Monk's Maze

Chapter 3-1

Chapter Three“I canna believe I let you talk me into this.” Meghan pulled against the oars and her sharp-nosed pram bucked over the waves. She checked over her shoulder and corrected slightly for the Port na Muinntir. Even the name gave her the shivers, Landing of the Community. She’d always avoided it because it was the landing closest to the abbey. And, except for seeking the light the night before, she’d never gone there.

“I can’t believe I talked you into this either.” Colin looked at her with sad, Cocker Spaniel eyes.

“There be hardly any sea at all here. Grit your teeth, man.”

He closed his sad and worried eyes and did just that. Literally. His jaw rippling beneath his smooth skin. His face turning a light shade of green as he perched on the stern thwart. He was pretty enough. A toss of light brown hair complemented his blue eyes. He was slender of face and of frame. And the knuckles of his long fine hands were white on the gunwale. The man had clearly never worked a day of his life with those hands.

She checked their course again and leaned into the steady pull of the oars.

Colin had talked long into the night, burning more lamp oil in a single night than she had in a month. Spouting more words aloud in a single night than she’d thought in a whole year. Lonely from his long solo travel, he chattered away at an alarming rate as he unraveled a history that went against everything she had learned.

The Order of Iona as advisor to the world governments.

The Order of Iona as peacemaker, peacekeeper.

The Order of Iona, unable to turn aside the terrible fall humanity was bringing down on its own head, departing the Earth taking a copy of all the great libraries. Of all the technology. Taking the finest scientists, the best minds, and leaping for the safety of the dark night of space. Launching into the unknown just days before humanity had taken out its own jugular with the Great Pulse and destroyed all electronics and thus all technology of that age.

Not what she had learned at all.

The Order of Iona, finally rebuffed by the people whom they would control.

The Order of Iona, fleeing to space to save their lives from an angry world.

The thrice-cursed Order, triggering the Great Pulse that had destroyed every piece of electronics on the planet.

The Great Pulse, that had cut society’s throat and brought about the fell shroud of a Second Dark Ages. After millions, even billions had died. Some in riots that had ripped every large city from the face of the planet, far more from the starvation that followed.

He had promised in the night that he would cause no harm on Iona. That he had come from the stars and simply had to check if something was indeed on Iona. It would alter his precious Plan, perhaps the only thing the long-winded man wouldn’t discuss though he referred to it time and again.

He had even told her the lengthy history of the island. How a kingslayer became a saint by moving from Ireland to Scotland which was a good enough choice, but not considered a saintly one.

In the misty morning, rocking lightly on the waves of the Sound of Iona, she regretted her agreement. But if she turned back, he would batter her with even more words and more puppy-dog disappointment.

A last correction and then timing the waves. As a tall crest rolled toward her, she dug in hard. The wave lifted, rolled beneath her, and the boat slid off the back. She shipped the oars and they were dropped onto the white sand with a solid thump. A quick hop over the retreating wave and she dragged the boat up the beach on the next wave.

Colin remained frozen in the stern, hands clamped firmly to the gunwale. Eyes yet squeezed shut.

“Oh dear. I’ve gone and landed us on a rock in the middle of the channel. I’m fearing we be stuck here and must swim home.”

That popped his eyes open.

“Ye can climb out of there now.”

He looked about, aimed another sad-puppy look her way then nodded and looked down at his hands.

“If I can figure out how to let go first.”

Once ashore, they crossed the narrow, white sand beach, clambered over the high berm cut by ocean’s constant attention to cutting into any shore it encountered. Upon the wide meadow before them, the grass was tall and still wet with the morning dew.

Colin strode through it as if it wasn’t there. Head up, eyes on the horrid abbey as if he were headed to a great temple of his God. Which was completely accurate now that she thought of it. The holiest of holies to a monk of the Order was the Abbey of Iona.

What had she done? She should strike him down with her staff. One blow. Leave him on the soil of Iona and no one would ever know. She might even be a hero. The Watcher of Iona who had risked the madness of the island itself to defend all humankind. And then it would no longer be her problem. Last night he’d told her that if he didn’t return, the Order would wait fifty years before sending the next emissary.

But there were two sides to that coin. The patience of the Order could wear down the people of Earth. Every half century another observer would arrive. That was what finally convinced her, or rather justified the decision she’d already made that she couldn’t kill a man in cold blood. If Earth didn’t deal with the Order once and for all now, they would eventually have to.

So, instead of counting down the last four days of her time on Iona, here she was struggling through the tall meadow grasses that parted before the monk only to snarl about her tired feet. Even after Colin had slept and his constant stream of words had ceased, she’d lain wide-eyed through the night and now the daylight weighed down upon her.

The thin, gray, misting rain had already soaked through her woolen coat, far faster than was decent. The fine brown fabric of Colin’s attire shed water like some kind of duck, leaving him warm, dry, and cheerful as he bounced along before her.

“The abbey is relatively new. An order of Benedictines built it around 1200 A.D. though it was in poor repair by the twentieth century. That was the founding of the Community of Iona. Dedicated to rebuilding the abbey and working to bring daily faith into the hectic life that had become the standard of that period of history. They continued until Robert Brude joined them in 2022. Four years later he refounded the Benedictine order of monks and we became known as the Order of Iona.”

“And then he killed the world.”

Colin glanced back at her. His hood was pushed back and the fine rain from a passing cloud had turned his hair dark against his scalp, though he didn’t seem to notice.

“I say again as I said last night. The Great Pulse, as it has been so appropriately named, was not the Order’s doing. Why would we seek to kill our mother planet? We are an Order of peace whose sole mission is to protect humanity’s knowledge until you are all ready for it again.”

Meghan paid attention to dragging herself closer to the center of the island’s evil. The problem was, Colin’s explanation made far more sense than the common beliefs. Why would the Order try to destroy? For half a century before the Pulse, before the Collapse into the Second Dark Ages, they had struggled to bring peace between the governments. Meyer Miller had never once complained against the Order, or even mentioned them. He had simply talked about a better way of life. Of pursuing spirit to save soul rather than technology to spare effort.

They turned the corner of the abbey and the full force struck her a blow to her gut that almost knocked her to the earth.

The crosses.

She must truly be mad at last if she’d let herself be drawn here once more. Crazier than Mad Erin.

Colin strode along as if the ancient stone was not spitting waves of ancient hellfire down upon his soul. As if …he were just walking across a meadow of Iona. Even the rain diminished for him, fading away without her noting.

Well, she’d not let some monk of the Order of Iona, fingers probably still sore from how tightly he’d gripped the gunwale of her boat, show greater inner strength than she could muster.

Each foot weighing a hundred kilos, she dragged herself into the maelstrom until the cross was but three paces away. And then it eased. Eased as if conceding a round in battle, though she was not fool enough to think it was done with her. Eased as she studied the towering bit of stone. It had stood over fifteen hundred years. A time in which a civilization had been born out of the First Dark Ages, flourished, died, and struggled for survival through a Second Dark Ages.

Yet this slender shaft of stone had remained. Small mosses cradled in every nook and cranny added their grays and greens, coloring the cross with a natural mosaic no artist could have produced with a century of trying.

The pedestal, just an arm’s-width long and knee-high tapered up out of the soil as if it were just the smallest tip of one of the ancient Egyptian pyramids. The great structures that had towered above the sands for five millennia before the Ten-Hour War of 2032 had removed them from the face of the desert as thoroughly as the entire population of the Mid-East nation-states. Yet it had a strength that she imagined those long gone pyramids had once held.

The cross itself rose a half-meter wide and a hand’s-breadth deep to over twice her height. The carvings, made by craftsman near enough a hundred generations gone, covered the two faces.

Colin ran his fingers over the surface tracing each outline as if he were tracing the curve of a woman’s hip. She almost laughed aloud at the image of the celibate monk, unable to offer her a hand up from the soil, ever being with a woman. He stepped back to inspect the symbols higher on the stone.

Her own hand reached forward of its own will to stroke the rough granite. The rock was colder and smoother than she’d expected.

A portion of her mind sat in the corner and howled.

The pressure hadn’t eased, but it no longer drove her away. Instead it pressed inward, compressing her soul against her heart from all sides. The screams became whimpers and still she couldn’t move, her hand lightly touching the stone as she became aware of Colin speaking excitedly.

“See. See there.” He pointed upward. “The Virgin and the Child. Androcles the lion being healed of the thorn in his paw by Daniel. Even Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac.”

“He’s sacrificing his son? What kind of a god is this of yours?” No wonder the cross was shrouded in evil, bearing a symbol of a father killing his child.

“It’s just a biblical story. All very nice and Christian on this side. Except the base. The base shows an older hand at work here. The triple bosses, these mounds the size of my fist, the three elements of fire, water, and air.”

He stroked the three other bosses just above the first set and then traced the curved line that separated and surrounded the two groups.

“And the earth, the fourth element. Here, come here.”

The monk actually grabbed her sleeve and dragged her to the far side as if the evil of the cross were not pouring out upon their heads. As if the vile thing weren’t biding the second when it could reach out and crush them into the very soil of Iona.

The other side had no pictures. The winding lines that he had claimed represented earth wound back and forth to the very top of the cross. The raised mounds left by the carver were clustered in small groups all up the face. Most were small, as small as the bosses on the other side. But at the junction of the arms, five great rounded bosses stood out from the surface. As if the tops of penitent’s heads were sticking out of the stone.

“Yes. Yes. See the groups going up the face? Four suns as a cross around no planet. And then a small central planet until the great cluster. Four suns around a mighty Earth. The four seasons of the sun. This is it.”