The Quirin Stone

by Marie Morin

  He was breathing harshly, slickened with effort, his body trembling when at last he lay spent on top of her. Uncomfortable as it was to have his dead weight on top of her, it was also as gratifying in its own way as the passion he'd given her.

  He levered himself up after a moment, adjusted his jeans and sat up, raking his hair back from his face. Cassie rose up on her elbows, studying him as a sense of uneasiness slowly replaced the afterglow of their lovemaking.

  He glanced at her, studied her a long moment, and finally held out his hand. When she took it, he dragged her across his lap, kissed her briefly and tucked her head against his shoulder.

  “You shouldn't have gone into my office, Cassie,” he said quietly.

  Cassie glanced at him sharply, feeling the blood drain from her face, only to rush back in a dark tide. She didn't try to deny it, however. “You knew!"

  His arms tightened around her. “In all honestly, I'm surprised it took you as long as it did. I'd thought your curiosity would lead you there long ago."

  Confused, Cassie settled against him once more. “You wanted me to go in?"

  He said nothing for a moment. “You can't conceive of how weary I had grown of life. The young can't understand how that's possible, but that's because they haven't really lived. They have played at life, not suffered it. They haven't toiled and loved and lost and saw that there was no ending it, no surcease but death.

  “Until I met you, the only thing that I looked forward to anymore was the peace of knowing that I would finally find death. It's one of life's wonderful little ironies, I suppose, that now, when my time is almost upon me, I've begun to fear what I longed for for so long. I can't bear the thought of leaving you any more than I can bear the thought of losing you. I don't know what will happen now. I wanted....” He stopped. “I needed to know that you knew who, and what, I was and that you could still love me. I thought, once you saw everything, you would begin to understand and it would make it easier for you to handle the truth."

  Cassie closed her eyes, listening to the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear, trying not to think that one day it would cease. Her own heart was racing with fear. Something terrible was going to happen. She knew, and she didn't want to face it, but then neither could she deny him the need to talk. “Nothing you could have done could change the way I feel about you."

  Chapter Twenty Three

  His arms tightened around her for a moment. “The identities are a necessary evil to permit me at least a small measure of peace. Your people have never had much tolerance for anyone different. Even now, when you have advanced so far technologically, you're much the same as your forefathers, distrustful and fearful of anyone who doesn't fit comfortably within the pack, and because of that fear, you hate and you try to destroy.

  “Long ago, on a world far from this world, I was Prince Taur Kalil, a rebel, and a traitor to my rightful king. In my eyes, he was not fit to rule and I was young and foolhardy enough to believe that I could change my world for the better. In the end, I failed. I was captured and tried. I should have died. Instead, they devised a far more cruel punishment for those who had rebelled. For my crimes I was sentenced to banishment for life plus twenty on a primitive, distant world.

  “I was young then still, in years and in experience. I was still rebellious when I was sent here ... we all were. But we found this world far too primitive to aid us in escaping our fate and at last, we had to accept that it was not something that all our might and all our intelligence together could save us from.

  “We lived apart from the primitives in the beginning, because we preferred our own company, not because we terrified them or had any empathy or patience for their primitive minds, their superstitions and fears. In time, however, all children grow and learn and when we looked about ourselves and saw that they were no longer more animal than intelligent beings, that they showed promise, we grew tired of the imprisonment of only our own company that we'd chosen, and we went out among them.

  “We had been rulers on our own world, princes, and it was difficult to resist the power we had over them. Mostly, we didn't resist and, for a time, we satisfied our need to pour our anger out, fighting bloody wars, gathering the things men considered valuable to make ourselves wealthy and powerful.

  “But, in time, that too ceased to appease our hunger for the lives we had had, the dreams and we only wanted peace to serve the endless years until we could return to our homes. We found we could not have even that so long as the people we lived among knew that we were different. We had to appear to be the same as they were, so we became nomads, living in one place until we were discovered and moving on."

  Cassie pulled away from him far enough to look at him. “You're saying you're not from Earth? They sent you here, to Earth, for ... a hundred and twenty years?"

  His lips twisted. “That means nothing to you because, even now, you have no conception of the capabilities of my people. I was not banished for one hundred and twenty years. I was banished for twenty life times, Cassie. I have lived on your world for nearly three thousand years. There are no reprieves, no pardons, no early releases. Everyone I knew on my own world, save for those sentenced as I was, everyone who ever mattered to me, died long ago and passed from all memory but mine."

  “I was sentenced to live, knowing I could not have what everyone else had, true life, could not raise a family, could not love and marry and grow old with the one I loved, could never have freedom from living, freedom from struggling, peace."

  Cassie sat up. He was wrong. Even with what she'd seen in his office, it was too much to accept. As much as she loved him, she couldn't believe anything that he'd told her. It certainly explained the identities, but unfortunately those could be, and probably were, the invention of a shattered mind trying to cope with its own madness.

  He set her from his lap and rose. His jeans, which he hadn't fastened, rode low on his hips as he strode to the suit of armor she'd studied so closely and withdrew the great sword. She gasped as he drew it across his palm, cutting deeply.

  He held his palm for her to see.

  She leapt to her feet, glancing around frantically for something to stem the blood flow even as she rushed toward him. She saw nothing, but even as she reached him, grasping his bleeding hand in hers, she saw to her relief that the blood had already ceased to flow. As she stared at the gaping wound, it began to close, rapidly regenerating the damaged cells until his palm was whole once more.

  She looked up at him in confusion. “It's ... it's a trick?"

  His face hardened. “It's a curse, not a trick, and certainly not magic. I can not die. I can not age. That is why I can never stay in one place long. Look at me. The people whisper even now, suspicions grow, and the fear will follow it, and my peace will go with it, because I'm not like you. The ten years I've spent here are nothing to me, not even a minute of your time."

  Cassie looked up at him, fear dawning as the many bits and pieces of the puzzle that she had gathered began to lock into place and build a picture. “We are ... lesser beings to you. The coldness is contempt."

  His face twisted. “There was a time, long ago, when that was true, but the coldness was to spare me more pain, to try to escape the torture of my existence. I did not want to love you. I couldn't help myself."

  She stepped away from him, shaking her head. “You've infected me with the madness. Thor, I don't understand any of this, but it can't be true. It just can't."

  He studied her in helpless fury for several moments and then, before she even knew what he was about, he turned the sword he still held and thrust it into his chest, through his heart. She screamed as he dropped the sword and went to his knees. Falling to her knees in front of him, she pressed her hands over the wound, trying to stop the blood spurting from his chest. He caught her shoulders, gripping them tightly.

  “The implant will not allow me to die,” he said through gritted teeth. “It's sole purpose is to regenerate each cell that dies as rapidly as possible
, and because of that, I do not age."

  Cassie hardly heard him above her sobs, but as she stared at her hands, watching his life blood pumping between her fingers, she saw it slow and finally cease. Terror struck her. For several moments, she thought his life had drained through her fingers, but his chest moved, dragging air into his lungs. Slowly, she pulled her hands away, and before her eyes, the wound began to close, just as the wound in his hand had closed.

  Stunned, she sat back on her heels. “Why did you do that? Why did you scare me like that?"

  “I need for you to understand. I need to know that it isn't this identity that you love, the person I am now. Whatever happens on the dig, I must go and I must leave this identity. I need to know if there will be something for me, for Taur Kalil, when Thor Severnson dies."

  The words trembled on her tongue to tell him at once that she loved him, not his name, not what he had, or who he professed to be at the moment, but the chaos in her mind tumbled more questions from her lips. Swallowing with an effort, she stood and stepped away from him. “The dreams—they weren't dreams, were they? You were Francois, Duc de Maurier."

  He stood as well. “That was long ago, many life times ago, many identities ago. I'm not the same man that I was then."

  He reached for her, but she stepped away. “Cassandra de Maurier was your wife, the one who died, the one you still mourn."

  He shook his head. “I believed I loved her once. Perhaps I did, but that ceased long ago, too. Even the hate that sustained me for many years has died long since."

  “You didn't keep her portraits because you hated her!"

  His face hardened. “I kept them to remind me of the pain that awaited me if I allowed myself to love another human woman, but I couldn't stop it. When I met you, I couldn't prevent myself from falling in love you."

  “You don't love me. You love her. You think I'm her. You think I'm your Cassie, reincarnated.

  “She betrayed you. She died having another man's child and you still love her, even after all these years. I thought it was only because I reminded you of her, but that's not it, is it? It isn't even that much. I'm not her, damn you!"

  “Reminding someone of someone else doesn't make them love you. It's true. There are some things about you that remind me of her. And yes, I wondered for a time if there was some truth to the belief in reincarnation.

  “But none of that made me love you. Those things distracted me and I lowered my guard. I would never have allowed you close enough to steal into my heart, otherwise. But it was you I fell in love with, Cassie."

  She shook her head. “I'm not her. I don't understand why I saw those things. I don't understand how I could even remind you of her when I'm so different, but I am a different person."

  “Do you think I don't know that? I love you, Cassie."

  She swallowed with an effort. “How convenient for you that I have her name. It makes it easier to say, doesn't it?"

  Chapter Twenty Four

  It felt strange to leave summer and find fall when they landed in the southern hemisphere and began the long trek to their dig site. Cassie welcomed the distraction. She welcomed any distraction. She'd hardly spoken to Thor, or Taur, since the night before they'd left. If the expedition hadn't required some communication, she wouldn't have spoken to him at all.

  As hard as what he'd told her was to accept, it was still easier to take than what he hadn't told her.

  What plagued her most, however, was her denial that she was Cassandra du Maurier and her certainty that he thought she was. If she was Cassandra du Maurier, wouldn't she feel gladness that he had waited and loved her still? Why would she feel that he didn't love her if she was the same person?

  The answer was because she wasn't. Perhaps she'd had the dreams because some part of her was that other woman. Maybe she'd inherited a used soul. But there was far more to being someone than the soul, whatever anyone else thought. Her life experiences made her someone unique, just as the life experiences Taur had encountered over the many aeons had changed him from the man he once was.

  She'd locked herself in her own prison. Only she had the key and she couldn't bring herself to open it.

  He'd said he loved her. It looked like love. It felt like love. Why couldn't she just accept what he offered and be grateful for it?

  Because she was afraid that one day he would wake up and realize that she wasn't the one he truly loved.

  But pushing him away went against everything she'd believed in since her parents’ deaths. She'd vowed then never to deprive herself of the day. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Seize what could be had instead of mourning what couldn't, throwing away the goodness life offered for fear of losing it.

  When she awoke finally, she realized that she had driven such a huge wedge between them that it had grown into a chasm. Thor had ceased to wait and hope that she would relent. He'd withdrawn once more to protect himself from pain and she became afraid that he wouldn't allow her in again.

  Worse, she didn't know how she'd found her way past his defenses to begin with and that lack of knowledge left her with no tools to try again. The fear went even beyond that, however.

  She'd been so stunned by what he'd told her, and then so wrapped up in herself and her own misery, it wasn't until they made their first discovery that the memory pierced the shell she'd erected.

  He'd said his time was almost upon him. He'd told her he had been sentenced to twenty life times and he had served almost three thousand years.

  Even without knowing the typical life span of his people, she realized he had been trying to tell her his time was coming to an end. ‘He feared what he had yearned for'. Did that mean that he would die when his time was done? Did he know that? Or only suspect it?

  They unearthed a city that no one had suspected was there. No one but Thor. The moment she looked at his face, she knew he had brought them home. He'd returned to the place where he and the others had settled when they had first been banished.

  For the first time in weeks, their gazes locked across the space that divided them. Around them, the students and the natives who'd been hired for additional labor celebrated with wild excitement. After a moment, Thor turned and headed toward his tent.

  As fearful as she was, she followed him.

  “Did you need something?” he asked coolly, not even turning to look at her.

  “You."

  He turned then, but there was no welcome on his face. He shook his head. “It's better this way, Cassie."

  “It's not. I was wrong. I was hurt, but I love you. I want to start again."

  He looked away. “I don't have the heart to start again, and in any case, I'm afraid it's too late."

  “Don't say that!"

  He looked at her again. “Some things can be changed, but there are many things in life you have to accept because you can't change them. This is one of them."

  She was tempted to get down on her knees and beg him as Cassandra had so long ago, to show some mercy for her failings, to show pity, and forgiveness. Instead, the pain brought anger to the forefront.

  “You could live fifty lifetimes and still not learn a damn thing, Taur Kalil! You can't stop loving someone over something like this if you ever truly loved them at all. There has to be some forgiveness. You could have spared yourself much if you'd forgiven Cassandra!"

  He looked at her. “I did."

  She gazed back at him for several moments and finally turned and fled to her own tent, weeping herself dry. He was so focused on whatever his goal was in coming here that she wasn't certain he wouldn't have pushed her away even if they hadn't argued.

  Would he go home now? Was that what it was that he was waiting for? Would they be coming for him?

  Despite his determination to remain emotionally distant, she refused to allow him out of her sight thereafter. A week later, they unearthed the third building. A crew was immediately set to clear the excess rubble and the students set to work defining the perimeter and marking spots that mi
ght yield the clues of the civilization that had built this city.

  The students could barely contain their excitement. They'd already made discoveries that indicated the city was so far advanced from what it should have been that they'd begun to whisper that it might be the city of gods the ancient Incas had written about.

  Cassie knew that Thor's insight wasn't insight, however. He knew this place. Despite the years that had passed, he knew every inch of it, and she knew the moment she looked at his face that this was the place that he'd sought. Whatever it was that he was searching for would be here.

  She could scarcely sleep for worrying that he would vanish overnight. If not for that, she wouldn't have heard him the night he left his tent and headed up the mountain to the dig. Dressing quickly, she followed him, settling in the shadows and watching as he began to dig, shifting carefully through the rubble.

  She was already cramping from having crouched so long when he stopped at last, staring down at something at his feet. To her surprise, he lifted his head and looked straight at the shadows she'd thought concealed her. “I know you're there, Cassie. Would you like to see it?"

  Without a word, she stumbled from her hiding place and made her way carefully toward him. The light he held winked off the object at his feet and she looked down at it, feeling almost a sense of relief when she saw what it was.

  It looked like nothing more than a talisman of some kind, or perhaps nothing more than ornamentation. It was beautiful, even though it was still encrusted with dirt. The metal it had been wrought from gleamed a pale yellow, but oddly enough, it didn't look like gold. The piece had been wrought in the form of a star with twelve points. Black pearls radiated outward from a large crystalline stone of indeterminate color. For several moments, she thought the wavering light from the lamp was responsible for the flickering movement of the stone. As she squatted down to look more closely, however, she saw that it was coming from the stone itself, as if it were a live thing.