The Emperor Awakes

by Alexis Konnaris

  ‘We’ve already arranged for Eleni Symitzis’ remains to be transported from the Symitzis Museum in Athens to Limassol. We thought about whether to stop on our way to pick them up, but that would be risky and we could not afford the delay or something going wrong. We wouldn’t want the Ruinands catching up with us in Greece and jeopardising everything.

  ‘The priority is to get to Cyprus as quickly as possible. We have the phial with Iakovos’ blood. We have the three icons and we can, therefore, now establish which of the three are the two real Likureian icons. We have the Emperor’s ring and the Book of the Pallanians and its missing part, the seven pages comprising the chapter called “The Pallanian Resurrection”. The scroll explains in detail how to put everything in its rightful place once we reach the Emperor’s tomb.

  ‘I propose to split the teams as follows: the team to approach from the castle tunnel will consist of Elli, Aristo and Katerina. John, you can dive can’t you?’ John nodded. ‘OK. Myself, Vasilis and John will deal with the seaward entrance. Vasilis?’

  ‘I’ve already arranged with trusted people from Valchern for the equipment to be ready at the appointed place and they will be expecting us. Andros and Anna will be taken to my mother’s house by four of our men where they will be under guard until this is over. The house, already a fortress, is now impregnable.

  ‘OK, everybody, that’s all. We should be landing soon. We are all suffering from lack of sleep, but I think the adrenaline will keep us going for as long as necessary to complete this mission.’

  CHAPTER 56

  Limassol, Cyprus

  21st May

  Present day

  Vasilis, Giorgos and John were already at the quayside ready to board the small submarine. Elli, Aristo and Katerina were in the large cavity below Limassol Castle next to the wall covering the opening to the tunnel beyond.

  The castle closed an hour earlier. There was nobody else around. A small device detonated the explosive that surgically removed enough part of the wall to allow a human to go through.

  Elli, Aristo and Katerina switched on their torches and cautiously proceeded through the opening. Once they entered a strange feeling came over them. It hit them that time seemed to slow down only inside the tunnel.

  They walked on, their ears pricked for the slightest noise or sign of danger. The tunnel was a lonely place, but the sense of the slowing down of time made it even more threatening and lonely. It felt as if they were being choked, their limbs pulled apart, as if they were slowly being dismembered.

  They had only walked a few paces when they saw the beginning of openings on either side of them. First one on the left, then the next on the right and so on. They stopped at the first one. A part of the dark wall started to glow with an inscription. Elli recognised it immediately.

  ‘It’s in the Pallanian language. Turn on the voice recorder on your phone. We can pass it through its transcription programme.’ She traced her fingers over it and the characters bubbled in her vocal chords. They heard a voice from a faraway era.

  “The temple of wisdom is asleep, dismembered, its life extinguished, if only for a moment in its time, a lifetime in the time of men, it lies hidden in the four corners of the earth, it lies in wait for the time when the one favoured by the gods will bring together the pieces and the torso of the body of the king lost in the city that had reigned as queen in the darkest time when all around it were being stifled, and reawakened by the blood of its progeny, the king will show the way and breathe life into that wonder that was lost, but was once shining bright above all stars in the fiery firmament of a blinding sky. The one that reawakens the king will manipulate him and wield his power but only for the common good. If anyone attempts to use that power for his own ends, the power shall be extinguished and he with it.”

  In the meantime, Vasilis, Giorgos and John had entered the tunnel on the seaward side. They hadn’t realised it but the gradient of the tunnel was gradually ascending.

  After they had covered a few feet they encountered a series of steps hewn from the rock that led to another tunnel at a higher level than the one they were in. They noticed that the sea water was lapping against the bottom two steps and appeared to remain at a constant level of a couple of feet lower than the lip of the next tunnel.

  Once they had reached the higher ground they were relieved to now be walking on dry land. As they no longer needed their diving equipment, they took it off and abandoned it there. With the equipment not weighing them down they could move a lot faster.

  The tunnel they entered was similar to the one on the other side accessed through Limassol Castle with similar openings at the same irregular intervals. They had heard Elli read the inscription. There was nothing similar at their end. They waited as the other group had begun to throw ideas as to the meaning of the inscription.

  An expression of recognition coloured Katerina’s face.

  ‘It must refer to Constantinople and the king must be the Emperor. That bit about the pieces of the Emperor’s body could be a test, something we need to get before we proceed to the tomb and the final act of waking the Emperor. The “temple of wisdom” could be an actual structure that we should find further on inside with pieces missing that we would need to insert to complete it.

  ‘Then again “temple of wisdom” could be referring to a space with manuscripts residing inside, a space very much like a library, perhaps? It could mean that the Emperor’s tomb could be inside the temple.’ Katerina paused, suddenly, and surprisingly for her, self-conscious and shame-faced. ‘I hope I’m not going on a wild tangent here. Sorry. My imagination got the better of me.’

  Suddenly she had second thoughts and quickly recovered from her unlikely feeling of shy embarrassment. She certainly did not have an inferiority complex. Her defiance and common sense reasserted themselves. ‘But, surely, especially because of what we have encountered so far on this adventure, my speculation is not that crazy, is it? I only wish the geological scans were clearer.

  ‘The geological strata or something in there was interfering with the satellite imaging. But the outline of that subterranean structure in the middle could be a temple or a church. And there seems to be a chasm surrounding it, above and below and on each side. It looks as if there is no way to reach it. We’ll have to get there and see by ourselves. If indeed there exists that chasm around whatever structure is there, there may be walkways leading to it.’

  Giorgos cut in. His voice carried clear through their earpieces. ‘Katerina, it looks like you will have to go through the opening next to the inscription before you proceed further along the tunnel.’

  At that time the same inscription appeared next to the first opening in the tunnel on the seaward side where Giorgos, Vasilis and John were standing.

  ‘It looks as if we have to do the same at our end. Let me check the scroll.’ Giorgos paused for a couple of minutes while he consulted it. ‘The three keys seem to activate walkways leading to the middle structure. Katerina your wild speculation appears to be right. But that comes later. We need to go through our respective openings first. There may be traps. Take care.’ They all went through their respective openings.

  CHAPTER 57

  Present day

  Katerina, Elli and Aristo recognised the place they were standing in. It was the Megaron Mousikis or Music Hall in Athens. They were suddenly all dressed to the nines for a very formal event.

  A board on a tripod in front of them told them that Elli Symitzis appeared to be hosting a concert there in aid of the Symitzis Foundation and a host of charities close to her heart. A chance for the elite to show off and hear and relish the multi-layered gossip. Another chance to trash some people, praise others and dish the dirt. And an opportunity to do business.

  Security was tight. Nobody unwanted could slip through the net, the spider’s web that Elli had weaved, unless she wanted them to.

  When Giorgos, Vasilis and John went through the opening on their side, they seemed to have landed at the same
event, themselves dressed formally as well. As they were mingling and enjoying the jovial and glamorous atmosphere, during the interval before the second act, the three of them found themselves drawn towards backstage to see one of the performers whom they admired like star-struck teenage fans, when their eyes fell upon a strange altercation outside one of the dressing rooms. They went closer to investigate.

  Giorgos, Vasilis and John could see the intensity of the discussion increasing until it was almost a shouting match, only none of the people standing close to them or passing by, seemed to have noticed or, if they had, did not want to get involved. It was as if they could not see the verbal combatants at all.

  As the three of them approached, the couple who were engrossed in their drama, apparently more dramatic than anything taking place only a few metres away on stage, the whole place started to wobble and the floor was changing shapes like jelly and taking them on a rollercoaster ride.

  All three of them started to feel dizzy and swaying like a tree accosted by high winds. They were feeling close to losing their balance. The couple was not getting any closer. It was as if they had been walking forever. They began to wonder whether they were going to miss the rest of the performance.

  Then suddenly the couple disappeared. Giorgos, Vasilis and John launched into a fierce search. Their eyes caught someone disappearing through a door and they followed. They found themselves in an empty low-ceilinged room with whitewashed walls and no adornment but a simple chandelier hanging from the ceiling. There was nowhere to hide and no other exit from the room. Where did the man go?

  As they were about to give up and return to the concert, a man materialised in front of them. Not any man. He was dressed in what Giorgos recognised as Persian attire of the 4th century B.C. The whole room transformed into Persepolis, the Persian Empire’s ceremonial capital and showcase of Persian splendour, that stood for more than two hundred years until it was burned down by the army of Alexander the Great a few months after they captured it in 330 B.C. an act that some people claimed might have even been an accident or the result of a challenge or a misguided act committed in a drunken stupor; others have labelled it a crime against history by the usual perpetrators, the victors.

  The Persian led the three men through pillared halls and peaceful gardens to a strange door with indecipherable writing around the whole of its outer edge. The Persian beckoned them through. They were a little apprehensive, but they followed once again, bitten by the bug of curiosity.

  When they went through the door, they realised it was a gateway that took them a few years into the future for they found themselves in a ruined Persepolis, only recently raised to the ground by Alexander the Great’s Macedonian troops and stripped to its foundations, its hollowed and ghostly, formerly intimidating, halls of grandeur, now deserted ruins still smoking and telling their sad story through their smoky tears to everybody who would listen.

  Giorgos, Vasilis and John felt the shame of being the only people, since the fateful day of its destruction, to see that place freshly desolate. The sands of time and of the desert hid it well until it was rediscovered in the 20th century. The three men wondered what they were doing there when they saw the Persian disappear up a flight of stairs ahead of them.

  Up the stairs they went to the great hall and throne room, now not even a burned out shell, but a pile of ashes and random stones. In front of their eyes, though, it seemed to have been restored to its former glory and awe-inspiring magnificence.

  They entered a different place, a whole world away from the ashen ruins they left only a few footsteps behind. But then suddenly the illusion was shattered and the hall fell back to its harsh reality of non-existence, its ethereal beauty turning to dust and stripped back to its burned out ashen shell.

  They went down a few steps, and through a free-standing doorway connected to nothing, a lone survivor, jutting out like a sore thumb in a flattened-down landscape coming from nowhere and leading to nowhere. They tried to go around it, but the Persian shook his head and insisted that they go through. Although he only spoke once when he greeted them at their first sighting, the few words he had said were strangely in both English and Modern Greek. They wanted to ask why, but held back.

  They went through the lone doorway, half-expecting to come out the other side just a step from where they were standing earlier, when they were forced to stop, as if an invisible barrier had been erected in front of them. They tried to go back to where they had come from, but they came up against another barrier.

  They were trapped in limbo. They could not move forward and they could not go back. Then they heard a noise accompanied by a tremor appearing to be coming from under their feet and rising ever closer towards them, getting louder and more intense.

  A flight of steps appeared and they followed down into darkness that slowly lifted to bathe them in day-light.

  They were standing in an underground temple. A mesmerising song echoed around the fresco-heavy walls and the forest of statues and the unsupported roof that did not seem to be attached to anything but floating above them.

  The whole place shone with changing colours and images that appeared and disappeared and were reflected around its edges like a news reel or a film, with them the only spectators in a surreal spectacle that seemed to be drawing them in and taking them to different places, places they had never seen before.

  A mist rose and fell and a battered stone chest landed at their feet. Something like branches or tentacles or long legs jutted out and speared the ground, securely fastening the chest, and nailing it to the ground, or so it seemed.

  Giorgos, Vasilis and John attempted to find a way to open it, but it seemed solid with no visible opening. They tried to lift it, expecting great weight and resistance, and they were almost thrown back when it proved to be as light as a feather.

  The Persian seemed to have disappeared altogether. They were flummoxed, defeated by their featherweight gift that miraculously appeared with no warning or an instruction manual. A dark presence was approaching.

  Shadowy figures began to gather and multiply exponentially inside the temple. A cold shiver ran down their spines. Then the figures spoke with one voice, the words appearing in the air in front of them.

  “You need to see the world with new eyes and then you will be deserving to accept the blessings of the chest. Do not be afraid of what you see. You will know what is an illusion and what is real. Time in your world and the worlds through the other openings has stopped while you are inside.”

  * * *

  The scene suddenly changed and they were standing in a field in the middle of nowhere. They saw a plane a few feet away. What looked like a pilot stood by the plane and there was a lonely ticket booth on one side of what they now decided was a derelict airfield, while, in all honesty, calling it that would be stretching the definition.

  Above the ticket booth was a board with the word “tickets” and below the phrase “plane charter for peanuts”. They began to walk towards the ticket booth, wondering with what money they didn’t have they would pay the fares, when the person behind the counter made a gesture to waive them away towards the plane, but not before handing them a small bag which when they opened saw that it contained a hand. A note inside told them that it was the Emperor’s right hand.

  The pilot told them they could board the first flight out of there. They boarded the rickety old plane and with their fingers crossed, their knuckles white from holding on for dear life, and their hearts in their palms, they set off to destination unknown.

  Giorgos, Vasilis and John recognised their destination when the plane landed on the street outside the acoustically extraordinary Megaron Mousikis or Music Hall, in resplendent-in-leafy-concrete chaotic Athens.

  A famous soprano was singing in Bizet’s “Carmen”. They simply could not resist attending. After their evening at the opera was over they ventured out to find refuge and relax at an elegant old café a short bracing walk away in the Kolonaki area of the city.<
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  Sitting at a table, only a short distance away, was the soprano they had just watched, the soprano who carried them into another world, who reached into nerve endings they didn’t know existed, teasing them ruthlessly, playing them like a master, making them vibrate and swell almost to bursting point like a grenade armed and about to explode and spread their innards and splash them onto the canvas around them with deft masterstrokes in a phenomenally wondrous but bloody masterpiece. Job done, sacrifice worth it to the altar of great art.

  The soprano had generously and selflessly given them emotions they had never experienced before. Now before them she seemed to have switched to another role, a role expected of someone of her fame, talent and stature, when not on stage but amongst her public, that of behaving every inch la diva prima, la prima donna.

  Something did not fit the picture they had created of her in their minds. For her act slipped at an unguarded moment, the layer of legend was peeled away, revealing a girl in all her vulnerability, a deep sadness appearing to be eating away at her. She was, shockingly, alone. Where were the armies and hoards of admirers, barbarian and otherwise, to adulate and worship at her altar and glorious form?

  She looked in their direction and beckoned them over. They got up reluctantly, suddenly star-struck shy. Even when she spoke, she sang like a nightingale or a bird of paradise.

  ‘Vasilis, and Giorgos and … John, is it? Come and sit with me.’

  ‘How do you know our names?’ Vasilis was curious and a little bit worried.

  ‘Come. First you sit down. Then I’ll tell you.’

  The three men obeyed.

  ‘Thank you.’ She sang.

  ‘For what? What could we possibly have given you, my dear lady, that we don’t remember? Our dear friend, amnesia, may have been more tender than usual in her affections.’