The Wayward Godking by Brendan Carroll Page B

was pale and lifeless, water dripping from her hair onto his lap. “Luke, help me with her.”
    Luke jumped up from the bench and took Dunya from him as the others crowded around him, asking questions. Lily’s questions were loudest, demanding to know who these persons were, who had suddenly appeared from nowhere in their midst. Luke Matthew helped Omar to his feet and looked him over cautiously, trying to decide if he was real or yet another illusion.
    His skin was blue from lack of oxygen and he was shivering uncontrollably in the heat. The numerous, colorful tattoos that Sabaoth, the Ancient Evil, had decorated Jozsef Daniel’s body with stood out starkly in the torch light. Birds, scrolling vines and exotic flowers from the tropical jungles of Haiti covered his chest and stomach, while a crouching jaguar coiled, ready to spring from his shoulder. More designs trailed away down his back, too numerous to count.
    “Where have you been? Where did you come from?” Luke Andrew asked as he ripped off his own light jacket and draped it over Omar’s shoulders.
    “I… we were on the roof,” Omar stammered and looked up at his uncles in bewilderment. “I was going to jump into the sea. I wanted to get to the Seventh Gate and Dunya tried to stop me. Then something happened. We fell. Together.”
    Meredith, Merry and Lily were fussing over Dunya, whom they had laid out on the front bench. Lily had covered her with her woolen shawl and was rubbing her hands, while Merry looked her over for injuries. Meredith was trying to revive her.
    “Dunya?” Meredith spoke close to her ear. “Can you hear me? Wake up, Dunya!” Meredith slapped her cold cheeks lightly and the smaller woman coughed up a mouthful of salt water.
    “Why, the lassie looks drowned!” Lily commented and stood up, drawing back from them. “What is happening here?”
    Meredith still experienced emotional difficulty each time she came into contact with Dunya. No matter what the personality, patriarchal or matriarchal differences, Dunya still looked exactly like a young Cecile Valentino, and Meredith had no desire to remember her. Merry Ramsay, on the other hand, had an entirely different set of memories concerning Cecile. The situation was growing more and more untenable.
    Merry knelt beside her and took her face between her hands.
    “Are you all right?” She asked.
    Dunya blinked at them and spit up more water, coughing and choking as they helped her to sit up. She had no lasting or significant memories of either of them other than the short time she had spent with Meredith and Mark Andrew as a small girl.
    “Excuse me,” she said and pressed her hand over her mouth. “I am so sorry. Where is my brother? What happened to Omar?”
    When Omar heard her voice, he was beside her in an instant, leaving Luke Andrew to his questions.
    He wrapped her in his arms and held her very tight, whispering in her ear that everything would be all right.
    “A word with you, please,” Luke Matthew took his nephew’s arm and escorted him outside the cavern. They could go outside the cave’s mouth, but only Marduk was allowed to wander further abroad. The Lord of the Sixth Gate was nowhere to be seen.
    “What do you make of it?” The King asked him in a low voice. “Did you see where he came from?”
    “No, I was sleeping,” Luke Andrew answered and shook his head. “It was so strange. I was dreaming about him and then he spoke to me and there he was. Just like that.”
    “Just like that,” Luke Matthew repeated and nodded. “I believe you might have struck on something.”
    “What?”
    “Whoever is orchestrating this fiasco is controlling it through our subconscious minds,” the King said quietly. “I would be willing to bet someone dreamed Meredith here. Most likely I got here the same way.”
    Luke nodded vigorously. “Ahhh! Yes! I remember my father speaking of you shortly before we were overcome by those idiots with the dunking seats. He said something