The Rings of Poseidon (29 page)

The wyvern retreated for a moment to the
overhanging rock and seemed to shrink a little. Then Gill saw
Stella materialise a bow from out of nowhere and aim an arrow at
Steve.

"Look out!" she yelled.

Steve glanced up in time and dived back
amongst the rocks. Then Gill had to duck down herself as an arrow
flew close by.

"Two can play at that game," she thought, and
imagined Steve with a bow. He leapt up and fired at Stella. Halfway
across the roughly open ground the arrow dematerialised. The woman
moved around a little to get a better shot at Gill who moved in
turn. Gill thought she too needed a bow.

"If both Steve and I can fire at the same
time her attention might be split," she thought. And then it struck
her. There were no limits but her imagination. "One of those
anti-tank rockets should do nicely."

Obedient to the picture in her mind, a
soldier-Steve found himself with a rocket, and fired.

The astral explosion was ... satisfactory. It
could not harm Stella physically but it certainly caught her by
surprise and blasted away the rocks. The wyvern saw her and, though
weakened, still raged.

It poured one more torrent of ill-will;
another withering blast of malice and hate that caught the woman
open and exposed. As flesh would be burnt from bones in a fairy
tale, so the blast stripped bare a soul, tore a personality apart,
burned up ambition, laid lust to rest and gored greed so that none
remained. That entire personality was ... nothingness.

"The mirror again," thought Gill and the
Perseus-Steve emerged again from the rocks holding a mirror. The
wyvern, weaker now, sent one more blast of hate towards the
approaching figure but the mirror was too much for it. The stream
of evil was reflected back, the wyvern shrank and shrivelled and at
length it was destroyed by nothing more nor less than its own
evil.

Gill walked from her hiding place towards the
cave, but Steve was already carrying towards her a wooden
chest.

"Here's what you came for," he said.

"Quickly, before all the evil on the astral
is aroused," answered Gill. "Put the box down here and then return
safely to your sleep."

Steve put the chest down, kissed her and
vanished. With an audible 'click' she returned to her physical
body.

Beside Gill's prone body there materialised a
wooden chest about two-feet-six by one-foot-six high by two feet
deep. It was heavy and Manjy needed Alan's help to lift it onto the
alter stone, while Gill scrambled to her feet. When Gill looked,
the chest was, perhaps surprisingly, not locked, but it was Alan
stopped her opening it.

"Later," he said. "Finish the ritual
first."

"That's good advice," said a deep rich voice,
and the older woman they had seen earlier seemed to solidify from
the dark blue mist around them. "The evil ones are gathering. All
the mindless creations of eons of ill will have a life of their
own. What you have been doing has attracted them. You had best
go."

Gill turned without turning and moved without
moving so that they passed back along the path of Lovers. The
lovers waved in a desultory greeting and the dark shadow settled on
the path behind them, blocking it completely to any who came
after.

Gill opened up a door and they entered the
flood ofgolden light, closing the door behind them. The throne was
empty as they went out by an opposite door, onto the path of
Temperance. No entity was to be seen as they walked towards the
purple glow. In the mist itself they heard a distant elephant
trumpeting, but saw nothing, so they took the final path. No figure
of any sort was to be seen there either. The great laurel wreath
was a gate through which they stepped to reality – or rather, what
passes as reality.

The sky was lightening and all three realised
that they must waste no time. Gill repeated the banishing ritual
with which the whole affair had started and then walked round the
inside of the circle of wool with the talisman, saying,

"Go. You are dismissed, but be ready to come
when you are called."

Neither Alan nor Manjy even wondered to whom
she spoke. Then she broke the wool and wound it up.

"Let's have a look inside the chest," said
Manjy.

"I'm itching to have a look myself," said
Gill.

Manjy undid the clasps and pushed back the
lid. Inside were six masks, hideous but beautifully made in
hammered and enamelled copper or bronze, inlaid with gold; five
wyvern's foot sacrificial knives - no doubt the ones from Alan's
story, and the five rings.

"What are we going to do with all this
stuff?" asked Manjy. "It's too heavy to carry far or fast and we
won't get it through customs at the airport."

"Let's leave the masks here. It will really
set the archaeologists working on this site a problem to solve and
the masks have no power of their own. We can manage the knives and
rings okay, so we can take those with us."

The knives and rings went into Gill's bag,
along with the jars of incense and the ash tray-burner. Alan
stuffed in the papers and the Tarot pack, whilst Manjy put the
masks carefully back into the chest, shut the lid and fastened the
clasps.

"Leave the chest right where it is," Gill
suggested and picked up the bag.

"I'd like to be around when it's found," said
Alan.

"You will be if we don't get a move on," Gill
answered, and the three began to retrace their steps to leave the
ruin, before the growing light of day made an unseen getaway
impossible.

* * *

In Salamanca Ian talked low and urgently with
Cornelius as they tried to cope with Stella. "It's like a bad trip
on drugs," said Ian.

"Almost."

"Did she say what she was doing on the
astral?" Ian asked. "Presumably she heard something."

Cornelius nodded.

"It must have concerned the rings. She must
have thought they were in danger somehow."

"She did."

Ian was frustrated by Cornelius's silences
and monosyllabic answers, though his English was clear and almost
unaccented and his understanding near perfect.

"We'll have to get to Boloña and find out for
ourselves what's going on," he said. "There's no time to waste.
We'll have to leave as soon as we've had breakfast. I'll wake
Julie."

Cornelius nodded.

* * *

On Hoy, Steve stirred and rubbed his eyes.
"What a crazy dream," he thought out loud but with no Gill to hear.
"Wait 'till I tell Gill. She'll probably think I'm going
potty."

He glanced at his watch and turned over. 'Ten
more minutes and I'll be up to start breakfast,' he thought.

* * *

"I don't think anyone saw us," said Alan as
they reached the car.

Manjy unlocked the doors and Gill scrambled
in the back. "You drive Alan," she said.

Alan headed the car back along the winding
side road towards the main highway. "Where to?" he asked.

"I don't know," answered Gill. "I feel too
drained to think straight yet."

"I'll go to Vejer de la Frontera," Alan
decided. I fancy going up the hill to take a better look at it, and
there's an advert on the main road for a good hotel. We can rest
there during the day, get up and have an evening out, then sleep
the night there."

"Sounds like a great idea," said Gill and
yawned. "Mind you," she added, "I could sleep anywhere."

"We can drive to Jerez tomorrow and spend the
night there. We don't have to fly back until the day after," he
continued.

"Sounds great," said Manjy.

The road up to Vejer de la Frontera from the
main road was very steep, it twisted and wound up the almost sheer
hillside like something from the Alps and it was none too wide but,
when Alan parked at the top, the view was stupendous. There was a
small car park and viewpoint rather like a seaside promenade.
Facing the 'promenade' were several shops and a
restaurant-cafe-bar. Above the viewpoint a narrow road led back and
up towards a church and a castle, which looked to be not so much a
ruin as part of the houses. From the viewpoint you could gaze out
across a land more hilly than around Medina Sidonia and gaze down
upon the steep sloping drop to a river and the main road below.

After a few moments looking at the view they
crossed the road to the cafe. Alan ordered coffee and churros for
them all, and they sat down.

"What's churros?" asked Gill, still
yawning.

"Sort of crisp fried pancaky things. The
Spanish often eat them for breakfast or a snack. You'll probably
like them. I like them dipped in chocolate."

"Sounds fattening," said Manjy.

"Indigestible as well, I should think," said
Alan, "but I still like them."

"Everything I like is either fattening,
immoral or illegal," remarked Gill. "The castle here looks
Moorish." she added, changing the subject entirely.

"This part of Andalusia is a mass of walled
towns on hills with a castle at the top like this one," Alan said,
"And the names: This is Vejer de la Frontera but it's Jerez de la
Frontera too. There’s Chiclana de la Frontera just down the road
and Arcos de la Frontera just beyond Medina.

The 'de la Frontera' bit refers to the
frontier between Moslem Spain and Christian Spain. There are
literally hundreds of place name like that, created by a frontier
that moved around for several hundred years."

"I remember that Charles Martel defeated the
Moslem attempt to spread into France," commented Manjy.

"True," agreed Alan. "That was somewhere in
the late ninth century. El Cid recaptured Toledo from the Moors in
1057 - that's nearly two hundred years later. Granada was the last
Moorish stronghold to fall, and that was not until 1492. The
re-conquest went on for centuries."

"These churros are really good," said Gill,
bringing them back to the here and now. "I didn't realise how
hungry I was."

Manjy was nibbling cautiously. "Mmn. Not bad
if you like fried cardboard," she said, "I think I'll try them
dipped in Chocolate." and she dunked hers in Alan' steaming glass.
For a time the talking gave way to eating and a second strong,
milky coffee.

As the waiter brought the second cups of
coffee he asked Manjy, "¿Es Española?".

She looked desperately at Alan. "He asked if
you're Spanish," he said.

Manjy did look rather Spanish with her long
black hair tied loosely back, her dark and quite Spanish eyes and
her jeans and T-shirt. Alan explained that no, she wasn't. She was
English and actually she didn't even speak Spanish. He didn't add
that Manjy was already bilingual, because the explanations involved
talking about minority ethnic communities in England and he didn't
feel quite up to doing that in Spanish.

The waiter said that she certainly ought to
be Spanish. He said, "Momentito!" - just a moment - and disappeared
behind the bar. He returned with a phrase book which, he explained,
some English tourist had left behind, and gave it to Manjy, who was
surprised and touched when Alan explained.

Alan took the opportunity to ask about the
hotel. The waiter told them it was just around the corner from
where they were at that moment. Manjy studied the phrase book, the
three finished their churros and their coffee, paid their bill and
left.

The hotel was a converted monastery and
seemed to retain some of the peace and calm of its former use. It
wasn't cheap, but it had rooms free and didn't mind at all their
wanting to sleep almost immediately - the concept of siesta was
well-established.

* * *

Driving around Spain you can take the toll
motorways and make fast progress if you're so minded and at one
point, entering Madrid from the north-west, the road is fourteen
lanes wide, where traffic crosses and merges. Ian was driving far
too fast. Stella still sat vacantly in the back of the car - alive
but mindless.

"I really think she should see a doctor,"
said Juliana. "She's eaten nothing for breakfast and nothing for
dinner. I think she's dying."

"She's had some kind of bad experience on the
astral, that's all," answered Ian. "We need to get to Boloña
quickly, then we can see to Stella. If she hasn't already snapped
out of it by then. Don't you agree Cornelius?"

Cornelius nodded.

"I'll just look out for a filling station
before we head on south," Ian added.

Chapter 24

Alicia eased herself out of the fourth house
and walked over to where Frank and his team were carefully
replacing the numbered roof stones of house number two.

"How's it going?" she asked.

Actually the question was largely rhetorical.
She could see that it was obviously going well because they'd
almost finished.

"What?" boomed a voice from the inside. "I
can't hear you down here."

"It's okay," yelled one of the volunteers,
"Alicia just asked how it was going."

Frank's head appeared in the chimney-hole.
Looking his usual cheerful self he replied, "Well we've done what
you can see, which is most of it, and what you can't see is the bit
still to do."

Alicia laughed. "Ask a stupid question," she
said.

"Seriously though," said Frank, "I think
we're going to be finished by lunch time and once everybody is
safely out you can begin to throw sand back on top and replace the
turf. The weather's not looking too good and it would be nice to
finish before it rains. Anyway, I'd like to see for real what it
was like in bad weather."

"Knowing British weather, I should think
you'll have plenty of chance!" said Alicia.

"How's number four going?"

"Iamie’s sieving every grain of sand."

"Early days yet."

"After all the finds in number three we don't
want to miss a thing. It does seem as if the people walked out of
the village with what they could carry and nothing more," Alicia
commented.