The Rings of Poseidon (31 page)

She turned again and went out, followed by
Steve. "I've done enough searching on my own for now," she said,
"I've got the beginnings of an idea I want to talk about." And she
closed the door behind her.

"Right. Where?" asked Alicia briskly.

"Get a map of Hoy and pick a place to start
from and we walk to the middle of nowhere from there," suggested
Frank.

Alicia reached for a map from the top drawer
of the filing cabinet, opened it up and spread it out.

"How about taking the Landrover to the end of
the Rackwick road and turning left along this track," said Alicia.
"The track just peters out, but we can stop somewhere along here
and just walk."

"I think one place is as good as another,"
said Manjy.

"If it's night we could strike a boggy patch
of moor," Alan pointed out.

"Tomorrow's Sunday. If the weather's good we
can go for picnic in the afternoon and pick a spot for the ritual
later. If the weather isn't kind to us, I'll get Steve to drive off
alone tomorrow and pick a general area," said Alicia. "He can make
sure it's okay, and nobody else will know in advance where we're
going. We'll pick the exact spot together on the spur of the
moment"

"Sounds fine to me," said Frank. "What say we
go out and enjoy what's left of the day?"

They all got up to go except Alicia. "I'll
see you later," she said.

Frank nodded and they drifted out. Alicia
locked the cabinet again and pocketed the key before returning to
her diary of the dig.

Steve was sitting back on the bunk in Gill's
room and Gill was lying down with her head in Steve's lap, the late
professor's papers scattered around, mostly on her stomach.

"I think I see how it might be done," she
said at length. "What worries me is the power we need. Perhaps if
you made love to me there might be enough power at the climax."

"With everyone watching? I don't think I
fancy that."

"Well if they all did too ..."

"I don't think Alicia or Manjy would thank
you for suggesting an orgy. No I don't think that's a runner
either."

Steve couldn't tell how far Gill was joking
when she said, "I can't really see how to get the strength for the
guardian otherwise."

"Well," he said, "you did say there may be
enormous power between us."

Gill gathered the papers together. "Let's go
for a walk along the beach while I give it some more thought," she
said, struggling to a sitting position and then reaching to the
floor with her feet. "I think I need to drop the subject altogether
for a while," she added.

"If you want to think about something else
for a few minutes, when do you have in mind for a wedding?"

"In some ways I feel married to you already,"
answered Gill. "I feel as if I've known and loved you in other
lives than this."

"Perhaps you have."

"Interesting idea," she said speculatively.
"Anyway, about our wedding. I'd like it to be soon," she continued,
"But it will have to wait until this expedition's over in seven
week's time, I think." She paused then said, "I'd rather like to go
back to southern Spain for a honeymoon."

"Then the honeymoon will have to wait 'till
my parole's up at the end of September," he said getting to his
feet and adding as an afterthought, "But the wedding needn't wait
that long." With that they went out.

The sea was placid and, though there were
still scattered clouds around, the sunset was a deep pink and
getting redder all the time.

"You mentioned Alicia having been a
priestess," remarked Steve.

"Yes?"

"I wonder what we all were in past lives
other than the one connected with ring. Frank was quite a character
in his story and Manjy was a sort of sacrifice besides Alicia."

"You mean," said Gill, "that we're all of us
souls that have many lives of service?"

"Well, I was just wondering. Perhaps there's
the power between us."

"Maybe," said Gill, thinking of a book called
'Windows of the Mind' that she had read once. "Given time we could
possibly find out, but time is something we don't really have."

They wandered along the beach with the sky
turning redder, promising good weather the next day.

Chapter 25

Cornelius sat back from the hotel breakfast
table. "It's a damn nuisance not having the car," he said, "Apart
from the inconvenience of hiring another and having just the one
driver, we've lost several days as well."

"Not to mention losing Stella," said Ian,
despondently. "And the injuries to Juliana. The doctor says her leg
was so crushed that she may never walk properly. At least, I think
that's what he says. His English isn't much better than my
Spanish."

"We can manage without her. Stella is a loss,
but we can manage without her as well."

"I wouldn't have said it to her face," said
Ian, "but she was so personally ambitious that she was difficult to
work with."

"It wasn't her ambition. We're all ambitious
but she was always certain that she knew best. One would have
needed that amulet to control her."

Ian thought that Cornelius had possibly
wanted that for himself.

The big man continued, "I don't suppose
there's much risk of your archaeologists beating us to the
rings."

"We can't be too sure of that," Ian said
morosely.

He looked around at the small hotel in Medina
Sidonia in which Gill, Alan and Manjy had stayed just a few days
previously.

"Stella obviously thought there was something
urgent on the astral."

"On further reflection, I don't believe it
was anything to do with the rings," said Cornelius. "There was no
way she could have got like she was from a clash with your
archaeologists."

"You wouldn't think so," agreed Ian. "Anyway,
I ought to visit Juliana again today," he added.

"It will have to wait until we have finished
our business at Boloña."

"Can't we go round via the hospital?"

"Oh ... very well." Cornelius was irritated
and not in the best of moods. "But hurry up," he grumbled.

* * *

Sunday breakfast at the dig on Hoy was quite
a different affair, as can easily be imagined. When the eating was
done, there was some striking of tents as the group of volunteers
from the Orkneys Archaeological Society packed up to go home. They
all seemed to have things to do and had already stayed a week
longer than they planned, so Steve was driving them down to the
ferry later. The two girls from Kirkwall decided they ought to
leave as well. Six bodies less around the site made it appear less
busy and, with the tents gone, the camp already looked a lot
smaller.

"Lovely day for it, whatever 'it' turns out
to be," Frank said to Alicia.

"Still sceptical?" she asked.

"You betcha."

"Don't you want to take part?"

"Well," said Frank, "I'll go along with it
all right, but I don't know that I believe all this junk."

Manjy joined them on the steps. "I found all
this 'Tree of Life' business hard to take. I think it belongs to
medieval Europe and I certainly don't," she said.

"I think it may be a lot older than that,"
said Alicia, "Even biblical referance to 'the Tree of Knowledge'
could refer to a primitive version of the same thing, though I
admit it was all written down in the Middle Ages. Still I take your
point. The Bible is as Western as the Tree of Life, I suppose."

"Yes," said Frank, "but Manjy has a head
start." he turned his attention to her. "You already believed in
the idea of reincarnation." Manjy nodded and Frank got to his feet.
"Well, as I said earlier, this is a nice day for it," he said
again. "I think I'll see how Steve is getting on."

"Poor Frank," said Manjy when he'd gone. "He
doesn't want to believe."

"He's not the only one," said Alicia,
yawning. "I was all safe inside my little scientific world when
along came the ring and buggered it all up. And your beliefs didn't
help."

"Don't you believe either?" asked Manjy.

"Oh something happened right enough. There's
no argument about it. No argument that the professor was after the
ring for some ... evil purpose. No argument that somehow or other I
was that other woman who was sacrificed. I only said I didn't want
to believe reincarnation was the answer."

At that moment they were interrupted by
Frank, who announced that everything was ready and all six people
piled into the Landrover.

Manjy noticed that Alicia was very quiet as
they turned onto the Rackwick road, and shuddered a little as they
passed the stone circle, but neither woman said anything.

Rackwick was just a hamlet. They turned left
onto a track, paved but potholed at first, then just gravel. At the
crest of a low hill Alicia said, "Okay. Stop somewhere here.
There's a pleasant sea view."

Steve pulled off to the side of the track and
they all piled out again. Alicia and Manjy were both still in
T-shirt and jeans but Gill had dressed up for the occasion and wore
a skirt and blouse. She even went so far as to indulge herself with
lipstick and eye make-up and somehow, with her height and longish
blonde hair and violet blue eyes a shade too close together, looked
... perhaps ancient was the word. Un-English, certainly. Manjy had
tied back her long black hair and somehow contrived to look serene.
The three men were all neat but casual.

Besides the picnic food there were various
other things in the Landrover. The professor's briefcase for
example, now containing six rings and six sacrificial knives, there
was a folding table to use as an altar and sweaters for the cool of
evening and a ceramic ashtray to use as an incense burner.

For the moment, though, it was warm and sunny
with a pleasant view: just right for a picnic. Leaving the other
things for later, they went in search of a suitable place, and
found it in a little dip, sheltered from the slight breeze and from
the view of any person passing on the track. There they lazed
around, ate, talked, got up and went for a walk, admired the view
and lazed around some more.

* * *

Cornelius stayed in the car and fidgeted
while Ian went into the hospital to visit Juliana. When he came out
they drove onto the same Cadiz-Algeciras Road that Gill, Manjy and
Alan had taken, and headed for Boloña.

There is just the one dead end lane to the
beach and the ruin, so they took it and pulled into the same car
park where the three archaeologists had parked. Cornelius, of
course, knew exactly where to look for the rings and exactly what
ritual to use. Because of this the two of them went to eat rather
than worrying about locations.

Come nightfall, Cornelius and Ian went to
more or less the same spot as Gill, Alan and Manjy had done and
followed much the same ritual as they had as well.

* * *

When it was falling sunset on Hoy, Steve
fetched the folding table from the Landrover. "Where d'you want
it?" he asked Alicia.

"Find somewhere level in the middle of the
hollow," she answered.

Steve found an almost flat area of rock
protruding, only an inch or two through the coarse grass, and put
the table there. Alicia put a white cloth over it and Gill put the
makeshift incense burner and the jars on it, along with some
matches, the dagger they had bought in Spain, the Tarot cards and
the ball of wool. Next to the table she placed the professor's
briefcase containing the six rings and the six wyvern's foot
sacrificial knives.

The beginning of the ritual was not unlike
the one Gill carried out in the ruins of Bella Claudia, other than
that there were more of them. Gill lit the charcoal and Alicia
sprinkled onto the glowing coals a little of the incense from the
first jar as they all stood round the table. Next Manjy and Gill
unwound wool from the ball to make a huge circle, large enough for
them all to lie down in, and tied the ends. Then Gill performed the
banishing ritual. It was not yet anything like full dark as she
drew the pentagrams in the air and traced the outline of the circle
over the wool, but the air still seemed to glow a little.

Alicia, Gill and Manjy raised their arms and
they sensed rather than saw the presence of the entities guarding
the circle at the cardinal points. A windswept figure in purple
robes standing in the east; another in red robes, holding a fiery
sword at the south and standing before a sun-drenched desert; a
third in blue standing on a wave-washed rock in the west, they
almost 'felt' the spray; the last in russet standing in the north
before a field of corn. Elemental guardians as well as
cardinal.

"It is time to tread the paths of the Tree,"
whispered Gill and once again the woman beckoned them through the
laurel wreath gate. Even Frank was drawn through the mighty wreath
and felt the air turn violet. They saw the elephant, heard it
trumpet. Alicia sprinkled incense from the second jar and the same
sharp but not unpleasant scent filled the air around them.

'The kind of smell that takes you by the
scruff of the soul and shakes you gently into a different kind of
wakefulness,' thought Frank.

Now it was Alicia who led them along a path
through gently rolling countryside, past the figure with the
pitcher of water and the goblet. They all stopped as Alicia took
the proffered goblet, drank and passed it onto Gill. She drank and
passed it on to Manjy and so on down the line. The personification
of the Tarot trump 'Temperance' took back the goblet and inclined
her head solemnly as they passed on, into the golden glow
ahead.

Alicia sprinkled incense on the coals and
smoke wreathed up. At the same time a mist wreathed around the area
of their minds lit by the yellow glow. A room with many doors
solidified out of the mist and a king sat on a throne. He pointed
to the door straight ahead and this time spoke.