Dark Visions (42 page)

The building was a barn, and there was a woman inside. She was forking hay and dung, handling the big pitchfork very capably for someone as small and light as she was. When she saw Kaitlyn she stopped and looked without saying a word.

Kaitlyn stared at her, drymouthed. Then Rob spoke up.

"We're here," he said simply.

The woman was still looking at each of them. She was tiny and elegant, and Kait couldn't tell if she were Egyptian or Asian. Her eyes were tilted but blue, her skin was the color of coffee with cream. Her black hair was done in some complicated fashion, with silver ornaments.

Suddenly she smiled.

"Of course!" she said. "We've been expecting you. But I thought there were only five."

"We, uh, sort of picked up Lydia on the way," Rob said. "She's our friend, and we can vouch for her.

But you do know us, ma'am?"

"Of course, of course!" She had an almost indefinable accent—not like the Canadians Kaitlyn had heard. "You're the children we've been calling to. And I'm Mereniang. Meren if that's too long. And you must come inside and meet the others."

Relief sifted through Kaitlyn. Everything was going to be all right. Their search was over.

"Yes, you must all come inside," Mereniang was saying, dusting off her hands. Then she looked at Gabriel. "Except him."

Mereniang turned. Her face was still pleasant, but Kait suddenly realized it was also remote. And her eyes…

Kaitlyn had seen eyes like that only once before, when the man with the caramel-colored skin had stopped her in the airport. When she'd looked into his eyes, she'd had the sense of centuries passing.

Millennia. So many years that the very attempt to comprehend them sent her reeling.

There were ice ages in this woman's eyes, too.

Kaitlyn heard her own gasp. "Who
are
you?" she blurted before she could stop herself.

The enigmatic blue eyes dropped, veiled by heavy lashes. "I told you. Mereniang." Then the eyes lifted again, held steady. "One of the Fellowship," the woman said. "And we don't have many rules here, but this one can't be broken. No one may come into the house who has taken a human life."

She looked at Gabriel and added, "I'm sorry."

A wave of pure fury swept over Kait. She could feel herself flushing. But Rob spoke before she could, and he was as angry as she'd ever seen him.

"You can't do that!" he said. "Gabriel hasn't—what if it was self-defense?" he demanded incoherently.

"I'm sorry," Mereniang said again. "I can't change the rules. Aspect forbids it." She seemed regretful but composed, perfectly willing to stand here all evening and debate the issue. Relaxed but unbending, Kait thought dazedly. Absolutely unbending.

"Who's Aspect?" Lewis demanded.

"Not who. What. Aspect is our philosophy, and it doesn't make exceptions for accidental killing."

"But you can't just shut him out," Rob stormed. "You
can't
."

"He'll be taken care of. There's a cabin beyond the gardens where he can stay. It's just that he can't enter the house."

The web was singing with outrage. Rob said flatly, "Then we can't enter it, either. We're not going without him!"

There was absolute conviction in his voice. And it rallied Kaitlyn out of her speechless daze. "He's right,"

she said. "We're not."

"He's one of us," Anna said.

"And it's a stupid rule!" Lewis added.

They were all standing shoulder to shoulder, united in their determination. All but Lydia, who stood aside looking uncertain—and Gabriel.

Gabriel had moved back, away from them. He was wearing the thin, faint smile he'd given Rob earlier.

"Go on," he said directly to Rob. "You have to."

"No, we don't." Rob was right in front of him now. Golden in the blue twilight, contrasting with Gabriel's pale face and dark hair. Sun and black hole, Kaitlyn thought. Eternal opposites. Only this time they were fighting
for
each other.

"Yes, you do," Gabriel said. "Go in there and find out what's going on. I'll wait. I don't care."

A lie Kait could feel clearly in the web. But no one mentioned it. Mereniang was still waiting with the patience of someone to whom minutes were nothing.

Slowly Rob let out his breath. "All right," he said at last. His voice was grim and the look he turned on Mereniang not friendly.

"Wait here," Mereniang told Gabriel. "Someone will come for you." She began walking toward the house.

Kaitlyn followed, but her legs felt heavy and she looked back twice. Gabriel looked almost small standing there by himself in the gathering darkness.

The white house was made of stone, and spacious inside, with a cathedral hush about it. The floor was stone, too. It might have been a temple.

But the furniture, what Kaitlyn could see of it, was simple. There were carved wooden benches and chairs that looked Colonial. She glimpsed a loom in one of the many recessed chambers.

"How old is this place?" she asked Mereniang.

"Old. And it's built on the remnants of an older house. But we'll talk about that later. Right now you're all tired and hungry—come in here and I'll bring you something to eat."

She ushered them into a room with an enormous fireplace and a long cedar table. Kaitlyn sat on a bench, feeling flustered, resentful, and
wrong
.

She went on feeling it as Mereniang returned, balancing a heavy wooden tray. A young girl was behind her, also carrying a tray.

"Tamsin," Mereniang introduced her. The girl was very pretty, with clusters of curly yellow hair and the profile of a Grecian maiden. Like Mereniang and the man at the airport, she seemed to have the characteristics of several different races, harmoniously blended.

But they're not what I expected
, Kaitlyn told Rob wretchedly.

It wasn't that they weren't magical enough. They were almost
too
magical, despite their simple furniture and ordinary ways. There was something alien at the core of them, something disturbing about the way they stood and watched. Even the young girl, Tamsin, seemed older than the giant trees outside.

The food was good, though. Bread like the loaves they'd bought at the kiosk, fresh and nutty. Some soft, pale yellow cheese. A salad that seemed to be made of more wild plants than lettuce—flowers and what looked like weeds. But delicious. Some flat purply-brown things that looked like fruit roll-ups.

"They
are
fruit roll-ups," Anna said when Lewis asked. "They're made of salal berries and salmonberries."

There was no meat, not even fish.

"If you're finished, you can come meet the others," Mereniang said.

Kaitlyn bridled slightly. "What about Gabriel?"

"I've had someone take food to him."

"No, I mean, doesn't
he
get to meet the others? Or do you have a rule against that, too?"

Mereniang sighed. She clasped her small, square-fingered hands together. Then she put them on her hips.

"I'll do what I can," she said. "Tamsin, take them out to the rose garden. It's the only place warm enough. I'll be along."

The rose garden's warm
? Lewis asked as they followed Tamsin outside.

Strangely enough, it was. There were roses blooming, too, all colors, crimson and golden-orange and blush pink. The light and warmth seemed to come from the fountain in the center of the walled garden.

No, not the fountain, Kaitlyn thought. The crystal in the fountain. When she'd first seen it in a picture, she hadn't known what it was; she'd wondered if it was an ice sculpture or a column.

It wasn't like Mr. Z's crystal. That monstrosity had been covered with obscene growths, smaller crystals that sprouted like parasites from the main body. This crystal was clean and pure, all straight lines and perfect facets.

And it was glowing gently. Pulsing with a soft, milky light that warmed the air around it.

"Energy," Rob said, holding a hand up to feel it. "It's got a bioenergetic field."

Kaitlyn felt a ripple in the web and was turning even as Gabriel said, "Beats a campfire."

"You're here!" Rob said. They all gathered around him happily. Even Lydia was smiling.

At the same moment Mereniang came through the other entrance in the wall with a group of people.

"This is Timon," she said. The man who stepped forward actually looked old. He was tall but frail and white-haired. His lined face was gentle, the skin almost transparent.

Is he the leader
? Kaitlyn asked silently.

"I am a poet and historian," Timon said. "But as the oldest member of the colony, I am sometimes forced to make decisions." He gave a gently ironic smile.

Kaitlyn stared at him, her heartbeat quickening. Had he
heard
that?

"And this is LeShan."

"We've already met," Gabriel said and showed his teeth.

It was the caramel-skinned man from the airport. His hair was a pale shimmery brown, like silver birch.

His eyes were slanting and very dark, and they flashed at Gabriel dangerously.

"I remember," he said. "The last time I saw you, you had a knife at my throat."

"And you were on top of Kaitlyn," Gabriel said, causing some consternation among the rest of the Fellowship.

"I was trying to warn you!" LeShan snapped, moving forward.

Mereniang was frowning. "LeShan," she said. LeShan went on glaring. "LeShan, Aspect!"

LeShan subsided, stepping back.

If Aspect was a nonviolent philosophy, Kait had the feeling that LeShan had a little trouble with it. She remembered that he'd had a temper.

"Now," Timon said. "Sit down if you'd like. We'll try to answer your questions."

Kaitlyn sat on one of the cool stone benches that lined the wall. She had so many questions she didn't know which to ask first. In the silence she could hear the singing of frogs and the gentle trickle of water in the fountain. The air was heady with the scent of roses. The pale, milky light of the crystal gave a gentle radiance to Timon's thin hair and Mereniang's lovely face.

No one else was speaking. Lewis nudged her.
Go on
.

"Who are you people?" Kait asked finally.

Timon smiled. "The last survivors of an ancient race. The people of the crystal."

"That's what I heard," Lydia said. "I've heard people use that name, but I don't know what it
means
."

"Our civilization used crystals for generating and focusing energy. Not just any crystals—they had to be perfectly pure and faceted in a certain way. We called them great crystals or firestones. They were used as power stations; we extracted energy from them the way you extract the energy of heat from coal."

"Is that possible?" Rob said.

"For us it was. But we were a nation of psychics; our society was based on psychic power." Timon nodded toward the crystal in the fountain. "
That
is the last perfect crystal, and we use it to generate the energy to sustain this place. Without it, we would be helpless. You see, the crystals do more than just supply technical power. They sustain
us
. In the old country they could rejuvenate us; here they merely stop the ravages of time."

Is that why so many of them have young faces and old eyes? Kaitlyn wondered. But Lewis was speaking up.

"There's nothing like that in history books," he said. "Nothing about a country that used crystals for power."

"I'm afraid it was before what you consider history," Timon said. "I promise you, the civilization did exist.

Plato spoke of it, although he was only repeating stories
he'd
heard. A land where the fairest and noblest race of people lived. Their country was formed of alternating rings of land and water, and their city was surrounded by three walls. They dug up a metal called
orichalcum
, which was as precious as gold and shone with a red light, and they used it to decorate the inner wall."

Kaitlyn was gasping. For as Timon spoke, she
saw
what he described. Images were flooding into her mind, as they had when Joyce had pressed a tiny shard of crystal to her third eye. She saw a city with three circular walls, one of brass, one of tin, and one which glowed red-gold. The city itself was barbaric in its splendor—buildings were coated with silver, their pinnacles with gold.

"They had everything," Timon said in his gentle voice. "Plants of every type; herb, root, and leaf. Hot springs and mineral baths. Excellent soil for growing things. Aqueducts, gardens, temples, docks, libraries, places of learning."

Kaitlyn saw it all. Groves of beautiful trees intermingled with the beautiful buildings. And people living among them without racial strife, in harmony.

"But what
happened
?" she said. "Where did it all go?"

LeShan answered. "They lost respect for the earth. They took and took, without giving anything back."

"They destroyed the environment?" Anna asked.

"It wasn't quite as simple as that," Timon said softly. "In the final days there was a rift between the people who used their powers for good and those who had chosen the service of evil. You see, the crystals could just as easily work evil as good, they could be turned to torture and destruction. A number of people joined the Dark Lodge and began to use them this way."

"And meanwhile the 'good' psychic masters were demanding too much of their own crystals," LeShan put in. "They were greedy. When the energy broadcast from the crystals was tuned too high, it caused an artificial imbalance. It caused earthquakes first, then floods."

"And so the land was destroyed," Timon said sadly. "Most of the people died with it. But a few clairvoyants escaped—they'd been able to predict what was going to happen. Some of them went to Egypt, some to Peru. And some"—he lifted his head and looked at Kait's group—"to Northern America."