The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1)

by Rae T. Alexander

  I considered it my greatest misfortune when I realized that my stones of blue and white did not travel with me. I was stranded. All that I had was my golden stone and my ring. Sometimes my ring had the power of mesmerizing people, but the stone of prophecy was the real power. I looked at my golden stone for some guidance out of my dilemma. It would know what to do. I did not know why my stones did not travel with me. The last thing that I remembered, before my death, was that I had added a beautiful black onyx stone to my satchel, just before I collapsed on the floor of the palace. Perhaps I did not know enough about the secrets and powers of the stones, or their limitations.

  The Anakites had passed on their methods of transference to their descendants, but our knowledge was incomplete. The stones had secrets that even we did not know about. It was said that only a group called the Priests knew everything about them.

  Some Anakites traveled by the power of the stones, but some used an inner magic. They were known as natural witches. I used the stones to transfer, but I suspected that my sister used her own natural abilities to travel away from Egypt, abilities that even she did not know about. She was what I called a natural witch.

  Once I regained my composure, after the clone was completed, I followed the direction of the stone and what it predicted or commanded. I befriended a woman called Mary, later called Mattie. The golden stone told me that day:

  “The stranger without a husband shall be your path. Protect her and you shall live. Follow her and you shall get your justice!”

  There was only one true justice that I craved for. Justice would be the rise of the Anakites, I thought. I imagined a flood of Anakites that were once thought dead, pouring out of the earth’s core. I imagined the destruction of the great Living Spirit!

  So I befriended that girl called Mary. I sought out the justice that she would lead me to. Somehow, she would bring me to a place where I would have my justice at last, I thought. I attempted to protect her, and I followed her, wherever she took me. I became Mary’s companion. I traveled with her and lived with her. I was very close to Mary, and I played my part extremely well. I became her closest friend. I was her greatest advocate, and I even supported her in her theatrical pursuits. She wanted to be an actress and a modern woman.

  Something that she possessed also motivated me to be with her. She had two traveling stones, presents that she said a stranger had given to her. I first assumed that it was an Anakite that had given them to her. I tried to steal them, but some power prevented it. They were cursed, or she was a witch, I thought. All that I knew was that the stone said to follow her, and the fact of her having the traveling stones seemed to confirm my destiny with her.

  I traveled with her when she toured as an actress. I functioned as a maid as well as a companion. I cleaned her room and made sure her dresses were ready before every performance. Mary became a very successful actress, and she would have been known worldwide, if not for her tragic death on a ship in the middle of a cold ocean.

  There was a fatal accident that prevented her greatest dreams from being realized. It happened on a return trip from Europe, after a tour of England. Mary met her disaster when an ocean liner sank in the Atlantic Ocean. I used that opportunity, in our last two hours of life, to teach her of the blue and white stone magic that she possessed. I did not know that it would actually work on the human. My plan was to simply hold on to the stones while I sunk to my death. I stole her stones, just before the ship sank, and, as we both drowned, she reached out with her last strength and managed to touch the royal stones. I inadvertently helped her escape the tragedy of dying at sea.

  I considered myself an Anakite. I had mostly Anakite blood in me. I knew that I would maintain my memory, but I believed that Mary, a human, would experience a great memory loss on her trip on the river of light. I used Mary to travel ahead, and I survived. I survived and continued on my quest for my promised justice, and I vowed to defeat any enemies that stood in my way.

  The greatest enemies of the Anakites have been and always will be the ones that are called the Guardians. I missed my golden opportunity to kill a Guardian, in April of 1906, after the great earthquake in San Francisco. My arrival was ill-timed. I had just missed the Priest by a span of about two weeks.

  What I found out later truly surprised me. The stranger without husband, Mary, had been visited by a Priest. He was the one who had given her the stones of travel. He had given her stones of the type that he claimed could be used by a human in their hour of greatest need, against the master of death itself. I knew that they had great power when I moved my hand over her pocket. The ancient stones moved against my red stone on my finger.

  There was always a great dependency upon humans, in regards to the power of the stones of transference. Some Anakites could travel forward in time by way of magic and dark powers, if they knew the magic, even without the stones. I traveled solely with the aid of the stones as I was not gifted as my sister was. However, the Anakites could never travel into the past, without a human presence with them, though some Anakites never knew this fact. It was one of the safeguards placed on the stones. It was designed by the great Living Spirit, during the first creation. My mother taught that secret to me, and she had learned that from my father.

  The Anakites did have a secret of their own, not known by many. The Anakite, if successfully killed by a Guardian, could save its life by moving into an animal or a dying human if one was immediately available. This method saved us many times, and it preserved us.

  I found out later that this was how Dred, the last surviving Anakite, had transferred away from Arthur at his beheading. He had found a nearby wolf to inhabit, in the woods of the forest. In the case of animals, Anakites learned the ability to enter their bodies, even though the animal was still alive. We only had the ability to enter humans if they were dead or dying. Such was the case during Dred’s later avoidance of death, in the presence of Hajen Habib, when Dred moved into Peter, just after he killed him.

  When I left the body of Aysha, she was in the dust and rubble of the fallen ruins on Market Street. I did not have Aysha’s red stone of clairvoyance. My stone, on my ring that I faithfully wore on my finger, was not its equal. My red stone was not of ruby, but of rhodonite and had once been the jewel on an ancient and magical wand of an evil wizard. The greatest power that I had was the power of clairvoyance in the golden stone of prophecy, taken from the treasures of the royal palace in Cairo.

  It was the absence of the red stone around my neck that first made Hajen Habib suspicious of me—my true intentions, and my real identity. When we first met, it was in his office in Cairo. I was in Egypt at the time with the one called Dred. I was under his orders. Dred had gone into the cafe a few hours before me. I was instructed to enter the cafe and look for him if he did not return in two or three hours.

  When I made my trip on the river of light, sometimes called the river of death, from the land of Cairo, Egypt, I had made up my mind that I would dedicate my next life to search for the legend of Medraut. I always wondered if he was a myth or reality. I also followed the orders of the stone as I wanted my promised justice. I waited until after my trip down the river of light to search for Medraut, the Anakite. I waited until after I arrived with Mary in a different time, after I was finished with her use. Then I used the stone of prophecy to guide me to a distant land and country to where Medraut was. I did find him at last. He was not a myth.

  It was a fulfilled dream of mine to meet Medraut. After all, my sister was dead, and Medraut represented my only connection to a lost past. Believing in him was a necessary hope that kept me alive in spirit. We all must believe in something in order to survive life, even if that belief denies the existence of everything. I believed in Medraut. However, all beliefs have their consequences.

  I found Medraut and met him in a country called England. I found that he had changed his name to Dred. He told me that he had spent many hundreds of years in the form of various animals before entering the body of a hum
an. This was how he had survived. I stayed with him, and I spent several years learning from him. I connected finally to the past of the Anakites.

  Eventually, he sent me to find a certain Priest and to convert someone named Robbie to be his slave. I learned that this human named Robbie wore a ring of submission around his finger that only needed to be activated. I was to find this Robbie and make him a slave, Dred told me.

  Dred also said that he wanted to find all of the Guardians that were alive. He wanted to kill them all. Dred wanted to go to the depths of the earth and find and release all of the Anakites below, if there were any more alive. They had not been seen since the Great Destruction—the flow of mercury that the great Living Spirit had sent to destroy the Anakites.

  I followed this man called Robbie to Egypt, and I approached him just before he entered a cafe. I pretended to ask him for directions. When he turned to offer assistance, I saw the onyx ring on his finger. Dred had told me to turn him and revive his hatred that was contained within the rock. He would make a valuable asset to our team, Dred had said.

  After Robbie had answered my artificial questions, I thanked Robbie for his assistance and placed my hand over his ring before I left him, in a gesture of thankfulness. The red stone on my hand glowed but only an instant, and then I removed it. The bewitching power of the ring stirred the elements of the black stone. When I removed my hand, the black stone activated, and an old debt was paid. An old promise was fulfilled.

  The man’s eyes grew solid black for a moment. “Now you belong to us, human!” I told him.

  I did not know that Robbie had the partial blood of an Anakite within him. I usually could tell such things, but his blood was too fragmented. Such was the case with many offsprings of the mixed Anakites. I was proud that my blood had more Anakite blood in it than human.

  You may be sitting at the table and eating with one even now, and you do not even realize it.

  I waited for the best moment to infiltrate the cafe and trap the Priest. When I saw that he entertained a man called Peter, along with two other people, named David and Mattie, I knew that the moment was near. Dred and I could kill them all, I thought.

  I had the chance to kill the Priest and the others, but I did not. Dred advised me to wait. He wanted to trap everyone, including a man called Tom. I thought this was a mistake, but I did as Dred commanded.

  On the day that Peter and Haj left for their trip to San Francisco, Dred decided to reveal himself. We knew their every move, by the surveillance efforts of Robbie, our slave, and the many bugs that he had planted in the cafe. We would entrap and kill the Guardians, we vowed. The stones would once again be possessed by the Anakites.

  After Dred left for the cafe, I waited for several hours before I decided to check on him, and then I took a taxi from my hotel to the cafe and made my attempt to break into the locked doors. I noticed a sign on the front door that said, “Closed for maintenance,” and I used a pick and broke into the cafe and residence.

  After I had entered the home of Hajen Habib, I explored the building to see what sort of man this Priest actually was. The first floor of the building, or the cafe, was devoid of persons or anything else that interested me. I next explored the second floor, and I found it empty of persons as well. However, what I saw on a dresser in a bedroom caused me to pause in absolute horror and shock. I discovered something that I had not known until that very day.

  I saw the photograph of Haj and his wife, or at least that was my assumption. Perhaps she was his lover, or perhaps she was his wife. One unmistakable fact was clear. The woman looked exactly like me in every detail! She even had a red stone necklace, exactly like the one that my sister had worn in the palace of Queen Cleopatra. The photo was of Haj and Aysha! But how was that possible, I thought. I had seen her dead, in the streets of San Francisco. I had cut her wrist! I had drunk her blood!

  Then I heard a noise from downstairs. It must be Peter and Haj returning from their trip, I concluded. Dred and I had learned, from our bugged conversations, that they both had planned something special today. This was why Dred and I had decided to act.

  While it was true that Dred could have torn the city apart with his power, I persuaded him to make our actions covert. There was news from England about a mysterious man and flying cars. Fortunately, it was not believed and had not been verified by sober or reliable witnesses. I suggested a more subtle approach in Egypt. Reluctantly, Dred agreed.

  As I started to walk down a hallway, away from Haj’s bedroom, I heard the growling of a dog. The sound came from a nearby room. It was just ahead of me. As I passed it, en route to the stairs, I saw a dog in the room as it suffered and sat near his vomit. He did not recognize me, although I looked like Aysha. He was too sick to move or attack me, but he knew that I was a stranger.

  I closed the door on him. I hoped to silence his objections to me, and then I walked downstairs to find the basement.

  What happened next truly startled me. While I walked downstairs, another creature confronted me. It was Pili!—the black calico cat that I had known in Egypt. My ancient and mystical cat from a long ago world recognized me and jumped onto my shoulders.

  The whole story of Pili flashed through my mind, but I had other things more concerning than the history of my cat. Not only was Haj with Aysha, possibly the real Aysha, but they had ownership of my cat! I took hold of a dark and wooden club near some couches in the rooms below and continued my journey to the noises and voices that I heard coming from a lower place.

  I arrived in the basement in time to see Peter, who stood directly in front of Haj. Instinctively, I hit Peter over the head with my heavy stick, but I did not realize that Peter was actually Dred.

  Dred had often talked to me about his gold after he spent afternoons with Mattie in disguise as one called Nora. I was just about to use my ring’s power of hypnotism on Haj and obtain the location of that gold when I realized my crucial mistake.

  An aura of happiness on Haj made me realize what I had done. I had knocked out Dred, who had taken over Peter’s body. Haj, who thought I was Aysha, embraced me genuinely. I had fooled Haj, at least for the moment. But I had to get rid of him. I had to revive Dred. I needed to call for Robbie’s help.

  I played along with Haj, and then I thought of something. I could tell Haj to go back in time to see me, I thought. So I told him to go back to me, to go to the past. I thought this would throw him off. It was the quickest solution and easiest way to have him leave. I needed to figure this out and ask Dred what had happened before I acted in haste. Haj called me his wife, so I deceptively returned his intimate words.

  “Go back to me, my husband! Go quickly, before he arises! I will wait for you!” I said.

  At the request of Haj, I played my part well. I found heavy sewing thread that I wrapped around Peter’s hands and feet. I pretended to secure him from harming anyone. Haj then left briefly to make a couple of phone calls.

  When he came back into the room, I simply reminded Haj, “San Francisco.”

  When Haj left through his cloud of magic, I immediately untied Peter and summoned Robbie with a quick phone call. He had waited at a nearby hotel for instructions. We planned to be ready for Haj when he returned.

  Peter awoke and told me everything that had happened, which changed things entirely. Dred was now powerless, I learned. Without the powers that Dred once possessed, we had to change our course of action.

  We grabbed the pink stone in the vice, and, at Peter’s insistence, we brought along the sick dog. He thought the dog might be useful for what he called “experiments.” Dred, now Peter, acted differently. He seemed like a scientist. I almost did not believe that it was him.

  I looked for Pili, but she was nowhere to be found.

  Peter said that the travel stones were not on the table, and the safe was locked tightly. We needed explosives to blow the safe, and we needed transportation. So I suggested that we procure a moving van first.

  We left by car to find a moving
van or secure a truck. Peter suggested that there might be a lorry rental place nearby. He thought he had spotted a moving van earlier, just across the street.

  We called Robbie on his cell phone and told him of the changed plans. We had him meet us at a truck rental company, but without Dred’s powers, it took longer to obtain the illegal dynamite. We were forced to bribe some members of a militant group for the desired explosives. Fortunately, Peter had money at his hotel.

  We knew that we wanted to remove the stones from Egypt, but we were not sure where or how we would take them. We even arranged for cargo rentals if a ship was necessary. They were massively over-sized containers, but sufficient to move all of the jewels near the cave’s entrance and in the basement. There were treasures in abundance all over the cave. We wanted them all.

  We were gone only for two hours—if that. But when we returned to the basement, the jewels, and the safe and the vials in the cabinets were all gone. Most likely, we concluded, it was the moving van that was seen earlier. This had been planned, but how? What tipped them off?

  It was then that I remembered Haj looking at my chest before he embraced me. I remembered the photo that I had seen upstairs in their bedroom, and the answer came to me. Haj had not seen my red stone around my neck, the one he had obviously expected to see. The red stone must have been a signal to them, just as it was for my sister and me. This meant that the real Aysha was probably still alive. It also meant that Haj went back in time to rescue her somehow.

  How did she survive the earthquake? I saw her dead body! I even possessed it!

  We then believed that it was imperative that we capture Haj and force him to bring Aysha out from hiding. Our plans were starting to fall apart. I questioned the loyalty of my sister and wondered how she could have turned against me. My sister, this other Aysha, had united with a Priest!

  We also concluded that waiting for the right moment to capture all of the Guardians was the only thing left to do. Moreover, we found prophetic words on the stone of prophecy that validated this destiny.