The Seven Magical Jewels of Ireland

by Robert Adams

  "I guess it all boils down to the differences in our backgrounds. From what you've told me about your life and your family, you came of what some people in that other world refer to as 'the Tidewater Aristocracy,' families who'd been in America for two or three hundred years, owned a lot of land and farms, rode horses, lived on inherited money, and supported the Republican Party, mostly. You were an officer in the army, too. So all this would naturally be easier for you to stomach and become a part of."

  "Bass, all of my grandparents were immigrants, from Russia and from Latvia; my father was even born there. He grew up in this country—I mean, in the America of that other world—though, and he lived his democratic and fanatically egalitarian ideals. And he instilled them in me, Bass, to a degree that I hadn't really known or realized until I started trying to act the part of a great lady, here. I truly hate what I am becoming, what I am expected to become, what I must become; I miss people disagreeing with me, telling me I'm full of shit, sometimes. I just want to be a normal, average human being again, Bass."

  Seeing her dark eyes swimming with tears, Bass Foster slipped from his chair—albeit a bit stiffly, his muscles sore from all the long, hard days in the saddle—to kneel beside her and take both her hands in his own.

  "Look here, Krys, why don't you plan to leave here when I do? With my force and some of Sir Geoff's lances to escort us, we should be in no danger taking the old wagon track to York. Hal's palace is overrun with delegates to this religious thing he's presiding over just now, but Buddy Webster is just rattling around on Hal's country estate. You could live there for a while, until the weather warms up, then come down to Norwich."

  "Another cold, drafty, smelly medieval castle, like Rutland?" she demanded.

  "It was when first I moved in, still is, in some ways, honey," he replied, adding, "but it's being made more modern, more livable, every day, Krys. At least, it would mean we'd be together more."

  She sighed, then nodded. "I'll think about it, Bass. But, God, how I miss the other world, miss all the simple, beautiful things I and everyone else there took for granted—central heat, flush toilets, hot showers, cars and decent roads to run them on, good lighting, running water, people to talk to, argue with, new books to read whenever you wanted."

  "I love you, Bass, and I know that if I hadn't come . . . been brought here, I'd never ever have had you and our little son, but if only there were a way for us all three to go back together . . ."

  Colonel Dr. Jane Stone strode out of the lift on the level housing the projection laboratory, then went the few paces down the wide corridor to the pair of steel-sheathed doors flanked by well-armed guards. She reflected that basic human nature had not changed much over the years. It had taken the defections of Drs. Kenmore and O'Malley to get her superiors to heed her often-reiterated demands to beef up internal security measures at the facilities here and across the river. Locking the barn door after the horse was stolen. She tried to recall if she ever had seen a horse in the flesh, wondered if they, like so many species of once-plentiful animals, were now extinct.

  The guard officer saluted smartly, then opened the door for her. Inside the anteroom, she paced directly over to the desk of the director on duty. The balding, cadaverous-looking man came to his feet at her approach.

  "Well, Ackerman," she snapped, "have your people gotten the location of that stolen console locked in yet?"

  His head bobbed up and down on his skinny neck, and she noted that his sunken, dark-rimmed eyes contained the proper amounts of respect and outright fear of her; she noted these things with a sense of satisfaction.

  "Has anyone bothered to check out the location of the console? I don't enjoy the prospect of possibly projecting into three or four meters' depth of water."

  His almost fleshless lips slightly aquiver, the man nodded again. "Yes, Colonel Doctor, I have just come back from checking out the site. The console is sitting near one wall of a large, high-ceilinged space with a floor of packed earth, stone-walled, windowless, unlit save by the glow of the console. It appears to be possibly the cellar or ground floor of some sizable building."

  "How about doors, Ackerman? How am I to get out of this place? Any signs of life there?" She deliberately injected a note of exasperation she did not really feel just for the pleasure of watching the already abject man cringe still more.

  The effect was gratifying. He almost stuttered the reply. "It . . . a stairway . . . there is a stairway angling steeply up two walls and ending at a recessed archway on the next level. The only life I could see was traces of rodents."

  She nodded curtly, without thanks for the report, and strode on into the main room of the laboratory and directly over to the circular silvery plate set in the floor. Deferentially, the senior technician situated her at measured distances from the edge and center of that plate, then stepped back to place his hands on a bank of controls.

  "Colonel Doctor, as the receiver plate seems to be some seven and one-quarter centimeters lower than is this projector plate, it might be wise to flex your knees so as to absorb the shock of impact. Please indicate the moment you are ready to be projected."

  "I was ready for projection when I came in," she half snarled. "Get on with it!"

  The man's hands moved over the bank of knobs and buttons and levers, as she watched. Then he and everything else within her sight became wavery, cloudy, misted, hard to focus upon. For a brief time that seemed to last for an eternity, there was utter, unrelieved darkness—a darkness even darker than darkness, empty formless nothingness, eons old, immortal—then, from out a wavery, mint-green mist, appeared one of the small consoles and, behind it, big blocks of black and gray rectangular stones. A wall reached up beyond the limits of light, all streaky with slime and niter. Slowly, she turned about, then her right hand went to the grip of her heat-stun weapon, her forefinger seeking the activator, while she stepped off the plate, recalling that the field of the projector had been found to deflect some other types of beamings.

  "Damn that Ackerman!" she snarled under her breath. "I'll have that bumbler strapped onto a shock table until his brains, if any, congeal! Nothing but rodents, hey? I wonder what he'd call those."

  Those were six or eight men clad in archaic clothing, bearing swords, what were probably some sort of primitive firearm, and at least one big, broad-bladed ax. Two or three of them were carrying blazing torches, and more torchbearers were coming down the steps behind them. Even as she brought up her weapon and stepped forward, the foremost of the men drew his sword with a sibilant zweeep and a silvery-blue flash of fine steel blade.

  The royal seals were first chiseled off, entire, and set aside, then the galloglaiches went at the walled-up doorway with picks and sledges and coarse, hoarse Gaelic curses and obscenities. These became louder and more vehement when a second wall, every bit as carefully laid and well mortared as the first, was found some foot behind the outer one. It proved to be slow, hot, very exhausting work in the confinement of the archway, which was too narrow to allow for a full-arm swing of the tools, so Bass had the initial crew of wall-breakers replaced with a second when the first wall had been cleared away. Even so, it was nearing midnight before the last stones of the second wall had been dragged from their places and the open passage, pulsing with a faint, greenish, eldritch glow, yawned before them.

  Bass had patiently explained to all of them well beforehand that the device that lay down the stairway beyond the walled-up doorway was lifeless, soulless, only a machine no whit different from such familiar machinery as wheel-lock actions, clocks, and mills, that the glowing was simply akin to the glowing of heated iron. Still, when the first dim radiance welled up out of the long-deserted space, there was a ripple of movement as the hard-bitten warriors crowded back toward the honest Christian light of the torches, crossing themselves or clasping tightly the silver crucifixes strung about their sinewy necks.

  But regardless of their evident fright—these men who feared nothing living—when Bass, Sir Ali, Nugai, D
on Diego, Sir Calum, Sir Liam, and Fahrooq entered the archway and started slowly, carefully, down the steep, unrailed stone stairs, every one of the galloglaiches took up weapon, heavy tool, or torch and followed their chosen war leader.

  Just as Bass reached the foot of the dangerous stairs and took a step toward the brightly glowing, green-gray, boxlike device and the silvery plate on which it crouched, uttering barely hearable sounds that seemed to raise the hairs on his nape and set his teeth on edge like a thumbnail dragged across a slate, everything changed. The noise became truly audible—a whining-humming—and the glow heightened to fully illuminate every cubic inch of the earth-floored room—side to side and top to bottom—then, for the barest eyelid-flicker of a moment, complete and utterly black darkness enveloped the room and the men within it, bringing a gasp of surprise from Bass and a chorus of terrified moans from men who saw that not even the brightest torch would penetrate the suddenly stygian place into which they had trespassed.

  But then, just as suddenly, the too-bright green light returned and, along with it, something new had been added. A tall, slender personage stood upon the silvery disk close beside the boxlike device, but facing away from them all, facing toward the bare stone wall. The figure was clothed in some gray-green garment that covered it from neck to wrists and to just above its ankles, where the legs of it met its low-topped boots. It wore no sword, but was hung all about with pouches of various shapes and sizes, from among which jutted the pommel and ridged hilt of a knife or dagger. Another, smaller hilt stuck out from the top of the figure's right boot.

  Slowly, the figure turned, stood for a moment staring at them all while its lips moved soundlessly. Then, bringing up a something hung from its right side to point a slightly belled length of metal ahead, it stepped off the disk and strode toward Bass and the rest.

  He cursed himself for not bringing down at least one pistol. The others might not recognize the thing being pointed as a deadly weapon, but he certainly did. It was probably one of those things that Hal had called a heat-stunner, and here he was with only a sword and a couple of daggers and none of them properly balanced for accurate throwing. Nonetheless, he impulsively drew his Tara-steel sword from out its sheath, stepping out to meet the figure with his weapon at low guard. It was not until the flat-chested creature spoke that he realized he was facing a woman.

  The dialect was not too different from his own 1970s American English, far less different and more understandable than had been the English of this world when he first came here. "Drop that sword, man, or I'll kill you! Drop it, I say! All right, you————!"

  The final word was unfamiliar to him, but it its meaning was as crystal-clear as the tightening of her finger on what he decided must be the trigger of that strange weapon. Bass leaped sideways, then lunged forward, his body in a sidling crouch, his sword pointed very high, his intent to stun the menacing woman with a sword flat to the temple while he used his free hand to jerk the weapon from her grasp.

  But a split second before he had come within range to try to accomplish his risky purpose, the familiar-looking hilt of a kindjal was standing out from her chest, a look of shocked pain was on her face, and she was falling backward onto the floor.

  Bass, however, had not lived through many a hard-fought battle through allowing mere surprise to slow him down. He continued his forward movement until he had his left hand clasped on the short barrel of the woman's weapon, but when he essayed to jerk it from out her grasp, he discovered it to be fastened to the webbing belt cinching her waist. Dropping his sword, he used his freed right hand to unsnap the clip, then tore the butt-stock from her weakened grip and hurled it beyond her reach. When her emptied hand immediately started to move jerkily toward the square butt of what might have been some variety of automatic pistol, bolstered at her right hip, he beat her to it, drew it, and threw it in the wake of the larger weapon.

  The gaze she fixed on him for a moment was distilled of pure, unadulterated hatred, but then she sagged back in defeat, moaning, "Please . . . ? Take . . . it . . . out . . . never . . . felt such . . . pain."

  "You won't feel it long, either," said Bass bluntly, "That's a death-wound. You'll be dead in five minutes . . . maybe less, if I try to pull that blade out of you now."

  A voice spoke from just above him then. "Iss vay, mein Heir Herzog . . . might be. Blade did not directly into zee heart to go. Iss strange, for to at distance so short, miss." The squat little man knelt beside his victim, placed one yellow-brown hand palm down on her chest, and grasped the hilt of the kindjal with the other, gingerly, at first, exerting just enough pressure to see how deeply the blade was imbedded and to ascertain if point or edge was stuck in bone. He nodded to himself, then took a better grip on the hilt and drew out the full length of the blood-slimed blade in one smooth, swift motion, seeming to not hear the gurgling scream of the woman as the steel came free of her chest.

  Carefully cleaning the kindjal blade on the leg of her breeches, he then returned it to its scabbard at his waist. That done, he retrieved the sword Bass had dropped, checked it from end to end for possible damages, then held it until his master might again require it.

  "How long do you think she'll live now, Nugai?" asked Bass.

  The little nomad shrugged. "Might be two minutes, mein Herr Herzog, no more than four."

  With Nugai's assistance, Bass unsnapped the dying woman's belt and harness and, as gently as was possible, removed them and the various packs and pouches they held from her body. He beckoned over Sir Calum and said, "See that black thing at the base of that box, the thing that looks like a thick, shiny rope? Take your ax and sever it as close to the box as you can. Do it now, at once! Do it before another of these murderous people is projected into here."

  Turning back to the woman, he noted for the first time the silver oak leaves on her shoulder boards, which previously had been obscured by the straps of her harness. These insignia, coupled with the name strip affixed above the right breast pocket of her coverall—STONE. DR JANE—jogged his memory.

  "You're Colonel Doctor Jane Stone from the Gamebird Project, aren't you? You came after Hal . . . that is, Dr. Harold Kenmore, didn't you?"

  Her reply, though weak of voice, was perfectly clear.

  "Yes, but who are you? I don't think you're of this time, but then I know you're not of mine, either."

  "You're right. Dr. Stone," he replied, "but it's a longer tale than you have time left to hear. Suffice it to say that I was sent here by the man you knew as Kenmore to break the connection of that box to your world, lest someone like you came into this world. Needless to say, I was almost too late."

  She tried to snort a scornful laugh, but ended moaning with agony, then after a moment said, in a weaker voice yet, "Cut that cable through if you wish, whoever you are, but it will do you no good now. The lab has a firm lock on the coordinates of this console and can project through another if this one fades out, disappears from the scanning instruments."

  "You say Kenmore sent you? Well, why didn't the traitor come himself?"

  "For one thing, Dr. Stone, it's a long, hard journey and he is a very old man," said Bass. "Perhaps you are unaware of just how much he has aged since you saw him last."

  "How much can anyone age in two months, man? Talk sense. Where is Kenmore? Where is that other traitor, Emmett O'Malley?"

  "Hal thought something like this, and he once told me about it, Dr. Stone. Time must be different in your world from time in this one. Your two months there has been more than a hundred and fifty years here. As for O'Malley, the evidence is that he's dead, killed in a battle several years ago. Even had they both been alive and you had gotten out of here and sought them out, you'd hardly have recognized them, either of them. They lost most of their longevity boosters, you see, and . . ."

  He fell silent when he realized that he was speaking to a corpse. Colonel Doctor Jane Stone was dead.

  Sitting on the ground between the old tower keep and the hall stables in the bright
sunlight, with a sack containing the effects and clothing of the late Colonel Doctor Jane Stone atop it and the silvery disk leaning against it, the console did not look one whit so imposing as it had in the benighted subterranean room. Moreover, the greenish glow had faded so much with exposure to the sun as to be almost invisible.

  A party of the galloglaiches had hoisted the heavy, bulky device up to the first floor of the tower, while another group painfully pried up the disk on which it had rested. Bass meant to deliver both to the archbishop in York; if he didn't want them, maybe Pete Fairley could make use of the metal alloys and wire. Recalling another thing that Hal had told him of that sinister world from which Hal, O'Malley, and the dead woman had come, Bass and Nugai had stripped her to the very skin, then poked and probed at her cooling flesh until they had found what they sought—a tiny metallic disk implanted just under the skin of one inner thigh.

  After giving the corpse to the galloglaiches to bury, he ordered the walls rebuilt in the archway. With the walls once more firmly in place, he reset the royal seals in the fresh mortar, then went out to order the organization of transport for his wife and son, her household, and the other-world items down to York. He had now successfully carried out yet another mission for King Arthur. He wondered where the next one would take him, and he was beginning to wish that Hal and the monarch would find another errand boy before loneliness bred of protracted separation completely soured his relationship with Krystal.

  Harold, Archbishop of York, sat in the study-cum-alchemical laboratory of his palace facing the newly returned Duke of Norfolk across the width of a heavy, much-scarred table. The top of that table was cluttered, end-to-end, with the effects of the late Colonel Doctor Jane Stone. Directly before the cleric lay an opened case containing row upon row of small green-and-yellow capsules. Beside it, a similar case held two transparent ampoules and four hypodermic syringes.