The Rings of Poseidon (28 page)

They towelled themselves dry, rubbed on more
sunscreen and lay down to sunbathe a while.

"I want to walk back a little way on that
road and study the lie of the land," said Gill.

"All right," said Manjy, "Let's all go soon.
We have quite a few hours to kill. Do you think we ought to book in
at that hotel you saw?"

"I don't know," answered Gill doubtfully. "We
might have trouble sneaking out again to visit the ruins. Then, if
we're successful we could be carrying things to which we wouldn't
want to draw attention. We don't want anyone asking awkward
questions, do we?

Manjy saw the point. "Yes," she said, "I can
see that. Perhaps we should just sleep in the car tonight.

"It's around six already," said Gill. "If we
look over the route into the ruin, then top up the tank at the
filling station on the main road and have a meal somewhere it will
be nine or later. There won't be a lot of time to do more than have
a nap before we go into action."

They agreed to roughly Gill's plan for the
evening.

* * *

The Sierra swung into the main square at
Salamanca and stopped in front of an elegant and expensive hotel.
Juliana was feeling a little off colour, Ian had been driving again
and Cornelius was as silent as he usually was. Stella had the same
air of aloof and ruthless authority she had already shown.

"I don't care about getting any further for
now," said Stella. "We have no reason to suppose that those people
from the dig have got the time, money or inclination to come to
Spain for the rings and the other things. They probably don't even
know there's anything else to recover.

"Why you two couldn't have grabbed his
briefcase before you ran off I can't think," she added, not for the
first time. "As it is we'll have to go to all the trouble of
recovering his belongings. Not to mention the ring. And the
talisman."

"It was the talisman that caught us off
guard," said Juliana.

"That's no excuse," Stella answered
impatiently.

"It caught the Professor off guard as well,"
objected Ian.

"He'd grown too old," answered Stella, "If we
can recover the remaining ring and the talisman we can establish
the new order without waiting for him."

"He wouldn't like that," protested Juliana. "
And I shouldn't be surprised if he's left some sort of guardian
lurking with the rings."

"He doesn't scare me," sneered Stella, "He
can't invent a Guardian I couldn't handle," and she led the way
into the hotel.

* * *

The grass was rough and the ground uneven,
but there were no actual obstacles until they came to the fence.
There would be almost no moon tonight, just the last of the waning
moon very late and close to dawn. There was some light from the
stars but, although Manjy was carrying a torch, they had decided to
forgo any light except in emergency and it was dark.

Alan stepped through the fence between the
top and middle wire and held the wire up for Manjy and Gill.

"Thanks," whispered Gill as she stepped
through.

"Now, look out for the city walls," whispered
Alan, "They're less than a metre high here and no more than about
two metres from the fence."

"Ouch," muttered Manjy. "I've found
them."

"Okay," Alan told her. "I've found them too.
Now get down from the wall and walk very carefully to the edge of
the first building - about ten or twelve feet more - and jump down
two foot six to the pavement. You'll fall if you miss it."

The three of them felt their way to the edge
of the pavement and jumped down safely, Gill's bag making a slight
'clinking' noise as she landed.

"Okay. Now about twenty feet to the platform
of the temple, two steps up to the base and another six or so steps
from the base to the ruins of the temple itself," whispered
Alan.

In the middle of the ruin was a stone block,
which may or may not have been an altar - probably it was only a
part of the collapsed roof - but at any rate a handy focal point
and one whose long sides faced roughly north-south.

Gill put her bag on the floor and placed on
the stone the plain dagger they had bought in Medina Sidonia, an
ash tray they had 'borrowed' from the hotel there to use as a
makeshift incense burner, the roll of charcoal blocks from the
professor's briefcase and the four different jars of incense from
the same source, along with the tarot cards and the papers. To them
she added Manjy's torch and, from her own pockets, a long length of
wool wound into a small ball and some matches.

"I hope that's everything," she said softly,
taking the talisman from her pocket and putting it round her neck.
"I feel as if I should be wearing a robe or something," she
whispered, "but I'll have to make do with sweater and jeans."

"I thought witches danced around naked,"
Manjy whispered back.

"It's warm, but not warm enough for prancing
about in the altogether," she answered. "Anyway, we're not witches.
Well, not in the medieval sense anyway and this is essentially a
medieval ritual." She swallowed hard, braced herself, whispered,
"All right, let's begin," and lit the charcoal in the ashtray.

Alan and Manjy watched Gill as she first
unwound the wool in a rough circle of about five metres diameter
around them and then tied the ends of the wool. She sprinkled a
little incense from the first jar onto the glowing charcoal before
taking the dagger to the eastern edge of the circle.

Facing the east, she drew a pentagram - a
five point star drawn with a continuous line - in the air with the
dagger and pointed the dagger at the centre, where she whispered
something, too quietly for Alan and Manjy to make it out. The three
of them 'saw' the pentagram flickering blue - not a physical light:
real, but not quite of this consciousness.

Gill dragged the knife through the still air
to the south of the circle and drew a similar pentagram there.
Again she whispered something and again the three imagined they
could see it.

As Gill went to the west of the circle and
again drew a pentagram in the air, they thought they could see the
wool itself glowing where she had traced with the knife. Next she
went to the north and repeated the action there and then completed
the circle by returning to the east before returning to her
'altar'. She put down the knife and raised her hands in a 'V'.

"Around us flame the pentagrams and circle:
Now that we are protected we seek the assistance of the powers and
guardians of the paths of the inner self that we will tread." It
seemed that the air glowed more than ever.

Hands still raised, Gill faced her stone. As
she stood Manjy and Alan saw - with their minds rather than their
eyes, but genuinely and involuntarily - the figure of a naked woman
inside a great laurel wreath; an image from the last of the tarot
trumps. The figure seemed to beckon, Gill lowered her arms and they
passed through the wreath, the gateway to the path, and everything
appeared as if bathed in a flood of violet light throwing the ruins
into a brilliance seen only in the mind. Gill sprinkled incense
from the second jar onto the charcoal and the air was filled with a
sharp, cutting smell and their minds seemed more conscious of other
realities while physical reality ebbed. There seemed no incongruity
when an elephant trumpeted from the purple haze, stopped to gaze at
them, flicked its mighty ears and then stomped away into the
mist.

There appeared to be three paths before them.
Gill took the middle path and the violet light faded. Beside the
path there was a pool at which the image of temperance - a tall
woman in grey robes, filling a chalice from a pitcher - established
itself from surrounding uncertainty. They seemed to pause long
enough to drink a sip of cold water offered to them before they
passed on into a glowing yellow light. Gill again sprinkled incense
on the charcoal and the air became heavy with a rich and opulent
scent. A room began to emerge from their collective imagination.
Manjy dimly realised that the collective experience, which would
normally be obtained only in a lifetime of study and visualisation,
was the result of drawing upon many lifetimes.

The room had six doors, including the one
behind them by which they had entered, and the three became aware
of a king seated on a golden throne, at the centre of the room. He
pointed to the door just left of straight ahead. Gill took the door
he indicated and led them onto the path. The yellow glow was left
behind. This time there were three guardians of the path: a man and
woman - the lovers of the tarot pack - and a shadowy figure looming
behind them. The two people broke their absorption in each other
long enough to welcome them as three passing travellers.

Thus it was they arrived at Binah. The air
was a sombre dark blue and, except that it seemed to shut out the
stars, it appeared much like the reality around the ruin. An older
woman materialised in the mist, nodded in greeting and faded.

Gill lay down on the longer stone; Manjy and
Alan stood at her head and feet. Gill fingered the talisman and
Manjy opened the last jar of incense ready.

The astral is another, non-physical
dimension. It is not time, and time seems not to apply. Nor, for
that matter, does space - distances are irrelevant: the sleeper
entering the astral world accidentally travels what would appear to
be great distances to follow concerns or ambitions, but they are
concerns not distances. He or she who enters deliberately suspends
time and space and he or she who enters regularly has awareness of
intruders and interlopers.

Gill gathered herself mentally to leave the
safety and sanity of her body, Manjy heaped incense on the charcoal
until the air reeked with a bitter, acrid scent which stripped the
soul bare, and with an audible 'click' Gill passed into the
astral.

Chapter 23

The 'click' was barely audible on the
physical levels of reality, but it was an enormous noise, rippling
and reverberating around the astral like the ripples on a pond.
Yet, as time and distance have no meaning on that plane of reality,
it was heard everywhere and at once by those concerned to hear it,
whether they knew that concern or not.

In a hotel in Salamanca, Stella woke suddenly and
completely. She knew at once that some one had entered the astral
to recover the rings. She knew that the things left by the
Professor had a physical reality and that they had a physical
location at which she must be to grasp them.

On the other hand, it was quite possible for
her to be at that location on the astral instantly. Even if the
rings were physically beyond her reach, she could interfere to stop
anyone else from reaching them.

Steve turned in his sleep, disturbed by a
sound he did not hear and would anyway not have understood. He was
concerned only that Gill needed him and dreamed of rushing to her
aid, her knight in shining armour.

The noise woke something else. Something
stirred. The Professor-Priest had left such hate and malice that it
had an independent reality: not much intelligence perhaps, but you
do not need intelligence to defend in hatred what was gathered in
evil. The guardian stirred into wakefulness.

Gill found herself in a rough and rocky
landscape, not unlike the physical reality above and to the left
and not so far from the ruins of Bella Claudia at Boloña. A blue
light bathed an empty landscape. She stood behind a rock, gazing at
an overhanging cliff with a crack or shallow cave. There was a
stake hammered into the ground outside the crack in the
mountainside and a chain led from it to the cave.

Gill 'knew' the rings were close, but the
guardian was a new thought. She wondered what it was and how she
might get past it. All seemed still. There was another, slightly
nearer, tumbled pile of rocks and Gill began to walk quietly
towards them.

The air around her shook and trembled as the
guardian emerged from the cave, first a scaly foot and talons, then
two feet, a wicked evil head, a scaly body and two folded wings. As
Gill watched, it unfurled its wings, stretched up its body and its
head and looked around. Every scale was hardened hate: the talons
were unmitigated evil: the head and eyes a challenge from unbridled
ambition. Gill dived for cover among the rocks.

Its breath was like that of a dragon from the
stories of the past, except there was no fire, for there are no
bodies on the astral to feel that fire. Instead, the fiery breath
that hurled towards Gill was the heat and flame of pure, pure
malice, so long pent up that it would burn to nothingness a soul,
like a dragon in a story book of old would burn its prey.

Gill cowered behind the rocks, Stella laughed
in evil triumph - and into this fairy tale there rode her shining
knight. Steve.

Gill's first thought was that he looked
rather ridiculous in armour, her second thought was that he would
not get anywhere near the wyvern with a lance and her third thought
was, 'Oh God! He's going to get himself killed.'

The wyvern turned and directed a visible
current of malice and ill-will towards him. His shield protected
him from the worst of the blast of hate, but he was knocked from
his 'horse' and scrambled amongst the rocks. Stella laughed
again.

"What we need," thought Gill, "is a mirror to
turn back that malice on itself. The strange thought came to her
unbidden and immediately Steve emerged from behind the rocks,
looking like Perseus, but holding a huge, round mirror like a
shield.

The wyvern roared hatred - not its own, of
course, but that of the professor-priest - and again streamed out a
blast of malice. Steve held up his mirror and turned that malice
back upon itself. The wyvern staggered before all the stream of
hate and evil. It screamed with rage. From among the rocks a stone
emerged from nowhere, flew towards Steve and crashed into the
mirror, shattering it in a thousand pieces.