The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (31 page)

“Your mother contracted what all of us have contracted—all partakers of the sardius stone power. As protectors of these stones, as Guardians, we must at times travel and protect ourselves, or prolong our life, out of pure necessity.”—I spoke to him of the story of Queen Guinevere, a story that my father had told to me.

“I don’t understand,” Peter interrupted. “Are you Christians? Are you Muslims? What are you people? What was my father, really? Is this all some kind of weird cult?”—Peter’s questions, though legitimate, were many, too many to answer in a single phrase.

The truth be told, I didn’t know what I was. Maybe I was just a follower and not a believer!

“Our ancestors, sought to gather the sacred stones of Eden. Call them what you will—believe what you wish—but you have to admit, based on what I just showed you, they are a source of tremendous power. It was a power that many people once coveted.

“It was a power that a people known as the Anakites once sought and killed for, during the dawn of time itself. They were creatures that many believed were from another universe. Some believed that they were the first creation on this planet. Others believed that both the Anakites as well as the powerful stones came from another world.

“As for me, I believe that Anakites still exist and that they are evil creatures. They will stop at nothing to get these stones and their powers. The Guardians still seek to keep that from happening. We still seek to keep their knowledge from being discovered. What people do not know cannot necessarily cause harm,” I concluded.

“Rubbish! Why not just tell the governments and powers that be. If all or this were remotely true, why not let the military stop and kill these creatures? Why the secrets?” Peter insisted.

“Peter, if you ever saw the power of the Anakites, you would realize the futility of that action. Our secrecy and knowledge of the powers of the stones are the only remedies,” I said.

“Have
you
ever seen the power of these Anakites?”—Peter’s question brought me back again to that night that I lost my family and the others. Peter had been passed out when Dred had worked his magic in Carmarthen. Peter had not seen the evil of the Anakite.

“They destroyed my family and the Priests,” I alleged. “An Anakite killed your mother. And an Anakite killed your uncle also!”—I explained again to him that Dred was an Anakite with tremendous power.

“Dred said that he was my brother,” Peter said.

I corrected him. I told him that Dred was not his brother, but the father of many lies. I had him sit down on a bench in the basement, while I told him some further truth. I revealed what happened during his mother’s transference, an event that was nearly a thousand years old. I told him what my father had told me about the incident.

“You were in your mother’s womb when she went through a time portal, similar to the one that I showed you. I learned these stories from my father. He said that you traveled with her. She was pregnant with you, and you remained in her body during the trip. You were both transported into a future far beyond what she once knew,” I told him.

It was still difficult for him to grasp everything, but I took the time to explain everything that I knew about the incident of his mother’s transference. I told him everything that was relative to his understanding of his origins. It was a difficult afternoon, and one that exhausted us both.

A week later, and after much tutoring and knowledge sharing, I was finally able bring up a most controversial subject to Peter Jenkins. I planned on asking for his help with something that I had been involved with before his arrival.

I remember the day that I brought up the subject. It was the day that I picked up David and Mattie and met them for the first time. We were in the laboratory. I had finished another tale concerning one of the treasures below. That was when I brought up the subject. For a week, Peter had been filled with tales of magic and legends, and he was becoming hungry and anxious for more information.

“I have to go pick up some people in my taxi at their hotel,” I told him. “If you would like for me to show you a demonstration of time travel, to convince you of the power that we are guarding, then wait. I will show you in a few weeks! You are not quite ready now. I want to talk to you about what is beyond those tunnels.”—I opened the steel door of the basement, and I pointed to one of the cave tunnels in the dark distance. The tunnels were illuminated with special wired lighting, but the lights were off at that time. Darkness screamed at us beyond the steel door. Peter took a few steps into the darkness to take it in while I stayed on the other side of the door.

“One fatal night, my parents and the Priests walked down that cave entrance and never returned again! Beyond that entrance, about one and a half kilometers away, is a blockage, a dead end, the result of a cave in. I want to find out what happened to them. They may still be alive and trapped in another world. I have to know the truth. I have been digging through, as I have had the time, and I could use your help.”—as I spoke, Peter showed a look of terror and distrust.

“Are you out of your bloody mind!” he bellowed. “You have tried to convince me that I am the son of King Arthur, and then add to that some bloody story of creatures from below. You tell me that these creatures seek out our blood or enslavement?

“And now you want to dig up these people? And for what? For what insane purpose?—our detriment? I think that you’re all loony? Even Uncle Willie must have been a loony! Robbie tried to tell me some bloody weird stories too!”—Peter came back into the laboratory and started to pace. He stared intensely at the distant and mysterious tunnel beyond the basement room.

“Wait here, I won’t be too long,” I promised. “Don’t worry. I will soon show you more.”—I left the steel door to the cave open and left him to ponder my words as I walked up the narrow and dark stairs to the cafe. I then locked the door at the top of the stairs, but I did not tell him that I was sealing him in. I did not want to risk him leaving.

First, I wanted to pick up Mattie and David. I needed some witnesses. I wanted to make sure that someone from the outside world knew about Peter and me. What if Peter failed to believe my story—what if he turned on me in anger—I thought. Murder needed witnesses. It had only been a week, and Peter was still not quite prepared for the sights that he would see.

I left him for several hours but returned later with Mattie and David by my side. I took them into the basement and even into the area beyond the steel door. I explained to them, with a made-up tale, that I was doing an archaeological exploration of a tunnel created by the pharaohs and needed the assistance of a student archaeologist. David and Mattie bought it.

Peter refrained from a display of anger, even though he had been locked in a cave for several hours. He gave me a look that said retaliation and then greeted his new friends openly.

“Nice to meet you!” he cordially but artificially greeted.

“Oh, you are English?”—Mattie’s ability to state the obvious made Peter’s eyes shift instantly upward, but he acknowledged her anyway.

For whatever reason, they immediately took to each other—David, Mattie, and Peter. David and Peter became friends as they worked several weeks together in the caves. David labored with his genuineness. He was excited about seeing the ancient relics, although he did not know the full truth about them.

Peter operated with different motives and with a great reluctance. The real reason that Peter played along as the archaeologist was his eagerness to see the promised demonstration of magic and mysticism. He truly wanted to believe, but he needed more proof. He was the typical unbeliever, the man without faith.

Mattie brought us lunches from the cafe on occasion while my wife remained in her seclusion. However, my wife did make one exception to her rule of privacy. My wife, by her own free will and insistence, met with Peter, and they talked briefly. But she remained adamant and still refused to see David or Mattie.

While the men dug below in the caves, Mattie spent most of her time shopping in and exploring Cairo. That was her story. In fact, after pressing her, she said that she had met an Egyptian lady, whom she had befriended at a local market. She called her Nora. She said that Nora had shown her the sights of the city, but she had never taken her to see her family. I suggested that it might be because of her husband’s objections, and I apologized for any prejudice that she might have interpreted from the action.

For several weeks, after the arrival of Mattie and David, Nora showed Mattie around Cairo, while the men acted like professional archaeologists far below the cafe near two cave entrances. There were two major tunnel openings, and they were close together, at the far end of the cave. The cave deepened in depth as it sloped downward, between the steel door and the tunnels. The area in front of the tunnels had a cave ceiling that was about fifteen meters in height, and against both sides of the cave’s walls in this open area were the ancient treasures and artifacts, heaped in huge and unorganized piles on each side.

We dug with great consistency and effort through the blocked tunnels, although we eventually focused on the left one. We used mechanical drills, as well as hand picks, and we proceeded with extreme caution. The further and deeper into the tunnels we went, the more we had to brace and support the tunnel walls and ceiling with wooden beams. We used a method of bracing that Merlin had shared with my father. Merlin had told my father that he had learned the art of cave bracing while he was in the Old West, in America.

I purchased the wood that we used from an international company that discretely brought the wood into a private courtyard beside the cafe and then stacked it in several piles. The courtyard was secluded, surrounded by high walls of thick and decorated stone. In the yard, there were several concealed but accessible holes that led directly to the caves, one of which we used to lower wood or other supplies down to the open area just outside the tunnels. The holes also served as ventilation.

A steel cable lowered the wood down into the cave. It was attached to an electric winch and was set up near the holes. It made little noise but was always explained as “making renovations” if heard by the patrons of the cafe.

High above the tunnels, between the ceiling and the tunnel entrances, there were several smaller holes in the cave wall. I believed that those upper holes led to an area behind the blocked cave entrances, behind the collapsed tunnels. I thought it might serve as a shortcut. In order to investigate this theory, we built several levels of scaffolding that reached the upper holes, and I even provided individual climbing kits, composed of gear that was often mixed-up as we tossed our equipment into big bags at the end of the day.

Every day ended with David walking through the laboratory and staring at the tubes of colorful liquid that I did not conceal. I did not feel the need of doing so. Powerful things without the knowledge of their use were powerless.

As to the vials of liquid, I explained to David that they contained various metal ore. It was ore that I had found and melted, using a unique and highly secretive process. I did not tell him of the ancient secrets. I kept him in the dark about all things magic.

As for Peter, I told him to wait a little longer. I gave him the excuse of waiting for some kind of magical or astrological phase—which was a lie. I waited for seven weeks because my wife, the prophetess, had asked me to do so. As I often had found, she was extremely accurate in all of her predictions.

It was on the morning of the seventh day, of the seventh week, that my wife spoke to me her very prophetic words.

“You will show him today,” she advised me. “Today the evil will come, as a disguise. Then the evil will leave, and you must follow it—and take Peter with you,” she advised.

My wife spoke abruptly, similar to how she spoke to Peter when she first met him. Peter had been the exception to her rule of silence. She spoke about two sentences to Peter, but they were words I did not hear. I was in another room for just a moment when they talked. Later, when I asked Peter about his brief meeting with my wife, he simply said that he thought she was potty or barmy. Peter said that she had told him to listen to whatever I said. She said to do it without questioning, or he would fall into some kind of great peril. Peter insisted to me that she was talking bollocks, and he dismissed her admonition.

The evil day that was prophesied started out innocently enough as Peter came to the cafe from his hotel, on his own, in a rented car. I told Peter that it was the day that I would finally show him the mystical power of time displacement. I used the excuse of inappropriate moon phases as the reason for the delay. That was another falsehood of course, but Peter was the sort of man that needed an explanation for everything.

It was about seven when Peter showed up at my door, with his usual and annoying promptness. He immediately invoked a concern about David. I knew that David was always a late sleeper because I usually picked him up with my taxi after ten in the morning. David would not miss us during the experiment, I concluded. We would be gone for a matter of seconds, I thought.

“Don’t worry!” I told Peter. “What I will show you will be for a matter of seconds to them. We will be back in a flash of an eye, a speck in time itself.”—I couldn’t believe I was evoking such a cliché, but I could not resist fanning the flame inside my eager student.

Before we left the cafe for the stairs of the basement, the sight of an apparent and early female customer delayed us. She rapidly approached the front door and was dressed in a black veil and robes. It was two hours before we officially opened the cafe, and the morning light had just started to dispel the darkness in the city. I knew that I would have to explain that we were not open and refuse her service.