The Rings of Poseidon

by Mike Crowson

  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.

  The wyvern retreated for a moment to the overhanging rock and seemed to shrink a little. Then Gill saw Stella materialise a bow from out of nowhere and aim an arrow at Steve.

  "Look out!" she yelled.

  Steve glanced up in time and dived back amongst the rocks. Then Gill had to duck down herself as an arrow flew close by.

  "Two can play at that game," she thought, and imagined Steve with a bow. He leapt up and fired at Stella. Halfway across the roughly open ground the arrow dematerialised. The woman moved around a little to get a better shot at Gill who moved in turn. Gill thought she too needed a bow.

  "If both Steve and I can fire at the same time her attention might be split," she thought. And then it struck her. There were no limits but her imagination. "One of those anti-tank rockets should do nicely."

  Obedient to the picture in her mind, a soldier-Steve found himself with a rocket, and fired.

  The astral explosion was ... satisfactory. It could not harm Stella physically but it certainly caught her by surprise and blasted away the rocks. The wyvern saw her and, though weakened, still raged.

  It poured one more torrent of ill-will; another withering blast of malice and hate that caught the woman open and exposed. As flesh would be burnt from bones in a fairy tale, so the blast stripped bare a soul, tore a personality apart, burned up ambition, laid lust to rest and gored greed so that none remained. That entire personality was ... nothingness.

  "The mirror again," thought Gill and the Perseus-Steve emerged again from the rocks holding a mirror. The wyvern, weaker now, sent one more blast of hate towards the approaching figure but the mirror was too much for it. The stream of evil was reflected back, the wyvern shrank and shrivelled and at length it was destroyed by nothing more nor less than its own evil.

  Gill walked from her hiding place towards the cave, but Steve was already carrying towards her a wooden chest.

  "Here's what you came for," he said.

  "Quickly, before all the evil on the astral is aroused," answered Gill. "Put the box down here and then return safely to your sleep."

  Steve put the chest down, kissed her and vanished. With an audible 'click' she returned to her physical body.

  Beside Gill's prone body there materialised a wooden chest about two-feet-six by one-foot-six high by two feet deep. It was heavy and Manjy needed Alan's help to lift it onto the alter stone, while Gill scrambled to her feet. When Gill looked, the chest was, perhaps surprisingly, not locked, but it was Alan stopped her opening it.

  "Later," he said. "Finish the ritual first."

  "That's good advice," said a deep rich voice, and the older woman they had seen earlier seemed to solidify from the dark blue mist around them. "The evil ones are gathering. All the mindless creations of eons of ill will have a life of their own. What you have been doing has attracted them. You had best go."

  Gill turned without turning and moved without moving so that they passed back along the path of Lovers. The lovers waved in a desultory greeting and the dark shadow settled on the path behind them, blocking it completely to any who came after.

  Gill opened up a door and they entered the flood ofgolden light, closing the door behind them. The throne was empty as they went out by an opposite door, onto the path of Temperance. No entity was to be seen as they walked towards the purple glow. In the mist itself they heard a distant elephant trumpeting, but saw nothing, so they took the final path. No figure of any sort was to be seen there either. The great laurel wreath was a gate through which they stepped to reality – or rather, what passes as reality.

  The sky was lightening and all three realised that they must waste no time. Gill repeated the banishing ritual with which the whole affair had started and then walked round the inside of the circle of wool with the talisman, saying,

  "Go. You are dismissed, but be ready to come when you are called."

  Neither Alan nor Manjy even wondered to whom she spoke. Then she broke the wool and wound it up.

  "Let's have a look inside the chest," said Manjy.

  "I'm itching to have a look myself," said Gill.

  Manjy undid the clasps and pushed ba
ck the lid. Inside were six masks, hideous but beautifully made in hammered and enamelled copper or bronze, inlaid with gold; five wyvern's foot sacrificial knives - no doubt the ones from Alan's story, and the five rings.

  "What are we going to do with all this stuff?" asked Manjy. "It's too heavy to carry far or fast and we won't get it through customs at the airport."

  "Let's leave the masks here. It will really set the archaeologists working on this site a problem to solve and the masks have no power of their own. We can manage the knives and rings okay, so we can take those with us."

  The knives and rings went into Gill's bag, along with the jars of incense and the ash tray-burner. Alan stuffed in the papers and the Tarot pack, whilst Manjy put the masks carefully back into the chest, shut the lid and fastened the clasps.

  "Leave the chest right where it is," Gill suggested and picked up the bag.

  "I'd like to be around when it's found," said Alan.

  "You will be if we don't get a move on," Gill answered, and the three began to retrace their steps to leave the ruin, before the growing light of day made an unseen getaway impossible.