Atlantis Fallen (The Heartstrike Chronicles Book 1)

by C. E. Murphy

  The war has ended, the patient one advised then. The gods are telling us it is time to leave Egypt and search for our enemy. Ghean pulled herself from the wreck and sold the last of her stash of hair for passage on a boat going to America.

  "I do not understand this Prohibition," she said now. "Nowhere that I have been would such a thing be thought of."

  The boy next to her smiled, waving his hand. "Only in America," he agreed. "It doesn't work very well, does it?" Another wave of his hand encompassed the dark little tavern—speakeasy, Ghean reminded herself—where they, and dozens of others, were congregated.

  Ghean shook her head, about to speak when a headache rocketed through the back of her head, the abrupt wash of pain hard enough to feel as though it would come out her eyes. As quickly as it came, it passed, and she was left gripping the edge of the bar. After a few seconds she lifted her head, frowning beyond the boy.

  A tall woman, dark hair bobbed and curled in permanent waves, stood just inside the door, scanning the room with narrowed eyes. In a moment, her gaze fixed on Ghean and she nodded slightly before making her way to the other side of the bar. Ghean watched her sit, then excused herself to the boy, and followed the other woman, coming to a stop a few feet away from her table.

  The woman looked up, eyebrows arched. "I'm not looking for a fight," she said without preamble. "If you aren't either, have a seat."

  Ghean sat, tentatively. "You gave me that headache," she half asked.

  The woman's eyebrows went up again, and sympathy suddenly washed across her face. "You don't know what you are, do you? I thought you would. You feel…heavy. Old."

  Ghean hesitated. Tell her no! the patient one ordered. We need to learn to fight. She may help us, but how would we explain knowing what the Timeless are, yet being unable to fight? "No," she said slowly. "I was in an automobile accident in Egypt a few years ago and…."

  The woman's mouth twisted in a smile of acknowledgment. "And you got up from a fatal injury." Her voice was soft. "Maybe it's happened again since then. Maybe not. It will, though." She lifted her head, catching the bartender's eye and lifting two fingers. He nodded, and a minute later a pretty young woman delivered two drinks to the table. "Thanks," the Timeless woman said, and paid, pushing one drink across the table to Ghean. After the waitress was gone, she said, "I'm guessing that was the first headache like that you've felt."

  Ghean nodded, picking up the drink to taste it, and grimaced. "What is this?"

  "Gin and tonic." The brunette laughed. "It's awful, but it's cheap." She sipped her own drink, then offered a hand, across the table. "I'm Caterina. I was born in Venice in the late sixteenth century. Have you ever used a sword?"

  Surprise, largely heart-felt, flooded Ghean's face. She’d imagined Timeless would be much more secretive. She shook the other woman's hand slowly. "I'm Ghean. I—no, I've never used a sword."

  "Funny, you look as though you're here. Maybe it's a case of here today, Ghean tomorrow." Caterina smiled as a pained look twisted Ghean’s mouth. "Sorry. You probably get that a lot. Unusual name. Kind of pretty, though. You're going to need a teacher, Ghean. Finish your drink and we'll go to some nice little church and I'll tell you all about what you are."

  “Why a church?” Ghean asked, surprised, and Caterina laughed.

  “You are new. Because holy ground is our sanctuary. Not even humans fight on holy ground. Mostly, anyway.” She shrugged. “Point is, it’s meant to tell you I don’t plan on taking your head while we talk.”

  Two days later Ghean went west with Caterina, to a cabin in remote mountain territory where the modern world hadn’t yet invaded, nor seemed it ever could, and for three years, she studied under the Venetian woman’s tutelage. Caterina towered over her, and most men would be at least the Venetian woman's height. "Use it to your advantage," Caterina said, and taught her the short sword, and the use of daggers first, because no Timeless should ever go anywhere without at least a short blade, for the heartstrike. Ghean came to love the elegance of the rapier, and drilled long hours even after practice had ended.

  Caterina came out of the cabin early one morning to watch one such drill, arms folded. When Ghean eventually turned to her, the other woman came forward with an envelope. "There's not much more I can teach you, but there’s a lot left for you to learn. There are fighting styles in the Orient that would suit your size and frame, but I can't teach them to you. This is a letter to a friend of mine, and cash for the journey. I'll bring you to California. I've already arranged passage for you, if you're willing to go. It'll help you keep your head."

  Europe was racing toward war again by the time Ghean returned from the Orient to America. Only days after she landed, the thrill of warning shot through her as she walked a San Francisco street. The warning was accompanied by the close-by sound of swords clashing. Curious, she followed the sound, creeping forward down an alley to watch the battle. It lasted only minutes, two men silent with intent, the only sounds that of labored breathing and metal slamming against metal.

  Ghean had taken no heads herself; the fury of lightning that rained from the sky was the closest she had ever been to a Blending. She stood rigid in the aftershock, hair blown astray and heart racing as the survivor walked away, down the other end of the alley. Ghean sank against a wall, eyes closed, only to shriek in surprise when someone put a hand on her shoulder. Years of drilling came into play before she thought, and she knocked the hand away, whipping around to drive the heel of her hand toward the lower chest of the man who'd touched her.

  She stopped the blow just before it landed, but he jumped back anyway, both hands lifted in apology. "I'm sorry," he said. He was brown: brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin, altogether mild-looking. "You saw?" he asked, though he gave no indication what she might have seen.

  Ghean pulled in a breath, about to deny having seen the battle as the man lowered his hands. For an instant she froze, reconstructing the image of his hands in the air. There was a mark on his inner wrist, impossibly familiar. "I—what was—he killed that man!" she blurted. "And the storm! Where did it come from?"

  The brown man hesitated. "It would be best if you forgot what you saw," he suggested.

  Ghean shook her head. "No. No, I want to know. What was it? Who were they? You know, don't you?" She could hear her accent growing thicker, and calmed herself. "Please tell me."

  Another hesitation, then the man gestured with his head. "Walk with me. Tell me about yourself. My name is Thomas Burns."

  "Marion," she replied. "Marion Townsend." It was the name that had been on her traveling papers, the ones Caterina had provided for her. "I just came to San Francisco. I want to go to college. I want to learn history."

  "Do you?" Thomas smiled. "I'm a historian, myself."

  Ghean lifted her eyebrows. "I don't think I've ever seen a historian with a tattoo." She nodded at his wrist. "That's what's on your wrist, isn't it?"

  He smiled again, and turned his wrist over, displaying a dark blue tattoo, an hourglass with a tilted waist. Ghean stared, feeling heat surge to her face.

  It isn't possible, the frightened one insisted, and even the patient one seemed to agree. There was no detail within the hourglass, yet the curves were hauntingly familiar. The circle bordering the design had bullet points as familiar as the interior. Ghean swallowed, gazing at them, her heart pounding.

  It has to be, she told the voices. The Houses surrounding the Hunter, just as we used the symbols at home. It has to be. That's my House symbol!

  After five thousand years? the frightened one demanded. It's impossible.

  It's improbable, Ghean corrected it, and slowly looked up at Thomas. "It's very interesting. What's it of? The only tattoos I've ever seen have been fantastic creatures or women's names, things like that."

  Thomas shrugged, smiling again. "It's a symbol that caught my eye a long time ago."

  Ghean glanced back down the street toward the alley where the battle had been. It's impossible, the frightened one whispered
again. Aloud, she guessed, "It has something to do with the fight back there, doesn't it?"

  Thomas stopped walking, frowning down at her. "You're very astute."

  Ghean nearly stopped breathing. How? What does my family have to do with the Timeless? Who are you? Why are you watching us? What do you know about us? She stopped the race of thoughts with effort, and said, "I think I would like you to tell me about it, if you would."

  Eight months later, Ghean entered the Keeper Academy. She had taken no heads, and her Timeless existence had been quiet enough, evidently unnoticed by the Keepers; even her time with Caterina seemed to have gone unnoticed. She went into research as quickly as she could, and in a few years transferred to the European branch of the Keepers, unable to find what she was looking for within the American texts.

  The Parisian vaults held no more answers regarding the use of her House signet than the American histories had. Paris did, however, have dozens of texts on the only Immortal she had any interest in finding. They were called the Lorhen Chronicles, and for nearly a thousand years, there had been no new entries. The final journal came from 1066, the Battle of Hastings; his Keeper had lost him, and no one since had been able to find him. There were a few sightings that might have been him, over the last ten centuries, but most of the writers seemed to agree that Lorhen was dead, if he'd really ever existed at all. More than one chronicler suggested 'Lorhen' had been a number of different Timeless over the centuries, laying claim to the name of a legend.

  Ghean sat with the newest of the Chronicles a long time, turning pages without really seeing them. It hadn’t really occurred to her that he might be dead. Even looking at the scrawled handwriting that recorded his last verified sighting, she did not entirely believe it.

  She had time. If her old lover was still alive, she would find him somehow. The Chronicles were a disappointment in that aspect. She decided to study them anyway, as much for the sake of learning history as reading about her beloved. The newer texts were fairly easy to decipher, written in Old English or German, but she spent years learning Greek and Latin. The latter was easier, and let her read back centuries; the former took more time, but the oldest texts about Lorhen were in that language.

  The older the books, the more unwieldy they were. By the time she had learned enough Greek to read the very oldest books, the covers were nearly as thick as the paper between them. They were terribly fragile, three thousand years old, and Ghean turned the heavy covers and thick paper carefully, remembering the fine, thin paper her mother had used in Atlantis.

  The next piece of paper was very nearly that thin, and Ghean's fingers slipped on it, crumbling an edge to dust. She'd hardly been reading the pages as she turned them, and gave the piece under her hand a startled glance.

  My darling Ghean,

  For a few seconds Ghean couldn't read beyond the first words, written in her mother's delicate hand, in her native tongue of Atlantean.

  My darling Ghean,

  I realize the chances of you finding this are so slim as to be nonexistent. Still, I write these words in the hopes that this letter will somehow survive the centuries and end up in your hands.

  Your Lorhen saved my life. I find this ironic, as only weeks before I had chosen to make him and his kind my life's study. Had he not saved me when Atlantis fell, that study would have died with me, and the Keepers would not exist. Because he did, I have this final chance to communicate with you, through the barrier of time.

  He said that you died in the first moments of the panic. I have no reason to doubt him, other than the hopes of an aging mother. I know that you are, as he is, Timeless, or have that potential within you. It is a comfort to me to imagine that you somehow survived the destruction of Atlantis and live on, last child of our House.

  Sheer willpower prevented Ghean from crumbling the paper to dust. Her hands trembling, she stared down at the words. I know that you are Timeless. She was betrayed on all sides. Shaking, she took her hand away from the paper, to prevent herself from clenching her fist and taking her mother's last words to her away. In time, she was able to go on.

  I do not imagine you will ever find this letter, but if you do, I do not know what the world will be like, how much it will have changed, where the Keepers archives might be.

  If you have found this at all, it is likely you have found the Keepers themselves. I chose the Hunter symbol as the marker for the Keepers before Atlantis fell; now I am glad I did so, for it is a sign you should be able to recognize, no matter how many years pass.

  I thought to teach my students Atlantis' written language, for it is more elegant than any other writing yet known, but in the end it seemed a foolish pursuit, asking them to learn a drowned language. I can only imagine what language this letter might have been translated in to by the time you find it. I only hope that in whatever form, it survives the years, and that you, too, have somehow survived, and will be able to read this.

  If you do, share your history with the Keepers. Share our family with them, as they are a very real legacy of our House. Tell them of Atlantis, and if there is some way in the new world that you live in to bring Atlantis back to the sun, I hope that you will try. I hope that its magic will be a part of the world again someday.

  Remember that for all time, I love you.

  It was signed with the graceful scrawl of Minyah's name.

  Ghean read the letter until she could see the words with her eyes closed, committing them to memory. Her mother had known, and hadn't told her. We don't interfere, the patient one reminded her, echoing Caterina's lessons.

  She was my mother! Ghean shouted back. She wasn't Timeless! She wasn't bound by the same rules! She should have told me!

  She began the Keepers, the patient one said, too rationally. She made her own rules of non-interference. We couldn't have known Atlantis would fall. If we'd known, perhaps she'd have told us, to protect us. It's too late now. Let it go. Be glad there is anything of her at all, after all this time.

  Ghean's head dropped, and she nodded. "The letter," she murmured, in Atlantean, "the Keepers, and me. And someday, we'll bring back Atlantis for her." Feeling weary, she turned the letter over, trying to focus again on Lorhen's history.

  A second piece of paper cracked free of the back of the letter, falling forward against the pages. For a handful of seconds she simply stared at the blank sheet. Picking it up took conscious effort. She could see the impressions from where pressure had sealed it to the back of her mother's letter. I wonder how long it's been since anyone's looked at Lorhen’s chronicles. She turned the sheet over, carefully. It was old, but far less delicate than the ancient sheet her mother's letter had been written on. Seeing her name written again, in a different hand but in the same tongue, sent a dull sick thud through her, the feeling of a missed heartbeat.

  Ghean,

  This is the third time I've joined the Keepers to make certain your mother's letter was all right, and to hide something she left for you. It's funny, the things we do for our beloved dead. I can't imagine that you're alive, and still, here I am.

  If you're reading this, you're in the Paris Headquarters. In the extremely impressive vault where they keep my chronicles, there's a safe, cut into the wall in the back bottom left-hand corner. I could fit under the stacks to cut it there, so I'm sure you can fit under it to open it up. There's no lock, just the stone set back into the wall. There's a box in there, one of those damned Atlantean things with the pressure points. Minyah left it for you when she died. I expect it's going to stay there for the rest of eternity, but here I am writing a note to someone forty-six centuries dead anyway.

  I wish I could have saved you, Ghean. There was no time, and I don't believe anybody could have survived that cataclysm. I still think about you sometimes. I hope your rest has been a peaceful one.

  There was no name, only a date, written out in longhand, in Atlantean: eighteen hundred and forty-five.

  Ghean set the letter down gently, hands shaking. Only ninety years ago
. He's alive. The conviction filled her.

  He's alive.

  12

  Emma held her palm up. "Back up a little. What's the cloak you're talking about, and what sorts of other artifacts did these Houses have?"

  Lorhen looked up from his beer. "The cloak was—well, it became—Jason's Fleece. The golden one."

  "Logan." A note of exasperation, like she'd caught a five year old lying to her, came into Emma's voice. "That's mythology."

  "So are people who live forever. Most myths have some basis in reality."

  "Yes, but—back me up here, Cathal." Emma glanced at the Irishman, who studied his beer pensively.

  "I don't know. It sounds preposterous, but then, what would you say if someone came up and told you about the Timeless?"

  Emma leaned back in the bar bench, staring at Lorhen. "Then what else was there, besides the Fleece and the immortality crystal, if there were all these Houses?"

  Lorhen lifted a hand, ticking points off on his fingers. "Fleece, Stone, Excalibur, Excalibur's scabbard, which was actually the better of the two icons, the Cauldron." He ran out of fingers, and began again. "The Grail. The Dragon's Teeth. The unicorns. A ring that did approximately the same thing the Lazarus Stone did, but it was easier to carry."

  Emma said, "The Laz—" but was overrun by Cathal’s voice breaking like a teenage boy’s as he echoed, "Unicorns?" They eyed one another a moment before Emma finished, "The Lazarus Stone?" in a near-whisper that underscored Cathal’s break. "I never heard you call it that before."

  "It's a bad name for it. It doesn't resurrect anyone, it just keeps them alive. But Methuselah Stone was taken, and I had to call it something."

  Emma folded her knuckles in front of her mouth, not really trying to hide a frown. There had obviously been a faction of Keepers who had believed the fragmented immortality crystal, once pieced back together, would give them lives as long as their Timeless charges’. Even knowing about the Timeless, even in the midst of the fight over the damned crystal, she had written it off as wishful thinking. That Logan Adams believed had been one thing. That Lorhen, six thousand years old and counting, believed, was something else. That he had a name for it somehow brought it beyond dispute, drawing it into a kind of grim reality that cast too much light on who he was and what he had seen in his impossibly long life. Emma closed her eyes, pushing away the mens’ conversation—Cathal was hissing, “But unicorns?” into her silence—and let herself wonder for a moment if she would be so resistant to mythology come to life if Cathal or even Lisse was the one presenting the arguments. Probably not, but she had always known who they really were.