The Seventh Pleiade, page 16
Aerander had to duck beneath the lip of the cave, but he sensed a space above him and straightened out as he stepped farther in. The walls of the cavern were far derived from anything he had seen so far. In the dim light from the lava bed, they glittered with polished black stone speckled with silver. It was like being surrounded on all sides by the night sky. Lys came up close behind him, but there was no room to move forward.
Then Aerander noticed something right in front of him at the level of his waist—a stone basin, a well of some sort, filled with water. He heeded Ysalane’s command and didn’t touch it.
The three foreigners entered and gently shifted Aerander and Lys around so that Ysalane could stand in front of the fount. Aerander and Lys stood on either side of her. She put her hand into the water, and it lit up like a sun-filled lagoon. Lys backed away from it, stumbling into Hanhau. Hanhau chuckled and steadied him. Ysalane circled her hand in the water, activating it in some way.
“We call it the Eye of the Ancients. It is the only magic that survives from the old days. The elders forged many such devices. Of course, the greatest of all is the Oomphalos.”
Though he had never seen it, an image formed in Aerander’s head: a brilliant red orb, its light enticing him, infusing him with a sense of godlike power. “What is the Oomphalos?” he said.
“Long ago, it was our greatest hope,” Ysalane said. “We lived in peace then, all the people banished from the surface. The elders believed the Oomphalos would preserve an era of peace and prosperity, bringing light into the darkness and making all things possible below that are found above the earth. For a time, it must have been glorious. Our barren world was transformed into a fertile paradise.”
“Why did the New Ones steal it?”
“They weren’t always as they are now. They were once just men, with selfish desires for power. It is a vulnerability borne in each of us. We all call our father by the same name.”
How could a desire for power physically change a person into a giant snake? Did it happen over a gradual course or suddenly? What did she mean by “call our father by the same name”? In Atlantis, Poseidon was the holy father, and it occurred to Aerander that his descendants had become power-hungry, squabbling children in a sense. The ten filial lines were always trying to gain an advantage over each other. But was Ysalane saying that Poseidon was also the father of her people, these underground dwellers?
“Did you know the Oomphalos was not always ours or theirs to take?” Ysalane said.
Aerander shook his head.
“That is the story we have come here to tell.”
Her hand brushed faster through the water. It funneled and changed color in flashes of blue, green, yellow, and red. She lifted her hand above the surface. Her eyes shut tight, as though in meditation or conjuring. The pool shook and settled into a vivid picture: a brown, marshy field, and in the distance, a range of blue-gray mountains that looked entirely covered in ice.
“This is your world,” Ysalane said.
Aerander stared crookedly at the well. It didn’t look like any place he had seen, though the image was so real, he felt as though he could reach into it and feel the wintry air against his hand. No painting could be so lifelike. He watched a bed of reeds bending against a rush of wind. There were no references to explain such a device, but Aerander found himself transfixed. His voice cracked as he said: “Is it the steppe of Azilia?”
“No. This is a place from long ago. When the elders created the Eye, your world was just beginning. They watched and kept its history here. After the age of fire, there came an age of ice. A new race of men emerged. They were hardy, simple creatures that managed to abide the freeze. We had come to peace with our place below, most of us at least. But it made some men jealous. They were angry that we had been forsaken by the Creator God while another generation populated the surface world. Already, they were channeling strange power from the Oomphalos, changing in unnatural ways, and demanding their right to lead us as the New Ones.”
Aerander thought about the Oomphalos again, wondering what kind of power it bestowed. He desired it, and at turns he dreaded it. Something so magical could make a person forget himself and become obsessed with its power.
“The shamans had a solution,” Ysalane continued. “Though it meant giving up our paradise, they sent the Oomphalos away. They knew that if the New Ones got it, they would use it to destroy them.”
The lit-up picture in the pool muddied and rearranged. A volcano, hedged in by glaciers. An eruption and a brilliant skull-shaped stone launched through the sky. It landed on the shore of an island in the middle of a glassy lake. Clouds gave way to blue skies. Ice cleaved from the mountains in thunderous sheets. The brown terrain turned green and vibrant. The Oomphalos had brought the earth out of its freeze.
On the shore of the lake, a young tan-skinned man drew up cautiously to the strange, throbbing stone. Though he wore a primitive deerskin pelt, the piercings in his nose and his red ochre markings showed him as familiarly Lemurian.
“The shamans did not know the effects the stone would have above the ground,” Ysalane said.
Aerander watched the images, amazed at first, then gripped with anxiousness. “They gave the stone to the Lemurians.” His voice stopped short of anything else. He wasn’t sure that he could trust what he was seeing. He looked to Lys. His friend stared angrily at the fount.
“The Lemurians kept the stone for a time. But there are many stories here. We’ll travel farther ahead to a moment of great importance to your people.”
Ysalane’s palm grazed the fount, stirring again in circles, then counter-circles. A new image took form. A young seafarer gazing from the helm of a penteconter—a ship with two rectangular sails and a single line of oarsmen. Such simple ships were pictured in books from Aerander’s history lessons. They had not been in use for many centuries, all the way back to the Founding Age. The seafarer had long, brown wavy hair, almond-shaped brown eyes, and olive skin. An Atlantean.
Aerander was pulled into the picture as though watching things happen from some unseen distance. The boat approached an island beach. Gray skies hung above, and snow flecked the hardscrabble coastline. A party of bearded men in layered pelts stood on the shore, awaiting the ship’s landing. The seamen splashed into the sea and dragged their vessel on to the beach. The young seafarer approached the receiving party eagerly, cradling a clothed object in his arms. He peeled back the covering to reveal the glowing skull-stone.
The older men closed in, drew out daggers from their pelts, and tore at the young man’s body with their weapons.
Aerander winced, as though the violent imagery had jumped out of the pool and attacked him as well. Then the scene changed again. Clouds spread apart, creating gullies of sunlight. The island’s mossy shelves of slate transformed to grassy hills. Rivers flowed from ice-bound heights into pools surrounded by lush greenery. Aerander soared above everything, breathless and fraught with wonder and fear.
At the center of the island, the land rose up to a forested plateau. There were only a few mud-brick dwellings there, but the geography was unmistakable. It was the island of Atlantis, his home. How many hundreds of years ago? The fount shifted and came together with a picture of a mounted fortress overlooking circlets of urbanized canals. Aerander scanned the image, wanting to see more, wondering if his desire would allow him to home in and examine this ancient plan of the city, and its people. To look in on the past in such a way was a dream beyond his imagination.
“Many generations passed, but the New Ones never gave up their quest to regain the stone. Though they were forbidden to go above, they used their magic to create portals up to the surface. When a boy stumbled into their trap, they tricked him into stealing the stone for them.”
In the fount, there was a boy priest, gaunt and bare scalped, sprinting through a forest at nighttime, with a satchel on his back. His rounded, youthfully plump face stirred memories that Aerander couldn’t place.
“You know him as Zazamoukh.”
“When was this?”
“Ten centuries ago.”
That was the Founding Age: the era of Poseidon. “How is he still alive?” Aerander said.
“The Oomphalos,” Ysalane said. “When he brought it to the New Ones, they struck a bargain: let the surface dweller bring them slaves, and in exchange, they would keep him protected by the stone.”
Of all the fantastic things he had seen, this one puzzled Aerander sharply. “How do you mean? Is he immortal?”
“No. The magic of the stone only works when in its presence. Take the stone away, and whatever has undergone its enchantment returns to its ordinary nature.”
Zazamoukh would have to visit the stone often to stay alive all these years. Yet he had a very public life above the ground. He couldn’t disappear so frequently, which explained why he had become an old man, albeit slowly. What a despicable life—depending on the stone to preserve his withering body! Regardless of how he had started, he had become inhuman, a vulture, turning on his own kind.
“He’s been kidnapping people for hundreds of years?”
Lys broke in. “How many have the New Ones enslaved?”
“There must be several hundred, discounting those who were killed trying to escape. They live as long as they are kept near the energy of the stone. The New Ones need to preserve their workers.”
Lys shifted rigorously. Aerander wondered, at their close proximity, if he could contain himself. “We’ve got to get Leo and Koz. Then we go back and make certain that the priest is hanged.” Aerander eyed him steadily. “We’re wasting time,” Lys said. “They’re holed up in some prison and could be hurt. All because of Zazamoukh, who’s still running around, poisoning more boys. He’ll do it again at the next temple lottery.”
Lys was a step ahead of Aerander, but Aerander got there quickly. Just as Backlum and Hanhau had used snake venom to subdue them, Zazamoukh must have put the venom in his bull’s horn to make it look like Attalos was struck down at the Pillar of Poseidon. Being a showman, he played off the mystery by doling out harmless benedictions to all the Panegyris celebrants on Opening Day.
Aerander turned to Ysalane. “Will you help us?”
She was silent. Aerander’s eyes veered to Hanhau, who seemed to be the most sympathetic of the three. “You just need to show us the way. Once we break the slaves out and get them safely home, we have armies that will help you defeat the snakes.”
“That isn’t possible,” Ysalane said.
Aerander stared at her, pleadingly. Lys grumbled, “I told you. These people have no honor. They just want to hide away in the holes and cracks, like mice.”
“You know nothing of our world to speak about our character,” Backlum said to Lys.
Ysalane was calm during the exchange. When the two eased off each other, she spoke. “Typically, Zazamoukh brings the New Ones one or two slaves a season. But our lookouts noticed that it’s been three in as many days. We knew they must be preparing for something, but we did not know what. Until we looked to the Eye.”
She waved her hand over the fount. The surface rippled for a moment, then settled with sudden force into the likeness of a violent storm above the sky. Like an ever-reaching wraith, gray-yellow clouds, pulsing with lightning, skirred toward a coastline in the distance. The sea beneath crested with angry, white-tipped swells. The sense of an impending assault was unmistakable.
“There had been signs, but we didn’t know exactly when it would come to pass.” Images burst into color with her every word: “Tremors. Floods issuing from the glaciers. Tempests.” She looked to Aerander. “Your world has been living out of time. Nature is retaking its course.”
“What do you mean?”
Ysalane stared into the fount. There was a tempest-battered beach, palm trees shook backward at extremes angles, and the tide was sweeping in. A surge of waves rushed ashore, beyond the tree line, then farther still, enveloping the land. “When the stone was lost from your world, the changes began,” Ysalane said. “We, who have survived the ages, have watched them unfold, gradually. As I said, take the stone away, and things return to their ordinary form. The surface world has been fighting to come back into balance. That struggle is accelerating. It will end in drowning what the stone made possible. Its miracles will be washed clean.” She gazed at Aerander keenly. “The New Ones are stockpiling slaves because, very soon, there won’t be anyone left above the ground for them to take. And I’m afraid that means there will be nowhere for the two of you to return to.”
Aerander’s eyes darted to Lys. He shook his head. Aerander did not want to believe it either, though what Ysalane said reminded him of things he knew to be true. The earth changed, in cycles like the seasons, and in more profound, destructive ways. Maybe it happened to keep things in balance for a higher purpose, like a thunderbolt igniting a forest fire and clearing a plain from which eventually sprouted new life. The images that flashed and trembled in the pool confirmed an uneasy feeling that had clawed at Aerander all week. Something was terribly wrong. It was more than an unseasonable storm. He remembered Punamun’s strange proclamation the other day while he was staring at the leak in the ceiling of the bathhouse. It was borne out in the vision of the Eye of the Ancients: the earth’s first destruction was fire; the second will be water.
Ysalane brought her hand out of the pool and made some gesture that extinguished it into darkness. She pivoted around, listening. Everyone was silent. Aerander couldn’t say that he heard anything, but the three foreigners were wary and alert.
A giant snake head lunged through the cavern opening. It caught Hanhau by his weapons harness and dragged him from the shrine.
*
Ysalane and Backlum grabbed their crossbows and jogged outside. Aerander and Lys followed. From the ledge of the cave, Aerander saw Hanhau dangling from the monster’s mouth. He was trying to reach for his weapons pack, which was snared by a fang. The snake trundled backward through the lava bed.
Backlum shot off a metal arrow that pierced the beast in the neck. Ysalane pointed her crossbow in another direction. Aerander swung around to follow her aim. Another snake had crested to attack Backlum. Lys grabbed Aerander’s shoulder to turn him the other way. There was a third snake hovering above the opposite side of the shelf.
One snake lunged for Backlum. Ysalane fired an arrow into its snout. It shrieked and cringed. Backlum shifted to the other side of the ledge to drive back their third attacker.
Aerander watched Hanhau’s captor wagging him through the air while slowly backing away to the other side of the crater cavity.
Ysalane and Backlum shot off arrow after arrow to subdue the creatures. The foreigners had taken on a phosphorescent sheen, which seemed to be an effect of their exertion. Aerander remembered that the snakes were bothered by light, the brighter the better, like the harsh reflection of his xiphos back at the vault. Meanwhile, the snakes were only mildly impaired by the arrows striking them. They swung vigorously from side to side, judging a vantage to avoid the bolts. The archers aimed for the snakes’ heads, but there was scarcely time for accuracy. It took all their concentration to keep the beasts out of striking distance. How were they going to save Hanhau?
Lys rushed down the stairwell to the lava bed in pursuit of the snake that had grabbed Hanhau. Aerander ran after him. “What’re you doing?”
“We can’t let them take him.”
Lys marched forward in between the burning craters. He approached the snake and shouted and waved his hands. It halted its retreat, and its snout pointed to its diminutive harasser. Aerander stayed back a distance, shifting back and forth between Lys’ standoff and the skirmish up on the cavern shelf. The other two snakes craned toward Lys while Ysalane and Backlum kept rifling off their bolts. Nine, ten strikes the creatures had taken, yet they were still at full crest.
The snake with Hanhau skimmed toward Lys. Aerander raced for him on the shortest route, a stepping-stone path across a lava pool. What did Lys think he was going to do? Wrestle the snake to the ground?
Hanhau struggled to break free of the snake’s mouth. Lys stayed in place as the snake closed in. Aerander shouted. Even if Lys didn’t get bit, he could fall off balance into the lava pool trying to sidestep the giant snake, or get flung into a molten crater by a swing of its hefty tail.
The snake threw back its head and shrieked. Hanhau must have managed something, and he fell free from five yards in the air. Aerander’s breath halted as he watched it. Hanhau landed, legs crushed under him, a hair’s breadth from the lip of a lava pool.
The snake shook its head to loosen something. Aerander saw the tip of Hanhau’s blade poking through its snout. Its mouth reared open in an ear-piercing squeal, dripping black blood. Its tail swung for Lys. Lys tried to dive over it, got up high enough to tumble across its width, and rolled over himself on the ground. He hurried to get up on his feet and anticipate another swing.
The snake’s tongue tendrilled in Lys’ direction. Lys was hemmed in by bubbling craters, and now it looked like the creature had gathered strength to use its fangs.
Aerander threw off his cloak and used both his hands to tear open the neckline seam and free his hood. When he had it apart, he wound the hood like a torch and scrambled to a crater to dip one end into the lava. It ignited, and he rushed toward Lys, waving the burning wad above his head.
The snake reared back from the fiery light, and Lys retreated behind Aerander. Aerander swung his makeshift torch, feeling for a moment triumphant. Then the fabric broke apart in smoky embers. He waved it vigorously to stoke a flame, but it was smoldering and the falling ashes singed his hand. The snake ventured forward in interest. Lys grabbed Aerander’s shoulder. “C’mon.”
Aerander dropped the hood, and they made a break for it. There was only one way to go—back to the cavern. They took the broadest path they could find through the crater beds.
