The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (23 page)

“I have had, for a very long time, the sense of a past life, full of detailed memories. I remember being married. I remember living in San Francisco, Sacramento, and in Seattle—a very long time ago. I remember the names of my husband, my two children, and a friend’s name. Her name was Aysha. I can’t remember her last name,” Mattie admitted.

David was curious about her husband and children and was almost jealous.

“I remember waking up in a hospital,” she said, “I had lost my memory. I had two stones in my hands, and I had a red stone around my neck—on the necklace that I showed you. The stones in my hands were blue and white—like the ones in your story, Tom! I remember someone long ago telling me that they were powerful and would keep me safe. And, in the hospital, I was visited by a lady that I did not recognize at all, and hardly remember. I was on sedation or something. She said that she wanted my necklace—but I would not give it to her.

“As mysterious as that story sounds—it is the truth. I kept the red stone necklace but gave the blue and white stones to a friend to keep for me—that was about the same time that I left North Carolina to live in California.”—Mattie again pulled out the stone for everyone to gaze at it.

With her permission, Tom took the red stone and necklace. He looked at every side of the ruby stone as if he expected it to do something. All that he noticed was that it had jagged edges—as if it had been cut in two in haste, in a primitive manner.

“Mattie, what do you remember before the hospital?”—Tom looked away from the stone and then deeply into her eyes with a non-judgmental assurance. David rested his arms on the kitchen table and leaned toward her. He waited for the answer to the same question that he had always wanted to ask her but was always afraid to ask. Who are you, he thought.

“The memory is so fuzzy—I can’t remember.”—Mattie took back the stone with a guilty look of avoidance on her face as she slipped the necklace back over her head. Tom knew that she was hiding something, but he chose not to pursue it or press Mattie about it.

After their lunch, Tom urged them back to the bedroom. Something had caught his eye upstairs, and he had some things to disclose to both of them that would stir their imagination and leave them confounded.

Mattie and David sat on the bed, and Tom stood and explored the inside of David’s opened suitcase. Tom stopped and focused on a vial of grey liquid. He took it out of the suitcase to examine it closely. It seemed to vibrate slightly.

“...and ...
where
did you get this?”—Tom gave a rare look of suspicion to David, and David took the vial out of his hands.

“I found it,” David partially lied. “It was at an archaeological site in Utah that I visited just before I met Mattie—before we went to Egypt.” After a look of disbelief from Tom was received, David confessed, “Ok—this old prospector gave it to me. It was at a site in southern Utah. I was hoping to find out the source of its energy and then become rich and retire.”—as David joked, an irritated Tom interrupted him.

“Our money is more than enough for you now though, right?”—Tom stunned David with his choice of words.

“
Our
money?” David asked, curious about the remark.

“David, I must confess something right now,” Tom said. “Your projects were not financed by the government. You got your funding by the Guardians—or more specifically, by me!

“I have title to several mines and oil wells that are generating massive income right now while we are wasting our time talking about it. You were told that story about the government by Sam because you didn’t need to know all of the details at the time. Sam was with me—with our team—and so was Haj!”

“I wasn’t working for the government? I was working for
you
?” David asked, shocked from Tom’s disclosure.

“Yes, David.”—Tom took the vial back and gazed at the liquid. “You got this liquid from a prospector, in Utah, eh?” It appeared to move on its own. The liquid jumped upwards within the pocket-sized container.

David took a moment and tried to take it in. He had not realized that his butler had been his boss and investor. Mattie, feeling a degree of empathy, attempted to embrace him. As she put her arm around him, she saw the beginnings of a newer and more humble David.

“That stuff is extremely cool. It jumps up and down.”—Mattie looked at Tom and exclaimed. She told him that she had seen it before, when she first met David. Mattie knew that it was the same liquid that David had poured on her belly, but she decided not to share that personal detail with Tom. “David? You were in Utah? Before Egypt? You never told me about that little adventure—not that it matters,” Mattie kidded.

“Not a big deal—except for finding that stuff. I was just finishing my thesis in processual archaeology,” David explained.

“Processual what?”—Mattie had a look of confusion as Tom interrupted her.

“Um—excuse me children?”—Tom now had their attention.

“This little fascinating bit of liquid is quite a treasure—and I am sure that the story of finding it is quite interesting—but this liquid has a story of its own that is equally fascinating,” Tom said to them. He saw their blank expressions and suddenly realized that they did not share his full knowledge about the matter. It was time to tell the story of the silver liquid. But he wondered how David had obtained something that used to be locked up, inside a secure safe in Cairo, Egypt. How did he get it, he wondered. How did a prospector obtain it in Utah? Tom had his suspicions and his own theories about it.

“Oh, sorry—this is Cali!” Tom said as he came out of his daze. Tom pronounced it as “Kal-Lee.” Tom pointed at the silver liquid in the tube.

The expression on the faces of David and Mattie begged for more information, so he continued.

“Cali!” he said—still there was no response from them. “What do your legends call it? Oh yeah—Excalibur!” Tom emphasized.

“
That’s
the sword of King Arthur?”—David spoke and started to laugh.

“Yes,” Tom said, somewhat offended. “It was once forged into a long dagger, just like my—oh no!”—Tom felt his knife pouch on his belt. He was about to draw out his knife that he had used earlier on Robbie, the one he had used to force him down the hillside.

His knife was missing. He remembered that he had last touched it when he had checked on their prisoner, Robbie, tied up in a nearby room. He recalled that he had checked in on Robbie’s condition at least two times that morning. He also remembered that Robbie had sobbed heavily and had held on to him on both occasions as if doing so released great remorse for his actions or some prior or hidden hurts or pain. That was odd behavior for Robbie. Apparently, it was all part of an act.

“He took my knife!”—Tom saw in their expressions that they still did not understand. “He took my knife and cut his ropes! Robbie’s gone!” he yelled.

All three of them rushed from the bedroom to Robbie’s room. They found the cut ropes on the floor. They looked at the empty chair, where Robbie had been tied up. A message of doom was etched permanently on the wooden chair.

It simply read, “Medraut is alive!”

Tom looked at David, who, along with Mattie, panted heavily from their mad rush into the room.

“David, we are going to make a sword!” Tom declared. “But first, I need to finish the story of the stones, as told to me by Merlin himself! I want to explain what I meant when I said you were working for our team.” Tom continued to breathe heavily, more so than David or Mattie. He had showed his age with his sprint to find Robbie.

Then suddenly, Tom took a small green stone and a small gold stone out of his pocket, and he tossed them to David simultaneously. David barely caught them before they landed on the floor. Mattie screamed as David and his surrounding area became immediately and totally invisible.

“These may come in handy later, David,” Tom said, with a gleam in his eyes, and his breathing finally slowed.

Mattie heard an invisible David ask her if she was ok, and she fainted on the floor.

Chapter 16

Malkuth Stones of Gan Eden

Part Four

In the Words of Merlin

I arrived in the camp where I immediately saw Arthur, Joseph, Samuel, John, and Robin standing exactly where I had just left them, only a few moments before. At least, that was their claim. In fact, I would have been accused of playing a trick on them, had it not been for the peculiar clothes that I wore and my clean-shaven face. It must have seemed strange to them because they all wore leggings of some kind, and tunics. They were all bearded and smelled of unwashed genitals and armpits.

A few servants attended the horses, no more than two, as I remember. There were two tents, and, in front of the tents, about ten or twelve paces in front of them, there was a black cauldron. A fire burned underneath, and a servant stirred something in it.

For several minutes, maybe one or two, though I doubt they used the term minutes, I found that I could not understand a single word that the men said to me. I heard one or two words that seemed familiar, and they seemed equally puzzled at
my
speech.

I confused them with my manner and my clothing. I had forgotten to change my clothes on this trip, my fifth or sixth one as I remember.

After only a few minutes, my memory and my understanding gradually came back to me, and I was able to converse. I believe the first word that I heard, the one that jolted me out of my forgetfulness, was “wifman.”

“Woman! Yes! I mean wifman!”—we were able to understand each other though it took me a few more seconds. “Seconds” was a term that I had learned during my trips to the future.

“What are those words, my lord? What strange talk was that?”—Samuel spoke first.

“Hold your tongue, Samuel! I will speak to him in private!” Arthur interjected.

Arthur then led me away to engage in conversation as the others looked on and remained intensely focused on my clothing. Between the two of us, my memory returned, and we discussed the specifics of what had happened just before I left on my fantastic journey.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I remembered first that Robin ran with all speed to King Arthur and the others. I was several paces behind him. I followed Robin, away from Medraut’s camp, but I walked at my own stride. By the time I reached King Arthur, Robin’s conversation had already begun.

I heard Arthur argue with Robin—when I finally heard what they were saying. Robin told him that in one of the tents beyond the cauldron resided a woman. She lay supinely on a cot and was most ill. It was, he claimed, none other than the missing queen, Queen Guinevere. In the other tent, he said, was his beloved Marian. Both of the women suffered from a fatal disease that had no cure, except for a promised cure held by the mysterious man. Robin claimed that he was offered the cure for Marian in exchange for wearing a ring, with a black stone. He said that Arthur was to go to the tent immediately.

Robin explained that the ring would command his eventual allegiance to Medraut and that it drew out all fear and hatred from within his soul and mind. That was supposed to be a secret between Robin and the man. However, as a side effect of wearing the ring, all fear, including that fear of not disclosing that secret, and the consequences of doing so, had disappeared from Robin’s mind completely. He spoke freely to Arthur and the others.

I continued to remember more of these events.

After I had heard Robin say that the ring should not be removed, I determined to remove it as soon as possible. The man had threatened Robin with the consequence of any removal of the ring, an action that he said would cause the seed of eternal revenge to flood into his soul. But I had a plan, and I knew the cure. I also recalled that I decided to wait to remove the ring until later. My plan was intentional because the effect of the ring’s removal would be seen only once. I wanted a genuine reaction from Medraut when I did the deed. Yes, the memories of those events became most clear in several more minutes as my body acclimated to the dank air of the foul night in the forest.

Arthur argued with Robin. Arthur thought it extremely unlikely that the beautiful queen, killed by a dagger that pierced her heart, was still actually alive. However, no one could argue this one indisputable fact. We slept in a time long ago, and then we awoke in a strange land and time, a time in the future. If
that
event could happen to
us,
I thought, perhaps it could happen to the queen.

I tried to convince Arthur that we had truly passed through time by way of transference. It was a technique commonly branded by the Guardians as an illegal passage if performed when there was no threat to the safety of one’s life, and no peril befalling the stones. Nonetheless, we were successful. Though not premeditated, we were still participants of an illegal act.

I explained to the king a brief history of the island that occurred during our five or six-hundred-year absence while I watched his mood change, and his regal spirit lower. I explained that the once proud and territorial kings that we once knew were gone.