Heart of Stone

by Arwen Jayne

  Tyra let go of her boundaries and surrendered, inwardly smiling deeply, “Yes please...Sirs!”

  Excerpt from Book 2: A lick of Immorality

  They manifested inside a small mountain cave. Simon lit some candles he’d left on previous visits. The light revealed the staggering beauty of the crystal lined cave.

  “Silwa and his people blocked off the entrance millennia ago to keep out the curious and to hide it from the Din.” Simon motioned to the ceiling, made up of crystals of clearest quartz. “It’s beautiful isn’t it? Can you feel it? They each hold a piece of high-level consciousness that has protected Arion and kept him company all these years. I seeded it with the necessary particles long ago in the hope they would flourish here and help to heal him. They have grown beautifully.”

  Thex smiled at his lover’s care of his friend. “You sound like a gardener.”

  Simon liked that idea, “indeed!”

  Thex walked over to the contorted crystal that graced the back of the cavern. He leaned forward to touch his forehead to the cool stone. Seeking with his mind he tried to find Arion’s essence but couldn’t. He turned with anguish back to Simon. “Are you sure this is him?” he asked with a rare tear threatening to travel down the side of his face.

  Simon sighed heavily. “It has been difficult to reach him. He’s contracted so far inside himself. That is why I grew the crystals here, in the hope of giving his soul comfort. Silwa comes here often but he has many duties in the area that keep him away. Arion hasn’t had the same ongoing companionship as you’ve had from me and your human guardians. Unfortunately there is another of your team, Kiana, who is even more isolated.” He walked over to Thex’s side. “Let’s try together to touch Arion’s mind.”

  Thex worried at the suffering of the rest of the seven but let it go for later. He and Simon rested their heads against the crystal and sought contact, first with each other, then using their combined mind they reached out into the centre of the crystal. And there it was! Just a spark of mind but it was there. “Arion!” Thex just about yelled with his mind, “are you still in there my friend?”

  “Thex” the mind’s response was at first weak but interest and yearning awoke in it. “Are you really here?”

  Relief flooded Thex’s mind and into their three-way mind link. “You bet old friend. Simon is with me too. Simon and my other mate Tyra got me out. Simon seems to think it won’t be long and you’ll be out too.”

  “You mated SIMON? Somehow I can’t imagine you being his sub. Who’s Tyra?” There was a tone of jealousy in the question.

  “Tyra’s the lovely human who came to my rescue. She and Simon started to get me out when they were attacked by the Din. Simon was badly injured but a now good friend turned up and dealt with the Din. Tyra called Simon’s mum, together they finished freeing me and then Ma healed Simon who’d been gravely wounded in the attack.” Thex relayed pictures of the events to Arion’s mind. “Oh, and it's Tyra who plays Simon’s games, not me. Simon and I have made our own arrangements, usually involving Tyra, who’s immortal now by-the-way.”

  Arion was fascinated for the first time in longer than he wanted to remember, jealous but fascinated. Simon had been but a boy at the time of the great defeat but he had gotten to know him through his visits to his prison over the years. He didn’t dislike the bloke, in fact they had formed a tangible friendship over the years, but he would never have imagined Thex and Simon as mates. There was tinge of sadness in his heart. “So what you are saying is that you’ve moved on.”

  Thex nearly banged his head on the crystal in frustration “Damn it Arion, no, do you really doubt that there is still room in my heart for you? Why the hell do you think I’m here, duty?”

  Arion wasn’t sure that duty wasn’t part of it but...”Well okay then, so get me out!”

  “It takes a highly evolved human to do it Arion, one with a ton of compassion, I don’t know who that is to be yet. Tyra offered but couldn't come today because she hasn’t learnt our ways of travel yet and the cave entrance is blocked for the moment. Simon had a prophecy this morning though and seems to think that there are some other beings conspiring to get you out.”

  “Like who?”

  Simon took control of the mind share. “Trust me Arion. I’d tell you now if I could but certain things have to happen first. Today’s visit was just to give you hope. In the meanwhile it’s time you sorted yourself out and readied yourself for re-entry into this world. Draw on the knowledge and light of the crystals here, they have much they could teach you if you would just link with them and ask.”

  Arion wasn’t at all pleased at the delay but Simon was right about one thing, he’d been feeling pity for himself way too long. “Okay Simon, but don’t mistake that for submissiveness on my part. Fair-enough?”

  Simon laughed through the mind-link. “We’ll see.”

  Excerpt from Book 3: Trust and Destiny

  Sarah Brown huddled in the corner of her cell, trying to keep warm. It had been a week since she’d been caught. She missed her desert home. The first day had been the worst. They’d roughed her up quite a bit, accusing her of spying. She’d fought back, spitting at them and scratching them deeply when she could. In the end they’d realized she wasn’t going to speak in anything other than Pitjantjatjara. Without a translator they were getting nowhere and they knew it. She was fluent in English, even if it was her second language, but she’d wisely kept that little tidbit to herself. Surviving out in the desert she’d learnt it was best to let the prey underestimate you and what was an enemy like these guys except prey. Patience and endurance were the true weapons of any hunter. So she endured, she ate the pathetic food they fed her and she bided her time. Eventually they’d get used to her, then they’d make their fatal mistake.

  She used her time to observe everything about her enemy and her situation. Her cell was sparse with little more than a porcelain loo in the corner. Even that lacked for a seat. There was a mattress she’d hauled into the far corner, where she could watch the door to best advantage, and one measly woolen blanket that scratched her skin like blazes but it was enough to give her some warmth. The walls were of the style of red brick she’d seen used on some of the older-style buildings around Alice Springs and Roxby Downs. There were no windows to speak of. She knew she was underground. She remembered the exact route they’d taken her when they’d brought her down here. She practised that route in her mind each day since, going over in detail all the passageways, doors, fixtures and obstacles she could remember. She’d never been in an elevator in her life but she remembered the glow of the button lighting up the letter ‘G’ when they’d entered it and the number ‘23’ when they’d exited on this level. She wasn’t exactly literate, having wagged most of school to spend time with her grandfather out in the bush but commonsense said that meant she was on level 23, below ground. How that was even possible she didn’t know.

  Her captors had a military feel about them but it was obvious they did not belong to the government. Their ethics and demeanor did not match the profile she’d come to know from the few Australian soldiers she’d seen in her time. Then there were their auras. She couldn’t quite make out what it was but something snarled in the darkness that overlay each of her captors. It seemed to control them, fine tendrils of darkness reaching into their very being. They moved as if they were heavy beasts, something much bigger and far more dangerous than their human form. She filed that observation away, if she had to fight them she’d fight them with that in mind, not as if they were what they appeared to be.

  Her greatest enemy right at this moment was loneliness. Strange as it might seem to others the desert was her constant companion. Its vast skies, the wind and heat, the constant movement of the sands, the creatures big and small. It all formed the fine fabric in which she lived. To an extent it was her. Being separated from her normal surroundings left her feeling utterly bereft. She’d found some small comfort, reaching her senses out through the brick into the earth that
surrounded the building she was in. She’d connected with something, she just wasn’t sure what. It had felt feminine and caring. It had seemed to wrap around her and hold her, reassuring her. Then it had left. Somewhere in her soul she felt it had gone to get help, at least that is what she hoped. Yet she couldn’t rely on that hope alone. She had to be ready for whatever opportunity came her way. She knew it wouldn’t be long before her next meal was delivered so she stood and stretched. She’d spent the last days here thinking up moves to keep in shape. She knew she had to stay in condition, if only to continue her lifestyle when she got out. She’d gone over in her mind all the moves she’d seen the animals of the desert use to defend themselves, everything from a red kangaroo’s punch, kick and gouge to the stealthy moves of a praying mantis. When she wasn’t practicing her moves she spent the rest of her time walking circuits of her cell, as if she was still in the desert. It was kind of restful.

  As she passed the door to her cell something shimmered in the middle of the room and a man appeared. Stunned, she paused for a moment then attacked.

  Michael doubled over in pain from her swift kick to his middle. Nails raked his undefended sides and arms. Only his pack protected his back. “Shit Sarah, lay it off will you. I come in peace. I was sent to rescue you.” The beating stopped. Hell, he’d been expecting a wounded, frightened woman, not a hell cat. Kiana chuckled at the back of his mind.

  “The woman who lives in the earth sent you?”

  Michael had to think about that for a moment then he twigged. “The goddess of the Earth, Ma we call her. She told us where to find you.”

  “Us?”

  “There are others but I’m the only one who could make it through the energy field they have around this facility. The others are of too high a vibrational frequency to pass through it.”

  Sarah looked at him puzzled. Surely the man was talking gibberish.

  Michael took in the expression on her face. “Ah, yeah, right. Look, I’ll explain all that later. Hopefully by now Andrew and Anya are upstairs and can disengage the thing. In the meantime we need to get out of this cell.” He looked around the room, trying for ideas.

  Sarah grinned. The opportunity she’d been waiting days for was here. “They’ll be here in a moment to feed me. There will be two of them, there always is. They won’t be expecting you. I’ll wait over there and direct their attention to me.” She pointed to the wall opposite the door. “If you wait behind the door and come at them from behind we might have a chance. But don’t underestimate them. I think they’re more than they seem.”

  “You’re not wrong about that.” He handed her a couple of knives. He wasn’t about to give her a handgun or rifle until he knew she could use it. “These any good to you?”

  Sarah gave him an almost evil grin. “You bet!” She wanted to ask the man what he knew of her captors’ other form but at that moment she heard activity outside her door. She went to her position, concealing the knives by wrapping her trusty blanket around her, pretending to cringe as she waited for her captors.

  Michael quickly armed himself with the Mark XIX Desert Eagle he’d brought with him and took up his position. He hoped the guards didn’t slam the door open and flatten him. As for the gun, it had been converted to work with an anti-Din .50AE round. It had a fearsome recoil and he’d need two hands to control the damn thing but up against the Din there were very few handguns up to the task.

  The Din didn’t slam the door open. In fact they entered somewhat tentatively. They’d grown wary of the woman’s vicious nature. One entered with the tray while the other covered his back. The one with the tray paused for a moment, taking in her cringing form. “Finally breaking you are we, that’ll make things easier. Be nice and we might even warm your nights, with our bodies that is.”

  Sarah fought not to roll her eyes and instead maintained her frightened rabbit appearance. If this sleazeball thought he was ever getting that near her he had another thing coming. On her first day in captivity the damned bastard had near beaten her to a pulp while the other guy restrained her from scratching him and now he was trying to get slutty? He put the tray down in front of her and she sprang, near gutting him as the knife she held sliced him through his belly. In a roar of pain he fell as the Din in his aura materialized before her. She vaguely heard a gun going off but had no time to observe her own horror as the thing rose before her, its blazingly angry eyes intent upon her. “Shit!” A shot rang out again and the thing vaporized into nothing. Her eyes bugged as she stared at the place where it had been. The man she’d sliced was still writhing on the floor and the other was dead on the ground. She took a deep breath to center herself then followed the man with the gun out into the corridor. “What the friggin' hell was that thing?”

  Michael paused, peering around the corner to see what was up the next corridor. “Explain later, for now just believe me when I say that we have to assume that all the other enemy in this facility are possessed in the same way. Now follow me!”

  Sarah groaned when she saw him heading in the wrong direction. “Not that way, lift’s down the corridor this way.” She pointed in the other direction.

  Michael was surprised she knew the way out. “How you know?”

  She pointed at her head. “It’s all in here, I look at things.” As if that answered everything.

  Notes

  For the curious wondering at where some of the ideas for this novel came from I’ve included the brief notes below.

  1525 was the year that the Inquisition decided to eradicate the Alumbrados in Spain. Alumbrado means ‘illumined one’ and they most definitely have nothing to do with the later infamous Austrian illuminati. The alumbrados held little regard for the church or society’s laws believing that the only thing that mattered was union with the all-pervading deity and that was to be found within. The technical term for their disregard for arbitrary social values is antinomian.

  Tyra Aguila Goodwin - Tyra is a warrior’s name, Aguila means eagle and Goodwin means god’s protector. It seemed like a good name for a spiritual warrior.

  I-Wayan Agung is a typical Balinese name and simply means great oldest son.

  The name Alexios is derived from the Ancient Greek for a defender.

  The all-am-I mantra used in the book is an English translation of the Sanskrit Sarvam Aham which can be used in the same way.

  The way names given for the particular spiritual paths I loosely derived from Ancient Greek root words. The paths are roughly comparable with the three pillars in the kabbalah tree of life.

  John Stevens has translated some of Morihei Ueshiba’s works on the spiritual aspects of Aikido. “The Art of Peace” is probably the best known and most readily available of these titles. Part of this philosophy is compassion for your enemy, trying to minimise harm to them and recognizing that they are connected to and part of us.

  The philosophy that absolutely everything is one is called non-dualism in technical jargon. It is found at the deepest levels within most of the world’s mystical traditions including, but not limited to, some forms of radical Judaism, gnostic Christianity, Tamil Siddhar yoga, Kashmir Shaivism, within the traditions of some of the world’s native peoples and amongst many modern new age thinkers.

  The Malakim, the Din and the evil Sakla I have drawn from ancient semitic and gnostic cosmologies, with a bit of artistic license thrown in. In the original gnostic cosmologies Sakla (Saklas, Yaldabaoth or Samael) was a fallen angel or archon who tried to represent himself as the creator and ruler of the world. He is blamed for creating the materialistic illusion that most humans live in, that they are separate from the each other, the all pervasive universal deity, the earth and everything that lives on it. Din is a Hebrew spelling of djin or jinn and basically means demon. The myth of them seems to have been common across the semitic cultures. The idea of them inhabiting people’s auras I got from Meg Losey’s accounts of what she reports having seen as an energy healer in her book “Touching the light”. The idea of evil reptil
ians was also drawn from a common conspiracy theory about which there is plenty to be found online. They seem to represent a psychological archetype for evil, tyranny and power-hungry greed and materialism. The Tyrannosaurus is perhaps well named as representative of this archetype. Many cultures have a version; from Nordic gold hording dragons to Hindu snake-head asuras like Rahu. Who really knows, maybe there is some memory or fear embedded deep in our DNA or racial memory - at some level we’re still small furry mammals running from the dinosaur in the dark.

  This is my first novel. Before now I’d only ever written a few very short stories for a local pagan newsletter. If you liked this story please leave some feedback on one of the book review sites or where you purchased the book.

  For more about the author and her books visit:

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  Books by the author:

  Available in both paperback and ebook editions

  Non fiction

  A simple nuts and bolts guide to yogic meditation and relaxation

  Left hand adventures series

  Heart of Stone

  A Lick of Immortality