Crystal Warrior: Through All Eternity (Atlantean Crystal Saga Book 1) (71 page)

Georgina raised a silencing finger to his lips.

‘Take your clothes off.’

‘There’ll be no talking if I do that,’ he warned.

‘Yes, there will. We’ve no need to rush. You’ve no battle to fight. We’ve a whole week here—and then a lifetime. Come bathe with me in the Sacred Pool; make the invocations to Ist and Asar; ask their blessings and the blessing of the Great Father God—’

‘To be true to the twentieth century, where we are now, shouldn’t that be Father-Mother God?’ Torr twinkled.

‘Yes!’ Georgina murmured, ‘and isn’t it wonderful that modern man has come to understand the balance of male-female energy in all things?’

Dropping her hands to the hem of her tee shirt, she pulled it, and her bra, over her head.

Savoring the hiss of Torr’s breath and the blaze of green fire in his eyes, she said, ‘Come bathe with me and I’ll tell you how the end was for me. Come let the sacred water take the pain and leave us with the joy—the love.’

Torr ripped off shirt and trousers, underpants and shoes and thrust his hand out to Georgina.

‘Let the water take the agony and leave us only the ecstasy,’ he murmured, eyes smoldering as her hands stilled at the waistband of her pants and her breathing stopped altogether.

‘What?’ he whispered, enchanted by the widening of her eyes and their loss of focus.

‘I’m remembering—the morning you stepped into the pool in Ist’s Grotto. I—my heart stopped then too. You are so—beautiful.’

‘I didn’t do much talking then, as I recall. And you’re making it hard now, Golden One. You’re making
me
hard!’

Oh, she was! Georgina dropped her eyes, stripped off trousers, undies and sandals, grabbed up two fluffy towels from a shelf by the wall and tossing one to Torr started out the door.

‘Not so fast,’ he growled. ‘
I
want to look at
you
! It’s been a very long time, Gina!’ He gripped her arm and swung her to face him before she could cover herself with the towel.

They stood, breath suspended, drinking their fill of each other, then he reached a finger to touch the birthmark just above her right breast.

‘Fran had a mark just like that! I told her it looked like a dragon. It—cemented the sense of recognition I felt with her. I now understand the sophism in that.’

His finger lingered for a moment, heated yet gentle on her skin then he turned his back and it was Georgina’s turn to gasp. Prancing across his right shoulder-blade was a scarlet and black, fire-breathing dragon about ten centimeters high.

‘I’ve been fixated on dragons all my life—just as I’ve been afraid of the sea, all my life. I finally understand why—and I think—believe— that phobia has gone.’

‘Good. If our ancestors originally came from the sea we should be comfortable there.’ Georgina traced the mythical beast with a wondering finger. ‘A Son and Daughter of the Dragon in the twentieth century AD.’

‘And no one would believe any of it!’ he muttered roughly, grabbing her hand and drawing her outside to the pool.

Stepping down into the water, they stopped simultaneously to stare at one another in wonder.

‘It’s warm!’ Georgina cried.

Torr leapt back out and ran across to dip his foot in the stream.

‘It’s warm too. Must come from a hot spring.’

‘All we need now is the Grotto over us!’

‘God! If we did there’d be no stopping me!’ Torr settled back onto a rock facing Georgina, and gripping her hands, said, ‘My strength of will is being severely tested here. Tell me what I need to know.’ He stopped, shook his head in bewilderment and continued more slowly. ‘I don’t actually know what it is I need to know, just that there’s a terrible question so awful I can’t even face it.—Wait! That’s it!’

Georgina drew back from the fierce anger that was suddenly blazing from his eyes, the same anger that had seared her when they’d first met in the airport.

‘What did you do with Ugo? That’s what’s been gnawing at my soul for millennia! You were not only leaving me to die on my own, you only had Electra with you. Where—was—my son?’

Georgina knew he’d forgotten who he was, where he was, now.

‘Torrens Montgomery, calm down!’ she ordered abruptly, deliberately using his full name. The trance glaze gradually faded from his eyes. A wary smile took its place.

‘For a moment it felt like I was back there,’ he admitted ruefully.

Georgina nodded and tugged him a little closer until their knees were touching.

‘I guess that’s going to happen—often. Do you remember threatening to kill any cili who talked of ‘seeing’ the destruction of Atlantis? Ordering them to silence?’

He nodded.

‘I was cili. Do you remember that last morning how I woke and couldn’t find your ring?’

‘God, yes! I knew then. We were all doomed. Atlantis was doomed.’

‘I couldn’t tell you of my dream—for you had ordered—but I dreamt of Ugo, grown to manhood, so handsome, so like you but with my golden hair. He was a king, but not in Atlantis. Somehow I knew it was in Khemu—Egypt. He was dressed in strange, rich, white robes and he held his hand out to show me the ring—on his little finger. No matter we ripped the apartments apart I knew we’d not find it. Don’t ask me to explain. I can’t. I just
knew
that somehow Ugo would grow to manhood in a far country, in a
future time—
and he would have the ring. In the Star Path Pyramid I took Merwin’s Crystal into my hands—and the Goddess spoke to me through it. She spoke of Ugo’s destiny—his Life path—and how I had to be strong enough to help him follow it. He would grow to manhood in a distant time and place—if only I could relinquish him to her care—and to—Pandumon of Khemu who was on a spiritual journey seeking a miracle to prove him worthy of being King. He could only take one child and I knew it had to be Ugo. I had to give him the possibility of the life I’d seen in the dream. I gave him Merwin’s Crystal and the Goddess wrapped him in a couple of sodden Nyaldan banners and—handed him to Pandumon.’

‘So Ugo lived?’

‘I believe so.’

Torr swallowed.

‘One can only imagine what his life must have been like.—Do you think, with the knowledge we now have, we might go—mind travelling to that time? Visit him?’

Tears welled in her eyes and Georgina took a moment to fight down the huge lump that blocked her throat. Wordlessly, she squeezed Torr’s hands and nodded.

When she had her emotions under control, she said, ‘I had another dream I wasn’t able to tell you about as well. It was of returning from Khemu on a loaker and not being able to find Atlantis. We’d been sailing so long we’d run out of supplies and were close to death from starvation. That’s what woke me. But I knew then I had to get back to Qurazil. It was all my fault for loving you too much. I’d sacrificed the whole nation to my selfishness. I really believed what Electra had prophesied. I would have left you
because
I loved you. In fact, I wasn’t leaving.—I couldn’t. I was trying to come back to you. Even in that I was too late.’

Their hands gripped convulsively then in a voice raw with emotion, he said, ‘Dogon always said it would make no difference where you were. He told me once he really thought the end was inevitable, that Electra’s prophecy merely showed the timing of it. I believed then that he was right. I still do.’

Georgina sat for a moment staring at their linked hands beneath the water, then raising her eyes to him with a deeply releasing exhalation, said, ‘I accept that now too. I ask your forgiveness for being unable to accept it then.’

Torr leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers.

‘I freely forgive you, Gina. I think I always understood your motivation. But—the reason my soul hung onto the anger was that—my ego just couldn’t accept that you would consider anything—
anyone—
above me.’ He smiled mistily at her. ‘But you didn’t, did you? You did it
for
me.’

‘I did,’ she whispered back, and with eyes dancing, added, ‘and your ego is still strong and healthy!’

Torr beetled his brows at her and then tossed his head back in a joyous laugh.

‘Where you are concerned, my Gina, you are not wrong! You can’t imagine how bloody ‘egotistical’ I felt when I walked into the kitchen that morning and found Gould kissing you. God! You confused the hell out of me.’

He sobered and fixed her gaze with his again.

‘I need you to forgive me also, Gina. My Atlantean self did things that appall my twenty-first century self. Forgive me for the times I ignored your needs—your rights—in the pursuit of my own selfish ends—or because I was too well-endowed with the DragonBlood temper and libido. Please say you forgive me.’

Georgina took his face between her hands and bestowed a slow, loving kiss on his mouth.

‘I, Georgina, forgive you. Gynevra never saw the need. You were so much more than she would have thought to expect from a DragonBlood oaf. She loved you just the way you were.’

Torr’s hands came up to cover her cheeks, and Georgina felt the love flowing from his heart to hers, from hers to his, and knew she would never be happier than at this moment.

‘I love you woman,’ he said gruffly. ‘Marry me—soon—please. You can’t say we haven’t known one another long enough. Eleven thousand years, give or take one or two, should be enough in anyone’s book! And there’s no damned prophecy standing in the way this time.’

Georgina closed her eyes, savored the caress of his thumbs along her cheekbones, and thought briefly of Gould and Fran; of being hounded by the media and the myriad other reasons she knew her craven mind could think up for why it was too soon for her and Torr to declare themselves to the world.

To her delight and amusement, Gynevra formed as clearly on her inner vision as if she indeed stood before her. A miniature golden-haired warrior clung to her sparkling golden gown, a taller dark-haired one floated in the ether somewhere beyond her right shoulder, and on her hip sat an emerald-eyed baby princess with a cap of curls like shiny black silk.

‘Don’t you dare turn back now, Soul of my Soul! These children are waiting—we are all waiting—to finish the life we were so cruelly denied. The life you were cruelly denied.’

The image of Cadal Isidor II, the Warrior King, formed behind her, his fierce visage framed in long black locks on which rested the golden, obsidian-horned crown of Nyalda; his gold-gauntleted fist gripping an iron broadsword whose tip rested on the ground by his foot. Raising his free hand to Gynevra’s shoulder, his stern, rock-like features transformed into a deeply sensual smile.

‘
Love after all, is all that matters,’
he declared.

The vision faded and Georgina opened her eyes to meet Torr’s anxious gaze.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘I will marry you—and the media can go hang! We
have
waited long enough.’

Their bodies segued into one another, as a magnet to iron, their mouths kissing and talking all at once until Torr surged to his feet, taking Georgina with him. As the water poured down their bodies, he asked, ‘How does the invocation go?’

Suddenly Georgina giggled, then realizing the memory totally inappropriate for the moment or the man, tried to school her features to severity.

‘What naughty thought did you just have, my love?’

‘Not really naughty—but not really appropriate either.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t make me tell you,’ she pleaded. ‘It will only make you angry.’

‘Me or Taur?’

Considering that thought for a moment, Georgina realized, she’d been thinking like Gynevra.

‘Taur.’

‘Then might we hope a few millennia of soul growth have improved my view of things?’

‘Mmm—maybe.’

Torr grinned.

‘It’s something to do with Gotham, isn’t it?’

Leaning her forehead against his wet chest, she said, ‘I couldn’t remember the invocation before Gotham and I joined for the first time and he just said, ‘Great Goddess Ist, Great God Asar, we are cleansed before you. So mote it be!—Then he dunked us both under the water and that was it!’

His silence and stillness made her lean back to look into his eyes to find him struggling with a strange mixture of jealousy and mirth! At last he growled, ‘Works for me!—Great Goddess Ist, Great God Asar, we are cleansed before you. So mote it be!’

He took her down into the water with him then surging straight back to his feet with his hands still gripping hers, said, ‘There’s a perfectly good bed in the house where I think it’s time we took this discussion. Altars and rocks are greatly over-rated in my opinion!’

‘You’ll get no argument from me on that!’ Georgina laughed as they stepped out of the stream, snatched up the towels and ran for the house.

Inside, with the bed suddenly right there before them, Georgina was assailed by a trembling self-awareness that had her clutching the towel to her breasts, while Torr tossed his on the floor. In some ways, she thought, he is
so-oo
Taur, which means I should be
so-oo
Gynevra.
She
had no thought of hiding behind a towel.