The Centaur by Brendan Carroll Page B

the cellar. He closed the door softly behind him and then stepped lightly down the stairs, trying to avoid the squeaky boards. Sophia was up there somewhere. The last time he’d seen her, she had been on her way upstairs to take a nap at his insistence. The pregnancy was not going well at all. She suffered the so-called morning sickness well into the afternoon on most days and there were dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. Insomnia had set in almost as soon as they had arrived at the house, and she often woke him up, begging him to come and sleep in her room. He did not think it proper and so he sat outside her door on most nights, napping in a chair while she tossed and turned.
    Both Selwig and Nicole had prepared many potions for her, but none seemed to help her for more than an hour or two. Queen Meredith’s unexpected arrival followed closely by the arrival of Queen Oriel from France had made him forget the odd assortment of treasures he had stashed in a wooden crate in the laboratory. He’d made one last quick trip down to the lab after Nicole had repaired the kitchen sink to stow them out of sight and then they had slipped his mind altogether. Only to return to him during dinner when the Frankish Queen, a deceptively sweet and demure little lady with blonde hair and big sad eyes, had asked if they had seen any sign of the Urim and Thummin during the ‘engagement’, as she called it, with the ‘enemy’, as she referred to the hideous monster in charge of the former emperor’s army. Mark had made no comment as Sophia explained how limited their own part in the ‘engagement’ had been. The Queens, both of them, had been very disappointed to hear so little of the Templars and the Kings to whom they were married until Nicholas allowed Gregory to tell the story from his point of view.
    Surprisingly, the younger Sinclair-Ramsay had seen a great deal of ‘action’ as Nicholas called it during the ‘skirmish’ as Bari called it. Gregory had given them all a pleasantly colorful monograph, detailing all of his victories over the ‘insidious fiends’, as he called the Fox soldiers, along with some very encouraging descriptions of the health of both the King of the Britons and the King of the Franks. It seemed that the only one of interest that had taken serious damage had been the real Prophet, Omar Kadif, Bari’s father. Mark had winced when the excited young man had described how Omar had tried, single-handedly, to stop the army of the Romanian Baron, when the ‘incredibly stupid demi-god’ had attempted to steal the precious relic of the Elohim. Mark had listened to this story with rapt fascination though it meant very little to him personally. At least it had meant nothing personal until Oriel had asked about the Urim and Thummin. The thing that Selwig had brought to him in the yellow bag.
    His research on the object that vaguely resembled spectacles had proven very disturbing, but had satisfied his curiosity and left no doubt as to it’s identity as the Urim and Thummin or more correctly, Urim and Thummin, twin creatures of opposite polarities similar to the angels, but not quite. Unlike the angels, who had apparently taken an interest in humanity for some few millennia, Urim and Thummin were purely indifferent to the identity of whom they served. Their one desire, he had ascertained through meditative study of the objects, and consuming commonality, was freedom from the crystal prisons in which they currently resided. One of them, Urim, was a creature of light and purity, embodying a positive aspect. The other, Thummin, was a dark creature, totally devoid of light, possessed of a negative aspect. The arrangement in which they were situated in the metal frame, balanced the two opposing forces and focused them as a powerful tool when used by properly trained individuals. Ill-used, it could be a dangerous weapon.
    If one held Thummin in front of the right eye and mustered the power of the left