Crystal Warrior: Through All Eternity (Atlantean Crystal Saga Book 1)

by YatesNZ, Jen

  They were lifting her. A muffled scream reverberated through her head as she was jostled and jolted as if they'd almost dropped her. What was happening? Ibn Ist, help me!

  There was bumping and banging as if the box was being crashed against the side of a building. Were they at Oralin after all? Had her senses told her wrong? There were voices now, muffled and distorted by the box, but she could hear shouted orders and responses. More movement and jostling and stillness at last. Would they release her now?

  Then she realized that even though she was sure the box was settled on the floor, there was still movement—as if she were still on a boat. Or a ship! They'd hauled her up onto a ship. Where was she? What did they want of her?

  Suddenly the lid was removed from the box and she was lifted to her feet. Swift hands removed the bindings, the gag and the claustral cloths. Almost sobbing with relief, Gynevra smoothed her gown down over her knees and her hair from her face and stared dumbly from one unknown face to the next. She'd expected to recognize her captors, had been so sure they were priests. Not one of these four men had she ever seen before.

  That they were warriors in the King's service was obvious from their leather kirts, bare, oiled chests and broad leather belts and vambraces. But not one did she recognize—and far from threatening her they stood back, almost deferentially avoiding her eyes. The terrible fear that had stolen her senses from the moment of the abduction abated a little.

  Not the priests. Praise be to Ist! But—a terrifying new thought quickly stole all sense of relief. Were these her father’s men?

  ‘Where am I?’ she ventured, hoping her voice sounded more regal to them than it did to her. ‘Who are you? What do you want with me?’

  ‘You will not be harmed, Princess, but you are to be confined here until—until it's safe.’

  Gynevra stared at the man who'd spoken as if he'd suddenly sprouted a second head.

  ‘What do you mean, confined?’ she demanded, her natural authority asserting itself once again. ‘And by whose orders?’

  ‘All will be revealed when it's safe.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked again. Sacred Ist, she was starting to sound like a parrot! ‘When will it be safe?’

  ‘You will be informed,’ the spokesman said doggedly. ‘Meantime Princess, there is food and drink. Please make yourself comfortable.’

  The men began to back from the room, dragging the box with them.

  ‘Wait!’ Gynevra cried. ‘Just tell me who. Who has dared to abduct a Princess of the Realm in this finwodem fashion?’

  Her only answer was the firm closing of the door followed by a loud click as the latch fell into place.

  How dared they lock her in! Oh Gynevra, she chided herself. They dared abduct you from Qrazil, tie you up like a sheaf of wheat and stuff you into a box like a cargo for shipping! What's being locked in a room by comparison? At least you're now free even if only free within the confines of this cabin. A cabin, moreover, which was furnished richly and comfortably enough for a king!

  Which observation only increased her fear that her pavuon had ordered her abduction. Had he devised some nefarious purpose for her in order to ensure her silence?

  This new possibility stole the power from her legs and she dropped onto a plush upholstered couch affixed to the wall. She must overcome this tendency to panic. Now was her moment to act. There was no handy high energy vortex available to help her raise the energy to apportate so she must immediately set about generating it herself. Before someone returned to interrupt her.

  Seating herself in the lotus position, she straightened her spine and rested her hands on her knees, thumbs and third fingers joined. The thud of the door against the couch startled her eyes open. Before she'd even registered the identity of the man reaching for her, Taur had hauled her off the couch and hard up against his chest.

  Taur! What was he doing here? Had he come to rescue her?

  ‘Why would I do that when I've already rescued you, Golden One?’ he demanded, proving the link between them was as strong as ever.

  ‘From what?’ she bristled, suspicion fighting with the wild joy that threatened to overpower her.

  ‘From hardening into a sculpture of cold iron like Ianthe,’ he growled. ‘You're too much woman to be wasted in that way.’

  The deep, rough tone of his voice sent shivers of need coursing through her body. With his voice alone he could seduce her. But, he'd said—suspicion hardened into reality.

  ‘You? You abducted me?’

  ‘I had my men rescue you from this anarchy which is Poseidonia—’

  ‘What do you mean ‘rescue me’? And where are you taking me? I can't go with you, Taur.’

  Such a dream she dare not let form in her mind.

  ‘You are with me, Gynevra,’ he said, tightening his grip on her shoulders. ‘Now—and forever.’

  Gynevra felt her eyes widen, her breath become shallow and uneven. Sweet Hyades, if only.

  ‘Taur,’ she began, trying to sound stern and strong and only succeeding in sounding pathetically needy. She took a deep breath and began again. ‘Taur, you can't do this. It will cause untold trouble.’

  He looked deeply into her eyes and what she saw there made her tremble.

  ‘It's done, Gyn'a, and the trouble will be beyond anything you can imagine.’

  What would Ahron do? The thought of Taur dying a criminal's death froze the blood in her veins.

  ‘You must let me go!’ she cried, her voice hoarse with fear for him. Just knowing he was somewhere in this world made life bearable. To imagine all his vitality stilled was beyond comprehension. ‘Just put me ashore. I'll find my own way back and make some excuse for my absence. Please!’

  For answer he dipped his head and closed his mouth on hers. Sacred Mother Ist! Where was her strength now? There was only sensation and the wild beating of her heart. The taste of him as his tongue probed her mouth reeled her back through time to the night they conceived Solon. The hard power of his body against hers was the answer to prayers she'd never dared utter, and the unique scent of him that she'd recognize anywhere stole every last vestige of resistance.

  Now and forever. If it could only be so!

  ‘Sire! Sire! We're approaching the canal gates and the arabo are trying to close them against us!’ came a frantic call from beyond the door.

  With a livid oath, Taur thrust Gynevra back onto the couch and leapt toward the door. Stopping, he held her for a moment with the power of his fierce gaze.

  ‘It starts, Golden One. The race is on. If we make it unscathed to the ocean, we're away free. Pray we do.’

  With that startling request he vanished. Gynevra was still gathering her thoughts and calming her senses when a man wearing the hooded robe of a High Priest entered and quietly closed the door. Placing a tray of food on a side table, he removed his linen cloak to reveal the kirt of a warrior beneath and moved to a seat on the far side of the room.

  ‘I am Lord Aronad of Nyalda. I am here to guard you, Princess.’

  ‘What's happening?’

  ‘Ahron is trying to rally his puny forces against us.’

  ‘But why? He could scarcely know of my abduction yet!’

  The man's strange light eyes became hooded.

  ‘If the King has not told you then it's not for me to say,’ he declared somewhat pompously.

  Assailed with the desire to laugh, Gynevra gave him instead a haughty grimace and closed her eyes. Whatever Ahron was pursuing Taur for, if she wasn't found on his ship he couldn't be charged with her abduction. She'd calm herself, shut out foolish dreams of forever and pathetic, big-headed priests and raise the energy to apportate back to Qrazil.

  ‘No you won't, Princess.’

  Gynevra's eyes shot open.

  Aronad held her gaze with an amused smile.

  ‘Like I said, Princess. I'm here to guard you. We went to a lot of trouble to obtain your presence for the King and put our persons in not inconsiderable danger while we did i
t. T'will not go for naught. Every man on this ship would lay his life down for Taur of Nyalda.’

  Sudden banging and shouting broke out topside accompanied by an ominous grating sound along the sides of the ship. Trying to keep the fear from her eyes she returned Aronad's stare with a querying one of her own.

  ‘Sounds like the men are being called to do just that.’

  ‘We're running the gates. Once clear we'll have no trouble navigating the sea canal. There's not a ship in port will engage with us. They have too much respect for King Taur.—So Princess, why don't you break your fast now before we reach the ocean. I know you've not yet eaten this day.’

  There was no way she could eat now! Her stomach was churning with a curdle of conflicting emotions. Fear, excitement, longing, anxiety, love—

  Some strange compulsion drew her gaze to Aronad's light eyes and she found herself rising and moving to the table where she found a bowl of thick barley broth accompanied by a platter of cheese and chunks of dark bread. It was too late to consider that Lord Aronad was obviously a very advanced ennead, that even if she'd been forewarned his power would easily have overshadowed hers and that it was probably he who'd done just that at the Needles this morning. She was suddenly quite hungry.

  Her mouth tasted like ass’s breath and her brain didn't seem to want to function. Her last clear memory was of being in Taur's arms and even if it had been a dream she clung to it as the only light in a smothering darkness. Every time she began groping towards sanity someone would coerce her to eat or drink something and in her weakened state she had no will to argue. What was happening to her?

  Someone was shaking her arm and calling loud enough to wake the dead. Was that the answer? Was she dead? She curled her body into a tight ball and covered her head with her arms.

  ‘Gyn'a! Come on. Wake up. I need to talk to you.’

  Taur? Taur belonged in dreams and dreams only brought pain.

  ‘Go 'way.’

  ‘C’mon, Golden One, wake up for me!’

  Strong hands pried her arms from her head and then lifted her against a hard, broad chest. A chest that felt real and familiar beneath her questing fingers, yet chilled and wet. Her nose pressed into damp ropes of hair that smelled of salt. She forced her eyes open. Black hair. She leant back a little. A hard squared chin with several days’ growth of black stubble. Leaning back a little further still she encountered smoldering green eyes that seemed to devour and repudiate her at the same time.

  Taur for certain. But from his wild state and the strange light in his eyes she still wasn't sure he wasn't a dream. She struggled to free herself and he let her go. The ship lurched as if falling into a deep trough in the ocean and she fell back on the clagren and stared at him.

  ‘Where am I?’

  Her brain didn't want to work and that was the only question she could think to ask.

  ‘On my ship headed for Nyalda. We've been at sea six days, running from Ahron's ragtaggle navy. They pursued us as directed but never came close enough to attack. We lost them yesterday when the weather started to deteriorate. I'm guessing they turned back. They probably figured only fools—or finwodi—would continue into such seas.’

  A muscle worked in his jaw and the eyes that searched her face as if committing it to memory held some message she couldn't decipher. Gripping the back of the couch to steady herself, she sat up and pointed to the waterskin in its secure box by the door.

  ‘I need a drink.’

  He turned and bracing himself against the violent motion of the ship, handed a pottery cup to her and siphoned some water into it with the ease and grace of a dandified piaca in a regal reception salon. Even drug-fazed and angry, Gynevra knew another blank square had been filled in the mosaic of her knowledge of Taur of Nyalda. He would be as calmly balanced whether on a tossing ship or a bucking horse.

  He waited while she drank thirstily, then continued, ‘The thing is, Gyn'a, the weather has turned treacherous and unless it changes it could be another five, even six days before we reach Heceuda Harbor.’

  The water was cool and faintly brackish from resting in the waterskin but it helped clear the shrouds from her mind.

  ‘You're taking me to Fyr Heceuda?’

  A wild hope took root somewhere in her navel. Her emotions were as unpredictable as the motion of the ship. And she had no right to wild hopes.

  Taur nodded.

  ‘You'll be safe there. You were in danger from the priests and ultimately from your own light-sire.’

  She was in danger! It was he who'd abducted a Princess of the Realm, the Archinus Elect. Suddenly, something shifted in her head. Her mind was totally clear. It was as if—

  ‘You've been drugging me!’

  The shocked words flew out of her mouth the moment the thought formed in her head.

  ‘For your own safety, Gyn'a,’ he responded patiently. ‘I've just been explaining about the danger—’

  The great arabo just stood there as if the ship wasn't careening under his feet like a leaf in rapids, as if her mind wasn't about to shatter like so many shards of crystal.

  He broke off, but in reaction to the angry light in her eyes, he continued, ‘Every man was needed topside to keep the ship sailing swift and true. There was no one I could spare to watch you so my only recourse was to sedate you with corba. We always have it on board for a painkiller but heavier doses will keep a man sedated for days on end without any serious side effects. I won't risk you apportating back to Qrazil, Gyn'a. You're mine now and I vow to keep you safe from the breara Temples and your manic sire.’

  Her heart beat a frantic tattoo in her breast. She had to make him understand!

  ‘You're the one who's in danger, Taur! You must let me go. Take me back to Qrazil. I'm safe there. I'll tell Ianthe I went with you willingly, that—’

  ‘I can't do that.’

  His eyes were flat, almost black, and deeply watchful.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, anger warring with the panicky suspicion that he'd done something irreversibly terrible.

  ‘I can never return to Fyr Poseidyr. I'd be handed over to the priests to be killed for finwod.’

  ‘Finwod?’ Gynevra stared at him, speechless for a moment. ‘Why?’ she whispered.

  ‘Kidnapped you for a start and defied Ahron's explicit veto on joining with you.’

  ‘You asked him—?’

  ‘Ta’a,’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘He was very forceful in his refusal.—I also incited a riot in the Outer City by suggesting to a few roughnecks there are ample grain stores in the royal granary and fresh meat on the hoof in the grounds of the Royal Citadel. There was big trouble brewing in Fyr Poseidyr when we left and there's plenty to say I had a hand in inciting it and since I'd already suggested to Ahron that he open the granaries and slaughter the sacred bulls I'd be hard put to deny it—even if I felt so inclined.’

  Gynevra felt her eyes widen with the enormity of the crimes stacked against him, the cold hard implacability of his stance as he recited them. She couldn't stop herself from reaching for the precious and solid reality of him, which suddenly seemed so vulnerable. She must make him see sense.

  ‘If I could get back to Fyr Poseidyr that would clear some of your crimes, wouldn't it?’ she asked. With a will of their own her fingers traced a ropey vein curling across the flexing muscle of one bulging biceps.

  Taur shook his head.

  ‘There's more.’

  All the blood drained from her heart. Her head ached with the after effects of the corba—or was it from her terror for Taur? She clutched his brawny forearms. The sodden state of the richly embossed leather vambraces scarcely registered.

  ‘What have you done?’

  Fear stared back at him from Gynevra's golden eyes and a strange pain filled his chest when he realized her fear was for him. Sure, his closest and most trusted Paggi friends and advisers in Fyr Poseidyr had feared for him when he'd told them what he planned to do. But they'd feared for his sanity and the future
of Nyalda, and thought nothing of his personal safety. This woman with eyes like bruised gillyflowers and her mouth soft and trembling for him alone, made him feel things that had him doubting his sanity.

  But there was no doubt in his mind that the decision he'd made in the face of Ahron's increasingly psychotic malevolence was the right one. It would be better for them all if he kept his mind on the possible ramifications of that decision and the immediate threat of the high seas to all their lives instead of on how much he wanted to fall with this woman onto the couch she'd just risen from and forget all finwodem acts and their outcomes. Her drug-clouded eyes searched his face demandingly, waiting for his answer.

  Putting her from him, he strode to a high desk in the corner of the cabin and bracing himself against it, folded his arms across his chest. He wanted to be ready for the censure he'd see in her eyes. It was alarming how her opinion mattered to him. More so when he cared naught for the opinion of anyone else. This woman was dangerous to him in so many ways and yet—he could no more imagine impounding himself in Nyalda without her than he could imagine not responding to the heat he saw in her eyes whenever they met.

  Pitching his voice low, he held her gaze and said, ‘I've declared the Province of Nyalda independent of Poseidonia and Atlantis. Nyalda is now a nation in its own right.’

  She opened her mouth to speak then closed it again. The tip of her tongue slid out and moistened her lips and fire of a lethal kind attacked his loins. If it weren't for the violent lurch of the floor beneath his feet and the constant need to counterbalance, he could forget where he was.

  ‘Independent?’ she whispered at last, eyes huge and dark, bloodless hands gripping the edge of the couch. ‘Have—Have you—declared war on my pavuon?’

  War? Kurn it, he wanted her. No other woman could plunder his mind like this, merely with a look. War? He dragged a hand through the sodden tangles of his hair. What were they talking about? Cronos, he needed to get himself in hand.

  ‘No,’ he managed to growl, ‘but I imagine Ahron very well could declare war on Nyalda.’

  Gynevra crossed her hands over her breasts, closed her eyes and whispered, ‘Ibn Ist del Alomdino, en cala suevon ara mei!’