Pillars of Time

By R. J. Robin

Karen Jacobs has been mysteriously transported from her twenty-first-century world to an unknown time and place. After the initial shock, she adjusts and learns the ways of the new land; five years later she believes she is coping well.

Considered an ignorant outcast by the ruling class, Karennow called Karn and disguising herself as a boy for safetyhas managed to preserve her independence and privacy on a farm of her own in the land of Tidrine. Her new homeland holds many secrets and mysteries, including the pillars that took her from her own time. The class structure of the place promotes suspicion and distrust, and the aristocracy can be tyrannical. Even worse, Karens own secret is in danger as well. The vicious and manipulative High Priest, the supreme ruler of Tidrine, seems determined to enslave her as his personal servant. Now she must decide whether to flee and begin building a new life all over againor whether to stand up for herself and choose a different path.

In this fantasy novel, a twenty-first-century woman trapped in a world beyond her imagination must build a new life in the face of dangerous and unusual powers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jun 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781480819108

R. J. Robin

R. J. Robin has been writing for her own pleasure for many years. Encouraged to try publishing she was surprised to discover the possibilities now available. With the superb assistance of the editors at WordSharp.net, this first book of the trilogy is now here. R. J. lives in Washington State.

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Copyright © 2015 R. J. Robin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-1909-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1910-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015908710

Archway Publishing rev. date: 6/12/2015

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

AUTHOR’S NOTE

If one traces the myths of Atlantis to Peru, then across the seas to India, back to the Mayan, the Aztec, and onward to Indonesia the most common denominator is that the founders have disappeared. In this worldwide traverse, Egypt cannot be omitted. Stories, legends, and speculations surround them all. From Egypt the pyramids break the horizon with their size, and seemingly are the oldest to register studies by western explorers, perhaps because of ancient contact via the Mediterranean Sea.

As modern historians and scholars attempt to determine some facts, it seems to me the suspicions seem to magnify and increase. There are several versions of how the stones themselves were brought to the site. There is speculation the Nile River was closer to the Giza plateau. One pharaoh is named as the builder, and it took ten years. Yet the mathematics of cutting and moving that many stones seem so me, well… to involve incredible speed. Carvings using primitive tools are countered with suppositions of aid from alien spacemen and/or a lost superlative technology. These are my own gleanings of information.

There was, however, one speculation that caught my imagination more than others. This was the idea that the stones were moved by levitation. Whoever might have had the tools or knowledge to do such a thing is debated or discarded altogether. But as an old Star trek fan, it seemed to me that a sort of beam me up Scotty idea was just as viable. Were stones beamed into place? Did these creators of far flung ruins come from our planet or someplace far away, and whatever happened to them?

From an entirely different source came an interest in crystals. Amethysts are reputed to be helpful in healing. Attributes are associated with the many colorful others, and there are different versions of benefits and uses. However, we do know that quartz crystals were used to build early radios. Quartz crystals have what is called piezoelectric energy, an electricity due to pressure.

Just the intrigue of playing with various speculations eventually sprouted my own ideas. These ideas are not scientific or scholarly, but based on my own synthesis and imagination.. Pillars of Time is the result. There are three books in the series; this is the first. It’s reasoning is mine, and I hope, sensible and engaging enough to create speculations and intrigue for you.

Chapter 1

K aren Jacobs took a deep breath. Something felt wrong, but she could not name it. Five years ago, as a tourist at a newly discovered temple, Karen had rubbed a glyph carved into one of the pillars. Her next conscious recollection had been the painful knot on her forehead. That had been the start of coping in this world. Almost five years had been a procession of wrong things, but they had names. At first, it was fear she had been mugged and carried off. However, the only footprints she saw were her own. Karen was never certain how many days elapsed before she realized nothing had been stolen. Her backpack with two days of clothing, extra jacket and toiletries for the short excursion to the new temple were all in place. The Swiss army knife, camera, binoculars, wallet, passport and money attached to her belt were also where they should be. She even had the two bars of chocolate and the apples she had taken from the hotel. She stopped creeping nervously from bush to bush. The time on her watch never changed, and her camera phone never again functioned.

A major problem was that the location was wrong. After a short climb above the brush on the hill beside the stream, a scan with her binoculars filled her with confusion. To the northeast, a high range of mountains loomed, their tops snowcap white against the blue sky. Wherever she was, it was not Egypt. She climbed higher, but not a fence or road could be seen. No jet contrails marred the sky. Those first days had been confusing. Perhaps concussion, Karen thought later, but that was only one of the first of a succession of logical guesses that followed. There were no guards if this was a kidnapping. Speculating about what had happened soon became suppressed in the need to survive. To the north, farther upstream, she suspected a clearing beside the large stream. It took the rest of the day to reach the site.

The clearing turned out to be an empty campsite, possibly of eight tents. She found a few broken pottery cups. There were scraps of wool snagged here and there so she guessed the hoof prints were from a flock of sheep. On top of the hoof marks were the soft leather prints of people. Karen followed their trail, grateful for the forest skills from her youth spent in Montana roaming the forests behind her father’s ranch. The habits of doing chores in a timely fashion had also been engrained early. University had been easier than expected once realizing the same principles applied; do what needs to be done, at the appointed time. Play comes after chores. She set her priorities, food, a night’s shelter, then locate the shepherds and try to determine where she was.

The early fear of starving was quickly eased when she rigged a hook from a safety pin and easily caught trout from the streams. It took more than a week to catch up to the sheep. The shepherds were a mother and her two children, and their reaction to Karen had been fear. The shepherdess reacted with aggression, and the fear became palpably mutual. Her shouts and flailing shepherd’s crook backed Karen away. No attempt at speaking calmly or spreading wide her empty hands dissipated the woman’s aggression. Karen fled. Once she figured out that keeping the spring-swollen streams between them, much of the woman’s fear and aggression was mitigated, and she would try to talk. Karen learned some of the language, walk, sit, hand and so forth. She also acquired the name Karn. It was the best the woman, Fiona, had been able to pronounce. Gestures soon taught her the words for face, eyes, arm, etc. Walk, sit, run, hand, face, etc, were demonstrated easily. Other words were more of a problem. She was not certain if the words Fiona returned when she held up a stick meant wood, branch, or was the name of the plant. Karn also was unable to correct the impression that she was a young man. Perhaps it was her short hair or the blue jeans. Enough of these reflections, she chastised herself. The encounter with Fiona happened four years ago, and had little to do with this new fear today.

Now Karn lived in Tidrine, a settlement to which she had traveled with the men of the nomadic shepherd bands of the mountains. Eventually, sharing trout with Fiona and then teaching her to catch her own fish led to mutual trust. Karen had been slow to realize how close to starvation Fiona and her family were. The ragged woolen clothing and sheepskin cloaks hid their thin bodies. It took her much too long to realize Fiona’s fear was that she might steal one of the sheep. After a few days of poor fishing, Karen at last realized that hunger could be a constant fear. In this world there was no alternative; no stores, no others to lend assistance, no possibility beyond your own skills. For Fiona, it demanded constant, careful attention to her flock.

Fear of starving became a constant companion. Even now, almost five years later and after a second successful harvest, Karn always found the time to check on the storage bins of her precious wheat. In the early days, she had learned to build traps to catch field mice. Smoked trout only kept hunger at bay for a day or two. Her tools were of stones, and she blessed the Swiss army knife. After one scare that she had lost it, woven reeds secured it to her blue jeans. As fall approached, the harvest of the foods she had discovered provided a reliable supply of nourishment. Leaving the mountains because of approaching winter found her following Fiona back down to the clearing she had first discovered.

For winter, the various nomadic family groups, known as tents, gathered then traveled together to a second camp two days farther south along the river. From the second camp, only the men drove selected sheep the seventeen days to trade with Tidrine. Karn was what the Tidrine natives, as well as the nomads, called a Seiko. It meant stranger but carried a taint of sorrow with the fear it engendered. Learning there were others like herself, however, Karn was delighted. Pulling a travois of her tools, extra food, pots and woven coverings, she traveled with the men to Tidrine. During these weeks, the men told Karn what they knew of their destination. They spoke of a disaster that had killed most of their early society. The shepherds of the nomad tents were descendants of those early survivors. As Karn listened to the various accounts, she guessed these nomads had been related somehow to the ruins she had encountered in the mountains. They also knew that the same disaster had struck Tidrine, where there had been more survivors.

Upon arrival, the leader of the trade, Bedlaka, took Karn to the cliff above Tidrine where she could view the huge artificial mesa with a temple that also held glyph pillars similar to those first encountered in Egypt. The Seikos of Tidrine had arrived there. The first to arrive had been crusader knights whose armor and swords quickly gave them supremacy and they imposed their aristocratic culture. Over the next 184 years (a Seiko reckoning), others arrived periodically and maintained rule over the peaceful inhabitants. Bedlaka and the traders of the other nomad tents spoke of the current Seikos with disdain. Nevertheless, Karn decided her chances of survival would be better here, or she could possibly escape through Tidrine’s temple.

At Bedlaka’s insistence, Karn promised not to enter Tidrine for two weeks in order to protect the nomads from any association with her. That request changed the manner in which Karn entered Tidrine. Karn, she spent two weeks surveying the complex from the cliff tops so her arrival would not be associated with the nomads. Entering without her travois, or any outside reference to her Seiko origins had proven wise. At first, accepted as a young lad, Karn had been able to pass as one of a distant tribe of nomads come to be a farmer. However, her own carelessness had revealed her Seiko origins as the end of her second year approached. Since then, she had been what the ruling High Priest called a Seiko-farmer, setting her outside all the groups. All of this matters nothing to the current problem, she thought, again trying to set her mind back on track to this present-day fear.

What I think I know, she mused, as she trod the winding track, are scraps and bits of things, yet somewhere, there must be something to grab. Whatever the sum of these, I only know that when the hair at the back of my neck bristles, something is wrong. In the nine months she had spent in the mountains, such physical warnings had saved her from several possible disasters. Her survival had depended on the memories and wisdom of her own mind, the outdoor skills of her youth and the strength of her own body. She also knew the lucky discovery of the garden, fruit trees, and fields of the mountain ruins had been her salvation. She had also learned that caution was critical and carelessness potentially disastrous. So what bits and scraps bother me now?

It started with that look on the High Priest’s face, she whispered aloud as if presenting an argument to someone. An odd glance, yet I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise. The fear became stronger when I saw the sad look of the Prince just before he quickly turned his head. All the while, the Countessa kept blabbing on in her too shrill voice about providing the High Priest with replacement servants. Karn wiped her face with a work-roughened hand.

The High Priest, supreme ruler of Trine, had allowed two of his long-time servants to be Chosen. Being Chosen was the euphemism of the method whereby the unwanted were sent away by use of the Tidrine temple glyph. Maybe they were lucky and arrived safe and sound in some better world as the High Priest and his predecessors had promised. Who knew? Not a single person who had left Tidrine had ever returned. New arrivals, Seikos, were all from the same Egyptian temple, but not the one that had transported Karen. Yet, the glyph Tidrine used for the Chosen to leave was the same as the one that had brought the Tidrine Seikos here. It was also exactly like the one from the different starting point that had left Karen stranded weeks of walking farther to the east.

Her journey had begun with a tourist visit to a recently discovered archeological site in Egypt, an expensive tour of places not yet opened to the public. It was a trip she had hoped would give her space to decide what to do with the rest of her life. Tony, her husband, had not yielded to Karen’s fears of his traveling in a customer’s plane. The crash had filled her with guilt that she had not convinced him, and sorrow that she hadn’t insisted on also going. She had sold their business, and at the urging of Tony’s family to try to move on, they had purchased the tickets for her Egyptian tour. You need a place without any memories, her father-in-law insisted. You can’t keep moping about.

The trip had indeed brought wonders to help her think of new things. No ropes or confined paths kept this small group from exploring the archeological sites not generally available to the public. No suspicion that rubbing the intriguing glyph carvings on that temple pillar would transport her from the twenty-first century to a world beyond her imagination. In this world of Tidrine, those Chosen were taken to a pillar in a similar temple on top of the artificial mesa. There, some filthy men called Worthy Priests showed these Chosen how to rub a glyph, and they disappeared.

Karen knew the glyph would get her out of Tidrine, but to what new dangers? She had quickly discarded that idea. There had been enough sleepless nights wondering how she would go on facing the trials this world presented. There were five pillars in the Tidrine temple, but unlike those of her original site, four were blocked off with high walls of stone that held back tons of dirt. Only the tops of the pillars were visible, so no other glyph was reachable.

Karn shrugged her shoulders in a shiver, just remembering that long-ago mistake was painful. She had no wish to find herself in another strange world that might demand more years of hunger, cold, confusion and fear. It was bad enough to be struggling in this primitive world. Now, after years of struggle here, this harvest finally resulted in enough to eat with almost a year of reserve stored. The sufficient variety from her garden helped to assuage some of the dream temptations of exotic foods like roast beef and chocolate. Perhaps this next year the carefully tended fruit trees planted from the mountain seeds would bear fruit.

There was also the self-doubt that she wouldn’t be able to find the willpower to start again. Facing five more years of misery just when she now had a dry and warm place to sleep seemed unbearable. At last, there was time not needed just to survive. True, the farm took work, but there was still some time to work on improvements or just to enjoy playing the ukulele she had made. How could one unsettling look from the High Priest and a glance too swiftly turned aside be scary? Scant evidence for this new fear.

Karen quickly shook her head. Never again will I fail to listen to the warnings my own body gives me. When I feel the hair rise on the back of my neck or when the pit of my stomach rises and my breath comes suddenly faster, something is wrong. I shrugged all these senses away, and Tony, my beloved, boarded that doomed airplane, and….

And the next year you came to Egypt, a long trip to consider a way to start a new life, find a new purpose to go on living. You have it; though you might have embroidered your prayers for such a new life with a few more details, her inner voice argued.

Talking to herself was a new behavior in this life. For the many times such self-dialogues were helpful, there were those few where the voices of her own thoughts held more pain than arguments of pro and con. Such discourses often had Karen speaking her thoughts aloud while her inner voice spoke silently. Late at night, Karen wondered about city street people who spoke aloud to themselves. Perhaps, they too were lonely, or in a world where those around them knew nothing of their past or the context of those experiences that they brought to a current existence. Such musings were just idle thoughts that filled many of the hours of darkness, especially those long winter nights with nothing for diversion but the flickering light of her small fire, her body tired while her mind pleaded for occupation.

To fill that strange aching, Karen planned her activities. She racked old memories for data that might help her improve this new existence. Bits and scraps surfaced from remembered novels or television documentaries, such as how to make cement, or use bellows to raise the temperature of a fire in her forge. Tedious hours were spent in trial and error, stomping out her frustrations, or racing down to throw rocks out of her garden and making up epithets to replace swearing.

Karen wiped her hand down her face knowing she was avoiding this current dilemma. Tidrine was not a bountiful place. Her own hunger the first year here had been severe, but too many families lived on the edge of such starvation. No, today there was one other critical detail to this new fear, the casually phrased question of Duke Hornsen last Monday following that monthly Sunday supper. Cleverly, the Duke found an excuse to walk past her. In a whisper, he asked if I had ever considered going back to the nomads. Again, Karen shivered. Maybe it is just my paranoid imagination, but…all I’ve done this past week to prepare is really not a waste. If the High Priest, that dishonorable Count, wants me as a replacement servant then I must risk the glyph again or…just take the travois of supplies I left on the top of the cliff and flee. Either leaves me no choice, none…but what if there is no problem?

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Karen continued along the narrow track from her farm but turned back in surprise as her neighbor Duce caught up to her.

Gracious, Karn, I’ve called out twice.

Oh, Duce, Karn replied, My mind was far away.

Thinking we will be given assize to clean barns again? Duce asked smiling.

Karen looked up at the man. His grandfather had been a Seiko, and Duce was one of the largest men in Tidrine. No, old thoughts, Duce, Karn responded, a bit chagrined. Assize was a French idea that as she recalled denoted the labor on the roads that French peasants had owed their lords. Started in Tidrine by early Seikos, it was modified to include all labor. It mandated two days each week of the thirteen-month year were owed to the High Priest, although it was called labor for the temple. The names of the months were in French. The extra twenty-eight-day month called Bastille, followed June. To make the year a full three hundred sixty-five days, there were two December twenty-fifths. No one bothered with leap years. Thus, Tidrine’s Seiko calendar slipped slowly backward until a new High Priest added back a week in celebration of his ascendancy. Solstices and equinoxes were celebrated regardless of the actual position of the planets. All original monthly ceremonies, now full of Catholic influence, were required for everyone, the twenty-first of every month.

Karen tried to think of the assize as a more direct form of taxes. The percentage of time worked for the Tidrine assize was equivalent to the amount she’d paid back in the United States, in that former life. Still, USA taxes were paid with money earned doing work one wished to do. Tidrine tasks involved work in the fields, cutting firewood for the Seikos and temple priests, and chipping out building stones. Most onerous was assize to work the bellows of the forge in the heat of summer.

Probably, she answered at last.

Are you sick? Duce asked peering down.

No, but I did not sleep well.

Well, at least if we must clean barns again it will never be as bad as that first time. You should be more cheerful. Duce smiled. I am glad we are not doing trade assize this year. Starting in the rain is not good. The only nice thing to say of trade assize is that it only is required every five years. Did you know that long ago it used to begin earlier that October 1? That is what my father told me.

No but that would be more sensible, Karn answered, better weather.

Duce was brawny as well as tall. His strength was well known. Often, he was assigned assize because of his strength. I always think of Gother at this time. When we made that trade together, it was when we became friends. Duce smiled broadly. I know he was more amusing cleaning barns as well.

Karn chuckled at this thought. Gother was funny even when he grumbled.

Duce became more serious. What a miserable life he must have had. I think he tried hard to make you smile.

Karn nodded, remembering. Gother’s family was forbidden to leave their farm, and all visitation was denied. Gother’s younger brother, Lozen, had Down’s syndrome. When the child had a tantrum during the High Priest’s prayer at one monthly festival, Baron Heinrich Luther Von Restnauer had demanded the family be executed. Bad blood and you have to stop any possibility that there will be contamination of other families if they are allowed to breed. The farmers are stupid enough now. However, Gother was a good worker, and for whatever reason he was to be allowed to perform his usual assize, banned from everything else. The High Priest had agreed to castrate the boy, Lozen. The boy’s castration was badly mangled, a miracle he survived. Gother’s marriage, scheduled for the following month of June, was canceled and his sister, age 13, was summarily dismissed from the Abbey school. A few years later the mother had died, leaving the two older children to care for their handicapped sibling, Lozen.

Their farm on the Dades was the closest to Tidrine. All farms along the Dades were Monday assize, Gother, Duce and Karn on the North bank, Harani and Jayrow on the South bank. Duce was strict about adhering to the High Priest’s edicts. Karn, unaware, had waved at first, and if encountering Gother on the way to assize, would speak to him. Duce drew her aside and explained the edicts imposed years before, and how every farmer had sworn to abide by them. Well, Duce, she’d replied, When I am asked to swear, then I will. Until then, I will wave. However, she had done more than that. Gother’s family was the first she taught to build the traps to catch mice and how to cook them.

Duce, too, had been remembering; then he shook his head. Ah, before I forget, Peno wanted to know if we are cutting wood this week. Whenever he spoke of his wife, Duce seemed to stand taller. Only a blind man would miss the radiance of love the couple shared. Within this aura, their two sons had thrived.

I, ah…I haven’t decided. Could I tell you tomorrow?

A bit taken aback, Duce nodded, Of course, Karn. Are you certain you are not sick?

Not sick, Duce, just…just thinking. The first day of trade assize brings many memories.

We were so lucky, then Karn, to be chosen to go on to the ocean for salt. The seeds you traded for…a blessing Karn. Let me again thank you for that.

Karn looked into his eyes. Duce, you are welcome. We have both prospered because of them. Look how healthy we are compared to the other families. You are correct, a blessing, a very lucky blessing; a gift, really, of the Goddess.

Yes, the Goddess, Karn. You speak truly. In the old religion of the nomads and Tidrine, the Goddess was worshiped as much as God was. In their language, the word Goddess actually meant God, Goddess and All That Is.

Duce smiled, Well then, I will hurry on ahead of you.

Karn nodded agreement. Their friendship was kept secret from the rest of Tidrine.

Chapter 2

K arn resumed her trek until reaching the outer edge of the quarry and stepped behind the pile of broken stones and dregs from the iron forge dumped there. It had become a ritual for her to gather herself behind this screen to be certain she assumed her role as Karn before entering the main plaza of Tidrine. She wished she had instituted this ritual before the European Seikos discovered she too was a Seiko.

It was Karn, not Karen stomping mud from the straw sandals and tucking the straw umbrella into a dry crevice. The woven straw hat would keep her ash blonde hair dry for a few more hours. Taking a deep breath, she proceeded down her checklist to protect what was left of her disguise as she changed from a stranded twenty-first century woman to the young peasant lad from an unnamed Pacific island whom she pretended to be in this one.

She curved her shoulders forward, slumping, and checked the ties that bound her mouse fur cape. Her callused hand wiped down her face as though to screen her eyes and remind her to keep them lowered. Several deep breaths were clues to keep her mouth slightly open, a pose she thought helped disguise intelligence. It helped dismiss her lack of beard or even the hint of one to come. Her five-foot seven-inch frame was just a bit below medium height for men in this place, where the tallest man, a Seiko, was only a few inches taller. Upon her arrival in Tidrine, she had insinuated the lad was a slow-witted nomad boy encouraged by his tribal elders to take himself off to become a farmer because he hated following the flocks of sheep and eating mutton; a half-truth because Karen had always hated mutton. The original ruse had worked for almost two years. Her own lapse from Karn to Karen betrayed her.

Disgusted and frustrated by the utter stupidity of the waste around her, the lad called Karn struggled to keep Karen silent. Much of the waste was unnecessary, and Karen could not escape her belief that at least some of the Seikos knew better. However, the ruling Seikos were more interested in their petty arguments about whom to blame instead of fixing anything. One afternoon, Karen’s pent up anger burst past her disguise. She had been listening to an argument between the Prince and the Earl in English. When Earl Roderick Wilton was about to upset a clay mold of hot iron and burn himself, she commanded him to move away in English.

At a hastily called meeting in the High Priest’s house, the ruling Seikos hammered questions at her and finally accepted the lad’s argument that as a peasant there had seemed no need to inform these titled lords she had arrived in this world much as they had. She described the wilds far to the east. After hours of grilling, they seemed to accept this truth particularly after assuring themselves the site of her arrival was a barren, empty place with no buildings. Importantly, there were no Seiko competitors among the wandering nomads. Karn also intimated that she had been born on a Pacific island, and lucky enough to be contracted to an Egyptian company as a menial construction worker. The opportunity to own a large farm in Tidrine was wealth beyond an island peasant’s wildest dreams. The lad Karn was more than content with farmer status. Following this, the High Priest ruled the lad was not entitled to a Seiko share of the trade goods, mollifying the Earl and the Countessa. He also demanded she begin attending the monthly Sunday dinners and be fed the Seiko tea.

Since then, the ritual before entering Tidrine and her heightened fear helped her hold her tongue. Much of the difficulty was that the skill she most prized about herself, and the one that gave her the most pleasure, was her ability to solve problems, those niggling wasteful ones. Silly instances of waste, which if fixed or at least improved would make any situation more manageable and eventual solutions more viable. Tidrine was a bonanza of such opportunities.

In her old world, she and her husband had made a lot of money with this horse sense. In the early days of the computer technology explosion, they had developed program applications that allowed the end-user to type necessary data in once, then have the data stored and copied to all the different forms. Tony used to say that all their company had really done was try to supply a sophisticated way to eliminate duplicate typing, photocopies and pawing through file cabinets. Karen tried not to think of Tony. Her sadness at his death lingered, submerged by necessity beneath the immediate struggle to survive.

All other Seikos had come through the same shaped glyph directly into