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  Prophet Of Doom

  ( The Destroyer - 111 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Where There's Smoke...

  Everybody with a spare million is lining up at the gates of Ranch Ragnarok, home to Esther Clear Seer's Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth. Here an evil yellow smoke shrouds an ancient oracle that offers glimpses into the future.

  But when young virgins start disappearing, CURE smells something more than a scam. Here in Wyoming, East and West are about to fulfill an ancient prophecy. For Apollo himself, Zeus's own wild boy, is set to unleash a power greater than any seen in two millenia.

  He's got a score to settle - and Remo is the lucky sacrificial vessel.

  First edition May 1998 ISBN 0-373-63226-6

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to James Mullaney and Daisy Snaggers for their contribution to this work.

  PROPHET OF DOOM

  Copyright © 1998 by M. C. Murphy.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  Printed in U.S.A.

  To Father John Conneil. And the Glorious House of Sinanju.

  PROLOGUE

  She brought the goat as payment.

  Some people brought jewels or perfume. Those who were poor brought food or even wine to Delphi. Gold was an offering worthy of a god. But without any of these things available to her, Nausicaa brought the goat that had been her responsibility ever since she had gone to live with her father's brother in Thebes.

  Her uncle would be angry when he learned that the animal had been used in sacrifice at the temple in Delphi, but it was the only thing Nausicaa possessed that would be acceptable to the god of the smoke.

  Not that the Pythia itself was a god. The Pythia of the Temple of Apollo was a servant. Within the vapor—the knisa—that flowed from the living rock inside the temple, there dwelled a spirit who infected any who sat above it. When the vapor was inhaled, the servant would become in its very essence the spirit of the Pythia. Whoever was fortunate enough to become Pythia was given the gift to prophesy.

  As a result of its mysterious Oracle, Delphi attracted pilgrims from every corner of Greece who wished to see into the future. Because of this, the spirit of the Pythia was granted special status as a conduit to the gods.

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  But the Pythia served a greater master, the. sun god Apollo, who daily led his flaming chariot across the heavens.

  It was the powerful Apollo, son of Zeus, to whom Nausicaa silently prayed as she made her way up the well-trampled road to the temple on the hill.

  Her question for the Pythia would surely seem petty to some. Her uncle had arranged for her to marry the son of a prosperous neighboring farmer, but Nausicaa was opposed to the union. She would slaughter the goat before the Pythia and then ask the Oracle if the marriage was her true destiny. If the Pythia foretold this was her future, she would surrender herself to the will of her uncle and return with her slave, Tyrtaeus, to Thebes. Reluctantly.

  When Nausicaa finally laid eyes on the magnificent Temple of Apollo, she was awed by the sight. The building was huge. Bigger than any other man-made structure Nausicaa had seen in all of her fifteen years.

  The walls were towering vertical sheets of the smoothest quarry rock. Creamy white marble statuary dotted the landscape along the path up to the main entrance of the temple. Gleaming bronze likenesses of Apollo, carved with painstaking detail by the finest craftsmen in Greece, stood watch over the huge archway into the temple. Particular attention was paid in many of the statues to Apollo's defeat of the mighty scrpi-iit Python near Delphi, when the sun god was only an inlant. The Pythia was named thusly because of this event in the young god's life.

  At the cntryway Nausicaa was confronted by one of the white-robed temple priests who demanded the customary fee before he would allow her entry. Meekly

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  Nausicaa offered him the cloth sack that she had brought. In the bag she had placed the pelanos, which was a type of cake, for payment to the lesser priests.

  After inspecting it, the man seemed satisfied with the gift and he pulled the drawstring closed on the bag. Putting the sack aside, he led Nausicaa into the bowels of the temple.

  Once inside, Nausicaa noticed the other priests, who stood in the darker recesses of the temple, motioning excitedly toward her. Some nodded and whispered among themselves as if some momentous decision had been made.

  The hungry looks they gave her as she was led through the inner chambers made her uncomfortable. As they walked through chamber after massive chamber, the stares from Apollo's priests became more intense. She realized with growing concern as they negotiated the labyrinthine corridors that the world outside was getting farther and farther away.

  Nausicaa began to feel uneasy. Her mouth felt dry.

  When they at last reached the entryway to the Pythia Pit, the slave, Tyrtaeus, was made to remain behind. Alone and with a feeling of deep foreboding, Nausicaa followed the priest into the Pythia Pit.

  Inside, the room was filled with a choking yellow smoke. Nausicaa knew that the Pythia divined the future by inhaling the noxious sulphur fumes, but she hadn't expected the smell to be so strong. A fine yellow film of sulphur powder coated the floor and walls of the inner chamber. Nausicaa began coughing uncontrollably as another priest came forward and led her goat up to the platform on which the Pythia sat.

  The temple had been constructed around the rocky

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  fissure through which the breath of Apollo had first appeared, and so the floor of the Pythia Pit resembled the hillsides of the region.

  The goat left tiny hoofprints in the yellow sulphur powder as the priest led the unwitting animal to the top of the hill. There, he held the creature firmly in place as he removed a ceremonial dagger from his belt. With a practiced motion the priest swiftly slit the animal's throat. The goat squirmed in pain and fright as a fountain of thick red blood erupted from its throat and poured out into the cleft in the mountainside.

  As she watched the ritual from the floor of the chamber, Nausicaa grew more fearful. Perhaps she should have stayed at home and married the farmer's son. Since the death of her father, her life had been one of hardship, and the young farmer could offer her a warm home and freedom from want for the rest of her days.

  There was something else that had troubled her since entering this inner chamber. If the Pythia was to predict Nausicaa's future—then where was the girl through which the Pythia spoke?

  For the stool on which the young female servant of Apollo was meant to sit was vacant.

  This, above all else, filled Nausicaa's heart with fright.

  Nausicaa resolved to return to Thebes, to surrender It) the life her uncle had arranged for her. She would leave the oracles of the Pythia to generals and kings.

  She turned to hurry from the temple—but a group of priests barred her way. She hadn't even heard them enter the room behind her. Now they blocked her path.

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  She pleaded with them to let her pass, but the priests didn't listen. They took up a low, lyrical chant.

  Nausicaa tried to go around them, but they grabbed her arms and held her fast. As she screamed and struggled, they carried her slowly, almost reverentially up the incline to the rocky crevice. Nausicaa saw through frightened tears the yellow smoke pouring out of the
mountainside in steadier bursts, keeping time with the chants of Apollo's priests.

  For the first time she saw that the flat top of the tiny hill was moving in a strange, undulating pattern. She realized in horror that the entire upper platform was covered with squirming, wriggling snakes. The serpents slid atop one another, across the bare feet of Apollo's priests and in and out of the giant cleft in the earth through which the noxious smoke issued.

  The stool on which the Pythia interpreted the oracles sat vacant. Nausicaa wept openly as many powerful hands forced her upon the small wooden tripod. The thick smell of sulphur wafted up through the rock, filling her nostrils, overpowering her reeling senses.

  The chanting of the priests grew louder, more frenzied.

  Nausicaa's head felt as though it had filled with the yellow smoke. Slick brownish bodies of dozens of slithering snakes moved with sickening slowness across her sandals, coiling up around her naked ankles.

  She attempted a last scream, but the ecstatic cries of the priests muffled her voice so that only a whimper escaped.

  Terror clogged her throat.

  She felt the snakes tighten about her ankles. Cool,

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  flicking tongues were exploring her knees, her thighs. She could feel dry, scaly muscles sliding slowly across her neck—but it no longer seemed to matter.

  Something terrible was happening inside her head.

  The smoke continued to pour out of the crevice, surrounding her with its nasty old-egg stink. She became dizzy and fatigued. Nausicaa tried to blink at the sensation, but her eyes no longer worked. She thought hard on this, and realized that her eyes still worked. It was only that they no longer worked for her.

  Through a strange, shifting haze, Nausicaa saw the temple priests surround her body, ankle deep in slithering snakes, but she was no longer in her body. She was beyond it, above it.

  Somewhere from a distant, indistinct place her father was beckoning her to join him, and she left the temple and its chanting priests along with her body as she moved into a place of light and warmth.

  As her thoughts fluttered free, a strong alien presence that had taken root somewhere in a far-off place within her mind told her that the events of this last day in her young life would have resonance down through the ages, and that the chain that began here would end as it was foretold.

  The words spoken in her mind foretold that when East met West, a god of the past would meet a god of the distant future.

  There was only one word in the prophecy Nausicaa did not understand, and as her essence vanished into the ethereal nothingness, that single word and its significance—along with all the troubles of her earthly self—vanished behind her.

  The word she did not understand was "Sinanju."

  Chapter one

  This day the Prophetess foretold a great fire that would wash down from the mountains and scorch the valley below. The ground would quake beneath a stampede of mighty beasts, and the earth would give up its dead.

  There was much excited discussion among the new arrivals upon hearing of the catastrophe that would soon befall mankind. They looked up and around as if the end were at hand, which it was, according to the pamphlets they had received upon passing through the high steel gates.

  The sky was a warm pastel haze, the Wyoming sun a small spark of yellow white against the sea of ice blue. There wasn't much in the way of apocalyptic activity at present, but the Prophetess insisted it was on the way, and they had been assured that the Prophetess was never, ever wrong.

  "Will the seas turn to blood, like in Revelations?" someone asked fearfully.

  The Prophetess considered. "Like the blood of a thousand times a thousand souls," she intoned.

  There were gasps.

  "Will the sky darken?"

  The Prophetess allowed that it would. "The sky will I turn the color of death for seven days, and on the

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  seventh it will be torn asunder and a hail of holy fire will pelt the valley below." Pelt? She'd have to reconsider that word. It didn't sound sufficiently lyrical, let alone apocalyptic.

  The crowd was enraptured. "When will this come to pass?" they chorused.

  The Prophetess held her right hand to the heavens, as if the sun's rays against her palm were the source of divine inspiration. Her hand made an arc through the still air as she thumped the heel of the long hickory staff clutched in her left hand against the ground three times, making tiny circular marks in the dirt of the compound. Puffs of reddish dust rose and fell as she considered the question.

  Those gathered held their breath as the seconds slipped away.

  The Prophetess stepped up onto the broad wooden porch of the ranch house so that the crowd, clumped together at the end of the long road leading up from the main gate, was a full head-length beneath her. It was a well-rehearsed move and one that placed her in a clear position of authority.

  She suppressed a shudder as the air-conditioned coolness poured out through the open door of the house onto her back.

  At last the Prophetess spoke. "It will happen in the time of which I have spoken and in the manner in which I have foretold." She said it with certainty. Her blue eyes, like azure pools, held each of theirs in turn.

  There was power in the eyes. And wisdom. Those determined, unwavering eyes had converted many a disbeliever, leading the new faithful over to the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth like

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  Moses leading the Hebrews through the parted waters of the Red Sea.

  At least that was how the faithful saw themselves. Esther Clear-Seer, the divine Prophetess, was nicknamed "Yogi Mom" by her followers. As founder and Beatific Head of the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth, and possessing a mystifying gift of prognostication, she saw her followers less as Levites than as lemmings. They streamed willingly to Esther's wilderness church and flung themselves off the cliffs of reason with an almost violent eagerness.

  This new group was no exception. They had been driven by bus from the nearby town of Thermopolis, Wyoming, to the Truth Church ranch for religious indoctrination. Esther could see from their naive, hopeful expressions that they were ripe for the picking.

  There were about a dozen of them, men and women in their twenties and thirties. They stood there in the dirt of the arrival center of Ranch Ragnarok—duffel bags, knapsacks and third-generation suitcases bursting open at their feet—and Esther knew that they were all hers.

  She had seen their type before. Despondent, lonely, downtrodden. These were her flock: people with an emptiness in their barren lives. They looked to Yogi Mom for deliverance. Many such converts were toiling on the grounds of the ranch or in the concrete bunkers beneath her gold-sandaled feet.

  Some in this latest batch thought it odd that heaven could be achieved by sheer brute force, for that was the impression one got upon seeing the well-armed squads of Truth Church disciples who milled about at the periphery of the indoctrination area. It seemed that

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  everyone on this side of the Ranch Ragnarok gates carried some kind of pistol or rifle or machine gun. The new faithful were told in no uncertain terms that force was sometimes necessary to ensure harmony of spirit. They learned, soon enough, to adhere to this dictum, lest they find themselves staring down a 700-rounds-per-minute barrel of divine retribution.

  Thus, surprisingly few questioned the wisdom of Esther Clear-Seer. Most who had joined the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth had nowhere else to turn. These were society's outcasts, desperate for something to cling to. Esther Clear-Seer gave them hope, family, community. A future. Her assurances that they would be the survivors of the coming Dark Times made them somehow special. And in the end, special was all they had to cling to.

  These new arrivals were no different. Failure showed through the glazed look in their eyes and sat across their slouched shoulders. The world had dealt them many harsh blows, they believed, and they longed for some deus ex machina to allevi
ate their troubles.

  Al Ranch Ragnarok in the piney woods of Wyoming, I hey were promised the secrets of the future and pmUMion Horn the things that were to come.

  <)l miii.Ht-. nothing was ever given away, free of char yy

  (in ilit* sU-ps of her sprawling ranch house, Esther ('Itai Si ti addressed this latest motley collection of human flotsan and jetsam.

  "You all realize that you must suspend your belief in the rational. For to become one with truth is to that is false. Beyond those walls—" with

  17

  her staff she indicated the high hurricane fence and gun towers surrounding the ranch "—lies falsehood. Within these walls you will find safety and contentment. And spiritual knowledge. When the world as you know it has turned to ash, only those of us inside this fortress will be spared the ravages of the Dark Times." Her voice became a husky threat. "And you can only pass through to salvation when you have been stripped of all worldly trappings." With that she beckoned with her staff and, with a solemn bow of the head, backed through the open door behind her.

  When she was gone, some of the older faithful, the few who had been around since Esther Clear-Seer had founded the Truth Church, descended like pack animals and began the inevitable shake-down of the new recruits. Cash was taken, credit cards impounded, bank books signed over, personal belongings searched. It only took a matter of minutes before the worldly trappings of the newly converted became the worldly trappings of Esther Clear-Seer.

  Esther sighed inwardly as she watched the scene through the large bay window in the air-conditioned coolness of her Meditation Chapel.

  Just another day in the God game.

  Of course, the line she had fed this group was nothing new. She had predicted the whole "mountain, fire, burning valley, stampeding death" scenario before. In fact, she had given this particular prediction to every new arrival since Day One.

  And when these events failed to come to pass, she reminded the skeptical that she had never mentioned what mountain or which valley, and if someone had the temerity to press further, she invariably ducked the