Crystal Warrior: Through All Eternity (Atlantean Crystal Saga Book 1) (4 page)

A long time ago in another place, another time I knew you both. Even then I took her first, but it was you I loved, Golden One.

Georgina felt her eyes widen, felt panic grip her heart. For just a moment those green eyes glowed with an anger that seemed—ancient. Then the glow faded to be replaced by something she could only call disconcertion. His eyelids drooped and the connection snapped. She felt it as a physical severance, as if in one moment a fine electrical wire had joined them and in the next it had been cut clean through.

‘I'll go and serve dinner,’ she said, edging away.

Running. Always you run from me.

Voices in her head? Or was Torr Montgomery playing some sort of cruel mind game with her? What the hell was going on?

With Merryn's help the food was quickly arranged on the irregularly shaped swamp kauri table in large pottery serving dishes. Gould lit the candles in the silver candelabra in the center of the table and in the two matching bronze floor stands in the corners of the room. With the fairy lights switched on in the patio garden beyond the glass doors the dining room, three steps down from the lounge, assumed the ambience of a magical cave.

‘George, where did you get this table?’ Fran asked, her voice almost breathless with wonder, her fingers caressing the glass-smooth resin surface. ‘That rose looks real!’

‘It is,’ Georgina said quietly, standing for a moment in contemplation of the perfect yellow rose suspended in the clear resin filling a natural hole near the center of the slab. ‘A guy up at Kerikeri makes them to order. I love the natural shape. He puts all sorts of things into them. I just wanted a yellow rose.’

‘Why a yellow rose?’

Trust Fran to know it was important. Fortunately she'd long ago worked out her answer, for almost everyone asked that question.

‘It's vibrant and cheerful. Yellow roses are just that little bit rarer than red or pink and I'm not a red or pink person.’

Fran cocked her head on one side and peered at her sister across the table, then she pulled out her chair and said with a laugh, ‘And ain't that the truth! Yellow roses are definitely you. Me? The redder the better.’

In the general laughter that followed Georgina heard the voice in her head again.

In the language of flowers a yellow rose speaks of infidelity or secrets. What's your secret, Golden One?

Fire scorched her cheeks. Georgina jerked her head up and found Torr's eyes, viridescent in the candlelight, fixed on her. She hadn't known that. How had he?

From the gardener at the Dower House.

He hadn't spoken because Gould was now explaining to the group at large about some of the things they'd seen embedded in other tables from the same craftsman. Fire burned low in her belly now. Was it anger or desire? She no longer knew and it no longer mattered. Either was unacceptable towards Torr Montgomery. He was her sister's fiancé.

Keep out of my head.

Consciously projecting the thought, she looked directly at him and was surprised to see him shake his head as if something were bothering him and he was trying to dislodge it. Could he be as disconcerted as she was? Turning abruptly to Merryn who had Jordie in his car-seat, she pulled up an armchair so the baby could sit at the table with them. Fran's homecoming was supposed to be a gala family occasion but it was rapidly becoming a nightmare.

It was gone eleven and Merryn and Case and her mother had left. Gould and Fran had hardly stopped talking since they'd met, with Torr filling the gaps with laconic observations. Occasionally Fran had prodded him into sharing some of the more remarkable adventures he'd had and she'd even managed the odd question or hopefully intelligent comment herself.

They were all sprawled now on sun-loungers in the semi-dark of the patio conservatory overlooking the lake. It was a magical spot at night with streetlights reflected across the water and the moon and stars shining above. It should also have been relaxing.

But tonight, Georgina had the strangest feeling of sitting on the edge of her seat in a theatre, waiting for the climax of a suspense movie. The worst of it was feeling that she, who hated suspense movies, was somehow central to the outcome of the plot. A tense energy had hummed through her all evening and she'd sensed it at odd times in each of the other three.

Gould had seemed to find it more than usually necessary to stake his claim to her by caressing her back or her arm, or by twining his fingers intimately in hers. Or, as now, by fiddling with the arrangement of her hair, which he knew she didn't like and then giving her that boyish, unrepentant grin which she could rarely resist. Tonight though, it annoyed her and she felt irrationally like slapping his hand away. Especially when he continued to loosen her hair from its clip while turning that same, guileless blue-eyed smile on Fran. He knew she hated it loose, had only agreed to grow it long for his pleasure with the understanding that pleasure was confined to their bedroom.

While avidly questioning Fran on her experiences of the wonders and dangers of the Peruvian jungle, which was on his `books-to-write' list, he'd removed the clip and was starting on the elastic band that was now all that confined the mass of her hair. Impatiently she jerked her head away from him and felt Torr Montgomery's eyes fixed on her. Darkly shadowed against the dim light of the distant street lamps, she was nevertheless intensely aware of his scrutiny.

Such beautiful hair should never be confined.

Sweeping a startled glance over the others to see if they'd heard the words, Georgina dropped her eyes to where her fingers played restlessly with the bow-clip Gould had dropped into her lap. It was crazy to think she was picking up Torr's thoughts yet she'd heard the words quite clearly in her mind.

Easing out of Gould's embrace, she let Katja outside then gathered up the empty coffee cups and wine bottle. Escaping into the kitchen she loaded the dishwasher, started it on its cycle and began wiping the work surfaces. She needed to think and the best place for that was the pyramid pit.

When Case offered to design a house for her, she'd almost laughed. Casey Valois was a one-time painter and paperhanger turned master healer in the modalities of the ancient East. He was heavily tattooed with a bull rampant on his back and dragons and other mythical beasts on chest, arms and legs. Habitually garbed in denim or black leather, he rode a gleaming Harley Davidson as if born to it. He and Merryn ran a `Crystal & New Age' shop in Mt Eden Road and operated an alternative healing practice from rooms at the back of the shop.

Their home, a colonial villa nestled among trees at the foot of Mt Eden, one of Auckland's extinct volcanic cones, had a mystical ambience created by Case's flare with the stones. None of which gave him any of the skills necessary for designing a house. Georgina had nevertheless agreed to let him try. He'd suggested they consult architectural magazines so she could show him what styles attracted her.

Georgina had demurred.

‘No time for that. I like stone, natural wood, and lots of windows. Mediterranean style maybe.’

He'd said nothing of the plans for weeks until one night they'd insisted she come round for dinner. Until that point the project had really only been something to toy with in her few quiet moments because Merryn had suggested perhaps she should use her share of her inheritance from their father to build her own house so she could move from the place she'd shared with Alan. When Case placed his drawings before her after the meal, she'd been forced to regard her brother-in-law with much greater respect.

She'd been enchanted. There was no other word to describe the way the house had affected her from the moment she'd seen the drawings. Enchanted, and impatient for the moment she could start living in a place that spoke to something in her soul. She would've scoffed at the suggestion any part of her leant toward the mystical or spiritual but she'd allowed Merryn to demonstrate the relaxing effects of the pyramid in her meditation room once. When she found Case had incorporated one in the conservatory-style step-down relaxation pit set off the corner of the kitchen/breakfast area, she'd been intrigued enough by the innovation not to change it.

It had become the heart of her house. Sometimes when she sat in it, she fancied she could sense it beating. Usually, when she reached that stage in her relaxation she decided it was time to move. Flights of psychic fancy weren't for her.

Like the rest of her home, the kitchen was a showcase to twentieth century technology and convenience. The room was square, but set diagonally into the center of the house, with the glass enclosed step-down pit in its northern corner like a solitaire diamond in a ring. Case had wanted to suspend a large piece of quartz crystal from the apex of the wood and glass pyramid but she'd resisted that idea.

Putting out the light and leaving her shoes in the kitchen, Georgina crossed the breakfast area, slipped the new relaxation CD Case had brought for her to try, into the stereo, and stepped down into the lounge-pit beneath the pyramid. Sinking onto the soft sheepskin-covered banquette she stretched her arms along the top, rested her head back, closed her eyes and let the floating strains of music enclose her.

Case often brought her music to `try out' on her state of the art system. He talked of finding the inner self in the meditative state. Georgina wasn't sure she'd like who she was inside and there was no choice about continuing to live with who she was. Yet she always enjoyed the way Case's music made her feel. As usual, he knew what she needed better than she did herself.

If she hadn't been so aware of Torr Montgomery in the house she'd have indulged in another soak in the spa and played the CD over the intercom. But the pyramid pit offered a safer haven. The music flowed about her and for several long moments she reveled in the luxury of total relaxation.

Yet even here was she betrayed—but the majesty of what was playing on the screen of her inner sight held her spellbound. Herself, at least a strangely sensual approximation of herself, draped in a cobwebby gown dusted with gold, ran upwards on a silver-misted road among the stars. Her hair flowed out behind her, shimmering like burnished copper thread in the ethereal light. All about was a soft pink glow and as she ran with arms out-stretched towards a leather-clad warrior on a huge white war-horse with tail and mane of rippling gold, the glow intensified to a fiery glare.

On the warrior's head was a gold horned helmet. At his side hung a massive iron broadsword. High above him flew a double pennant featuring a rampant, golden bull on black beneath a golden dragon with glittering diamond fangs breathing orange fire across a scarlet background.

Taur. The warrior's name was Taur. She loved him and there was so much more she knew as she ran with arms reaching upwards, joy filling her heart. But as the distance between them lessened the light flared even brighter, harsher and the dark angles of his face blazed into focus. Teeth bared in anger, eyes flashing green and hot as the dragon's fiery breath, he shouted her name with a terrible ferocity.

`Gynevra!'

In an instant she was floating far above him. With a cataclysmic roar, the brave pennant was devoured by the inferno of the dragon's breath and all the waters of the earth rose in a soaring tower to engulf the warrior and his horse.

She was alone, lost in the heavens with no way back to the misty silver path.

Taur. Ta-au-ur!

After Georgina left the patio conservatory, Torr found it impossible to keep his mind on the discussion of the antiquities of Peru, which had engrossed Fran and Gould ever since dinner. Excusing himself to the other two who, to his bemusement scarcely glanced up at his going, he wandered into the lounge and stood contemplating the wall of books hoping for some clue to Georgina Hackville. Barrington's books along with Fran's two novels shared one shelf with an exquisite ceramic wolf. On other shelves he recognized many best-selling fiction titles along with an amazing collection of photographic travel books, a full set of Tolkien's works, reference books on many topics from family medicine to plant lore and even one on how to build a waterwheel to generate electricity.

An eclectic collection of fantasy and sci-fi novels vied for space with an ancient copy of Plato and a great variety of dictionaries, atlases and encyclopedias. It was the sort of generic collection one would find in many people's homes and he had no idea which books were Georgina's or which were Gould's though he figured the beautiful ceramic wolf figurines set here and there to break up the wide wall of books had to be Georgina's touch. Katja on a dark night in the forest could easily be mistaken for a wolf.

He felt compelled to know more about this woman who, like a dulled copper penny, hid intense personal beauty behind asexual business suits and an unimaginative hairstyle. A woman whose home had a fantasy foyer to flay the breath from his lungs and whose essence spoke to his on levels he'd never experienced before and didn't understand. He wanted confirmation she was hearing his thoughts in her head, as he was hers. He wanted to know where the damn thoughts were coming from in the first place because they sure as hell weren't his! He only had to catch her eye and it was as if a tape recorder had been switched on in his mind and the words would roll; words so incredible they couldn't be his.

Restlessly he wandered across the room to stare out into a small side garden lit only by a concealed ground light and as if conjured from his earlier thoughts, Katja padded through the shrubs and up onto the step. He opened the sliding door and the dog sank to her haunches by his feet, looking up at him with an intent and knowing look.