Race for the Flash Stone (The Anlon Cully Chronicles Book 2)

by K Patrick Donoghue

  Pebbles sipped more of the enjyia and closed her eyes. With her free hand, she stroked the soft tresses draped over her shoulder and listened to the waves roll onto the beach below. How wonderful it must have been coming here on sunny days like this, she thought. It reminded her of lolling on the aft bench of Anlon’s boat, curled in a blanket, listening to water lap against the hull. Suddenly, she felt very sleepy.

  A voice inside her head — Anlon’s voice — said, “Hey, wake up! We need answers!”

  Eyes still closed, Pebbles softly sighed. “Aw, do I have to? Can’t I just chill a little longer.”

  “Alynioria?” said Malinyah, jiggling Pebbles’ hand.

  The sharply spoken name jolted Pebbles awake. It was then she realized her head was resting on the table. Slowly returning to a sitting position, she yawned. “Oops! Guess I have a low enjyia tolerance.”

  Malinyah laughed. “I’m sorry, I thought coming here would relax you, make it easier for us to talk. Maybe the enjyia wasn’t a good idea.”

  “No, no. It’s honestly perfect. I’m the one who should apologize,” said Pebbles as she stifled another yawn. “I guess we should talk. Anlon will be mad at me if I don’t come back with some answers.”

  “Ah, how is your friend? Is he healed?”

  “He’s not all the way healed yet, but he’s getting there. It’s so cool you remember him,” Pebbles said. “Do you remember meeting Antonio yesterday?”

  “If you mean the black man, yes. He didn’t say his name. He was too frightened…like your friend Anlon.”

  Pebbles laughed. “Yeah, I think you shock their analytical minds!”

  There was a pause while Pebbles gathered her thoughts. There were so many questions to ask, she was overwhelmed. There were questions about the Stones, the map and Devlin. Questions about the Munuorians, about Munirvo and Malinyah herself. Although she knew there was an urgency to learn about the Flash Stone and the map, Pebbles was reluctant to pepper Malinyah about those upfront. So, she started with a simple question, one that Pebbles had often pondered during the long gap since they last spoke.

  “Can you tell time?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Malinyah.

  “You know, do you notice how much time goes by? Like, can you tell it’s been three months since I’ve visited?”

  “Oh, I see. Hmmm… It’s not an easy question to answer. For my own memories, the ones saved on the Sinethal, yes, I can judge the passage of time. But interactions with visitors like you are stored differently.”

  “Different how?”

  “Visitor memories are stored in sequence, but there is nothing that tells me how much time separates each visit, unless in the exchange of thoughts with a visitor, I am told there has been passage of time or I sense a visitor’s perception of time.

  “Like our visit now, I could tell from your greeting that there was a gap between our visits. You said you missed me. You hugged me tightly. The tone of your voice was wistful. Your mind shared these perceptions and let me know time had passed. I didn’t know how much time, only that you perceived it as a long time.”

  “Does that mean when someone’s not visiting you, you’re not aware of time?”

  “That’s right. My consciousness is only active when the Sinethal is connected with a visitor,” Malinyah said.

  “Then, do you know how much time has passed since your memories were moved to the Sinethal?”

  Malinyah picked a wedge of the purple fruit from the bowl and shook her head. A sense of shame washed over Pebbles. Malinyah said, “Don’t feel bad, Alynioria. I can sense it’s been longer than three months.”

  The look in Malinyah’s eyes belied the frivolous quip.

  Pebbles asked, “Would you like to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Well, I don’t know the exact amount of time, but it’s been several thousand years, at least,” said Pebbles.

  Malinyah’s face flushed and she lowered her head. “Thousands of years?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “No, it is good to know the truth. I’m surprised more than I’m upset.”

  “By what?” asked Pebbles.

  “That my Sinethal wasn’t found earlier. Much earlier,” Malinyah said. She paused to consider the implications, then said, “If you are right, though, it means we were not too late. That our captains were successful. That is comforting to know.”

  The selfless comment awed Pebbles. The Munuorians had risked all to save the rest of the world, and for their efforts, they vanished as a people. She said, “You and your people saved humans from dying out, Malinyah. You helped the world start over again. At least, that’s what legends say.”

  “What happened to my people? Where are they today?” asked Malinyah.

  Pebbles meekly said, “They didn’t make it. They disappeared.”

  A ripple of pain passed through Pebbles, but outwardly Malinyah maintained a poised expression. She said, “I feared it would happen, but it’s still devastating to hear.”

  “Why, Malinyah? Why did you fear it would happen?”

  “We were too sheltered; we relied too much on our gensae. A painful lesson we quickly learned after Munirvo. I hoped we would find a way to recover.”

  “What’s gensae?”

  “Gensae. The gift. The ability to read Terra’s mind,” Malinyah answered.

  The ability to read Terra’s mind…Is that how the Munuorians viewed their magnetic sense? Pebbles wondered. As a way to read the planet’s mind?

  “You have gensae, Alynioria. Your mind glows with it,” declared Malinyah.

  Pebbles thought of Anlon’s pestering to test her blood. Shaking her head, she said, “No, no way. I can’t read anyone’s mind, let alone the planet’s! You said you relied too much on gensae. That you learned that after Munirvo. What did Munirvo do to change things?”

  “Take my hands,” Malinyah said.

  When Pebbles clasped hers in Malinyah’s, a new vision appeared. No longer were they seated comfortably enjoying a beautiful day. Instead, they stood in a mucky slime at the cliff’s edge. It coated everything in sight. No flowers, no trees, just miles of gray, noxious slime. The sky was yellow-brown and thick with ashy particles. Pebbles shielded her nose and mouth, but not quickly enough to avoid swallowing several burning embers. Through watery eyes, she saw Tumaera gushing torrents of lava into the ocean. No longer azure blue, the sea below bubbled a blackish sludge.

  Malinyah released her hands, and Pebbles gasped for air. Coughing to clear the burning sensation from her throat, she downed the enjyia left in her glass and poured another. She wiped at her eyes and fought to steady her breathing.

  After another glass of enjyia, Pebbles finally felt close to normal…physically. However, her mind raced as she sought to grapple with the confusing images. They were very different from the images Malinyah showed her beneath the Seybalrosa tree.

  “Is that what happened to this beautiful place?”

  Malinyah nodded. “Munirvo changed everything. It killed everything. Even the Stones went silent. Our gensae was lost.”

  “At Seybalrosa, your lands were untouched by Munirvo. Well, maybe not untouched, but nothing like what you just showed me,” Pebbles said.

  “We managed to protect a small area. The rest was destroyed.”

  “Why didn’t you show me that the first time?”

  Malinyah bowed her head and sighed. “Had I known several thousand years had passed, I would have shown you the bitter truth. But, when I first met you, I thought you and your friends were survivors. You would have known the worst already.”

  Pebbles apologized for questions that caused Malinyah to relive unpleasant memories. The Munuorian smiled and thanked her. Pebbles asked her if she wanted to stop their conversation, but Malinyah said she wanted to continue.

  “Okay,” said Pebbles, “in that case, can we talk about the Stones?”

  “Certainly.”

  “So, the
whole reason I met you is because a man named Devlin Wilson found your Sinethal. Do you remember Devlin?”

  Malinyah said, “Yes, we did not communicate like this, but we were able to share some thoughts back and forth.”

  “Was he the first person who visited with you?”

  “There was one other, one of my own people who came to say farewell. But, yes, Devlin was the first stranger.”

  “And you thought he was a Munirvo survivor?” Pebbles asked.

  “Yes. His curiosity was very strong. Almost too strong,” said Malinyah.

  “That’s Devlin, all right!” said Pebbles. “I only met him a few times before he died, but from all the stories I’ve heard about him, he was the kind of man who got hold of an idea and didn’t let go until his curiosity was satisfied.” She paused, then said, “He’s the one who rediscovered your civilization.”

  Pebbles described Devlin’s hunt to find proof of the lost Munuorian civilization. She told Malinyah that it all started with Devlin’s interest in ancient legends about strange men who came by sea to help survivors of a great flood. The stories interested Devlin because there were so many of them. They were recorded by different civilizations from every corner of the planet and their details were strikingly similar.

  Some of the legends carried more details than others, Pebbles explained. Some described fire from the sky, others said the planet flipped over, but all mentioned a great flood that washed over the planet. Pebbles told Malinyah that many of the stories described the awful conditions after the flood and the arrival of strange people by boat. Most often they were described as tall, bearded men, sometimes with reddish hair, sometimes blondish.

  Dubbed the “fish men” in some of the legends, the men were viewed as rescuers. They brought food and other supplies. They taught the survivors how to farm, build shelters and hunt. And, per some versions, the fish men carried strange stone tools. Tools that could do things the survivors had never seen. To many of the survivors, the fish men seemed like sorcerers.

  “Most people in my time think the stories are made up,” Pebbles said. “They call them myths or ‘fairy tales.’ But Devlin was fascinated by them. He thought the similarities in the legends were too detailed and consistent to be imaginary. So, he decided to look for evidence that would prove the fish men existed.”

  Malinyah interjected, “Why did people doubt the stories so much?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. There was a huge gap in time between when your people lived and the oldest sophisticated civilizations we know about. Like three thousand years. Since there was nothing left of your homes, your art or anything that could prove you were ever here, people don’t believe it was possible that a sophisticated civilization existed so long ago.

  “Our historians call your era ‘the Stone Age,’ mostly because the only things left are crude stone tools and cave drawings. So, they think all humans from that time were primitive, just small groups of people who lived in caves,” Pebbles explained.

  “But, our Tyls? You’ve found some of them,” said Malinyah.

  “Yeah, actually a lot of your Tyls have survived. They’ve been found all over the world. Mostly, Aromaeghs and Breyloftes. The other Tyls, not so much. But, no one knows where they came from, and since they’ve been found in places where more recent civilizations lived, they get lumped in with those peoples’ art. That’s the craziest thing — everyone thinks the Tyls are pieces of art or pottery. They have no idea of their powers.”

  Malinyah nodded. “There were many primitive people living in our time as your historians believe, but not all were.”

  “That’s what Devlin wanted to prove. He thought the tools described in the legends were too sophisticated to be made by cavemen. Devlin wondered if there might be an advanced ‘lost’ civilization.

  “Anyway, that’s what led him to your Stones. I don’t remember which Stone he found first, I think it was the Breylofte. From what I was told, Devlin was looking at a fish men legend that described the building of a shelter. The legend said one of the builders hummed on a stone and it caused another stone to move through the air. There was a drawing of the legend which showed a man humming on what looked like a bowl.

  “So, Devlin went looking for ancient, bowl-like stones that seemed out of place one way or another. He found something very odd. In the pottery of several cultures, he found stone bowls that looked the same — same size, shape and color. He asked other historians about the bowls, but they didn’t seem very interested. They were just simple pieces of pottery to them.

  “Some museums gave him a few. He took them home and hummed on one of them…and he rediscovered the Breylofte.”

  “Very clever,” Malinyah said.

  “I know, right?” said Pebbles. “Anyway, in the art pieces of those same cultures, Devlin found square tiles that also didn’t fit in. Even though the tiles had different etchings and came in different colors, they were all the same shape and size, just like the bowls. And they all had a center notch carved in the back, with two half-circle notches carved in the sides. So, Devlin bought one of them to study.

  “From what Anlon told me, some of the fish men legends described survivors learning to farm by looking at tablets provided by the fish men. Again, there was an ancient diagram that showed a man holding a tablet with something sticking out from behind it. Devlin apparently thought the center notch might be made for another stone.

  “Then, he noticed the tablet was magnetic. He started thinking some more about the center notch on the back. Did a magnet go in there too? He tried regular magnets, but they didn’t attach to the tablet. So, he went looking for a magnetic stone among the art and pottery of different cultures that would fit in the notch.”

  “And he found a Naetir,” Malinyah said.

  “Exactly. That’s when things got really interesting…and troubling,” Pebbles said.

  “In what way?”

  “People started dying.”

  CHAPTER 11

  THE FLASH STONE

  Incline Village, Nevada

  August 12

  Anlon checked his watch once again. Pebbles had been lying on the sofa clutching the Sinethal for more than an hour. During that time, her facial expressions and body language changed many times. Sometimes it seemed she was elated, other times scared. On one occasion, she coughed gruffly. On another, it looked as though she had fallen asleep. Throughout the session, she mouthed gibberish. Standard fare for a visit with Malinyah.

  When the Naetir popped off and plunked on the living room floor, Anlon readied a glass of water and waited for Pebbles to open her eyes. Slowly her lids lifted and she greeted Anlon with a big smile.

  He smiled back and handed her the water. “You good?”

  She propped up on her elbows and sipped the water. She made a funny face and said, “Not nearly as tasty as enjyia.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. You’ll see for yourself in a sec,” she answered, handing the glass back to Anlon.

  “Huh?”

  Pebbles picked up the Naetir from the floor, handed it to Anlon and then held out the Sinethal with her other hand. “Go ahead, she’s expecting you.”

  Anlon looked at the Sinethal skeptically, remembering his one and only experience meeting Malinyah. To say he freaked out would be an understatement. “Hmmm,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this yet.”

  “Oh, it’ll be fun! Just relax and take in the view. It’s gorgeous. She’ll offer you a drink; try it. It tastes pretty good,” said Pebbles.

  “But, I can’t communicate with her,” Anlon said.

  “I know, you don’t have gensae!”

  “What’s that?”

  “Apparently, you were right. I do have a magnetic personality,” cracked Pebbles. “But, don’t sweat it. Just admire the view and try the drink. You won’t have to say anything. But, if you want to say something, say kaeto. It means ‘thank you.’”

  “Kay-toe?”

  “Yep, you go
t it,” Pebbles said. “Oh, I asked her to show you how the Flash Stone works, what it can do. Remember to call it Tuliskaera. When you’re ready, hold out both hands and she’ll take them. Just let go when you’ve seen enough.”

  He sat unmoved.

  “Come on, A.C. I promise, it’ll be fun. Make sure to check out the volcano. Oh, and look behind the table at the seashell collection in the wall. They’re so colorful!” Pebbles beamed.

  “Okay, I’ll give it a try. But, first, how did it go? Did you learn anything?”

  “Oh, my gosh, it was way better than I expected. That’s why I want to share it with you. And yes, learned lots. We’ll talk afterward. Now, quit stalling and fire it up!”

  Anlon reclined in an armchair, took a deep breath and lowered the Naetir…

  The first sensation to hit Anlon was the sound of waves. Then, he felt thick, humid air against his skin. His eyesight faded in slowly, but from the blurred colors at the outset of the Sinethal vision he could tell he was seaside. Around him, he heard conversation and laughing. A cool breeze ruffled his hair.

  When his eyes cleared, he found himself standing on a rocky ledge overlooking the ocean. White birds circled overhead, and Anlon could see ships on the horizon. He teetered slightly, feeling too close to the edge. An arm reached out and steadied him. He turned to see Malinyah smiling at him.

  Although he did flinch when she touched him, this time Anlon didn’t scream like a little girl. Feeling a sense of accomplishment, he smiled back and said, “Kaeto, Malinyah.”

  She applauded his first words of Munuorian and gave him a hug. To say it was a weird feeling when her body pressed against his didn’t do the sensation justice in Anlon’s mind. The floral scent of her hair was so light, it seemed barely detectible, but he could still smell it. He reached to return her hug and could feel the thin fabric of her tunic on his fingertips. It was soft and smooth, almost silky. The details of the experience were so vivid, down to the small black flecks dotting the bright blue of her eyes.

  They separated and she pointed to an empty chair. Anlon was about to sit when he noticed the wall of seashells Pebbles had mentioned. From where he stood they looked as if they’d been painted. Holding up a hand, Anlon deferred sitting and paced toward the wall.