!

  He gathered his robes around him, warding off the morning chill and stood up on unsteady legs. A moment later he was out of his quarters, and shuffling down the long stone passage towards a doorway. His guardian and minder, Assam, smiled with a yawn and made a respectful bow.

  “Falaq, the dawn is come,” said Kelly, nodding back. The man made no effort to impede him, but followed quietly behind as Kelly hurried on down the corridor, out the door, and into the courtyard beyond. He breathed in the clean, cool morning air, amazed at the clarity of the lightening sky as he emerged from the rightmost front paw of the Sphinx shrine. Just ahead of him, starkly silhouetted against the sky, was the telltale shape of a Pyramid. He hastened to its edge, quickly climbing the stairs to the top.

  In the distance he could hear the call of the Muezzin, beckoning the faithful to their first morning prayer. He was late, and had forgotten to wash and bring his prayer mat, but no matter. He would reach the top of the pyramid in time, breathless after his climb, but safely there and with minutes to spare. He took a moment to compose himself, then walked slowly to the center of the Pyramid and knelt to make his first bow in respectful prayer.

  “Falaq – The Dawn is come,” he began. “In the name of God the most gracious, the most merciful. I seek refuge with the Lord of the Dawn.”

  “From the mischief of created things,” came a voice from behind him. He looked back, expecting to see his minder, but instead it was Hamza, the scribe and curator of this complex.

  “From the mischief of darkness as it overspreads,” said Kelly, “and from the mischief of those who practice secret arts.”

  “And from the mischief of the envious one, as he practices envy.” Hamza bowed low, joining Kelly, close by his side now.

  “Then let us rise in the protection of Allah, and greet the day,” Kelly finished just as the blazoning sun cleared the horizon, illuminating the vast, empty desert around them with tawny yellow light.

  The two men watched in silence for a while, then bowed low before Hamza spoke again. “Ra comes in his endless round, to rise into the sky and take his place in the firmament. Such is the way our distant ancestors understand things. They knew nothing of Allah, praise his name, and the true creed delivered by Mohammed, peace be upon him, will not come to the world for millennia. Yet come it will, and I am here to make certain it stays.”


  Kelly smiled. “It is a beautiful day,” he said. “Will you be working the wall again today, Hamza?”

  “As I must,” said the scribe. “You may join me if you wish, and we can have another of our discussions concerning the record of days.”

  “You’ve finished your carving of the age of the Prophet, yes? It’s amazing the progress you have made in recent months. What is the story today then?”

  Hamza smiled. “I recount the time of the Banu Umayyah, the Sons of Umayyah to say this in your words. Some of my people call this Caliphate the Great Red Dragon, having seven heads and ten horns—seven provinces and ten mighty rulers. The Prophet himself can trace his blood line through the sire of the sons of Umayyah. It was truly a great Caliphate, one of the largest empires the world has ever seen, and it might have been so much greater were it not for a misstep by the Emir Abdul Rahman.”

  “You’re talking about the Umayyads? You mean when Abdul Rahman ran afoul of Charles Martel? Yes, I’d call that a misstep. Charles made short work of him at Tours.”

  “Ah, you are willful again!” Hamza smiled. “We do not see the history quite that way,” he explained. “It is described as a great victory for the forces of Christendom by your scribes. In accounts of my people, however, the matter was not so threaded with gold. The legend of your Frankish lord is overblown. As it is written in our time, the faithful pierced the mountains, trampled over rough and level ground, plundered far and wide in the country of the Franks, smiting all with the sword, insomuch that when Odo came to battle with them at the River Garonne, he fled before the wrath of Islam. So it begins.”

  “Yes, but it didn’t end that way,” Kelly challenged, and Hamza held up a hand, nodding his head in a slight concession.

  “The great Emir Abdul Rahman was careless, to be sure,” he said, “and his men too worrisome over the fruits of their plunder. I have had many deliveries in recent days, and must complete this work in due course. And I will inscribe it diligently and faithfully, so that this misstep may be corrected. Come. Will you join me? Undoubtedly you will have much to say about the period.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Kelly.

  He lingered a moment as he watched Hamza walk back toward the stairway, half way expecting to feel that lightness of being and the frosty chill that made the cool morning air seem balmy by comparison. But nothing happened. He had been many long months here now. The last time he felt that intense cold of infinity was the moment just after he met the scribe and walked out with him to face the place where Mecca would rise up in ages hence. He remembered how Hamza thought to prepare him for the fate that awaited him.

  “Your friends will try to call you home soon, though you may not feel the place to be a home in your heart when you return. They will make an error, a very small one of course, but then little things have great consequences—”

  It was obviously more than a small error, thought Kelly. He felt the retraction shift beginning, that heady lightness, tinged with a wave of nausea. For the briefest moment he thought he was back in his dream again, the same dream he awoke with this very morning, at the Harney Science Center Arion complex. Then he could feel his blood thicken and solidity returning to his body. He fell on the cold wet stone, unaware until he awakened. Was it hours later? Minutes? Seconds? He could not recall it now. They tried to pull me out and failed, he thought. Or perhaps it was that Time had no place for me in the world where my friends live now, and it tried to hijack the retraction shift and send me back to the beginning, back to a moment where I could walk gently forward to the death that was rightfully mine.

  That thought darkened his mind every time he considered it. He had tried to ask Hamza what he knew of the events of his day, but the man was reluctant to divulge too much about it.

  “The days yet to come are not my concern,” he would say. “I will contemplate them when the time comes to inscribe them here in the wall. You should not trouble yourself with idle speculation, my friend. Time has left you safely in our care. It is the will of Allah that you remain here with us, and share in the counting of days.”

  So the moment when Time could best decide his fate was this moment, thought Kelly. Hamza was right. Time left me here, abandoned, a lost orphan. It took the easy way out. Hamza had told him just enough to know that the world had changed yet again, and was restored to the true Prime Meridian.

  They had worked a mighty transformation, or so he explained it. A stumble and a kick had foiled them for a brief interval, but they worked it, with all determination, and found another way to restore the Time line to what it had been that Memorial Day when Palma exploded and wreaked its havoc on the world. How could Time account for my presence in that altered Meridian if I had shifted forward to the project lab again? He was well aware of the dilemma, and the grave danger of Paradox.

  Time would have to balance her books, he thought, and my presence would force her to the difficult choice of either annihilating me, a Prime Mover and Agent of First Cause, or somehow finding a way to alter everything else to serve the need of my life. So she made the quick and easy choice, he thought, and just left me where I was, with a nice fat buffer, ten millennia wide, between me and any potential problem my life might cause.

  Still, he had hope that one day he might return home to the world he knew. He wasn’t sure what had actually happened, given his failure to flood and destroy the shrine and record of days here. That uncertainty made friends with hope, and together they gave birth to a determination on his part to try and find his way home, whether that choice was wise or not. There was little he could do here on his own. His only chance would be to somehow alert his companions to the fact that he was alive and well, and prompt them to act. He soon realized he had the perfect means of communicating with Paul and the others right here!

  The hieroglyphics, he thought. They’ll survive for thousands of years intact, and Nordhausen can read them! All he had to do was get chummy enough with Hamza and the others here to avoid arousing suspicion. So he joined Hamza where he worked at the wall each day, engaging him in lively conversation and discussion on the history, an advocate for his own Western perspective on the course of events, though Hamza might define him as a devil’s advocate with such opinions.

  He would also join the others at prayer each time they would answer the call of the Muezzin, and he would sit with Hamza each evening and hear reading of the holy suras of the Koran as well. In time they came to see him as a new initiate to the faith, and eagerly engaged him with the teachings of the Prophet. And he found the discourse very uplifting and enlightening, however narrow the mindset behind it was at times. On occasion he would tussle with Hamza intellectually, trying to elucidate a viewpoint that could embrace the freedoms of the West, but it was largely a fruitless endeavor. If it was written in the Koran, then Hamza would give ear. But things like the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the personal freedoms they gave rise too were often at odds with mainstream Islamic teaching.

  “Tomorrow will be a special day,” said Hamza. “I will carve the rendering of new meaning for the concept of Jihad, as the Prophet related it in his ministry at Mecca and Medina. More than a simple admonishment to actively recount the words of the Koran and initiate the unfaithful, jihad now comes to be understood as a more active resistance to the ways of the Infidel.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Kelly. The concept of holy war is not unknown to the West. I suppose the Crusaders proved that in no uncertain terms. Yet a time must come where men of different views and faiths can be at ease with one another, and find peace together. Is that not to be wished for?”

  “Such contentment can arise only when the world acknowledges the true teachings of the Prophet,” said Hamza. “For there is no God but God, and Allah is his name, and Muhammad is his Prophet.”

  “Peace be upon him,” Kelly finished with a sigh.

  “Yes, I will come to the wall again today, Hamza, and you may teach me more. Perhaps you will even let me help you, as I did onc
e before, and ease your burden.”

  Hamza had showed him his craft, explaining how the tools were to be used, and dyes applied to the hieroglyphics to preserve them through the long ages. Each day when he would come to the wall he could now see many others at work there, under Hamza’s watchful eye. They were carving the record of days, year by year, on the long, smooth stone walls of the chamber at the heart of the Sphinx. As big as it was, Kelly thought that they must eventually run out of space here. He could see that they were already nearing the end of this wall, and asked Hamza what he would do when every space was covered.

  “What we cannot fit here will be carved in new slabs of stone and stored for safekeeping.”

  They were carving these even now, and small groups of men were apparently assigned to different periods of the history, while Hamza inscribed the main narrative on the wall. “This character here,” he pointed, “will instruct the reader that what follows is to be found in detail on a stela, and indicate its location.”