Arrows of Time - Kim Falconer [67]
My ancestors! Maudi!
‘Wonderful, Dray. Are they friendly?’ She crouched down and stroked his back, unable to take her eyes off the other felines. She wondered what it would be like to face these creatures without her bonded mate. That was not something she wanted to find out. Drayco had identified them as forebears and it made sense, though just how far back in time they’d gone, she couldn’t guess. The temple had been destroyed before the Corsanon wars had got under way. She tried to remember when that would have been. Gaelan history was not her best subject.
They’re my family.
‘I’m glad you’re so excited, Dray.’
You’re not?
‘I was hoping to get to Earth and find Kreshkali, or Nell.’
That’s not a problem.
‘What do you mean?’
You’ll see.
‘This isn’t a good time to be cryptic.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Shane asked, missing the mental communication from Drayco. He tore his eyes away from the approaching temple cats to look down at her.
‘I don’t know what’s going on. We aren’t where we wanted to be—again—and Drayco isn’t making much sense.’
Shane put his hand on her shoulder as the lead temple cat sat in front of them and stared at her with jewel-green eyes. ‘Maybe where we think we want to be and where we actually need to be are not the same thing,’ he said.
Rosette stood up, glancing sideways. ‘Are you sure you dropped out of the mystery teachings?’
He laughed. ‘Bards can have insights too, you know.’
She smiled. ‘I know.’ She said the last words so softly she didn’t think he heard her. Turning her attention to the temple cats, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘You’re all so magnificent. Let me introduce myself.’
They know who you are, Maudi. I told them.
‘Thank you.’
But you better tell her.
‘Who?’
Nell.
Rosette’s eyes widened. ‘Nell? She’s here?’
‘Of course, my dear.’ A voice floated from the top of the steps, light as a breeze.
Rosette stared at the woman. She wore a long green dress that dropped down from her shoulders and plunged deeply between her breasts. Her arms were tattooed with temple cats, ravens and other symbols, black images with just a hint of shade and colour. Her hair was red with highlights of gold.
‘Nell? Is that you?’
‘Who else would I be?’ The woman opened her arms, her lips curling into a smile. ‘Welcome to Temple Dumarka,’ she said. ‘Now tell me who you are and how you come to know my name.’
EARTH—TIME: BACKWARD
CHAPTER 15
Everett pulled the tome from the highest shelf, and dusted the jacket. It was quiet in the rare books library, the long reading table empty, only one lamp turned on. He stretched his neck from side to side. He’d been searching half the night, looking for answers in the artefacts of the past—books. So far, he’d found none. The old medical texts offered nothing he didn’t already have in his database. They listed the diseases now eradicated, particularly the cardiovascular disorders that plagued earlier times, but he found no clues to Jane Doe’s condition. The editions from the twenty-first century post-enlightenment period were too dated to be of any use. Dead ends. But the text in his hand might offer something the medical books could not.
Art in the Ancient World—the Collected Works.
He re-read his handwritten notes before opening the book. Jane Doe’s skeletal scan placed her at no more than thirty years old. She couldn’t have a physiology susceptible to heart conditions, unless she wasn’t human, or was much older than her bones. Or from somewhere else. Where else could there be? He was getting nowhere down that path. He folded his notes and put them in his pocket.
What she did have was body art, and that might tell him something about where she was from and who she was. The thought made him shiver. It may not be a question of pathology as much as species, or even time. He wasn’t sure which possibility frightened him the most.
He checked the table of contents. Running his finger down the chapter headings, he stopped at number eighteen,