Chapter 6

I had sat, entranced, listening to Merlin's tale of how he'd received the ring, and all that went with it. But as he stopped talking to sip at our now cold tea, I was still unsatisfied, despite everything he'd said.

I gestured around the nonexistent room around us, saying, "But all that you've told me still doesn't explain what you said at first... that this room represents the time and place you were in when you came to meet me - Berkley in the 60s. If your destiny was to be in King Arthur's Court... why are you here?"

"I can tell you has happened to me, my lad, and I can even speculate as to why it has worked this way... but I cannot readily tell you why it must be this way."

"You see, when I awoke again after awakening the power of the ring, I had been transported to the past... just not the past that I had expected. Instead of finding myself in the era of King Arthur, I awakened in the year prior to my own birth, 2631 A.D. I was still in Antarctica, but I had another name, though at the time I awakened I was not aware of it. I was in a different house, with different clothes... well, suffice to say that everything that I had known before was gone, except for my journal. It was only logical that it would make the trip backward with me, as I would need to give it to Olympias in Camelot.

"As I combed my new home on the day I awoke, I found a bookshelf just like this one," he gestured behind him to the books he had examined earlier, "filled with thousands of volumes just like this," he picked up the book he had sat on the table earlier. "Each was numbered, and arranged in descending order, the first being number 4267. Thinking that they must be numbered that way for a reason, I took out the highest numbered book and opened it to its first page.

"It was another journal, of all things, written in my own hand! The date read August 22, 2631... which according to the calendar on the watch I was wearing, was actually the day before! I had just arrived in another time, yet here was a book with a journal entry in my own handwriting, from a day that I had not lived in... yet.

"Unlike in a regular journal, the dates ran backward instead of forward, in this case from August 22 to January 1. There was only the one entry; the rest of the pages were empty. So, I sat down to read what had been written.

"The entry was short and to the point: "Welcome to your new life. There is no use in writing a journal entry for today, though I know you will anyway. Your name is Jacob Kroninger. Your neighbors think you have been ill, expect one or two of them today; this "illness" will help cover your disorientation and unfamiliarity with where and when you are. Check this journal first thing every morning. I have a feeling it will be the signpost that will help explain where you are going... by telling you where you've been. Sleep well, for apparently our tomorrows are now our yesterdays... and our future runs only in reverse."

"Most of what had been written there was nonsensical to me... but, no sooner had I closed the book than a knock came at my door. When I did not come quickly enough to suit her, a woman let herself in, and seemed surprised to see me walking toward her.

""Jacob!" she said loudly, "What are you doing out of bed! The way you've been feeling the last few days, you know you should be resting! I just came over to fix you a bit of something before going out to work myself."

"Now, lad, I felt fine, but I didn't know who this lady was, or why I was standing in someplace other than where I had expected to wake up, which was Camelot in the Middle Ages! Perhaps my own frustration got the better of me, but, in a rather surly way, I blurted out, "Madam, who are you?"

"Instead of getting angry, she rushed over to me and put her hand against my forehead, as if checking for a fever. Apparently not finding one, she took my hand and led me over to a soft chair; when I hesitated to sit, she pushed me down into it.

""The doctor said you might still be disoriented, and that's why you shouldn't be moving about. So you just sit there and I'll fix you a nice breakfast, and if you feel like you need to, ask me any questions you want."

"Very well, answer my first question. Who are you?"

She walked back into the kitchen, apparently to begin fixing something for me to eat. She talked loudly enough to be heard as she looked through various cabinets for something to fix. "I am your next door neighbor, Sally Cross, and we have lived next to each other for four years now, ever since we both left Australia just before the desert overran the last livable city."

"Well, lad, I had to admit I was rather stunned! My father had mentioned Sally Cross several times to me as I got older, and with good reason! The good Miss Cross was the first of many to die from the first "plague" at the Antarctic colony, a pulmonary Hantavirus. With no effective antibiotic treatment, the only thing the colony could do was isolate those that had acquired the virus and hope for the best. In this case, the best was a mass burial, as the virus proved to be 95% fatal. I believe Dad said that the colony lost 50% of its numbers from that first massive wave of illness, and Sally Cross was the first to be diagnosed, the first to be placed in isolation... and the first to die.

"And here she was standing in my kitchen!

"As I sat pondering the unlikeliness of such a thing, Sally came out from the kitchen with a tray, which she settled in my lap. "I'm afraid its soy coffee, toast, and imitation fruit spread, but it will due for now." She looked me with concern. "I do hope you snap out of whatever this is that is ailing you, Jacob. Each day that goes by, you seem a little fuzzier, a little less sure of who you are and what you're supposed to be doing." She smiled slightly. "If it gets any worse, you're not going to even know what day it is, or which way is up."

"I tell you, lad, she was a lot closer to being right on both of those counts than she ever knew!

"At any rate, she left shortly afterward, and I was alone again. For most of the day I simply looked through the apartment, trying to find some clues about who I was supposed to be, what I was supposed to be doing. Sally appeared again, later in the day, and fixed me a nice salad with fresh vegetables she'd harvested from the fields just that day. As we sat together in my living room, I couldn't help but sense she'd spent time with me here before, talking at great length about things both great and small. She stayed with me until darkness fell, and then excused herself to go back to her home to prepare for bed.

"I decided that wouldn't be a bad idea myself, so I did my toilette, and found a nice pair of pajamas in a drawer in the bedroom. Before I turned out the light, I took my new backward-running journal and wrote under the day's date, "What the hell am I doing here?"

"When I woke up the next morning, what I had wrote the night before was gone from the pages, as was the entry for August 22. But now, there was something written on the page for August 21.

"The calendar on my watch said the day was August 22, 2631.

"I had just awakened one day further into the past."

I wanted Steven to enter the converted garage first, so that I those inside would not think anything was wrong. I could hang back, just out of sight, and take control of those inside once I was sure of how many there were and where they were in the room. The little scene I had played out with Matilda and the guys had convinced me that I could control multiple people at once, but it would be easier to just turn them off, like I had Steven, until I was sure what I was going to do with them.

However, my worries about multiple people inside the room were misplaced. When the human puppet that was Steven opened the door and walked inside, it was apparent that the only other people inside were Ramon and Sara... and Sara was not going to notice much of anything with a blindfold over her eyes. I doubt I could have broken Ramon's concentration on Sara with less than the air horn from a Mack truck... but, just to be safe, I made myself invisible to them, entering the room and letting the door shut behind me. I had Steven walk into the room and sit on a folding chair facing the other two, then locked his muscles in a sitting position, so that I could take my mind of controlling his every movement and concentrate on the last two people I had need of confronting tonight.

Sara had her wrists tied together, and these ropes had been hung on a hook that was connected to the ceiling. It was apparent from the sweat on both of them that Ramon had been working on Sara for quite a while. As she stood naked in the middle of the room, I drank in the sight of her. The body she worked so hard to maintain was still in impeccable shape, soft yet firm in all the right places. Her lips, parted in anticipation of the next blow from Ramon, were still so desirable, so kissable, that I wanted nothing more than to close the distance between us and press my own lips against them. Her fiery red hair was stringy from the exertions of the evening, but I still wanted to run my fingers through it and stroke it as I had so many times before. In every aspect she remained as fully beautiful as I remembered, and I ached to touch her, to wrap my arms around her again.

But her body also showed the evidence of a woman well used by the man she called "Lord." Already, bruises were forming in several places on her breasts, a sign he had used something hard to strike her there repeatedly... perhaps a crop, I thought, seeing one nearby on the floor, as if it had been thrown aside in a tantrum. I couldn't see her back or buttocks, but I knew they were likely red, inflamed, dotted here and there with the welts and imprints of the flogger and the cane. But Ramon had not finished for the evening, and was rapidly reaching the climax of his sadistic exertions.

He had arranged a circle of clothespins on each of Sara's breasts, until they both looked like that onion appetizer from the Outback Steakhouse. He had placed even more clothespins on her stomach and the insides of her thighs. And now, using a single tail whip, he stood six feet away from Sara and began to flick clothespins from her body with aim and manner of a master whipwielder. Some pins came off so gently that Sara barely moved and uttered no sound. However, when caught one just right, the clothespin was ripped from Sara with the jaws still closed around the skin, and she would convulse as if in epileptic seizure, a deep moan tearing its way from between her lips. I knew that if I reached between her legs after one of those body-wrenching strikes, I would find her pussy so hot and wet that, if you didn't know Sara, you would have thought she'd just cum.

Ramon was an artist, and he moved around Sara with the grace of a dancer and the balance of a swordsman. He seemed to be able to find whatever mark he sought, no matter the angle or distance. His whip never touched Sara in any spot that was not covered by a pin, and he seemed to have minute control over how the blow would land. He varied them, so that, after a particularly intense moment, the next few might be feather light, until again the whip struck and the clothespin was torn from Sara's body, and she again shuddered and moaned, lost in the agony and ecstasy of her divine torture.

At the last, he varied his strikes not at all, but hammered each whip strike home as fast as his wrist could bend, striking each pin from her body with savage force. Her moans were constant, growing greater in intensity and volume until they were the shrieks of a wild animal, all reason gone, with nothing left to do but howl as the pain and the pleasure built to its wild crescendo. At last, all that remained was one lone clothespin, clamped upon the nipple of each breast. He paused for a moment, gathering the whip in his hands, calculating like a marksman with a thousand yard shot. Then, in the blink of an eye, his hand moved, and the whip cracked twice with a sound as loud as lightning. Before I could really register what had happened, both the clothespins went flying through the air.

It seemed like it took Sara's body a moment to react as well, as she stood uncertainly, as if knowing something had happened, but unsure how to react. But then, like a volcano erupting after long lying dormant, her body twitched, and then began shaking with such force that her feet left the ground. At the same time, the wild animal shrieks that had built with such force before reached their ultimate peak, a lung-rattling "AHHHHHHHHH!" that only died when Sara collapsed, her bound wrists the only thing keeping her from falling bonelessly to the ground. Even as she hung there, her body was overcome by small aftershocks from overloaded nerve endings; it was apparent that she had been pushed over the edge of consciousness into that nebulous world called subspace, and I had no doubts that, with a double stroke of his whip, Ramon had given her the rarest of gifts... an orgasm.

Ramon watched Sara hang in her bonds, a satisfied smile touching his lips. At that moment, I dropped my shield of invisibility, and stepped away from the wall where I had been leaning. Ramon was startled by my sudden appearance, but even more startled when he realized who I was. I began clapping my hands together, an ovation for my better and successor.

"Well done, Ramon!" I shouted, as I walked toward him. "Bravo! You make me envious with your skill!"

Ramon seemed uncertain as to what to say or do, so he simply stood where he was in silence.

"I have to admit, I had half a mind to charge in here and make some sort of mad charge at you, in hopes of getting Sara back for myself. But you two are getting along so famously, perhaps that's not the best thing for me to do at all. Besides, you and I should have a friendly talk, man to... whatever you are."

His nostrils flared just a bit at that, but he still said nothing.

"It took me a while to figure it out. Ramon. There was something there, something I couldn't put my finger on, but it tickled the edges of my brain until it all came together. Sara leaving me. The occult store in the mall. A demonic symbol in Sara's journal. Destiny and fate, mythology and religion. And then it all just came to me at once.

"Ramon could be an anagram. Rearrange the letters, and you get Roman. As in Romans. You know, the chapter in the Bible? Romans 13, Verse 4 comes to mind. " For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." I like that verse. I really like it a lot.

"What do you think about it... Ornias?" Before he could react, I threw the ring of Solomon as hard as I could directly at Ramon.

He tried, I'll give him that. He flicked his whip toward me out of desperation, trying to deflect the path of the ring... but missed, as neither the ring nor I was as steady a target as clothespins on naked flesh. His biggest mistake was standing still, and he was still standing there when the ring struck him right between the eyes.

The flash of light was tremendous, and Ramon's body collapsed to the floor when it was done.

It didn't matter, really. The force that had animated it stared out from its conical prison of light, hissing in hatred and embarrassment.

"Welcome back, Orny old boy. You've got a lot of explaining to do."

"Ah, my boy, would we the time, I could tell you so much about my unique traverse from the future to the past. As it is, you will have to settle for this.

"Each day I wake is one day further from my own time. As my doppelganger in the past so eloquently put it, my future now runs backward rather than forward. Each day still runs its normal course, but when I put head to pillow, or when the dark and the dawn meet at the sunrise, my time in one day comes to an end, and in a blink I find myself in the day before.

"No matter where I go, the journals follow me, each one accounting for a year in my travels backward, but each revealing to me only the writing of the day before. This, I have learned, is so that I can prevent myself from making mistakes that could lead to injury to myself or others... as well as to keep me from saying things that might unknowingly lead to my incarceration as a mental defective.

"And, as each year expires in my backward progression, the corresponding volume in my journals disappears! I can only speculate as to why the journals work so strangely, but my best guess is that, if I could read every day in my own history before I had chanced to live that day, I would grow bored with living altogether, and would likely seek some way to extract myself from my agreement to wear the ring.

"Thus, the journal entries are rather vague in some respects. Only if something absolutely must happen is the journal ever specific as to what I must do. Or, if I wake up in a strange place with a new identity, the entry will give me as much detail as possible to help me fit into my new life... though I may have been carrying on as that person for many, many years. It can be confusing sometimes to live a life where my beginning would be someone else's ending.

"So I get a chance to live through interesting times in history, seeing for myself things that I had only read about in books. And, though I know I have a destiny waiting for me even farther back in the past, perhaps it is necessary for me to see something of these times, to live in them myself, in order to impart the wisdom and knowledge that Arthur will need to build Camelot.

"I have aged very little in the time I have worn this ring... perhaps just a few years in the 700 I've seen. And, every once in a while, I disappear." He saw my questioning look and smiled. "I know it sounds strange, lad, but its true! I believe that, when a ringwielder is chosen by Olympias, the forces of natural law make it impossible for them both to exist in the same plane. Thus, I disappear, and reappear in the time before the most current ringwielder was chosen. It is confusing and disorienting, but it is the only answer that fits the circumstances."

I had to interrupt him at that point. "You need to explain something to me. You say you don't have knowledge of the past of more than the day before... yet, you told me I was the 12^th ringwielder when I woke up here. How did you know that?"

He laughed out loud. "Still trying to find holes in my story, lad? Very well. This is the simplest thing to explain. Olympias told me I would be both the last, and the first, to wear the ring. But she also told me I would be the 15^th and final ringwielder. And I have met and counseled 2 others so far. By simple deduction, that would make you number 12."

I may have reddened a bit at the simplicity of his explanation, and he hastened to pat my hand again to reassure me. "There is no shame in the asking of a question, especially in as strange a situation as this. Remember, I meet you here having come from decades in your own past. That is again part of the design of the ring, as it cannot allow me to come from your future, or, obviously enough, from your present. As far as you are concerned, I cannot exist except in your past. So here we sit, in my kitchen, which is not my kitchen, just a convenient energy construct to contain our spirits for a while, while we talk."

"Energy construct? You make it sound like science!"

"Any sufficiently advanced science can appear like magic to another culture. Before I wore this ring, I would have scoffed at any suggestion or hint of the supernatural in anything. Now, I feel that they co-exist, and this ring is a tool that can be used in the pursuit of science, or magic, or both.

"It all depends on what you wish to do with it."

We both sat in silence for a moment, and then another question came shooting forward in my head. "What happened to Olympias? Do you know?"

Merlin nodded his head, his expression grave. "I was holding her hand as I fell into unconsciousness after awakening the power, lad. She is... here. But she is not, as well." He reached under his shirt and pulled a silver charm on a leather cord out into view. I had never seen it before, but I thought I knew what it must be.

"Olympias' rune? The one you gave her... or will give her?"

He nodded. "Yes, lad, the same. I can feel her presence, her spirit, if you will, locked inside it. Her body did not make the transition, however. Perhaps the journey back through time is something only I can accomplish, courtesy of the ring. But, it is my hope that, when my last day as ringwielder has come, and time begins to run forward for me again, that she will again be restored to her body, and that I will have given her the destiny she hoped for... the death of one purpose, and the birth of another."

I could think of nothing else to ask. If he was right, the journals that traveled with him no matter where he went were like sands in an hourglass, ticking backward through time... until, inevitably, he would reach the final page in the final book, marking the end of his march through time. And, at that point, all certainty in his life would stop, and perhaps only God could or would know what would happen to him then.

Merlin cleared his throat, bringing me back from my melancholy reverie. "My lad, it has been wonderful talking to you about all this, but I fear that soon, this quaint kitchen of mine will dissolve, and along with it my chance to teach you what you need to know.

"In the main, know that the ring can and will translate your very thoughts into action. It is not quite the wish-to-make-it-so powers of witchcraft as shown on television, but it is not far from it. You will have to picture what you want, and then feed that image to the ring, and let it accomplish what you wish.

"You may effect anything with this power: human, inhuman, living, non-living, it doesn't matter, as long as you have a clear picture in your mind of what you want to happen. However, the ring has limits, and you will be wise to abide them. It can aid you to learn, but it cannot make you smarter. It can aid you to conquer, but it cannot change the will of those you have not met or cannot see. It cannot create things that have never existed, or invent such things based on your whim. You cannot change what has happened in the past, nor can you see what will happen in the future.

"And, most important, the more you use the power, the less you will have, for the power is not infinite. As Alexander found, the ring's power will go so far and no farther, and, once it has extended itself to its maximum, it will not be moved another inch, even if you are in deadly peril.

"So you must use the power wisely, if at all, remembering that the more things you alter, the more energy you use to make things remain as you wish, the less you will have in the future.

"It is my hope that you will move quietly through the pages of history and use only the power that you need, and no more. In that way, you may accomplish more than all the conquerors that have ever roamed the Earth.

He stood from his seat and walked around the table to my side, fingering the little silver rune with one finger. Quietly, he added, "And remember one last thing, lad. No matter how much it hurts, a love that runs one way is not a true love. Remember that sometimes, you must let go... for your own sake, as well as theirs."

I tried to move then, to reach forward to offer my hand to him, but found I could not move it from where it sat on the table.

Merlin smiled down at me from where he stood. "And so, it begins! Back to your own body, to your own time, to your own destiny! It would be my hope, Daniel, that one day, when you have learned the extent of your powers, that you should look for me again on this plane. I would have another cup of tea with you, for you have a ready ear and a good heart." He placed his hand over his heart, as if offering me a blessing. But both his body and his voice were quickly fading, receding from me as if down a long tunnel.

"Godspeed, Daniel. Choose your destiny well!"

And then everything was black again... until the moment I opened my eyes inside my apartment, lying on my back on the floor. I didn't feel any different, really... no better or worse for wear. Then again, I felt as if a dark cloud that I had been carrying on my shoulders had been lifted, as if I could focus again on something other than Sara and how much I missed her. As I got to my feet, I couldn't help looking at the back of my left leg, just to confirm what I already knew.

The red tattoo was there on my calf, the same as it had been on Merlin.

I was the ringwielder. Its power was mine to use as I saw fit.

The next monthly meeting was 10 days away.

The only sounds in the dungeon were the hissing curses issuing from Ornias' ghostly form imprisoned by the ring. I paid no attention to it, knowing it would not answer any questions from me until it had run out of outrageous insults to hurl at me.

Instead of waiting, I walked over to where Ramon - if that really was his name - was lying like a load of discarded laundry. The mind that remind inside Ramon's body without the demon controlling it had been submerged and brutalized for so long, it might take days to reassert itself. What mainly remained was an empty, quivering mass of disconnected memories and disjointed impressions, with no will or personality to give them meaning or focus. I left him lying there, knowing that Ornias had made himself a home and would likely return once I set him free again.

Then I turned to Sara.

She was still hanging by her wrists from the ceiling, still floating in her subspace haze. She didn't react when I wrapped my arms around her waist, lifted her from ceiling hook, and gently laid her upon the ground. I let her head rest in my lap, removing her blindfold as I did so. Her eyes were closed, fluttering, as she rode the waves of her overloaded nervous system; occasionally she would tremble briefly, then be still, as if she was trying to surface from her deep immersion but could not yet break the surface. I simply let her stay down, content to be close enough again to run my fingers through her hair and remember all the times she had enjoyed that loving, tender stroking. Even now, she seemed to push her head up under my hand, trying to keep my fingers in contact with her hair. A soft sigh escaped her lips each time my fingertips brushed over her scalp or gently grazed the top of her earlobe.

As I stroked her head, I let my gaze travel down her face, down to her upper chest, where the only piece of jewelry she wore lay face down against her skin. I had seen it dangling between her breasts as Ramon struck her with the single tail, and it had been the last confirmation I needed that I had indeed put the pieces of my mental jigsaw puzzle together correctly. I reached out with my left hand and turned it over.

It was the "Poerdh", the Celtic rune that had been given by Merlin to Olympias, that Merlin had showed me during our brief meeting in non-linear space/time. The moment I had seen it, I knew. She had said it to Merlin on that day at the end of the Earth:

... whenever I gave up the ring, that gave Ornias power over me. Once it rested securely on the finger of another, my body would fade, and I would find myself in someone else's body, at the cruel command of some man who Ornias had taken possession of. And he would use me again and again, day and night, until the destiny of the ring wielder had been fulfilled, and the ring came back to me again...

She was in Sara's body, riding along at the whim of Ornias, who still cursed me from its perch above the ring, which had landed about five feet from where I held Sara. I held the rune between my fingers, feeling the traces of Merlin's power, and the echoes of Olympias' presence.

I needed to talk to her... to Olympias. I needed to know why she had picked me, what was happening to Sara, what I could do to break her free of the hold of the demon. But I could only think of one way I could do it... and I didn't know how!

Still, I remembered what Merlin had told me. I had to picture what I wanted I my mind, and let the ring do the rest. Concentrate on a room... my living room, maybe. Yes, a familiar place. Sitting in my chair, next to the fireplace. Across from me is a woman. Not just any woman, a regal woman of stature, not overly beautiful, but in every way the essence of a queen. Wearing a simple cord with a silver charm around her neck. Concentrate. Think myself to that place.

As what I thought of as real faded from my senses, I could hear one thing clearly for just a moment before it drifted away.

The sound of Ornias hissing "NOOOOOOO!" at the top of its voice.

When I opened my eyes, I was exactly where I had pictured myself... in the living room of my apartment, in my chair by the fireplace. Flames crackled on burning logs, though I doubt I would have lit a fire in the middle of August. Still, it added another point of reference that seemed to solidify the illusion surrounding me.

She was sitting across from me, smiling.

"Olympias?" She nodded, confirming my question.