Eternal Horizons:
On the Trail of the Templar Treasure
Chapter Three:
Red Sky At Night
Murphy got unsteadily to his feet, the wine making his usually tricky knees even shakier. He held onto the arm of the chair with one hand and raised his glass with the other. “I see now I have chosen well in having you three search for the answers. I have no doubt you’ll shed new light on a mystery that has fogged men’s minds for two thousand years. I have some unorthodox notions about Jesus and the original church, ideas some would call heretical. Prove me wrong, and I assure you, I’ll be just as happy as if you had proved me right.”
He nodded to each of them, then took a sip and placed his glass down. “Milner!” he called out, at no one in particular. “Wheel them in!”
From the opposite side of the room a door opened, and Milner entered, pushing a silver butler’s serving cart whose top was covered by a large red satin cloth.
 Arthur also got to his feet, a bit more steadily than did his host. “Since we’re playing the honest-to-a-fault game here, I have a sort of confession I’d like to make.”
“Arthur!” hissed Connie, but he waved her off.
Murphy had his hand extended to the cart as it approached, but Arthur’s admission caught him off guard. “Y-yes?” he finally stuttered.
Arthur took a deep breath. “What I do, with my hands, touching the past through an object? I already said it’s a talent and a curse. But the worst thing is,” he said, holding both hands together in front of him, “I’m not really certain how reliable it is.”
“Really?” Murphy said, and he blinked a few times as if he’d been slapped.
“Yep. Sorry.” Arthur turned to face the doorway Milner had entered as if he was prepared to leave. He did take five or six steps in that direction.
“No,” Connie said, “that’s not quite true. What he means is, he can’t control it the way some people expect. He can’t turn it off and on like a tap, and he can’t always get a perfect image. Sometimes,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, “sometimes he doesn’t get anything at all.”
“I see.” Murphy rubbed his great meaty hands together, as if the air conditioning was suddenly set too low for his liking. He grunted out a laugh, then turned and went over to a small hutch against one wall. He opened the top half, which contained a computer screen and keyboard, and called up some files.
“Random guessing: fifty point eight per cent,” he said, reading off figures from a study done by a group called the Center for Parapsychology Research. “You’d expect it would be fifty per cent, but for some reason, it’s not.” He checked another column. “Low-level or latent talent, untrained: fifty-four point three per cent. A little better, but not bankable.”
His finger ran down a series of other totals. “Medium talent: sixty-seven point five per cent. Winnable? Maybe, maybe not. Trustworthy? Certainly. Strong talent: eighty point eight per cent. Now we’re getting somewhere. Exceptional talent?” he said as he tapped the screen. “Ninety-four point two per cent.”
He hobbled back over to Milner as his assistant positioned the cart beside a nearby wall. “The reality is,” Murphy said, laying his hands on the handrail of the cart, “nobody’s perfect. Not even those with the best grasp of this skill on the planet. And if you’re not one of them, Arthur,” he said, deliberately calling him by his first name, “then no one is.”
Murphy grabbed the end of the red material like a magician about to pull the tablecloth out from under a set of dinner settings. But Arthur held up a hand, and Murphy waited.
“You don’t understand,” Arthur said, as he took a step towards them. “It’s not just the fact that what I see may be something I’ve made up, and there’s no way of anyone knowing, least of all me. It’s…” He drifted off, then held both hands up in exasperation. “It’s…it’s what I call the Cayce Effect.”
“I’m not familiar with that,” Murphy said, “and I’ve had experts researching this for years.”
“They wouldn’t have come across it, because it’s something I’ve made up.” He walked away slowly from the others, who now were gathered around the covered cart. “When Edgar Cayce was first doing his past life regressions, he did them for himself and a few close friends. But fame caught up to him, and he began doing more and more. And later, World War II came along, and suddenly, there were thousands of people wanting his help, wanting to know if loved ones were okay, wanting to know what part they played in past ages so they could be better people in this one. He did more and more regressions, despite his wife and children begging him to limit himself. They were exhausting, and he was no spring chicken. But he had a talent, and what right did he have to deny the people the use of God’s gift?” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his stained vest. “He died in ’45, and from what those around him said, it was because he spread himself too thin between this world and the past.”
Connie took a step closer. “Arthur, I’ve never heard you mention this.”
Arthur smiled weakly and shook his head. “Yeah, well, I didn’t want to worry you or Nev. Maybe I should have. Truth is, I’m kinda worried that, you know, too many memories of the past might just bury me and my little grasp on reality here.”
Murphy’s hold on the cloth relaxed. “All the more reason to make sure those objects you do touch with your gift are only the most rare, the most valuable.” He drew off the covering cloth with a simple flick of his wrists. “And the most interesting.”
 On the top of the silver cart, an obscenely expensive Breuer 1930’s model, were three objects: a worn brass bowl, a grapefruit-sized black crystal ball, and a dented tin tube, capped at both ends, that looked like it might hold rolled-up drawings inside.
Like a nail being pulled by a magnet, Arthur slid over to stand in front of the cart. Murphy closed the distance between him and Arthur by sliding his left leg over and following it with his right. “I noticed that you never actually touched the canopic jars, nor the Faberge eggs.”
Arthur nodded, as he bent down for a closer look. “Sometimes, the energies are strong enough that I can get a pretty good reading from just being close to them.”
Milner, standing almost forgotten behind Murphy, spoke up. “What determines that, do you think? What you had for breakfast, or the phase of the moon, perhaps?”
Murphy frowned, ready to dismiss him from the room, but Arthur answered as easily as if it were Connie’s or Neville’s question. “Hard to say. Continuous contact with other humans? Being thought about or worshipped? Or it could be something to do with the energy of their creators, or the materials they were made from. I’ve never been able to figure it out.” He looked closer at the crystal ball. “I’m just happy if I make it back without complete amnesia.”
“Here’s the thing,” Murphy said. “I’m the kind of fellow who goes on gut instinct. Seat of the pants and all that. My instinct is to trust you one hundred per cent, no questions asked. My advisors, on the other hand,” and his body inadvertently leaned towards Milner, “have suggested a blind test to assure them, and my bankers, that we’re putting our efforts behind the real deal.”
“But a blind test should mean that neither Arthur nor you have any idea what we’re testing,” Neville said. “Pictures in a sealed envelope, placed there by a third party.”
“Yes, except we’re not testing for far seeing or remote viewing,” Murphy said. “What Arthur — Mr. Albright has, is a tactile sensation, so he has to be able to see what he’s touching.”
“Still, you could have done the test in the dark,” Neville persisted, “or placed the objects in a closed box with only a small opening for his hand.”
Milner coughed politely into his fist. “Those ideas were offered.”
“Why bother?” Murphy replied, with a cold look to Milner. “What I’m asking for here is very simple: all I want to know is, who made these objects. In all three cases, we have no fully verifiable way of checking their authenticity, so there is no way of checking your accuracy. But the answers you give will go a long way in convincing future historians. Besides,” he motioned with his right hand to Milner, who dragged over one of the lounge chairs for him to drop into with a groan, “since your skill is in psychometry and not in mind reading, it’s unlikely our limited knowledge will influence the outcome.”
“I’m glad you chose these items for me to try,” Arthur said, tugging off his right glove.
“Why’s that?” Murphy asked.
He stuffed the glove deep into a vest pocket, then began pulling off his left glove. “I had a bad feeling you were going to wheel out a bunch of skulls. I’d have been out that door quicker than you could have said, ‘G’day, mate.’ ”
A look passed between Murphy and Milner, which Connie and Neville both noticed.
“But it really comes down to trust, doesn’t it?” Milner said, waving his left hand in a dismissive fashion. “I mean, we have to trust you to tell us what you see, that you’re not leaving anything out or... Well, you know.” He made a face that suggested Arthur knew what he meant.
“There is one way you can be absolutely positive,” Arthur said, as he positioned his right hand above the small brass bowl. Then he stuck out his left hand and grabbed Milner’s wrist, as he dropped the other hand into contact with the bowl.
Milner tried jerking his arm away, but as soon as Arthur connected with the bowl, they both froze.
Just from looking at the arcane engravings around its lip Arthur could tell the bowl was one used for scrying, and the energy he felt before he even touched it projected strong emotions. He knew a little about medieval metallurgy, and suspected the bowl’s shape placed it in the 15th or 16th centuries. And since he wanted to catch Milner’s attention right away, he expected to jump back three or four centuries into the past, which would overwhelm his unwilling passenger with so many images that he’d be a limp and pliable participant.
 But on first contact, he found the bowl’s history much harder to navigate, as if there were tens of thousands of impressions within the bowl from all different eras and epochs, all jumbled together. He saw a brief glimpse of narrow streets and towering buildings that may have been New York or Chicago, right next to images of a muddy field littered with the bodies of French and English soldiers, muskets and cannon. He caught a series of impressions of the city of London, from the tragedy of the Great Fire of 1666 through to the Battle of Britain. But they weren’t seen with the usual American ‘Big Brother’ attitude, but more like the impressions from a worthy adversary, or even an actual opponent. Visions of other lands — China, Mongolia, Japan, Arabia — mixed side-by-side with visions of the moon and planets.
All these were easy enough to accept, even if they were unusually widespread and seemed to have no central purpose. But when visions of a vast world conflict appeared, with millions dead and whole regions devastated, a sea turned blood-red and a sky filled with a dozen burning suns, he backed way off.
He could feel Milner’s energy beside him, coursing through his wrist and arm into his right hand. But his was a different energy, alive and vibrant. Though it was far stronger than what he picked up from the bowl, it was an energy he could easily keep at a distance. Despite the draw of the other images, there was something about this man that beckoned Arthur’s interest, a discrepancy, a feeling of important but veiled purpose. Arthur chalked this up to Milner’s avowed disbelief in Arthur’s powers, so he paid little attention to it. And he knew that if he probed too deeply, Milner’s mind would simply lose contact. But he made a mental note to mention the odd feeling to Connie and Neville when the readings were over.
The last images, so full of terror and violence, were paired with a message, almost like a coda, that echoed through his mind: All part of His plan. Arthur could tell this message was added by someone from outside, not a participant in the devastation. Possibly an interested observer had left it, or one of the bowl’s owners.
This was no ordinary bowl, he decided. It must have been used by some sort of adept, perhaps a diviner or fortune teller. With this theory, Arthur proceeded in a different manner: he avoided the images themselves, and searched instead for the one who left the message. He could sense there were many who had owned the bowl over the ages, and most of those had tried to use the bowl, nearly all of them unsuccessful. He felt many of their attempts, and the bitter frustration at their failure. But there was one owner in particular who was most successful, the one who had left the ‘part of His plan’ message. Arthur searched for any other messages he might have left and quickly found hundreds, arranged almost like footnotes: The city of the hollow canyons…when the third brother dies…all your sons will rule in their time. But when Arthur came across one particular footnote, He of the Crooked Cross, a part of his mind realized instantly who this particular owner was, and what this bowl represented.
To confirm his suspicions, he sought out a time when that owner may have used the bowl, expecting to see a closed room, perhaps a study or library, deep in the middle of the night. The memories he looked for came easily, as if the one who’d experienced them actually wanted, even expected them to be recovered.
Arthur found himself standing beside a seated figure, a trim-bearded, elderly man, wrapped in heavy cloaks to keep out the night’s chill. The room was pitch dark, except for a wooden candelabra on a desk beside the bent figure. Spread across the desk were ancient tomes, loosely-bound manuscripts, even a few half-unrolled scrolls. He had six or seven sheets of parchment carefully stacked in the middle, beside a quill pen and a stained ink bottle. The fellow’s attention wasn’t on any of those objects, however, but on the brass bowl. It was filled to the very brim with clear water, and was supported by a brass tripod.
 The old man lifted an ebony wand from the desk, stirred the water with it, then placed the wand across the edge of the tripod where the legs met the bowl. Pulling back the sleeve of his outer cloak, he used the first two fingers of his right hand to touch the water, then used the water to wet the hem of his cloak and the tips of his shoes. He was about to wipe off the dampness, when he appeared to second-guess himself. He proceeded to touch this fingertips to his lips, then to his forehead, and then indicated something above his head. He carefully dried his hand, then picked up the quill pen and wrote two lines, in an old dialect of French which Arthur was not familiar with but which he found he could instantly translate:
 Estant assis de nuict secret estude,
Seal repose sur la scelle d’aerain...
Sitting alone at night in secret study,
It is placed on the brass tripod...
The old man continued writing, the first quatrain of a work called The Centuries. These were the collected prophecies of the great physician, astrologer and healer, Michel de Nostradame, known to most by the more common name of Nostradamus. The impact of being in the presence of such a historical icon staggered Arthur, and he sat down rather abruptly on the desk, heavy enough that he worried he might upset the ink bottle, though his form was as substantial as the smoke swirling above the candelabra.
Something in the room caught Nostradamus’ attention, and he glanced directly at the spot on the desk where Arthur sat. For the briefest of moments, there was a connection between Arthur and the seer, as if they were both flesh and blood. But then Nostradamus’ eyes wandered a bit, glancing in the shadowed corners, at the bolted door and the single curtained window. Then, with a final glance in Arthur’s direction, he wrote more words:
Un peur & voix fremissant par les manches:
Splendeur divine. Le divin pres s’assied...
Fear, and a voice runs trembling through the sleeves:
Divine splendor. The God sits nearby...
A shiver ran down Arthur’s spine, no doubt equal to the fear Nostradamus felt from his own shadowy presence nearby. To think that his being here had been recorded as part of The Centuries was almost too much to believe, folded in with all the terrible and wondrous things Nostradamus would see within the brass bowl and then record for future generations to deny, argue over and marvel at.
But that hint of fear, rarely present in his other time slips, as he thought of them, reminded Arthur that he still had hold of Milner, and that his companion had neither the experience nor the training to handle such powerful impressions. So, reluctantly, he readied himself to leave. But just before he released the image, he leaned forward and whispered into Nostradamus’ ear, “Pray you are wrong.”
The old man, writing again, gave no indication he had heard a thing.
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If you liked this excerpt, others can be found below:
Chapter One: The Sincerest Form of Flattery • Chapter Three: Red Sky at Night
Chapter Nine: When Giants Walked the Earth
An Introduction to the Team • The Cast of Characters
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Yet, those that meet Arthur do have faith in what he sees. Both Connie and Neville have witnessed instances where Arthur’s hands-on talent has passed along facts from the past that no one, other than the object’s original owner, could have known. And where archeologists can only make educated guesses about an artifact’s provenance, Arthur provides a singular perspective that often proves vitally important. 
