The Seventh Pleiade, page 26
Aerander shivered with an eerie thought: what if it had been longer? What if time passed slower in the sunless world below the ground? He felt like a ghost revisiting the world he left behind. He approached the shrine timidly.
Sights and sounds came into focus, and his dreamlike awe transformed to disbelief. He saw the priest’s twin hair braids. He heard his cloying intonation. How had Zazamoukh escaped from the vault? Had he been freed by Miro after the traitor learned what he, Lys, and Dam had done?
Aerander studied the congregants. At the edge of the shrine’s foundation, he recognized the group, dressed in chlamyses with their house colors, the celebrants from the Panegyris. Artemon and his other cousins were at the fore of the shrine. A few rows back, he spotted Dardy and the green-caped boys from House Gadir. Zazamoukh was calling them up to the altar one by one to receive a bloodstain benediction from his bull’s horn.
Aerander stepped into the shrine and staggered to the altar.
He shouted, “Don’t do it. It’s poison.”
The boys looked at him fearfully, like he was a spirit of his former self, raised from the dead. Unwashed for days, with his tunic torn in many places, Aerander realized he must have looked the part indeed.
Zazamoukh drew back in shock. But he quickly recovered and called out to a pair of guards.
“The criminal prince has returned. Seize him. He shall answer for murdering his rival.”
The guards closed in on Aerander. Lys came forward to intervene.
“It’s the priest who’s the criminal. He kidnapped Leo and Koz.”
The boys showed themselves at the rear of the temple. The armored men hesitated with what to do.
“I am in authority here,” Zazamoukh said. “The Governors Council has invested me with the task of overseeing the celebrants’ participation in a sacred ceremony. I do not know what mischief these boys have been up to, but they shall not prevent us from carrying out the ritual that Poseidon has demanded. Take them back, at once, to the palace keep.”
Aerander looked over the boys. “You have to come with us. There’s danger coming soon. We all have to get to safety before it’s too late.”
Dardy stared at him, confused. There was no reason for him or anyone to believe what Aerander was saying. Aerander looked to Artemon. His cousin was also at a loss. Who knew what Zazamoukh had told them about him? But they had to understand. He had to somehow get through to them.
The guards approached Aerander to restrain him. Aerander’s mind raced. There was no time to explain things compellingly and logically. Should they try to make a break for the palace where they could get support from their fathers? Many of the boys would be poisoned by Zazamoukh in the meantime.
He said to the priest: “You’ve nothing to barter anymore. The snakes are dead, and the Old Ones have the Oomphalos.”
Zazamoukh’s fiery eyes locked in on Aerander.
The armored guards stood steps away from grabbing him. Lys stared them down. “Stand back, you bastards.” The guards launched forward. Lys tried to hold one off, but the guard wrestled him aside. Another caught Aerander around his midsection and dragged him from the shrine.
Lys, Leo, and Kos shouted at the guards, and there was a scuffle of some sort that Aerander tried to keep his eyes on as he was being pulled away. The other boys stood and crowded forward to watch the fight. Aerander gauged what to do. Everything he had planned was slipping away.
There was an echoing rumble that called to mind an impossible thought: a cresting wave breaking in the shallows of the shore, that was loud enough to be heard from so far away? Cold seawater poured over Aerander’s feet. He couldn’t believe that it was happening. The Citadel was the highest point in the city and many stadia from the sea.
The guard loosened his grip to look around for the source of the flow. Aerander was free, but what to do? The water washed onto the shrine foundation. The boys shouted and screeched. If the Citadel was flooding, the entire city must be submerged by the ocean.
There wasn’t time to race back to the palace and gather his family. Aerander looked up to the sky, praying he could spot the Seventh Pleiade light.
It was there: a pinpoint struggling to break through the night sky cloud cover. His thoughts jumbled. Words escaped his lips, a frantic plea: “Please help us.”
Seawater swelled up to his shins. Aerander stared up to the star and sorted things as reasonably as he could. Find the Seventh Sister and the girl shall be / your spiritual guardian for all eternity. By legend, Atlas had seven daughters and one son. But the old man Silenos insisted there were only six daughters and one boy. The Old Ones said the lost daughter ran away with Zazamoukh and was cursed by him when she threatened to expose what he was doing for the snakes. But the girls were locked up in an apple orchard, and the only child Zazamoukh would have access to was Atlas’ son.
Fragments of a story linked together in Aerander’s head. Emperor Atlas was desperate to have an heir. Whether it was a curse or just bad luck, his wife Pleione gave birth to six girls in succession. When a seventh girl was born, it could have been the final straw. Atlas insisted that the child would be raised as his son. They kept the girl out of the public eye, as Silenos said, and they thought they could trust Zazamoukh with her religious lessons. But a secret love affair developed between them, and they ran away to be together. No one ever saw the girl again, and Atlas pretended that she—he—his only heir had died, interred beneath the ancient temple, away from the family graves so that his empty tomb wouldn’t be discovered by raiders. It was all just guesswork, but the star burned brighter, encouraging Aerander to speak the truth.
He shouted, “You’re Atlas II.”
A thunderous crack seemed to tear open the night sky, and a great blast of white light shone down. It marked the spot of the portal behind the shrine and held back the flooding waters, a perfect circle of dry land.
*
There were shouts—Lys, Kos, and Leo calling people to wade through the water to the portal—and then a desperate stampede to evacuate while the ocean swelled higher. It was pouring in from all sides of the clearing.
Still, Aerander kept staring at the burning star. It seemed so bright and so close above him, he imagined he could make out a young woman’s face within it. He made a silent vow of thanks. To his amazement, a message returned to him, a soft woman’s voice that filled his head.
“It is I who should thank you, Prince Aerander. You released me.”
There was nothing to see except the throbbing star, but he felt as though they stood a short distance apart, in private conversation, some magical connection that didn’t require speaking; their voices could travel to one another just by believing it could be so. He focused his thoughts.
“Can you help us? There are people in the palace that need to get to the portal.”
“The ocean rises. You must save those who are near. Save yourself. There is not much time.”
Aerander looked southward toward the palace, a shadowy expanse of thick trees. He longed to see the lighted towers, and to rush back and gather his father, his sisters, and Thessala. He started toward the forest trail, trudging through the waist-high current. He had to hurry.
Maybe they could see Celaeno’s light from the balconies and terraces, and they would heed the sign, or come out to the woods to investigate it at least. He needed that sort of luck. After all he had been through, it seemed possible, more than possible actually as he forged the rolling swells. He did everything he was supposed to and it was only fair that everyone would be rescued.
Celaeno’s voice entered his head. “Turn back, Aerander. You’ve come too far to let things end this way.”
He forged onward into the wood. A rush of seawater held him, and then another more powerful swell followed. He grasped out for a tree trunk to steady himself.
A frightened cry pierced the night. The guard who had detained him floundered in the surf and was carried back to the shrine helplessly.
Aerander’s feet found the ground as the swell passed by. He looked up to the star.
“I have to get my family.”
“The palace is lost. But there are people who need your help. They will be frightened and confused. They will need someone to lead them.”
Staring into the darkness, Aerander shouted: “Father. Thessala. Alixa. Danae.”
No sound came back to him but the roaring current pushing through the trees. It was cruel, unfathomably cruel. Aerander sidestepped around a tall pine to avoid a storming mass of debris, storage jars and wooden crates that must have traveled from the palace complex.
The water rose up to his shoulders. He moved along a row of trees, trying to make some progress from one rooted spot to another. He barely accomplished a few yards, and the flow was getting stronger. He turned to Celaeno’s light.
“Why won’t you help me? I released you, and you’re supposed to be my spiritual guardian. I want my family to live.”
“Would that I could help, Aerander. It is too late. You shall always have my bond. But you must turn back.”
A sightless rumble headed toward him. He was engulfed by a giant crest, lost his grip on a tree, and fell backward and under the surf. Submerged, he tumbled over himself and smacked rib-side into another tree.
Aerander felt as though he had been punctured in the lung, and he couldn’t reach out fast enough to hold on to the tree trunk. His arms flailed above the water, and he launched his head up for a quick grasp of air. In the eddying flood, he lost his bearings completely: which way to the palace and which way to the shrine?
Seawater battered his face; he swallowed a mouthful, and he sank beneath the water again. Dizzily, he tried to resurface. He was barreled beneath the powerful surf and losing his strength.
Two arms grabbed his shoulders and pulled him up. Aerander coughed out water and gasped for air. His rescuer held him solidly, and his feet were on a stone surface: the platform of the shrine?
A familiar voice shouted above the ocean’s roar. “We’ve got to get to the portal.”
It was Lys. Gradually, Aerander took account of their surroundings. They were standing against a column of the drowning shrine. Everyone was gone, washed away or maybe some of them had made it to safety. Waves swelled and crashed into each other all around them. The portal was still illuminated, several yards away, but the way there was through water too deep to trudge through.
Lys pulled Aerander toward the lighted opening. Aerander fought to break free.
“I have to get to the palace.”
“You’ll die. C’mon.”
Aerander wrangled out of his grip. Lys caught him.
“You want both of us to die here? Is that why we came back up? We saved as many of the boys as we could. We can’t do anything else.”
The ocean lifted them toward the slate roof of the shrine. Seawater was everywhere, as though they had been flung out to the middle of the ocean. Aerander stared southward. He felt like his insides had collapsed. He covered his face and hiccupped with sobs. Then he cried out for his family until his throat was raw. Lys’ arms stretched around him.
“I came back to save them.”
“We all did.”
Aerander thought about making another try to get back to the palace. He could play along like he was going with Lys and then break away. Maybe he would drown in the process. Maybe that was the way it should be. Why should he survive while everyone in his family died?
But he couldn’t do that to Lys. Maybe it was cowardice. Maybe it was mercy. Lys would drown trying to stop him.
With one arm tucked around Aerander, Lys fought through the water, using the shrine columns as a route for their progress. They came to the posterior eave, a short swim from the portal, which was closing up with water like the funnel to a drain. Lys looked Aerander over as though to nullify any mutinous intention.
Celaeno spoke to him. “Be strong, Prince Aerander. I’ll be watching over things here. You shall know when it is safe to return.”
Aerander felt something in his hand. He looked down. It was a chain link necklace with a bone pendant that was shaped like a three-pronged spear, the symbol of Poseidon.
The significance struck him, though he didn’t know how. The amulet must have been a family heirloom, passed from Poseidon to Atlas, then from Atlas to Atlas II, or really Celaeno. There was some magic in it, a way of communicating with Celaeno even from the depths of Agartha.
He pulled the necklace over his head. Lys eyed him strangely. But there was no time for questions or explanations.
“Ready?” Lys said.
Aerander nodded.
They dove into the water and swam for the portal.
PART FOUR
Epilogue
Epilogue
Before the flood, Atlantis counted over one hundred million people in its dominion, two-thirds of whom were slaves or foreign subjects from around the globe. One hundred made it through the portals to Agartha. There were ninety-three men and seven women.
Everyone else in the island city perished in the sea, lost in the space of one terrifying night. There were massive losses in the archipelago across the Great Sea—the Fortunate Isles—and the coastline areas of the continents Azilia, Lemuria, Lost Pangea, and Tamana. The colonies, with no Governors Council to rule them and provide for their defense, lay in wait for subjugation by barbarians.
Written records of Atlantis were washed away and buried under wreckage and silt. Stories of what happened, and of what was, were passed from mouth to ear, embellished or diminished depending on the storyteller.
The underground survivors were few enough in number to populate a single mountain cay that once warded the island city’s shoals. They were mostly boys of noble birth, the Poseidonidae, inheritors of an empire that had been unstoppable for a millennium. Only their worn and wrinkled embroidered cloaks distinguished them from the imprisoned men who came before them. There were no palaces, no attendants, and no gold thread lariats for them to wear in celebration of the kingdom’s last Boys’ Panegyris.
The Old Ones kept their promise to shelter the surface dwellers and quickly took to the task of restoring their subterranean city. Clearing the rubble would take many months, and there were terraced apartment houses to rebuild, stairwells and bridges to repair, and a network of cisterns and aqueducts to reconstruct. While they labored, with confounding cheer, so it seemed to their guests, the boys mostly kept to themselves in the stone cells that their glow-skinned hosts offered them. They had lost their fathers and their mothers. Some did not even have a brother or a cousin to call kin. Former clan rivalries didn’t matter much beneath their communal grief. No one complained at mealtimes when there was water to drink and cooked fish and snails to eat.
Alone, they talked about life in the colonies, their athletic contests, their adventure stories, and, for some, the girls they had dreamed about marrying, or at least taking to bed. In quieter confidences, they wondered how long they would have to live in a world where the only light was a glowing, skull-shaped stone, preserved in the Old Ones’ highest tower, overlooking everything.
There were others. By way of the portal to the Temple of Poseidon, Dam, Attalos, Callios, and Heron had gathered two dozen, priests and commoners, men and women, before the wave burst through the island’s inland wall and engulfed the city. Conventions remained. The lower-class survivors joined with the former slave miners to claim segregated quarters in the Old Ones’ settlement. They had their own stories and their own sorrows to mind. Hephad, cauterized and mute, was among them.
For Aerander, time passed as long stretches of grief, both bodily and mental, and the pain felt like dying. The only thing that stopped it was when his body wore out and he drifted to a numb place. Waking, he would look around with great excitement. Had it all just been a dream? Then the cold stone walls of his cell would close in on him again. The sadness would grip Aerander once more, and the tears and tremors would convulse out of him again.
Lys doted on him, pushing drinks of water and morsels of food when Aerander would cooperate. He tried to encourage Aerander to talk, but Aerander couldn’t speak. He had been carved hollow. His visitors—Dardy, Dam, Ysalane, and Hanhau—went unacknowledged and left him to his rest.
The news of his father’s death was the last shred of his heart ripped from him. No matter that Lys explained everyone had said it had to have been Zazamoukh’s doing, his final scheme to trick the governors into handing over their sons to the New Ones. All Aerander understood was he had left his family to die. He had visions of his sisters suffocating in seawater. He heard his father calling from the afterlife: why did you run away?
*
Weeks passed, the terrors lifted to a degree, and Aerander gradually reentered the world. A while spent stoking a cavern fire, a wash in a hot spring, a nod to a passerby—these moments accumulated until life approached a routine.
He noticed the sacrifice Lys had made, constantly tending to him when he could be with his cousins, mending his own hurts. What pairing off in their own cell meant was a subject much too expansive to wrap his head around, but he felt gratitude and guilt.
On a rare occasion when Lys slept while he was awake, Aerander stepped out from their cell. His body was stiff. He wandered through the settlement to stretch his legs.
Sometime into walking through a spiral columned corridor the Old Ones had refashioned, he thought he heard a footfall behind him. He turned and saw Dam trailing him. He stopped to let his friend catch up.
Besides meeting after the flood with a brief embrace to say they were relieved each other had made it underground, Aerander couldn’t remember having seen or spoken to Dam. They looked at one another hesitantly. Dam broke the silence.
“I stole the jewelry box.”
Aerander blinked. So—what of it?
