time. As I understand it, extremophiles can live under pretty much any condition, no matter how harsh. If there was a way to destroy them . . ."
"You said yourself, you can reverse what he did."
"Yes, but not destroy the ones already in the ground. I can stop them, but it will take time. Years even."
Ivory hated to disappoint him. He was looking at her as if the moon waxed and waned with her. She laid a hand on top of his head. "We will find a way to help her."
"It is here, Ivory. The answer is here," Razvan insisted. "In this cave. Life began in microbe form. There is something in this soil that protects against the invasion of the mutated microbes, I am certain of it."
She sank down beside him, feeling the healing earth move around her as if to cushion and blanket her with its warmth. Whenever she came to the cave she felt as if she'd come home. She'd spent a lot of time beneath the ground here, covered in the rich soil, absorbing the healing properties through her skin.
She scooped up a fistful of dirt and allowed it to run through her fingers like water, feeling the individual properties as the substance moved over her skin. Was it only her imagination because she wanted to do this for him so much, or did she really feel as if there was something different, an element in the soil she was missing?
"You said there is always a balance of good and evil, Ivory," Razvan reminded.
"Yes, but I deal with what is natural. Xavier twists what is natural into something evil. The microbes started out good, not evil, or at least neutral. They were not put on this earth to harm Carpathians. Xavier changed them for his own evil purposes. Had they been naturally poisonous, I would have no doubt that the cure would be close to them, as is always the case with nature. I can reverse his spell. I am certain I can, given the time to study it. But to find something to destroy what he has wrought . . ."
"It is here," Razvan insisted stubbornly. "I feel it."
She looked around her. She had utilized the precious metals and called the gems to her for her weapons and her warning system. She had used the soil for her bedchamber, painstakingly transporting it until she had a full basin. Occasionally she replenished the soil with new, fresh earth, although the healing properties had always remained as powerful as within the cave itself.
She believed in feelings. Ivory was very tuned to the earth after spending so many centuries deep within its rich beds of healing soil. If the metals and gems were the very veins and blood and bones of the earth, perhaps the organisms were her heart and soul.
Razvan had experienced the same connection to the earth. Mother Earth had accepted him, attached her veins to his and encased him in her gems and minerals to save his life. She flowed in his veins in the way she did Ivory's. Perhaps, with his newfound life, he was closer to the soil and could feel the minute differences in ways Ivory hadn't explored yet, but that still didn't make sense. She'd spent centuries in the earth, hooked to the ebb and flow of the earth's lifeblood and she couldn't detect what he thought he felt.
"Clear your mind of everything," Razvan suggested. "Sit like this." He lifted his left foot and placed it on his right thigh and tucked his right foot onto his left thigh.
Ivory sat facing him, assuming the position without question.
"Spine straight, relax your shoulders. That is right." He nodded his approval. "You want to make an oval with your hands, left hand on top of right, with your thumbs together and your middle joints of your middle fingers together. Let go of yourself. Similar to what you do in healing, but mind and body as one, and just let information flow into you. Take it in and let it out. Do not try to hold on to anything. Just be still. Breathe. Match the flow of my breath and then let yourself forget that, too."
Ivory did as he asked, giving herself up to the moment. To the cave. To the earth. It was not only the connection to the earth, she decided later, it was this-Razvan's stillness, his peace, the way he was one with everything around him-that allowed her to first feel the