Crystal Warrior: Through All Eternity (Atlantean Crystal Saga Book 1) (10 page)

You always were totally naive, she told herself now as she remembered how he'd been waiting for her and as soon as she'd opened the shower door, he'd had her. She'd given in because she hated scenes. But what followed had really been tantamount to rape. It wasn't so much that she'd been unwilling; she'd simply lacked choices.

Unconsciously Georgina clenched her fingers round the crystal in her hand as she sank into the memory of the ugly sense of invasion she'd felt and the thought that had pounded through her mind as Gould had relentlessly pounded into her body—‘Where has the joy gone? Where has the joy gone?’

She curled her body into a tight ball on the fine linen-covered, down mattress, pulled the woven wool rug around her shoulders, and tried to stifle a moan of pain. Her mother, Archinus Ianthe, resplendent in scarlet gown and jeweled head dress, stood at the foot of the bed holding the crystal-tipped staff of her high office.

This she now pointed at her daughter. The healing energy of the crystal hummed through her body with the focus of a laser and Gynevra knew there was more comfort for her in the energy of the staff than there ever would be from the person of her mother. Born of a long line of Archini of Atlantis, and having assumed the mantle of office at the young age of nineteen, Ianthe knew much about the Temple Mysteries and administration, and little about maternal nurturing or virgin cosseting.

Initiation into womanhood was something all women had to suffer and if they were born of a priestess and raised in the Temple their virgin blood was a precious commodity to be shed on the altar in temple ritual. The more painful the deflowering, the more blood, the more successful was the likely outcome of that ritual.

Bodies healed, pain was forgotten.

‘Crying helps nothing, Gynevra,’ Ianthe said briskly. ‘Magus Yazid has made an offering of a young she-goat to the Goddess and Our Lady will smile upon Her daughter who has served Her well. You could also be grateful the healing ritual was so successful that the Magus has made a handsome lodgment into your stadrac - and that you're no longer a virgin. You're now free to lie with whomever you wish as often as you wish—so long as you are programmed infertile.’

Gynevra's body curled involuntarily into a tighter defensive ball. At this moment she never wanted to look on a man again, let alone lie with one. She could scarcely believe she'd been as needy of the act as the delightedly randy old priest himself, and only wanted to block her ears to the assurances of the older priestesses that the body assuredly did heal along with the mind.

One positive thing had come out of this day's work though. She no longer had any doubts about her decision to petition her father to contract a sacred partner for her as he had for Meriane. A woman had absolutely no control over what happened to her body when she was tethered to the altar and as for the joy she'd been told could be experienced through the act of mating, there was none in ritual.

It was the old King, her grandfather, who'd changed the law permitting priestesses to take a sacred partner, purely because there weren't enough unprotected women available for the priests to use to raise the energy in their temple rituals. Now a woman must choose one path or the other. Gynevra knew herself too much a Daughter of the Dragon to be content with the minimal, and chancy, delights of the altar.

Ianthe would not be pleased. With a soft swish of fine linen, the Archinus left the small room in the College of Priestesses, which would be Gynevra's from this day on, her maternal duty done. The scents of musk oil and attar of roses wafted on the air of her passing.

The two young women who'd been waiting silently outside the room now entered and dropped one to either side of the bed.

Meriane, her blue eyes soft with concern, cupped Gynevra's cheek with a tender hand. ‘I've brought you cherry opal elixir, Gyn’a. If you'll just sip on it, you'll feel much better.’

Gynevra groaned and buried her face in the lint and lavender clagren.

‘It truly does help, Gyn’a. I know. It made me feel a lot better. Phree has brought some Angel's Salve and your Four Elements healing crystal.’

‘Sweet Goddess Ist, Gyn’a, please tell me it's not that bad,’ begged Phryne, tugging away the rug and slipping the crystal into Gynevra's hand. ‘It's my turn in eight days and if a worn out old priest can do this to you what will one of those Paggi warriors do to me?’

Gynevra clutched Four Elements tightly against her lower belly and for just a moment closed her mind to all but the strong restorative energy of the crystal. As she felt the healing rush fill her body, she opened her eyes and looked up at her two half-sisters.

‘Thank you Great Ra that you two are here,’ she murmured. ‘Close the door. If anybody else comes and tells me I should be grateful, I'll scream.’

Phryne did as Gynevra asked, then sat back on the bed with a saucy grin.

‘Well you should, Gyn’a,’ she said, looking round the grim old stone walls of the room, and the matching carved ebony desk and clothes chest, both inlaid with gold, silver, and mother of pearl. ‘You must admit our royal father has sent furniture a princess can be proud of and you have this room all to yourself. You can afford to buy some brightly dyed drapes to brighten the walls and you'll still have a lovely nest egg left over in your stadrac!’

‘Phree's right, you know, Gyn’a,’ Meriane said in her gentle solemn way. ‘You've gained so much. What color drapes will you look for?’

Gynevra looked from the bright loving green of Phryne's gaze to the dreamy blue tenderness of Meri's and felt the threefold strength of their togetherness, three daughters of Ahron, the paramount King of Atlantis, sired on different priestesses in the most holy Sacrament of the Joining of the Gods. Children of the Gods they were, deeply connected by their common royal sire.

There were other Children of the Gods sired by King Ahron in the Temple House of Children but Meriane, Gynevra, and Phryne had all been sired within weeks of one another and had been raised together within Temple Qrazil since babyhood. So long as they were together it seemed they could transcend anything. Slowly Gynevra unfurled her aching body and struggled upright. Accepting the cherry opal elixir from Meri, she sipped gratefully.

Then with a determined effort to allow her mind to be diverted, she said, ‘I like the colors Sarina has. Cobalt, peach, and cream. It's serene yet cheerful all at once.’

Sarina, an older half-sister to the three young women, had graduated from the House of Children to the College of Priestesses almost a year before and all three had visited her on occasion in her small tastefully furnished college room. Each of them had been impatient to achieve the adult status that would give them access to a similar living space.

‘But I don't actually feel like going down to the market just at the moment,’ she groaned as an afterthought, and Phryne and Meriane murmured in sympathy.

‘The word is, you effected a wondrous healing on the virility of Magus Yazid which means his position as Magus remains secure. Now he's proved he can still perform in Temple ritual, none can challenge him. He can afford to be generous,’ Meri said, stroking her hair.

‘Have you bathed?’ Phryne asked, sitting cross-legged in front of her and placing her hands palm down over Gynevra’s knees.

Gynevra relaxed into acceptance as she felt Phryne open her spiritual channel and add her healing energy to that of the crystal.

‘Yes. Allida and Florus took me through the cleansing ritual in the Sacred Pool.’

Phryne had her eyes closed and was concentrating. Her voice seemed to come from far away.

‘You need a good healing soak in the grotto. Then we can anoint you with salve and you will be good as new.—Meri, call Nyd to carry Gyn’a and we'll all go and bathe.’

In no time at all Gynevra was cradled against the broad comforting chest of one of the Temple giants. The big eunuch servitor carried her as if she were fashioned from precious glass, muttering and rumbling under his breath about what he would do to priests if only the Gods would give him the chance. At the grotto he waited until Phryne and Meriane had removed Gynevra's gown, tenderly set her on the seat in the steaming water, and took up a watchful stance at the entry to the tiny grotto.

Phryne waited until Meri settled herself in the water beside Gynevra and both were leaning back with their eyes closed and expressions of bliss on their faces. Then she quickly dipped her hands in the running stream of cold drinking water and splashed both her sisters.

Gynevra was just thinking as soon as she was able she'd make a thanks offering of a white dove to the Goddess when the cold water splashed across her face. Phree could always be relied on to make her laugh when she least felt like it, or most needed it.

Chapter 6

Georgina opened her eyes and in one second of terrified disorientation, swiped moisture from her face and reached for the sisters who'd been only an arm's reach away.

Katja rose to her feet looking eerily like a huge white wolf against the dark outline of the house. Unmoving, Georgina stared at the dog and tried to recall every detail of where she'd been, the faces, the names—and tried to tell herself the cold drops of water splashing on her face were just rain.

Wonderingly she let her finger stray to the center of her upper lip to caress the tiny emerald stud Gynevra had worn there. Smooth, downy skin was all she felt beneath her fingertip.

Yet Gynevra, Phryne, and Meriane—with the likeness of Georgina, Fran, and Merryn were vivid in her mind—in a place she knew belonged nowhere in this millennium, if indeed it had ever existed at all. She was losing her mind! With her heart still banging against her chest from the fright of the sudden awakening, she swirled her arms through the water of the spa to reinforce reality, to remind herself she was soaking in a hot tub on her deck, in Auckland, New Zealand, in the year 1998 AD and with a gentle rain beginning to fall.

It must have been a dream—but she'd swear she'd not been asleep. A vision?

Definitely more than a dream. She'd read of Atlantis and subscribed to the generally accepted belief it was a place of myth, a fiction of the long ago imagination of the Greek philosopher, Plato. But the pictures, people and places she'd just seen were as real as her life here, now. The great blocks of stone comprising the walls of the room had been spliced too closely, too perfectly against one another to have room or need of mortar. The stone had been dark granite, and Georgina who knew nothing of stone, only knew that fact because it was something she'd known
then.

Her alter ego in the dream-vision, Gynevra, had eyes of living amber and hair that flowed from her head in luxuriant ripples of rich golden copper and was held in place by a gold headband with a large teardrop emerald low over the center forehead. She'd been a young princess and novice priestess who'd just been brutally sexually initiated on the Temple altar. She'd been complaining—but also accepting.

What she'd undergone had, in that time been considered natural, right, and at some level the young Gynevra and her sisters had known when the body healed her healthy libido would surface again. And that too was as it should be. While she'd protested, Gynevra had known beyond the pain was another life, a grown-up life, a life outside of Temple ritual and mystery, a life she deeply intended to experience.

Georgina let her body sink a little lower in the water. This was the second paradoxical vision she'd had since meeting Torr Montgomery, or the third if she counted the auric outline of the Warrior Lord. Could one person trigger such experiences for another by coming into their energy field? That was something she could ask Case and Merryn. Torr had certainly triggered some uncomfortably intense physical responses in her. Even now, four months later, her body yearned for him. He'd stripped the carefully painted camouflage from her sexuality just by looking at her. She'd spent every day since trying to recoup her defenses, to deny the sensuality that brought her nothing but trouble.

She vividly recalled her first encounter with the very healthy nature of her sexual desires. She'd been fifteen and emigrating by air from London to New Zealand via Los Angeles with her mother and sisters. On the second leg of the flight one of the stewards had been the epitome of the California beach boy with golden hair and skin and deep, ocean blue eyes.

Georgina's eyes had taken on a will of their own. Her skin had become flushed, her hands clammy with sweat, and a strangely insistent pulse had begun beating somewhere below her navel.

Then he'd come to help her with her seat belt. His hand had pressed on her thigh in a signal that couldn't be mistaken. He'd seemed to find an excessive number of reasons to pass her seat and frequently stood just to one side of the central steward's station, right in her line of vision. The heat from her skin had seemed to permeate her entire body and then pool in an uncomfortable and sticky mess between her thighs. She remembered even now the ambivalence of the heated wanting and the fear born of furtive tales of pain and unwanted pregnancy shared with her mates in the dorm at the girl's school she'd attended in Oxford.

So, when somewhere high above the Atlantic while Ellen was sleeping he'd suggested she meet him at the back of the plane, she'd been torn by that ambivalence. The excitement of knowing he desired her and naively believing that meant he'd fallen in love with her, was intense. But fortunately, she acknowledged now, fear of the consequences had been stronger. With hot cheeks and downcast eyes she'd refused him and he'd leant close to whisper he knew she desired him because her breasts were so deliciously taut beneath her skivvy and he longed to get his mouth on them.

Georgina almost succumbed then but some innate sense of self-preservation or maybe just her guardian angel still prevented her from agreeing. Not five minutes later he was deep in whispered conversation with Fran and Georgina's consternation had been complete when Fran had asked her to cover for her if Ellen woke because she was just going down the back to have a `talk' with that gorgeous steward.

The mortification of that moment was as intense now years later as it had been at the time. As usual Fran had dived head-first into the on-coming waves of life while Georgina stood at the water's edge afraid to dip her toes in. How glad she'd been that she'd been saved from the humiliation of exposing her naiveté! How angry, how frustrated, how envious! None of which had helped the wet, soggy crutch of her panties.

It was a long time before she would ever again expose herself to such temptation or even admit she felt desire. Georgina knew she was an exact contrast to Gynevra, the girl in the dream for she'd never been comfortable around men, or with her sometimes unseemly and over-needy libido.

To this day the incident had never been mentioned by either of them. Georgina still didn't know what had actually transpired between Fran and the handsome young steward at the back of the plane nor did she know why Fran hadn't spoken to her for the rest of that long tedious flight.

They'd become close again as they settled into their new life in New Zealand but some subtle shift had occurred in the balance between them. Georgina had never quite been able to put a title on it. But it was ironic to consider that now, almost fifteen years later, history had repeated itself.

Fran had gone off with her man.

As on that other occasion, it was probably her own fault. Even more distressing and confusing was knowing that once again Fran had actually done her a service, given her a let-out. Why couldn't she feel any gratitude? Georgina surged up out of the spa and hurried indoors to the bathroom.

As she reached to turn on the shower she realized she still clutched the crystal Merryn had given her. With a sigh of impatience she placed it on the vanity counter. Stepping under the spray, she let the water beat over her body in an effort to wash away the vivid pictures of that other life, to erase the crazy feeling that that life was just as much a memory as her childhood in England.

But it couldn't wash away the anger she felt towards her twin and it was very painful when laid alongside the love she felt for her; would always feel for her. Sleep, when she finally crept into bed, was slow in coming.

The jangle of the phone brought her instantly awake, as if even in sleep she was listening for it. Fumbling the receiver to her ear, she said, ‘Georgina Hackville speaking.’

The grey light of dawn silhouetted the window frame. By some miracle she'd slept the night through. The few seconds in which her mind remained empty were all too short-lived. At the sound of her mother's voice on the other end of the line, recall was total. The grinding panic-pain closed its iron fist round her heart once again.

Gould. Fran.

‘George! Are you awake?’

‘I am now, Mum.’

‘Darling, I'm sorry to wake you so early but I couldn't wait any longer. I've been up all night and the only thing that stopped me ringing you at two o'clock was the thought you really needed your rest. Did you sleep last night, love?’

Georgina soaked up the sound of her mother's love through the wires like a sun-dried sponge.

‘Yes I did. Thanks Mum. A hot spa and a cold shower seemed to do the trick. So, thanks for waiting. What's wrong?’

‘I couldn't sleep, like I said, so about one o'clock I got up and made a cup of tea but I just couldn't settle for wondering about Frannie—and Gould, of course.’ There was a break in Ellen's voice, but she sternly cleared her throat and continued. ‘I—got out the crystal ball.’

Georgina was wide awake now. Ellen didn't cultivate the `knowing'. It was more that it was thrust upon her. She `saw' she often complained, much she would rather not. Her husband, the girls' father, had bought her a crystal ball during a long ago visit to France for the World Cup soccer final. Georgina remembered the excitement of his home-coming and the gifts. She'd been ten years old, England had won, and William Hackville had been moved to a totally uncharacteristic generosity towards his family. For a man whose only interests in life were the Antiquities on which he lectured at Oxford, and soccer, his brief foray into the world of materialism was as memorable for its curio value as it was for its results.

Each of the girls still treasured the exquisite, hand-painted china doll he'd bought them, but as far as Georgina knew, her mother had never looked in the expensive crystal ball but once. Seeing in it her neighbor’s wrecked car and bloodied body followed by herself and her daughters leaving William, had been traumatic enough. But when next day a distraught Marian Wall who lived across the street asked Ellen to mind her two children because her husband had been involved in an accident, Ellen was thoroughly unnerved. It was like having your foot jammed in the railway track knowing a train could come any time—and would.

Georgina had been fifteen when her mother had given up vying with musty books and soccer greats for a modicum of her husband's time and returned with her daughters to her native New Zealand. Georgina didn't think their father had even noticed, and knew for a fact Ellen had hidden the crystal ball, the only expensive present William had ever given her after her engagement ring, in the bottom of her glory box.

‘And?’ Georgina breathed into the phone.

‘Oh, George, I'm coming round! Put the kettle on.’

‘Mum!’ Georgina barked down the phone. ‘Don't you dare put that phone down until you tell me what you saw!’

‘Oh darling, I'm sorry. Of course. I just thought you might need time to wake up.’

‘What—did—you—see,—Mum?’

‘They're alive, on the yacht but—sort of—like they were in a mirage. They looked happy but—insubstantial. It was strange—like their souls—were floating in the ether—or something.’

Ellen's voice had dropped to a whisper.

‘Is that all?’ Georgina asked harshly.

‘No. They—the sea beneath them was like a mirror and the shape of it was—triangular and sort of crystalline—and as I watched they—gradually faded out and—’

‘Take it easy, Mum,’ Georgina said gently.

‘Oh, George!’ Ellen wailed. ‘They just vanished sort of dot by dot before my eyes—and right to the last fragment—somehow they were smiling—yet silently screaming. It was—horrible. But
I know
they're alive.’

Georgina drew in a sharp breath and forced herself to ask again, ‘Was that all you saw?’

‘No.’ Ellen steadied herself. ‘There was more. I saw you, George. You are the one with the knowledge to bring them back.’

‘Me?’

Her voice was little more than a wild squeak.

‘I saw it as clear as day. You surrounded by Navy personnel—on a ship, going to bring them home. It has to be you because you're the one with the knowledge.’

‘What—knowledge?’

Georgina felt the old frantic sense of inadequacy roiling deep in her stomach—and an ominous unease. Was Ellen buckling under the strain?

‘I don't know! All I could understand was that you are the one who knows what to do. Only you.’

She, Georgina Hackville, only knew about books and business. She never understood things to do with people, not even commonsense things other folk knew by instinct. Georgina felt something snap inside her as if a rubber band holding all her separate parts together just snapped. Ellen had never been wrong before, even without the bloody crystal ball.

What if she was right?

‘For goodness sake, Mum! What knowledge?’

‘This is no time to fall apart, George,’ Ellen reprimanded. ‘You've got to try and hold yourself together so you can think. It can only be something you've read—somewhere—sometime.’

‘I can't think what,’ Georgina muttered, relief that her mother was sounding more rational doing little to quell the panic created by the thought she might be Fran and Gould's only hope, or at the very least, that Ellen was trusting her to do something and she had no idea what.

‘I'm coming over,’ Ellen said again and cut the connection.

Georgina stared for a moment at the phone then dropped it back onto its stand. With slightly uncoordinated movements she climbed out of bed and pulled on her dark green velour dressing gown. With the mechanical actions of a robot she washed her face, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair. As she dropped the hairbrush back onto the marble-topped vanity her eye fell on the crystal she'd left there the night before. It could bring her comfort, Merryn had said.