Chapter 19 Gwynedd
Gwynedd
Garesh was a Sumerian name and an ancient one. I could see the weight of years in his eyes. All Druids knew the Sumerian tale of a man and woman, the only two people in the world given the gift of immortality who could not die. I believe this man was the Sumerian.
I had a hundred questions for him. Instead, I took his knife and recklessly cut off a lock of my hair and handed it over. I watched him wrap it carefully in a small swath of silk and pocket it in his purse. “You as well.” He nodded to the men.
Silently I pleaded with Taliesin and Merlin to follow suit.
They reluctantly gave Garesh their hair, and he said, “Come,” turning and walking away.
We followed him across the fields away from Stonehenge until we reached another clearing with an enormous mound of raised earth, a barrow almost four hundred feet long.
I knew right away the woman from my dreams had been laid to rest there in an ancient burial ground.
This warrior must be the guardian of her grave.
“Only she may enter.” He barred the way to Taliesin and Merlin, and I signaled them to wait. I lit a candle and walked into the small cave-like opening to find out what this woman’s bones had to say.
She had been laid to rest in the open air.
Her skeleton decayed by millennia. Even so, I could tell she had been buried like a queen.
Her body was extraordinarily long, and her skull was strangely shaped with an extended brow, much like a drawing I had seen once in Cathan’s library of an ancient Egyptian pharaoh.
The air inside her tomb was distilled with remnants of power.
I could sense memories waiting to be sifted and closed my eyes to chase them.
I could not tell if they were her memories or mine from another lifetime I had lived and forgotten.
Ultimately, it did not matter. The past’s horizon opened in my mind’s eye like a doorway, and I saw everything all at once:
I saw the Great Cataclysm from long ago in the ancient world.
The meteors and earthquakes came at dawn, and by sunset the same day Atlantis, Lemuria, Shangri-La, Aztlan, and other empires across the world had fallen.
People either took to boats on the waters or traveled deep into underground caverns, using whatever means they had to survive.
I saw whole cities sink beneath the sea, their tallest spires disappearing beneath the ocean.
I saw Atlantis, the most magnificent circular island city and pinnacle of technological feat, break apart as its ships sailed away from its ports with thousands on board hoping to survive.
Captains maneuvered their boats through raging waters and towering tsunamis.
These men and women were powerful Torsionists, the last from the Golden Age who were able to manipulate matter.
The ships pushed through the ocean wall.
In a testament to their mastery, not a drop of water touched the bows.
No one was meant to survive this planet-wide destruction. I will not burden you with talk of other worlds and the Great War with those forces who still seek to destroy this planet—or the guardians who made the decision to abandon us and sanction our annihilation.
All except for one guardian. One guardian who loved humanity so much she saved us with a song.
A song of infinite power that holds the key to creation and all the elements—a song that controls the atomic spin of life itself.
For music is the Force. Music is the very fabric of the universe.
Music can alter fields of energy, lift objects in the air like leaves in the wind, and transform atoms at their core.
The harmonics of the universe are encoded into our DNA.
A song created this Earth and saved it once, and there are factions who never want this song wielded again.
After our guardian rescued the world, she created a protective shield around the planet and hid the song in a labyrinth of time. It was the only way she could ensure its survival. She split the song into six parts and entrusted a part to five women. The sixth, she gave to her son, Horus.
The ring holds the map to finding the women when the Earth will need the song once more.
As I sat beside the guardian’s grave at one of the most powerful Ley Lines on Earth, I finally understood and my vision became clear.
For not only did I hold a part of the song inside me, I had been entrusted by her to find the other women and the parts they safeguarded.
This was the vow I had made to her lifetimes ago, because I had been a captain of a ship on that ocean too.
In that life, I swore an oath to assemble the song when the time came—when the poles began to break apart.
I do not know what year this will happen. I do not know what lifetime I will be living. Merlin has the gift to see the future. I do not. My future lives are unknown to me, but the soul’s calling transcends lifetimes, and the soul is more than the sum of a single life.
Sitting in the cave, I saw how when the time comes, the Ley Lines will open her labyrinth, and my real journey will begin to find the women. I will know them by their mastery of music. These women are scattered in time, and I must find each one and the part of the song they hold.
I say I, but I really mean you. For I am writing to my future self.
To a future life I’ve yet to live. Merlin has warned me repeatedly there is a chance we will fail our mission.
That we will not remember what to do or the ancient vow we made lifetimes ago.
Which is why I have left my memories on parchment.
To travel the labyrinth will be a perilous journey.
Once inside, you must find the woman in the time the labyrinth has sent you to.
However, when you do find her there is great risk.
Each time you play the song’s part, the song will splinter the labyrinth’s walls, opening dimensional doorways that should remain closed.
Beings of lower vibration will be drawn to the song’s power and want to possess it.
I believe stories of demons from hell defined in various religions attempt to describe such forces.
Your only safe course is to get to hallow ground where the Earth’s natural resonance is too high for them to follow.
The only way to escape their reach is to leave the time you’re in.
They will not have the ability to follow.
After you have retrieved one part of the song, never linger in that time.
To do so will be at your own peril. Lower vibrational beings will hunt you, and if they capture you, the labyrinth will close to you forever.
Which is why I must impress upon you, once you have the song’s part, leave or risk not getting back at all.
Only music can open the labyrinth’s doorway to the Ley Lines, and the ring on your finger is the key to opening the right door.
When the Ley Lines open, the ring will send you to your next destination.
Only after you have the other women’s four parts of the song can you return to your time where Horus will be waiting with the sixth and final part.
You must return before Winter Solstice or we will fail. I know these words seem fantastical to you now, but soon enough you will discover they are true.
Her song is the only chance we have to save this world once more.