The Crystal Wielder

By Neil Hetzner

In The Crystal Wielder, the second volume of The Annals of Amarna, Astrid Berensen learns that the enemy of her enemy is not a friend, but, rather, another formidable enemy. Her friend, Raymond, learns that power is intoxicating. Each teen is put in the position of having to decide if either the civilization of Amarna, which they have escaped, or its enemy, Bukhara, is worth saving.

Back on Earth after having escaped the Tjati guards, Astrid and the centuries' old camel rider, Bes, are chased by Bukharians, who have been sent to Earth to steal her crystals. Even as they evade danger, Astrid acts as a docent to Bes explaining Earth’s marvels--cars, electricity, televisions, and cheeseburgers. In their efforts to escape their enemies, Bes and Astrid become separated. Bes is left stranded on Earth and Astrid finds herself back on Kemet, the last place she wants to be, wandering alone through the Dustlands.

Impressed by his chess-playing skills, the vizier of Bukhara chooses Raymond to lead an army of Bukharians to invade Amarna.

After recovering the Mother Lapis, the crystal used to colonize Kemet before being lost on Earth for two thousand years, Bes returns to Amarna.

Whether by fate or the power of the crystals, Astrid, Raymond, and Bes are brought together moments before Amarna's fate and their own will be decided.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neil Hetzner
• Release date: Oct 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781734108910

Neil Hetzner

Neil (aka C.N.) Hetzner is married, has two children, and lives a mile from the edge of the continent in Rhode Island. Since his inauspicious birth in Indiana in 1948 he has worked as a cook, millwright, newspaper columnist, business professor, vacuumist, printer's assistant, landscaper, railroader, caterer, factory worker, consulting editor, and, currently, real estate agent. In addition to working, which he likes a lot, and writing, which he likes even more, he enjoys reading, weaving, cooking, and intrepidly screwing up house repairs. His writing runs the gamut from young adult futurism to stories about the intricacies of families; however, if there is a theme that links his writing, it is the complicated and miraculous mathematics of mercy.

Book preview

THE CRYSTAL WIELDER

VOLUME II

THE ANNALS OF AMARNA

BY

NEIL HETZNER

Copyright © 2019 Neil Hetzner

All rights reserved.

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter One - Welcome Home

Chapter Two - A Welcome Surprise

Chapter Three - Not What They Seem

Chapter Four - Raymond’s Move

Chapter Five - Another Loss

Chapter Six - Grand Master of War

Chapter Seven - Father, Friend, or Foe

Chapter Eight - A Brief Reunion

Chapter Nine - General Confusion

Chapter Ten - Found While Lost

Chapter Eleven - Unknown Strengths

Chapter Twelve - Now Is the Time, You Are the One

Chapter Thirteen - Going Home

Chapter Fourteen - Gathering Strength

Chapter Fifteen - Plans Slip

Chapter Sixteen - Reunion

Chapter Seventeen - Follow the Leader

Chapter Eighteen - Check, Mate

Chapter Nineteen - A Moment’s Peace

Chapter Twenty - Inside the Wall

Chapter Twenty-One - In the Dark

Chapter Twenty-Two - Winds of Change

Chapter Twenty-Three - What Is Ahead

Chapter Twenty-Four - Battle Cries

Chapter Twenty-Five - A Fatal Reunion

Chapter Twenty-Six - Lost and Found

Chapter Twenty-Seven - Consequences

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Burning Desire

Chapter Twenty-Nine - A Final Test

Chapter Thirty - Returned

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writers write. Readers fix. I have the benefit of exceptional readers. For this story, my readers were Martha Day, Phil Hetzner, Larry Rothstein, and Doris Rutz. For their efforts and insights, I am grateful.

I have no visual skills. I’m blessed to know Mike Monahan, who can take my words and turns them into startling images.

CHAPTER ONE

Welcome Home

Staggering barefoot along the crowded sidewalk, half-drunk from date wine and completely exhausted, seventeen-year old Astrid Berenson felt such a physical sense of relief at being back on Earth that it reminded her of nighttime baths when she was three or four. As she dodged what seemed to be an unending stream of people, mostly women clicking along in high heels, she recalled those feelings of being enveloped in warm water, of nostrils filled with the smell of the pink baby lotion her mother squirted into the water to make her skin soft, of her mother’s soapy hands sliding under her chin and into her ticklish armpits, of her mother’s singing muted from the water in her ears, of the feeling of being semi-buoyant. She had been safe, content, cared for, loved.

The very act of conjuring up the details from those long-gone days expelled her sense of relief. It was replaced with a feeling so wrenching that Astrid doubled over to spit out the bitterness of what she had lost.

Pedestrians veered to avoid the filthy girl, who was leaning on a rough-hewn spear as she held back a handful of long, thick, dusty black hair while she hacked and gagged. Watching her stomach’s contents splatter on the sidewalk horrified the teen as much as it did the passersby. After her stomach calmed, she retreated from her mess, reeled, and was sucking air past the stink in her nose when a sudden wooziness forced her to make a desperate grab for a lamp-post.

The olive-skinned, straight-nosed, almond-eyed, lanky teen hung onto the warm metal of the post and waited for the procession of slides—without detail except for color, some red, most a fuzzy black—flashing across the backs of her eyelids to end. As she waited, she listened to the sounds swirling around her: the wheezes and whines of cars, the protesting groans of over-burdened trucks, the tack-hammer taps of high heels, the crescendo and diminuendo of gibberish as pedestrians approached and passed her.

Astrid was positive that the gibberish she was hearing was French, but what she could not understand was how she had ended up in France. From what her mother and the camel rider Bes had told her, the Door should have left her and Bes somewhere south of Lake Erie—Western New York or Pennsylvania, or maybe Ohio or even Indiana.

Holding onto the pole, now more for comfort than for support, Astrid tried to understand what colossal error in the calculations had landed her in France. And, more importantly, how she was supposed to get from France back to Ohio and the Peltdown Institute when she had no money and no passport. In fact, she had nothing but the clothes on her back, the short sword she had retrieved from the Tjati guard she had killed when he tried to capture her, a couple of two-thousand-year-old drinking cups, and the spear that, along with the lamp-post, was helping to hold her up.

It took several minutes before the teenager’s stomach calmed down. The feeling of being on the verge of fainting began to lift. However, despite feeling stronger, Astrid continued to hold onto the lamp-post with her eyes tightly shut. She allowed herself the wistful thought that if she refused to open her eyes her surroundings would just go away.

It was not until the gibberish suddenly grew louder and more voices were added to the unintelligible chorus that Astrid made herself give up the comfort of that darkness. When she opened her eyes, she saw that across the street and further down the block a small crowd had formed a circle. People were pointing and yelling. The crowd pulled back and then closed back in, then out again in a way that reminded Astrid of the iris of a cat. Suddenly, people started turning away from whatever had held their attention. A few ran. Women in their high heels tottered and skittered as if they were running across a hot beach. Astrid saw something flash above the heads of those hurrying away.

Instantly the teen pushed herself off the pole and began running along the sunbaked sidewalk as fast as her reeling legs and bare feet would carry her.

As the girl drew closer, she saw through the gaps of those retreating just what she expected to see. The shiny object was the flailing blade of a Tjati sword. The hilt of the sword was loosely grasped in the hand of Bes, the ancient Amarnian camel rider, who had been transported to Earth with her. Struggling to make her way through the dispersing crowd, like a spawning salmon fighting its way upstream, the teen saw both fear and defiance fighting for dominance across the old man’s leathern face. His whole body seemed to be having the same fight—his flailing sword arm threatening fight, his agitated feet foretelling flight.

Bes! Bes! It’s me.

It took a moment for the old man’s eyes, more used to scanning the Dustlands’ empty vistas, to pick Astrid out of a swarm of people on a city sidewalk. However, once he found her, he pointed his sword before him and began to make his way toward her. Because he, too, was drunk on palm wine, far drunker than Astrid herself, his path toward the teen was far from a beeline.

The distance between the old man and the girl had been less than halved when Astrid noticed two men dressed in blue uniforms coming around the next corner at a half-run.

Astrid picked up her pace as she yelled, Cops! We’ve gotta go!

Cops? What are—

Guards. Like Tjati guards. C’mon!

When she was close enough, Astrid grabbed the saddlebag from Bes’s hand and prodded him with the spear to go in the direction from which she had just come. Looking for an escape route, her eyes darted back and forth like dragonflies above a stream. At first, all she could see were people, dozens of people with eyes agog, or fingers pointing, or mouths emitting short, loud bursts of gibberish. She forced herself to look past the accusers and taunters to the storefronts that lined the sidewalk.

Dresses. Books. Luggage. Cakes.

Even without turning her head, Astrid could feel the cops closing the distance between them and her. She tucked the saddle bag under her arm and used her free hand to hurry the drunken old man along the sidewalk.

Shoes. Shoes would be nice. Dishes. Alleyway.

She started to turn into the alleyway, then swerved back to the sidewalk when she saw that it was a dead-end.

Old furniture. More shoes. Stop tempting me.

Astrid twisted her head around and saw the policemen were getting closer. They weren’t quite running, but they were marching forward with determined steps.

C’mon, Bes. Faster.

Flowers. Candy. Hotel.

Astrid reached out to grab the polished brass handles of the hotel’s ornately carved front door, paused, then looked off to her left toward an intersection, which was less than one hundred feet away.

C’mon! Faster!

The camel rider’s head bobbled yes to Astrid’s commands, but the pace of his flopping feet and wobbly legs remained the same.

Astrid yanked Bes along the sidewalk. At the street corner she veered into the intersection as if she intended to hurry across the street. When she was fifteen feet into the road, she took a quick glance back and, as she had hoped, saw that the sightline between the police and her was cut off. To give the police a distraction, Astrid threw her spear toward the far sidewalk before turning back toward the hotel.

This way.

Astrid yanked Bes toward the side of the hotel, where a far less grand side entrance a third of the way down the block offered a possible escape. She jerked the door open and hustled Bes inside. Six feet inside the entrance was a second doorway. Just on the other side of the interior door was a stairway with treads covered in rose carpeting leading upstairs. Off to the right was the hotel lobby, which was decorated with dark wainscoting and a pale pink marble floor. A half-dozen empty red leather club chairs and small wooden end tables were arranged over a round dark gray rug. On the far side of the lobby, Astrid saw a small man in a black suit behind a long wooden counter. Afraid that the man could see her, Astrid took a step back. When she turned to look outside, the policemen, with their arms up and palms out to stop traffic, were making a beeline across the intersection toward the spear.

Bes, this is a hotel—forget it, I’ll explain what it is later. We need to go through this door and then up those stairs. We need to be as quiet as possible so that man behind the counter doesn’t notice us. We need get upstairs before the cops head this way. Do you understand?

Bes’s head moved, but in such a way that Astrid was unsure whether he was nodding from the effects of the wine or because he understood.

As soon as that man looks away, we go.

As if he had heard her, the clerk bent down to look at something on the counter. As the man’s eyes disappeared, a shiny circular bald spot appeared in a way that reminded Astrid of a rising full moon.

Now. Quietly. Quickly. Up the stairs. Now…wait. Give me your sword.

As the girl grabbed Bes’s sword and stuck it underneath her belt on the opposite side of where her own was wedged, the idea flashed through her mind that she was starting to resemble Yosemite Sam.

Astrid slowly opened the inner door, slid through, and crossed the short distance between the door and stairs. When she turned her head, expecting to find Bes right behind her, he was slumped against the door’s glass, looking like part of a museum display about an ancient civilization that was not quite ready to be exhibited. Stepping one tread higher so that she was completely out of sight of the clerk, Astrid began frantically waving her arms. She could see that the camel rider’s eyes were open; however, from his response to her waving, it was obvious that whatever he was looking at, it wasn’t her.

A feeling with which Astrid was becoming ever more familiar welled over her. Just like the night she and Raymond had run away from the Peltdown Institute and he had crashed his bike, just like when Raymond had lagged behind when they were trying to escape Fatman and use the crystals she had grown to transport themselves from Earth to Kemet, just like when her mother had her doubts about escaping from the Amarnian prison where she had been held for years, Astrid wanted to abandon Bes. She wanted to let his fear, or drunkenness, or stubbornness, or stupidity, whatever force was keeping him leaning against the door, become the cause for his being arrested and jailed. She was tired of taking care of people, of rescuing people, of having to goad people into doing what was so obviously the right thing to do next.

The girl backed one step higher before once again violently motioning Bes to come toward her. Looking like an incensed attendant at a county fair directing an unending stream of traffic, Astrid whirled her arms, but, five seconds later, after getting no response from the old man, she turned on her heel and raced up the stairs.

When Astrid got to the landing, she hesitated. Other than specifically avoiding the two policemen who were chasing her and generally avoiding all policemen, she had no plan. She craned her head to look up the stairwell and listened, but she saw and heard nothing. She put her face to the small pane in the door that separated the stairs from the hallway, but saw nothing but a seemingly unending length of rose carpet and tiara-shaped sconces with small bright lights running to the end of the hall. The lights and hall together reminded Astrid of an airport runway.

As the teen grabbed the hall door handle, she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye. Bes had moved. Now, instead of being slumped against the door, he was leaning against the entrance of the stairwell. She hissed, C’mon! Use the handrail. Pull yourself up. I’ll look for a place to hide.

Without waiting to see if the old man would follow her instructions, Astrid slipped through the doorway. Making her way down the hallway she stopped at each doorknob to give it a careful turn. Halfway down the hall, right next to the elevator, Astrid found a door that, unlike all of the others she had tried, had no brass number plate on it. When she tried the knob, it turned. Peeking inside, she saw a slop sink and shelves piled high with rose-colored sheets, towels, and blankets. There were cases of soap. In the far corner were mops, two large buckets with wringers, and an enormous silver and black vacuum sweeper that she thought would look at home at Cape Canaveral. She started when she heard a noise, but relaxed after seeing it was Bes fumbling his way through the doorway. That moment of relief was only that, a moment. The girl held her breath when it appeared that Bes’s erratic walk was going to cause him to stumble against a guest room door. The old man was less than five feet from Astrid before he became aware of her presence. His thin lips parted in what might have been a smile. He reached out a hand and slapped the wall.

Not stone.

Bes staggered forward another step before slapping the wall harder.

Not stone.

One of Earth’s miracles, Bes. Lots of trees.

Tugging on the old man’s arms, the teen commanded, Get in there. When she felt resistance, she inveigled, If you get in there, I’ll show you another of this world’s wonders.

Bes’s idiot grin widened as he lurched into the supply room. Astrid used one hand to steady the old man and the other to close the door. She whispered, We have to be quiet. The men dressed in blue, the ones who were chasing us, are our enemies.

Bes grabbed for his sword, but was surprised not to find it cinched under his belt.

I have it.

Despite her qualms about the wisdom of what she was about to say, Astrid whispered, I’ll give it back to you when you’re sober, but you have to promise not to use it unless I say so.

When the old man’s gnarled hand reached for the sword, Astrid moved to the stained sink.

Remember I told you that Earth had so much more water than Kemet? Look at this.

Astrid gave a slight twist to both propeller-shaped handles. A trickle of water flowed from the faucets.

Now watch.

She opened the knobs until a stream of water arced from the rusty faucets.

And now.

Astrid reduced the streams to trickles. When she looked at the old man’s face, it was awestruck.

I’m just beginning. Give me your hand.

Astrid tugged on Bes’s hand until it was under the stream of cold water.

And the finale.

She turned off the cold and turned down the hot until it was just a trickle. She turned Bes’s hand palm up and let hot water dribble on to his calluses as her bright eyes studied the disbelief on his face. After a moment of deep satisfaction at the superiority of her world, the same world she had hated ever since her mother had left and her sister Tippy had died, to Bes’s world on Kemet, she cranked the faucet shut.

Show’s over for now. You have to be quiet and get undrunk. And I have to figure out how to get us from France to Pennsylvania. Astrid pulled a plump pillow from a shelf.

Go sit down in that corner and put this behind your head. Go to sleep. Dream of dust.

The old man did as he was told and was asleep in minutes. As soon as his raspy breathing became regular, Astrid began to explore the supply room. She inspected the sheets, towels, and blankets and pondered if, or how, they might be useful. Could she do something with a sheet to make Bes’s pharaonic-era clothing less noticeable? Could she make a kind of shirt for him out of a pillowcase? Would pillowcases be a better way to carry the swords and cups than the saddlebag they had used to bring their things to Earth? Astrid was studying the cleaning supplies as she continued to think about how to make themselves less conspicuous when it dawned on her that some of the bottles and boxes were labeled in French, but many more of were in both French and English, and a few were in English only. As idea came to her that she found so exciting that she wanted to grab Bes’s shoulder and jostle him awake.

To dampen her impatience, the teen continued her explorations. Although her search was done mostly as a distraction, it led to the discovery of a worn key hanging on a nail hidden behind a carton of hand soap.

Astrid opened the supply room door just enough that she could peek out into the hallway. Seeing nothing but a runway of faded roses, she opened the door further until she could maneuver her hand around the edge and try the key in the lock. When it slid easily into that lock, it emboldened the teen to step into the silent corridor, put her ear against the door across the way, and, after hearing nothing, slide the key in that lock. After a moment’s hesitation, Astrid turned the knob and slowly opened the door to an unoccupied room. Astrid moved to the next door, gently knocked, tried the key, opened the door, and saw a pair of shiny brown wingtip shoes on the floor of a shallow alcove where a suit bag hung. She studied the shoes for several seconds wondering whether they might fit Bes, and, if they did, just how he might regard them.

It only took a second for Astrid to realize that the whirring sound she was hearing was the elevator. She pulled the door closed and darted back to the supply room. Once she was safely inside, she put a finger to her lips, but when she turned toward the camel rider, she saw that he had tumbled over from his sitting position. The camel rider was sleeping with his cheek resting on a mop in such a way that the mop looked like his hair and the whole effect reminded her of a bizarrely dressed Raggedy Andy.

The whirring noise continued for another ten seconds, then stopped for a few seconds before Astrid heard a thud that she guessed must be from the elevator stopping two or three floors above. A moment later she was back in the hallway. Less than ten minutes after that she was back into the supply room carrying an armful of clothes. Being as quiet as she could, she stripped off the clothes she had been wearing since she and Raymond had run away from the Peltdown Institute almost two weeks before. She grabbed a washcloth and bar of soap and turned the slop-sink’s hot water faucet a quarter turn. Ten minutes later she was relatively clean and dressed in a pair of navy blue cotton slacks and a blue and white striped boatneck pullover. Although the blue canvas tennis shoes she had stolen were a a size too big for her feet, the teen considered them a great improvement over being barefoot. Once she was dressed and had cinched her old belt around her waist, she used towels to wrap her sword and the drinking cup she had taken from the supplies the Tjati guards had abandoned. Her old clothes, sword, and cup went into a pillowcase. Bes’s sword and his ancient cup went into a second case. Before waking the old guide, Astrid took a minute to drag her fingers through her tangle of hair.

Getting down on one knee so that she could bring her mouth to his ear, Astrid whispered, Bes, wake up. it’s time for us to get out of here. We need to keep moving.

It took more whispering, then louder whispering, and some shaking, and, finally, some pinching before Bes’s eyes flicked open and his hand snapped out and clenched Astrid’s arm.

Stifling a yelp both from her surprise and pain, the girl said, Stop. It’s okay. We’re safe for now, but we need to go. I got you some clothes so you’ll look more like you’re from 1962 A.D rather than from 1962 B.C.

Bes shook his head, What does that mean?

Not much. We don’t use as many camels and we’ve gotten rid of hieroglyphics, but I guess the date wine and swords are about the same.

As she turned on the hot water tap, Astrid continued, C’mon. Get clean. Get dressed. Let’s go meet Earth.

As he stood up and was able to see the water gushing from the faucet, a worried look came over the camel rider’s face. He lunged toward the sink.

Whoa! Whoa. It’s okay. It’s okay to waste water on Earth. It’s not like Kemet. Most of Earth is water.

When Astrid held out a washcloth, Bes’s hands remained at his side.

I know it’s probably weeks before you’re scheduled to get clean, but if you don’t smell like Maysa … As soon as she said the name of Bes’s camel, who last had been seen running away from the oasis at Wahih with the guards’ camels, Astrid knew that she had made a mistake. To divert him from his grief, she thrust the washcloth in the camel rider’s hand.

Hurry. When you’re clean, put these things on, and put your old things in here.

After handling a pillowcase to Bes, Astrid turned her back to the sink and poked around the shelves to see if she could find anything else that might be useful on their journey.

In a corner in a box that had started life holding bottles of ammonia, Astrid discovered a treasure trove of items she decided must have been left behind by guests. There were a number of books and many more magazines, some jewelry made up mostly of single earrings, a snarl of belts, two pairs of high heels, both brown, a Timex wristwatch, a small jackknife with two blades, two pairs of nail scissors, a half-dozen pairs of sunglasses, and a handful of neckties that were so ugly the girl could imagine they had been left behind on purpose. She collected the jackknife, scissors, four of the sturdiest belts, and, after winding the stem and hearing it tick, the Timex. Astrid was pleased with her haul but she was euphoric when she sorted through the books and found that the slimmest one was a travel guide to Montreal.

When the teen turned to Bes to tell him the news that they weren’t stuck in France as she had first thought, she found him with his head bent forward studying the front of the gray summer weight wool pants she had hijacked for him.

Pointing, Astrid whispered, "The metal thing. It’s called a zipper.