The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (30 page)

Regardless of how it happened, it happened without making any sound that could be detected from above the cave. I heard nothing that night. Possibly the reason I did not hear anything was because of a steel door that had been recently installed. The door separated the caves from the basement of the cafe. Conceivably, I was too tired to be aware of any noise. I had tried to stay awake, but I had fallen asleep.

If it had not been for my wife, I would have easily lost my sanity. She was my saving grace during that time of great stress and personal loss. She had an aura of goodness about her. She had an enchantment about her that soothed my spirit when I was near her. Her eyes had the power to pierce my soul. She had locks of black curly hair and a beautiful, light olive complexion. Of course, at that time she wasn’t my wife at all.

I met my wife-to-be about three days after the great catastrophe in the caves. The future Mrs. Habib came into the cafe one day, and she claimed that she was lost and needed directions. I cannot remember where she needed to go, or why she was lost. But I felt deep inside of me that it was all something that she had made up as a pretense to talk to me. I sensed that she was a woman of immense mystery, but it didn’t matter. I fell for her completely. I fell for her great beauty and her enchantment. I felt like she was part of me the moment that we met. She was family. We bonded. We connected. It was as if we had known each other all of our lives.

From the moment that I met her, Mrs. Habib seemed to figure me out. It was almost as if she and I had already met in another world and in another place and time. It seemed like we picked up where we had left off. This intrigued and mystified me. I felt that we had met before, but I was sure that we had not. Her intuitiveness and attention to me gave me the sensation that she knew me. She knew my mind, even to the depths of my soul.

I needed connection. I craved it, in fact. After all, I had just lost my family. And I suppose that was the reason why Mattie and David bonded so well with me. It was because of our connection on an empathetic level. All three of us had lost our family at some point in our lives. I had known a large and wonderful family unit. I had several brothers and sisters. I never knew what it was like being an only child, or not being raised by a mother or father. But I knew about the pain that was experienced after the death of one’s family members. That was our commonality.

I drove David and Mattie to the cafe and shared some stories and drinks, and then I disclosed my identity to them.

“I am the one you seek, David. I am Dr. Habib. You can call me Haj,” I revealed.

They never met my wife. She was very secretive and very reclusive. I explained her behavior as a mental disorder, and that was enough for Mattie and David. When she went out in public, she wore dark glasses, and equally dark scarves and robes. As the wife of a Priest she took her role very seriously. She was a devoted wife and confidant, but she was not very social. I wanted her to mingle and to leave the house occasionally. I wanted us to have an open life. But her response was always the same, “at the right time and place, my husband.”

My wife had the special gift of prophecy and used it most wisely. Some, in another time, might have called her a witch or prophetess, primarily because she was often extremely accurate in her predictions. In fact, my wife accurately predicted that a traveler from the north would visit us—and later two strangers from the West would arrive. Mrs. Habib said that it was very important and for my own protection that I bring the two people from the West to meet the visitor from the North. She also predicted that a great evil was going to come to me. Perilous times were ahead, and a period of great trials, she told me.

So I listened to my wife. I brought the two visitors, Mattie and David, into my cafe and down into my basement to meet Peter Jenkins for the first time. I explained that Peter was a medical student from England and a student of archaeology. I also introduced Peter as an associate. I explained that the basement was actually an archaeological site, a unique one. I told them that Peter and I were working on excavating the tunnel system below that was sealed. I insisted that the dig was of archaeological importance. That was the official story.

A week before I met David and Mattie, Peter Jenkins had arrived, just after his father’s funeral. He had an act of vengeance in his mind and wore a stubborn determination. He got into my taxi, pointed a gun at me, pushed its barrel against the front seat, and demanded straightforward answers.

“If you are Hajen Habib, then you and I have much to discuss,” he said. “Were you in Wales recently? England?”—Peter had arrived with the full assumption that I had murdered his friend and mother’s supposed brother, Willie Myre.

“You need to calm down, Peter!”—when I spoke his name, I caught him off guard. I was sure that he must have wondered how I knew his name. This was when I realized that I would have to explain many things to him, to gain his trust. It also meant that I would have to trust
him
as well. Peter was a special case, and I felt it was necessary for him to meet my wife—if she was open to the idea. I needed her gift of clairvoyance and wisdom, to enable me to deal with Peter Jenkins.

I also knew that with the loss of the Priests, and the deaths of Arthur and Merlin, I needed to enlist new members, eventually. I could not think of anyone better than the son of Arthur to be the next Guardian. The task remained of convincing him that I was not a murderer.

“I did not kill your Uncle Willie!”—again, my knowledge surprised him. “I know who you are. And I know about your anger with me, but I am not guilty. I also did not steal your mother’s blue stone.”

Peter showed an even deeper reaction to
that
statement. He started to retreat with his weapon. I pulled the taxi over, parked on the side of the road, and continued. I watched his expressions in the rear view mirror, analyzing him as if he was a tiger ready to pounce.

“Your mother was a Guardian, the faithful wife of Arthur. She saw no other man,” I told him. My wife, the prophetess, had told me to stress to Peter the faithfulness of Arthur’s wife. I did not fully understand why, but I did as she had asked me to do. Whatever the reason, those words seemed to agree with Peter and they soothed him. “I helped her to find and guard her blue stone, one of the several stones mentioned in Willie’s book.” I paused briefly to see if it was registering. “You
do
still have the book?”

“What? Yes, of course,” he replied. I definitely had his close attention, now more than ever.

“Peter, you must come with me to my house, I have many things to share with you. Please, put away your weapon,” I begged him.

“If
you
didn’t kill Uncle Willie—then who did?” Peter asked, with a calmer demeanor.

“Your professing and false brother Medraut is the guilty party you seek, or as he calls himself now, Dred!” I looked back at him and saw an empty face in front of an empty mind. It was a mind that waited eagerly to be filled with answers to a myriad of questions within.

I finally convinced Peter to holster his weapon and come home with me. I drove him to my home while I glanced at his listless expressions along the way. We arrived at the cafe and the explanation soon began. It was an initial vigil of several hours as the account and confessions were unfolded before him.

How does one begin a crash course in ancient magic, especially if your prospective pupil started his relationship with you by pointing a loaded weapon at you? How do you convince a person who lives in the current day and time that magic even exists?

I escorted Peter below to the basement and to the blocked cave entrance.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” I asked him as I showed Peter my lab and the basement, just underneath the smoky cafe. I saw that it was going to take a special demonstration to convince him of my veracity.

“I believe that you may have killed my uncle,” he said. “And yes, I am somewhat skeptical,” Peter admitted. “Considering the fact that you knew about the blue stones—and that you did not confess your knowledge of anything until I threatened your life—yes, I am very skeptical. My mother was the only one that truly cared about me, except for my uncle. My patience is quite thin. So show me what you want, and then maybe we can talk.”—Peter started to examine the case that was up against the wall of the small basement room. That was the room with the steel door—the sealed caves were behind it. The basement was accessible by a long staircase that led down into it from the cafe.

The laboratory that I had set up in the room of the basement smelled of rotting mold and dankness. The air had a thickness to it, but it was breathable. The air of the caves permeated through the cracks of the steel door that barred its entrance with a message of foreboding. On one side of the room, with its wall of jagged rocks for decoration, there was the laboratory. On the other side of the room, there were several cabinets, tables, and various pieces of scientific equipment.

Peter inspected the vials of liquid that sat in a glass case against one of the walls of the room. The case had four glass shelves. Each shelve was lit by the white light of an overhead lamp. Each lit shelf had its own set of sealed glass tubes of liquid that rested in wooden containers. Each liquid was colorful, vivacious, but singular in color. Some tubes were solid black, while others were salmon colored. There were many blue tubes, along with red, gold, and green ones.

Beside the case was a metal safe. It was embedded into the cave wall. It was not hidden, but it invited curiosity as it displayed its handle and dial openly with a bold and shiny silver tinge.

Since Peter seemed fascinated with the tubes, I explained to the unbeliever the meaning of the colors. I surmised that this was the easiest starting point.

“Those vials contain liquefied stone elements, from a very ancient source,” I said. “The black ones are types of onyx. They have a most powerful effect when used properly. They can paralyze someone, or they can stop the power of . . .”—how was I going to explain transference, I thought?

I decided to start with a dramatic demonstration. I went to the safe, and I asked Peter to turn around while I opened it. I retrieved a salmon colored stone, and then I told him to turn and look at it.

“I have stones of blue, gold, green, black, and several others. All of these stones are from a source that no longer exists on this planet.”—as I spoke, Peter became more agitated and looked around the room—he seemed bored.

“Perhaps this will be a good start,” I said as I placed a pink colored stone in a vice that was set up at a nearby table. I turned a handle and tightened the vice’s grip around the stone. I then pulled out two stones that I had in my pocket, one blue and one white. His eyes stayed glued to the revealed blue stone.

“Is that my mother’s stone?” Peter asked. He acted like he might draw his weapon again.

“She asked me to keep it, as I said before—but yes. This was your mother’s stone, in another time and place,” I told him. There were many combinations of power that I could have shown him. This was only one of them.

I placed the two stones on top of the salmon stone, and then I placed my hand on top of them. A white cloud emitted from the stones and formed an oval shape that extended to the top of the cave. The edges had a solid appearance, but the rest of the cloud was more transparent. It was as if a door was created and extended from one side of the room to the other, and, at first, it seemed like nothing more.

“Ok, so you can blow smoke out of a rock, perhaps I should just call the police. They may want to know what you were doing in Wales just before my uncle was murdered!”—Peter’s threat did not phase Haj.

“Or, perhaps you would like to step through this cloud and visit ancient—Hawaii,” I gloated.

Hawaii? Was that the best I could come up with?

The center of the cloud suddenly filled with an image of a palm tree—with a leaning branch that partially protruded from the cloud and reached into the basement room. He saw the blue waves as they rushed towards a sandy beach, just beyond the magnificent tree. The smells and sounds of the Pacific Ocean filled the room. Peter’s broad grin and twinkling eyes gave evidence of the awakening that was within him.

He approached the cloud, and he reached out to touch the tree. But before he could touch it, I removed my hands from the stones, and the image and the cloud instantly disappeared—as if it had never been there. Peter’s smile was gone, replaced with a look of great annoyance.

“Do I have your attention now?” I asked him.

I shared many stories and legends with him that day. I revealed to him the many tales of history that his friend Robbie had not told him. I even showed him some of the treasures that were still kept in the cave. I showed him the Sword of Gath that once was used to remove the head of an Anakite, the great giant, Goliath. The sword’s source of strength had been removed many years ago, but that source still danced in a sealed vial of silvery liquid, inside the locked safe in the wall of my laboratory basement. I showed him treasures that had not been seen by the outside world for thousands of years. But they were treasures that were once very familiar to his parents, in a forgotten age of long ago.

“Your father loved you, more than you can imagine,” I said. “His wife was once very sick, even unto death. So he cured her, by the power of magic. That magic, like all magic, came with consequences.