"What?" Kaitlyn said, and Rob said, "What do you mean, except him?"
Mereniang turned. Her face was still pleasant, but Kait suddenly realized it was also remote. And her eyes...
Kaitlyn had seen eyes like that only once before, when the man with the caramel-colored skin had stopped her in the airport. When she'd looked into his eyes, she'd had the sense of centuries passing.
Millennia. So many years that the very attempt to comprehend them sent her reeling.
There were ice ages in this woman's eyes, too.
Kaitlyn heard her own gasp. "Who are you?" she blurted before she could stop herself.
The enigmatic blue eyes dropped, veiled by heavy lashes. "I told you. Mereniang." Then the eyes lifted again, held steady. "One of the Fellowship," the woman said. "And we don't have many rules here, but this one can't be broken. No one may come into the house who has taken a human life."
She looked at Gabriel and added, "I'm sorry."
A wave of pure fury swept over Kait. She could feel herself flushing. But Rob spoke before she could, and he was as angry as she'd ever seen him.
"You can't do that!" he said. "Gabriel hasn't - what if it was self-defense?" he demanded incoherently.
"I'm sorry," Mereniang said again. "I can't change the rules. Aspect forbids it." She seemed regretful but composed, perfectly willing to stand here all evening and debate the issue. Relaxed but unbending, Kait thought dazedly. Absolutely unbending.
"Who's Aspect?" Lewis demanded.
"Not who. What. Aspect is our philosophy, and it doesn't make exceptions for accidental killing."
"But you can't just shut him out," Rob stormed. "You can't."
"He'll be taken care of. There's a cabin beyond the gardens where he can stay. It's just that he can't enter the house."
The web was singing with outrage. Rob said flatly, "Then we can't enter it, either. We're not going without him!"
There was absolute conviction in his voice. And it rallied Kaitlyn out of her speechless daze. "He's right," she said. "We're not."
"He's one of us," Anna said.
"And it's a stupid rule!" Lewis added.
They were all standing shoulder to shoulder, united in their determination. All but Lydia, who stood aside looking uncertain - and Gabriel.
Gabriel had moved back, away from them. He was wearing the thin, faint smile he'd given Rob earlier.
"Go on," he said directly to Rob. "You have to."
"No, we don't." Rob was right in front of him now. Golden in the blue twilight, contrasting with Gabriel's pale face and dark hair. Sun and black hole, Kaitlyn thought. Eternal opposites. Only this time they were fighting for each other.
"Yes, you do," Gabriel said. "Go in there and find out what's going on. I'll wait. I don't care."
A lie Kait could feel clearly in the web. But no one mentioned it. Mereniang was still waiting with the patience of someone to whom minutes were nothing.
Slowly Rob let out his breath. "All right," he said at last. His voice was grim and the look he turned on Mereniang not friendly.
"Wait here," Mereniang told Gabriel. "Someone will come for you." She began walking toward the house.
Kaitlyn followed, but her legs felt heavy and she looked back twice. Gabriel looked almost small standing there by himself in the gathering darkness.
The white house was made of stone, and spacious inside, with a cathedral hush about it. The floor was stone, too. It might have been a temple.
But the furniture, what Kaitlyn could see of it, was simple. There were carved wooden benches and chairs that looked Colonial. She glimpsed a loom in one of the many recessed chambers.
"How old is this place?" she asked Mereniang.
"Old. And it's built on the remnants of an older house. But we'll talk about that later. Right now you're all tired and hungry - come in here and I'll bring you something to eat."
She ushered them into a room with an enormous fireplace and a long cedar table. Kaitlyn sat on a bench, feeling flustered, resentful, and wrong.
She went on feeling it as Mereniang returned, balancing a heavy wooden tray. A young girl was behind her, also carrying a tray.
"Tamsin," Mereniang introduced her. The girl was very pretty, with clusters of curly yellow hair and the profile of a Grecian maiden. Like Mereniang and the man at the airport, she seemed to have the characteristics of several different races, harmoniously blended.
But they're not what I expected, Kaitlyn told Rob wretchedly.
It wasn't that they weren't magical enough. They were almost too magical, despite their simple furniture and ordinary ways. There was something alien at the core of them, something disturbing about the way they stood and watched. Even the young girl, Tamsin, seemed older than the giant trees outside.
The food was good, though. Bread like the loaves they'd bought at the kiosk, fresh and nutty. Some soft, pale yellow cheese. A salad that seemed to be made of more wild plants than lettuce - flowers and what looked like weeds. But delicious. Some flat purply-brown things that looked like fruit roll-ups.
"They are fruit roll-ups," Anna said when Lewis asked. "They're made of salal berries and salmonberries."
There was no meat, not even fish.
"If you're finished, you can come meet the others," Mereniang said.
Kaitlyn bridled slightly. "What about Gabriel?"
"I've had someone take food to him."
"No, I mean, doesn't he get to meet the others? Or do you have a rule against that, too?"
Mereniang sighed. She clasped her small, square-fingered hands together. Then she put them on her hips.
"I'll do what I can," she said. "Tamsin, take them out to the rose garden. It's the only place warm enough. I'll be along."
The rose garden's warm? Lewis asked as they followed Tamsin outside.
Strangely enough, it was. There were roses blooming, too, all colors, crimson and golden-orange and blush pink. The light and warmth seemed to come from the fountain in the center of the walled garden.
No, not the fountain, Kaitlyn thought. The crystal in the fountain. When she'd first seen it in a picture, she hadn't known what it was; she'd wondered if it was an ice sculpture or a column.
It wasn't like Mr. Z's crystal. That monstrosity had been covered with obscene growths, smaller crystals that sprouted like parasites from the main body. This crystal was clean and pure, all straight lines and perfect facets.
And it was glowing gently. Pulsing with a soft, milky light that warmed the air around it.
"Energy," Rob said, holding a hand up to feel it. "It's got a bioenergetic field."
Kaitlyn felt a ripple in the web and was turning even as Gabriel said, "Beats a campfire."
"You're here!" Rob said. They all gathered around him happily. Even Lydia was smiling.
At the same moment Mereniang came through the other entrance in the wall with a group of people.
"This is Timon," she said. The man who stepped forward actually looked old. He was tall but frail and white-haired. His lined face was gentle, the skin almost transparent.
Is he the leader? Kaitlyn asked silently.
"I am a poet and historian," Timon said. "But as the oldest member of the colony, I am sometimes forced to make decisions." He gave a gently ironic smile.
Kaitlyn stared at him, her heartbeat quickening. Had he heard that?
"And this is LeShan."
"We've already met," Gabriel said and showed his teeth.
It was the caramel-skinned man from the airport. His hair was a pale shimmery brown, like silver birch.
His eyes were slanting and very dark, and they flashed at Gabriel dangerously.
"I remember," he said. "The last time I saw you, you had a knife at my throat."
"And you were on top of Kaitlyn," Gabriel said, causing some consternation among the rest of the Fellowship.
"I was trying to warn you!" LeShan snapped, moving forward.
Mereniang was frowning. "LeShan," she said. LeShan went on glaring. "LeShan, Aspect!"
LeShan subsided, stepping back.
If Aspect was a nonviolent philosophy, Kait had the feeling that LeShan had a little trouble with it. She remembered that he'd had a temper.
"Now," Timon said. "Sit down if you'd like. We'll try to answer your questions."
Kaitlyn sat on one of the cool stone benches that lined the wall. She had so many questions she didn't know which to ask first. In the silence she could hear the singing of frogs and the gentle trickle of water in the fountain. The air was heady with the scent of roses. The pale, milky light of the crystal gave a gentle radiance to Timon's thin hair and Mereniang's lovely face.
No one else was speaking. Lewis nudged her. Go on.
"Who are you people?" Kait asked finally.
Timon smiled. "The last survivors of an ancient race. The people of the crystal."
"That's what I heard," Lydia said. "I've heard people use that name, but I don't know what it means."
"Our civilization used crystals for generating and focusing energy. Not just any crystals - they had to be perfectly pure and faceted in a certain way. We called them great crystals or firestones. They were used as power stations; we extracted energy from them the way you extract the energy of heat from coal."
"Is that possible?" Rob said.
"For us it was. But we were a nation of psychics; our society was based on psychic power." Timon nodded toward the crystal in the fountain. " That is the last perfect crystal, and we use it to generate the energy to sustain this place. Without it, we would be helpless. You see, the crystals do more than just supply technical power. They sustain us. In the old country they could rejuvenate us; here they merely stop the ravages of time."
Is that why so many of them have young faces and old eyes? Kaitlyn wondered. But Lewis was speaking up.
"There's nothing like that in history books," he said. "Nothing about a country that used crystals for power."
"I'm afraid it was before what you consider history," Timon said. "I promise you, the civilization did exist.
Plato spoke of it, although he was only repeating stories he'd heard. A land where the fairest and noblest race of people lived. Their country was formed of alternating rings of land and water, and their city was surrounded by three walls. They dug up a metal called orichalcum, which was as precious as gold and shone with a red light, and they used it to decorate the inner wall."
Kaitlyn was gasping. For as Timon spoke, she saw what he described. Images were flooding into her mind, as they had when Joyce had pressed a tiny shard of crystal to her third eye. She saw a city with three circular walls, one of brass, one of tin, and one which glowed red-gold. The city itself was barbaric in its splendor - buildings were coated with silver, their pinnacles with gold.
"They had everything," Timon said in his gentle voice. "Plants of every type; herb, root, and leaf. Hot springs and mineral baths. Excellent soil for growing things. Aqueducts, gardens, temples, docks, libraries, places of learning."
Kaitlyn saw it all. Groves of beautiful trees intermingled with the beautiful buildings. And people living among them without racial strife, in harmony.
"But what happened?" she said. "Where did it all go?"
LeShan answered. "They lost respect for the earth. They took and took, without giving anything back."
"They destroyed the environment?" Anna asked.
"It wasn't quite as simple as that," Timon said softly. "In the final days there was a rift between the people who used their powers for good and those who had chosen the service of evil. You see, the crystals could just as easily work evil as good, they could be turned to torture and destruction. A number of people joined the Dark Lodge and began to use them this way."
"And meanwhile the 'good' psychic masters were demanding too much of their own crystals," LeShan put in. "They were greedy. When the energy broadcast from the crystals was tuned too high, it caused an artificial imbalance. It caused earthquakes first, then floods."
"And so the land was destroyed," Timon said sadly. "Most of the people died with it. But a few clairvoyants escaped - they'd been able to predict what was going to happen. Some of them went to Egypt, some to Peru. And some" - he lifted his head and looked at Kait's group - "to Northern America."
Kaitlyn narrowed her eyes. There had been no pictures in her head to accompany Timon's last words.
"This - destruction," she said. "It wouldn't have involved a continent sinking or anything, would it? Like a lost continent?"
Timon just smiled. "Ours is certainly a lost race," he said, then went on without answering the question.
"This little enclave is all that remains of our people. We came here a long time ago, with the hope of living simply, in peace. We don't bother the outside world, and most of the time it doesn't bother us."
Kaitlyn wanted to pursue her question, but Rob was asking another one. "But, you know, Mr.
Zetes - the man we ran away from - he has a crystal, too."
Members of the Fellowship were nodding grimly. "We're the only pure survivors," Mereniang said. "But others escaped and intermarried with the natives of their new lands. Your Mr. Zetes is a descendent of one of those people. He must have inherited that crystal - or possibly unearthed it after it had been hidden for centuries."
"It looks different from yours," Rob said. "It's all covered with things like spikes."
"It's evil," Mereniang said simply, her ageless blue eyes clear and sad.
"Well, it did something to Gabriel," Rob said. In the web Kaitlyn could feel Gabriel tense in anticipation.
Although he was keeping himself under tight control, she could tell he was both hopeful and resentful.
And that he was beginning to suffer as he did every night - he needed energy, soon.
"Mr. Z hooked Gabriel up to it," Rob was going on. "Like you said, for torture. But afterward - well, it had permanent effects."
Mereniang looked at Gabriel, then moved to look at him more closely. She put a hand on his forehead, over his third eye. Gabriel flinched but didn't step back.
"Now, just let me..." Mereniang's sentence trailed off. Her eyes were focused on something invisible, her whole attitude one of listening. Kaitlyn had seen Rob look like that when he was healing.
"I see." Mereniang's face had become very serious. She took her hand away. "The crystal stepped up your metabolism. You burn your own energy now so quickly that you need an outside supply."
The words were dispassionate, but Kait was certain she could detect something less impartial in those ageless blue eyes. A certain fastidious distaste.
Oh, God, no, Kait thought. If Gabriel senses that...
"There's one thing that might help," Mereniang said. "Put your hands on the crystal."
Gabriel looked at her sharply. Then, slowly, he turned to the crystal in the center of the garden. His face seemed particularly pale in the cool white light as he approached it. After a brief hesitation, he touched one hand to a milky, pulsating facet.
"Both hands," Mereniang said.
Gabriel put his other hand on the crystal. As soon as it touched, his body jerked as if an electrical current had been sent through it. In the web Kaitlyn felt a flare of power.
She was on her feet in alarm. So was Rob, so were the others. But what she felt in the web now was energy flowing, flowing into Gabriel. It was cold, and it elicited none of the wild gratitude and joy she'd felt in Gabriel when he took energy from her - but it was feeding him nevertheless. Sustaining him.
She sat down again. Gabriel took his hands away.
He stood with his head down for a moment, and Kaitlyn could see that he was breathing quickly. Then he turned.
"Am I cured?" he asked, looking straight at Mereniang.
"Oh - no." For the first time the dark woman looked uncomfortable. She couldn't seem to hold Gabriel's eyes. "I'm afraid there is no cure, except possibly the destruction of the crystal that made you this way.
But any crystal which produces energy can help you - "
Rob interrupted, too overwrought to be polite. "Just a minute. You mean destroying Mr. Zetes's crystal will cure him?"
"Possibly."
"Well, then, what are we waiting for? Let's destroy it!"
Mereniang looked helplessly at Timon. All the members of the Fellowship were looking at one another in the same way.
"It isn't that easy," Timon told Rob gently. "To destroy that crystal, we would first have to destroy this crystal. The only way to shatter it would be to unite it with a shard from a crystal that is still pure. Still perfect."
"And this is the last perfect crystal," Mereniang reminded them.
"So - you can't help us," Rob said after a moment.
"Not in that, I'm afraid," Mereniang said quietly. Timon sighed.
Kait was looking at Gabriel. His shoulders had sagged abruptly, as if taking on a heavy weight. His head was slightly bent. In the web all she could feel were the walls he was doggedly building brick by brick.
She could only guess what he must be feeling.
She knew what her other mind-mates were feeling, though - alarm. The Fellowship couldn't cure Gabriel's psychic vampirism. Well, then, what about their other problem?
"There's something else we wanted to ask you about," Lewis said nervously. "See, when we were trying to figure out what Mr. Z was up to - well, it's a long story, but we ended up with this telepathic link. All of us, you know. And we can't get rid of it."
"Telepathy is one of the gifts of the old race," Timon said. His old eyes rested on Kait briefly, and he smiled. "The ability to communicate mind to mind is a wonderful thing."
"But we can't stop," Lewis said. "Gabriel got us linked, and now we can't get unlinked."
Timon looked at Gabriel. So did Mereniang and several of the others, as if to say, "You again?" Kaitlyn had the distinct impression that they thought he was a troublemaker. She sensed a flash of anger from Gabriel, quickly stifled.
"Yes, well, I'm afraid there's not much we can do about that, either," Mereniang said. "We can study it, of course, but a five-way link is a stable pattern. Usually it can only be broken by - "
"The death of one of the members," Kaitlyn and Anna said in chorus. They looked at each other in despair.
"Or distance," Timon said. "If you were to put physical distance between the members - that wouldn't break the link, of course, but you wouldn't feel it as much."
Rob was rumpling his already tousled hair. "But, look, the really important thing is Mr. Zetes. We understand if you can't fix Gabriel or break the link - but you are going to help us against Mr. Z, aren't you?"
There was one of those dreadful pauses which spoke louder than words.
"We are a peaceful race," Timon said at last, almost apologetically.
"But he's afraid of you. He thinks you're the only threat to him." Rob glanced for confirmation at Lydia, who nodded.
"We don't have the power of destruction," Mereniang said. LeShan was grinding one fist into his palm - Kaitlyn sensed that he, at least, wished they did.
Rob was still protesting. "You mean there's nothing you can do to stop him? Do you realize what he's up to?"
"We are not warriors," Timon said. "Only the youngest of us can even leave this place and travel in the outside world. The rest are too feeble - too old." He sighed again and rubbed his lined forehead.
"But can't you do something psychically?" Kaitlyn asked. "Mr. Z's been attacking us long distance."
"It would give away our location," LeShan said grimly, and Timon nodded.
"Your Mr. Zetes does have the power of destruction. If he discovers this place, he will attack us. We are only safe as long as it remains a secret."
Gabriel lifted his head and spoke for the first time in a long while. "You're awfully trusting of us, then."
Timon smiled faintly. "When you first came here, Mereniang looked into your hearts. None of you has come to betray us."
Kaitlyn had been listening with growing frustration. Suddenly she couldn't keep quiet any longer. She found herself standing, words bursting out of her throat.
"You can't help Gabriel and you can't help break the link and you won't help us fight Mr. Zetes - so what did you bring us here for?"
There was age-old sadness in Mereniang's eyes. Endless regret, tempered with the serenity of resignation.
"To give you a refuge," the dark woman said. "We want you to stay here. Forever."
