The Black Madonna (The Mystique Trilogy) (8 page)

If I can be of no more aid.
Ishkur looked to us and we assured him he was free to go.

Lugh bowed to me.
Excellent work, Your Highness.

‘I know you will see our cousin safely home,’ I said, proud of my one-time brother. ‘Your assistance is always greatly appreciated, Lugh Lamhfada.’

I am your humble servant.
Lugh’s smile was full of cheek and flirtation.

He was just like his younger brother, Mathu, and my desire to find my prince spurred me into action. I headed into the Amenti complex.

‘We have your father contained here,’ Polaris told me, now that we were alone.

‘Why here?’ I thought this a grave breach of security.

‘Arcturus handed himself in as soon as he realised he’d become a risk,’ Polaris said, defending my father, which was one for the books. ‘And now that I know for certain Sabine Labontè did not instil in him a command to ambush the Amenti Project, he is no longer a danger to us.’

‘What about next time Ishtar decides she wants her toy boy?’ I said. ‘Is this perverse arrangement you have with my father to be ongoing?’

‘Ishtar!’ Polaris hadn’t been able to recognise my kin as easily as I did. ‘Are you sure?’

I nodded.

‘Oh dear.’ Polaris feared for Arcturus’s ability to resist the seduction techniques of the goddess of desire, who was once the very embodiment of beauty.

‘And what about my mother?’ I asked. ‘When does she get told about this?’

‘Ah yes.’ Polaris scratched his head. ‘We need to speak with you about that.’

‘I’m sure you do. But right now I need to see Denera. I want her to consult the Hall of Records for me,’ I finished, answering his query before he could ask it.

He pointed down past the glowing limestone walls of the labyrinth towards where the Hall of Records was located.

The hall was shaped like a keyhole, rounded at the entrance end, with a long passageway extending from the opposite side of the chamber. The walls, floors and ceiling appeared nonexistent upon first viewing, and touching them felt like dipping your hands in thick tepid water.

‘Liquid light,’ I said in recognition. The substance was a medium for a good part of the time-space technologies of the Ceres, along with their huge crystal generators.

All of Amenti’s staff had been chosen from among the Ceres race, bar myself and my absent mate, who were both Anunnaki. Back on Tara, the Ceres race had evolved beyond material existence to become guardians to humanity—as above then so below. My people, the Anunnaki, were seen as the enemy of humanity as a few rogues among them were deemed largely responsible for the catastrophe on Tara and the fall of humanity into this lowest harmonic universe. To atone for this wrong, and those continuing it on this planet, I, Kali, Queen of the Anunnaki people, had volunteered to join the Amenti Project to aid in bringing home all the fallen souls of our people.

I could roughly judge the height of the chamber by the long oblong porthole inset in the wall at the far end of the hall opposite. The portal was deep green in colour, partially reflective and still—like the undisturbed surface of a pond. In the centre of the rounded part of the chamber was a circular mound of solid emerald that rose to waist height. Inset in the milky-white crystal floor of the chamber in front of the emerald mound was a black metallic circular plate. When anyone stood on the plate, a band of emerald green light enclosed them inside a light tube—this was the telepathic shield that ensured only one person controlled the Hall of Records at any given time.

Denera, keeper of the Higher Akasha, and her partner, Zalman, who maintained the Lower Akashic, were deep in conversation when
Polaris and I entered the Hall of Records. The instant they saw us, they stopped and gave me their full attention.

‘Welcome, Kali, to Signet Station Four, host to the Hall of Records and the Amenti complex,’ said Denera. She had once been known as Lilith, but went by her Ceres name since joining the staff of Amenti. ‘I am mistress of this station whose pyramid resonates to the frequency of Thoth, the master of illusion, and therefore the cycles of time.’

My heart skipped a beat; Thoth was one of the names my prince had been known by in Earth’s ancient past.

‘I know what you are thinking, Kali,’ Denera cautioned, ‘but Mathu borrowed the name of this station’s pyramid during the thousands of years he worked, studied and taught here. It was from this very control room that he shut down the Signet Grid and banished the Hall of Records to the astral realms before the demise of Atlantis.’

‘So the soul of my prince is in no way connected to this station?’

It was difficult to suppress my disappointment when Denera shook her head.

‘However, what is connected to this station is five other Signet stations,’ she said with a grin.

Gaia was the primary Signet station to which all the other stations needed to connect. The labyrinth here housed the Arc of the Covenant porthole passage, which was currently hosting the Sphere of Amenti, inside which burned the Blue Flame. The Blue Flame resonated to the frequency of the higher harmonic universe that Tara belonged to. It protected the evolutionary blueprint of humanity and fed the high-frequency energy through the Earth’s natural grid to the other Signet stations. Once a Signet station was activated, the celestial pyramid attached to it was as well; and each pyramid contained the stargate to the home planet of the guardian council assigned to protect that Signet station. If anyone but the true key-holder attempted to activate a station, the portal would be shut down by the guardian council, or could even be remotely destroyed as a very last resort.

My fallen kindred, the Nefilim, were well aware of the Signet Grid and, having failed in their attempts to activate one of the stations, had since been developing ways of damming the matrix in places. To do this, they had developed the dark arts, using the blood sacrifice of
innocents to summon demons from the lower planes of awareness into focused areas on the globe. The evil forms then spread evil thoughts and deeds among the Earth’s inhabitants, which lowered the harmonic frequency of the area and created a dark blockage in the Earth’s natural grid system through which light and energy could not flow.

‘You have opened half of the Signet stations already?’ I said, pleased they were so far advanced in their mission. Inwardly, however, I was concerned to learn I had less time to make good on my promises of finding Mathu and steering my fallen kindred back towards their soul source.

‘That is correct,’ Denera replied. ‘And you are here to consult the Hall of Records with regard to your search for Mathu.’ But instead of helping me as I’d hoped, she shook her head.

‘I need a clue,’ I implored her.

‘I would help you, child, if I could. I have tried!’ she said. ‘But so far as your Mathu is concerned, there is a void.’ She sounded frustrated. ‘It is as if the planetary records have been altered and all traces of Mathu’s existence removed.’

‘Please, no.’ My first horrid thought was that my prince had incarnated, and that the Dracon had got to him first with one of their soul-shattering devices.

‘I did it,’ a voice announced. It was Levi, overhearing our conversation as he approached with a replacement for the weapon I had lost to Erragal. ‘I hacked into the planetary consciousness on Thoth’s—or rather, Mathu’s—behalf.’

Denera looked shocked. ‘When?’

‘In a past life, before the Hall of Records was elevated beyond the physical world,’ Levi explained casually and handed me my weapon. ‘Try not to lose this one.’

‘Why didn’t you mention this before now?’ Denera sounded annoyed; finding Mathu was a high priority.

‘To tell you the truth I’d forgotten all about it until you mentioned it just then,’ Levi said, and then he broke into a smile. ‘The scribe probably planned it just so.’

‘Then how am I meant to find my prince?’ I implored the technologist. ‘I thought I would know in my heart when I’d found him, but I do not.’

Levi was staring at me with a dazed look of revelation. ‘Déjà vu,’ he said, recovering his wits. ‘Thoth said he would leave a marker by which you could identify him.’

I was filled with hope, and took hold of Levi’s arm. ‘Please tell me you know what this marker is.’

‘It’s a pendant,’ Levi said with a smile, happy to help, and from his mind’s eye I perceived an image of the said treasure. It was covered with hieroglyphs that I recognised: ‘He awaits beneath the lotus,’ I read aloud. It made little sense to me.

Levi nodded at my translation. ‘Miss Koriche gave it to me before I entered Amenti,’ he said.

‘Vespera,’ I gasped, for it was she who had been Miss Koriche in a past life. ‘I need to speak—’

‘Vespera is on her way,’ Denera said, having already telepathically requested her presence.

I recalled reading of the pendant in Ashlee’s journals; according to her account, Thoth returned the pendant to Miss Koriche, following Levi’s departure for Amenti.

‘The pendant contained a small fragment of Thoth’s original form,’ Levi explained while we waited. ‘It harnessed genetic information about the great scribe that could be accessed by anyone of high psychic aptitude, such as ourselves.’

Vespera entered the Hall of Records wearing a curious look on her face. ‘You requested to see me?’

I got straight to the point. ‘What happened to the pendant Thoth gave Miss Koriche?’

She looked puzzled a moment, then memories of that far-gone lifetime came back to her. ‘As Thoth requested, the pendant became a family heirloom, passed down by my son to his sons. And that’s probably where it is today.’

I looked at Zalman. He needed no further prompting.

‘I will trace Miss Koriche’s family tree,’ he said, ‘and get back to you with the identity of any possibilities. There may be none; there may be hundreds, it’s hard to say.’

‘A better staff I could not want,’ I told them all, happy to be finally getting somewhere in my search.

‘Are we done here?’ Polaris asked, having other pressing matters for me to attend to. ‘Arcturus will want to speak with you, Kali, before you return to Montségur.’

‘Ah yes, my adulterer father.’

‘The ringstone to which your father pledged his service acts as a constraint on his will.’ Denera spoke up on Arcturus’s behalf as I followed Polaris from the chamber. ‘Is a rape victim an adulterer? He may have looked like he was enjoying himself, but I assure you he did not.’

I nodded to concede her point. I would reserve judgement until I had spoken with my father myself.

Polaris entered the cabin where my father was confined to explain why I was there to see him. The room was made of Orme-reinforced steel, which blocked all psychic frequency. It had a twin-door entry with a security chamber between the doors; one door was required to be shut before the other could be opened. If the prisoner stuck his or her nose beyond the first door, then both security doors would close and trap the escapee. Even if the prisoner was able to become invisible, the sensors were DNA-sensitive and would identify even the ghost of a person.

When Polaris bade me enter, he looked more sombre than I had ever seen him. ‘He’s devastated, go easy,’ he advised.

It was so unlike Polaris to sympathise with my father that my Anunnaki judgemental streak dulled and I felt deeply apprehensive about having to confront a situation that involved true human emotion.

One look at my father’s expression and my human side knew how deeply he was hurting. He sat hunched forward on the metal bench that was the only object in the round, glowing metal room. I wanted to say something reassuring, but nothing came immediately to mind. However, the uncomfortable silence lasted only a moment, until my father found the courage to raise his head and see my awkward expression.

‘How can you even look at me?’ he asked, tears of shame in his voice.

‘I love you.’ The words were finally forthcoming. I may have looked older than my years, but emotionally speaking both Kali and Tamar were still very immature.

‘I don’t deserve your love.’ He couldn’t look me in the eye for his own filled with tears. ‘Or your mother’s.’

‘I won’t tell her,’ I said, moving to embrace and reassure him, but he held out a hand and stopped me.

‘I want you to tell her,’ he said. ‘She should know…’ His words trailed off; pained by whatever he was thinking, he added, ‘I cannot tell her.’

His shame consumed him and, although he fought it off, finally reduced him to tears. I had never seen my father cry, nor even unnerved.

‘Mum will understand, truly,’ I said as he wiped his eyes on his sleeve. He shook his head. ‘Look, I saw the whole thing,’ I started, then stopped at the look of horror on my father’s face. ‘Well, not all…’ I tried to backpedal but the damage was done. ‘But I saw enough to know you didn’t succumb to Ishtar willingly or easily.’

‘Ishtar!’ Arcturus went as white as a sheet as he recognised the name of the Nefilim goddess of seduction and war.

I took a seat alongside him on the metal bench. ‘Arcturus doesn’t fear the Nefilim, so why do you?’ I asked.

My father cracked a sorry smile. ‘Arcturus fears losing Meridan.’

My sympathetic smile did nothing to reassure him. I couldn’t predict how my mother would react; whether Ishtar’s scheme to cause a rift between them would be fulfilled. However, there was something I could do to ease the healing process.

A pile of paper materialised in my hands, covered with handwritten text. ‘Here.’ I handed it to Arcturus.

‘What’s this?’

‘My account of what happened as I would relay it to my mother…including the part of this conversation we haven’t had yet.’

I grinned to see my father’s sadness replaced by wonder and pride.

‘You are a very gifted child,’ he said, overwhelmed by my gesture of trust and forgiveness.

Even the Anunnaki half of me had to admit that bringing hope to another felt good.

‘Read it and decide how guilty you really are,’ I said, knowing he remembered little of what had actually occurred. ‘Then give it to Mum when you’re ready.’ I got up and turned to my father to say goodbye.

Arcturus didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘You
are
all grown up.’