The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (18 page)

Merlin held a secret meeting in his tent that included the still confused Arthur and Joseph, and two others, Robin of Locksley and his close friend and battle companion, John. John was stocky but tall, and Robin often called him “little.” After a brief and initial objection, Merlin reluctantly agreed to have John join the meeting. It was before Merlin knew about John’s skill with a sword.

“I want you both to observe and say nothing while I revive my friends.”—neither Robin nor John quite understood Merlin’s meaning. The two sat at a comfortable distance away from Merlin while the two confused and bewildered friends of Merlin sat on a cot in front of him.

“What is this madness!” Arthur objected. “Why are we here? Who are you? Where are we?”

Merlin prepared a powder and drink and warmed it with a metal stick, reddened from the heat of the camp’s fire just outside of the tent. “Everything will be fine soon. Please sup on this,” Merlin assured the two confused men.

It was with great encouragement that both Joseph and Arthur finally agreed to drink from Merlin’s cup. Maybe they feared the tall and menacing Little John, or maybe it was the site of the bearded Robin, the man who carried a bag of sharp arrows around his neck. Whatever the reason, they were finally convinced, and they both drank of Merlin’s potent and most magical potion.

After they had downed the drink, the eyes of Joseph and Arthur were instantly opened to all of their previous memories. Their minds and thoughts returned to them as Merlin looked at them with great satisfaction. All was well again.

“You were taken prisoner and the others disappeared from our sight as we left our own time!”—as Merlin started to explain, their attention fell to John and Robin.

“Who is this man?”—Joseph looked at the archer and his sizable friend with a small degree of fear.

“This is Robin. His friend is John,” Merlin remarked, and then he began his tale.

Merlin explained that he had taken a potion made from the sardius and black onyx stones, just before Medraut forced his spell upon them, which allowed his memory to remain intact during the mystical transference. It was a transference that brought those that were in close vicinity to Medraut’s circle of magic into a different time and place. Merlin said that he had cloaked himself from the others, by the power of the stones, soon after the arrival of Robin. He fled, and then he sought out a plan to rescue them later.

“What is this witchery?”—Robin could take this no more without speaking.

“The
real
witchery has taken your love, Marian!” Merlin bellowed back. “We must all leave this place and begin searching for her. On the way, I will explain more!”—Merlin received little objection due to the curiosity of what would happen next and the urgency presented by the absence of a lady from the camp. Robin was more concerned about finding Marian than anything else.

“How do we search for Marian?” John asked, having remained silent to that moment.

“With this!”—Merlin retrieved a golden globe from a pocket in his robes that enshrouded his small frame. It radiated with a pulsing and glowing color on one of its sides that seemed to point the way to their adventure. It was a golden stone of prophecy!

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Are there any other horses missing?—King Richard questioned all of his advisors in addition to all of the grooms and servants, but no one knew where they were. No one had seen Merlin depart in the night, due to all of the festivities and distraction that had surrounded the castle. No one had seen both Robin and his friend John leave with him.

Richard believed that the disappearance of Merlin and the others, along with several prime horses, was the result of either an enemy that sought a high ransom or an act of treason. He had to know the reason for their departure, so he sent two armed guards to seek out their location and to report back to him their findings. He vowed to bring justice to all of those involved. If the action was trickery by his enemies, then he vowed revenge upon the act’s supporters. If the action was treason, then he vowed a swift death, even if it meant the death of his friend Robin of Locksley, a man who had fought with him in several battles, both in and out of Britain, and even as far as Palestine.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The fires from the fire pit burned brightly while the night sky was clear enough to add its set of lights from the heavens. The cauldron boiled a large caponized cockerel, obtained, or rather stolen, from a nearby farm. The meal was being made especially for a sick dweller. The sick one, confined in a canvas tent, had a condition that worsened every day. It was a condition that was complicated by malnutrition.

The sick one was a woman who was a former practitioner of sardius stone magic. She once had used spells of magic that her estranged husband would have put her to death for, had he only known the extent of her unnatural practice. The ancient practice of sardius stone magic and its power to prolong life introduced a life-threatening and highly contagious plague.

It was a plague that some believed was a punishment from the Living Spirit. It was a supposed punishment for using the forbidden and ancient stones. It was a plague of ancient origin, and it began when those with the stones stirred them in boiling water and drank its results.

Within a matter of days of contracting the disease, a sheet of blisters formed on the woman’s face, arms, legs, and trunk. Patches of black covered her white skin, and the whelps that covered her face crowded and pushed against each other in an ugly mesh, even as her skin began to show signs of cracking in small patches on her arms.

The attendant, a man, endeavored to feed the woman and care for her. The man wore a long black cloak and showed no signs of the plague in his body. He stirred the meat in the cauldron outside of her tent with the intention of feeding the soup later to her. He planned on being careful not to break the skin around her lips when he fed her. A companion of the woman had not survived the disease—he needed
this
woman to survive. It was not that he was caring, or kind, but rather that he saw her as just another tool in a devious and unknown plan, the details of which were kept secret in his bowels.

At a discreet distance from the camp, just to a point where the fire was a speckle, a man squatted behind the cover of tall weeds. He assessed his next move. It was Robin who had volunteered to be the lead scout of the group. His mission was to find Marian.

The plan was for Robin to observe the camp, while the others waited for his report. The scout’s clearly revealed objective was to report, and not to advance to the camp, or engage with anyone. However, Robin chose to ignore those instructions. He crawled through the grass in small but stealthy stages, closer and closer to the dark stranger and the lights of the camp.

The fire grew larger as Robin came closer, and the smell of the boiled chicken became intense. The man at the fire stopped his stirring as if he heard something in the forest. He stared into the woods and saw nothing, so he continued to stir the pot.

Robin decided that his better approach to his objective was to the rear of the camp. He saw two canvas tents behind the cauldron. Both of the tents displayed faint shadows inside them, shadows that formed ominously against the canvas of each tent. The shadows did not reveal what was truly inside. The shadows did not seem to be the shadows of a person standing.

Someone is lying down and not standing, Robin thought.

The man at the cauldron stopped the stirring, picked up a bowl, and filled it with soup. He walked to the tent, the one on the left side of the camp, and he stepped inside. The candlelight cast a shadow of his figure against the tent. Robin could see that the man knelt down. He could not discern what the man was doing. Perhaps he was eating, or maybe he was feeding someone, Robin thought. Robin decided to take his opportunity and go to the back of the tent on the right while the man was preoccupied and inside the tent on the left.

Just as Robin was about to get up from a prone position of cover in the tall grass, he felt the pressure of something against his neck. It was John. He held a quarterstaff against his neck. John squatted over him, straddled Robin’s chest with his legs, and pressed against the quiver of arrows on Robin’s back.

“You were due back sooner than now!”—John was curt, but playful in his words, savoring yet another triumphant victory in an old game of tag that they played out frequently.

John released him and lay beside him as they stared at the tents. Robin rubbed the back of his neck and glared at John, “I am going to go to the tent on the right. Stay here!” The reluctant John agreed as Robin headed toward the tent.

Robin stealthily walked while he partially squatted. He moved to the right side of the camp, to the back of the right tent. A mosquito suddenly bit John, and he only briefly turned away his attention to scratch his leg. Unfortunately, John failed to see the man in the first tent make his move from the tent on the left to the tent on the right.

Robin poked his head underneath the canvas to cautiously inspect the surroundings, but he was called promptly by the dark stranger.

“Come out! Show yourself!”—the man in the dark cloak and dark goatee gazed sharply at his intruder. Robin crawled into the tent, and he stood before the man.

“State your business!” the mysterious man demanded.

Besides the man and Robin, there was a cot inside the tent. There was a woman lying down on it, supine and obviously suffering. Her skin had black and white patches of whelps that covered her face. Her exposed arms poked out of a loosely placed blanket on top of her.

“I have another one in the other tent. You should not have come here! You are now exposed to the same sickness!”—the man did not smile as he spoke the fateful words. He noticed Robin looked intently on the woman. He noticed there was a slight expression of recognition on his face as he looked down on her. “Do you know her?” the man asked Robin.

The woman on the cot wore a necklace of gold. The chain was similar to the one that Robin wore. It was a chain made with a figure-eight loop-in-loop construction. Each link had a 90-degree twist in it. However, unlike Robin’s chain, this necklace had a ruby stone on it. Robin knew without a doubt that this was Marian’s necklace, but he did not recognize the woman to be Marian and failed to answer the man’s intrusive question.

“You are from the castle in Nottingham!”—the man turned from Robin and peeked out of the tent. “Where are the others? Is Arthur coming also? Speak man!”

“Yes! They are not far from here.”—Robin knelt and stared at the woman. He placed his bow and the quiver of arrows around his neck quietly on the ground.

“Robin!”—the woman offered a slightly raised arm and a broken and guttural utterance as Robin leaned in toward her.

“Marian? What happened?” Robin asked her.

“Leave her be! Let her rest!” the man said to Robin.

The woman collapsed with a groan of pain. Robin grabbed her hand, but there was no response. The woman fainted from the pain.

Robin felt the rage that swelled within him. With eyes that watered and squinted, he reached for a knife that was underneath his tunic’s belt. He stood up and threatened his enemy.

“What magic is this?”—Robin pointed and jabbed toward the man—coarsely encouraging an answer.

“No magic, but sickness…”—before the man could finish, Robin’s knife was at the man’s throat. Robin grabbed him and spun him around. He held the man’s right arm behind his back, to increase the submission.

“Which...
can
be cured!” the man suddenly exclaimed to Robin.

The man’s brows rose as if he hoped this would halt his beheading. The man was angry that a swift move had the better of him. Robin released his hold, spun the man around, but still held the knife again in front of the man.

“What do you mean?”—Robin’s skeptical knife wavered with unspent adrenaline.

“This woman, this Marian, is sick unto death—to be sure—but I can cure her! There is another woman in the tent beside us, equally sick. There was a third one that I could not save, but I can cure
these
women They need not suffer!” he insisted to Robin.

“Then be quick, and do so!”—Robin then thought he saw a glint of redness in the stranger’s eyes.

“Of course, my good man, but first…” the man paused. With a wave of the man’s right forefinger, Robin’s knife instantly flew out of his hand and out of the tent and left a small tear in the canvas. Robin’s expression broadened as he looked at the hole where the knife had fled from the tent. The knife had left his hand by some evil magic.

“First, we deal with your partner outside, shall we?”—the man opened the flaps. John was running to the tent but stopped with a jolt of surprise.

“Go tell Arthur to come here! Go, or I shall kill this man before your eyes!” the man told John.

John looked at the visible face of Robin in the tent who nodded in approval. Then John raised his quarterstaff, and he ran away from the camp, back to Arthur and the others.

“Why do you seek Arthur? What is the payment for this healing?”—Robin looked back at his Marian with a look of despondency and foreboding.

“I have unfinished business with Arthur,” the man admitted. “He has something that belongs to me.” Robin sat down beside Marian.