Vaguely, he was aware that Attalos had taken account of something below. The boy shuffled with his torch to a jagged foothold to the floor of the crater bed. Heron guided Dam along to a perch above the spot where Attalos had landed. Attalos crouched over a body and swept his torch above his head like a standard bearer on the battlefield.
For a moment, Dam was overcome with disbelief. He knew scores of people had been near the tower when it had collapsed. But where had been the gods sparing mercy for the righteous to even out the evil of the bandits? Emotions flooded him. He scampered down the bank of ruptured bedrock by hand and foot.
Aerander lay on his back with one arm twisted under him and a leg turned over at a frightening angle from his hip. One side of his head was dark with blood. He wasn’t moving.
PART TWO
Chapter One
In Atlantis, hoary, honey-skinned women from the desert tribes of Tamana were said to have been gifted with the knowledge of palmistry by the witch goddess of the Amazons. They wore cloaks of many layers and veils for their faces, and they set up stalls at night in the alleys around the harbor. It was a district of rowdy tavernas and whorehouses, and Dam supposed that it was a good place for the witchy women to find men who were drunk or dumb enough to pay them for a glimpse of the miseries the Fates had in store.
Before Hephad had disavowed the practices of his native peoples, he had shown Dam some of the arts of palmistry, for it was known and held in great esteem in his country. A hairline furrow nearly the length of Dam’s palm signified his life’s trail, and it was traversed in places by finer wrinkles that heralded obstacles to overcome. Looking at that long groove etched across his palm, Dam understood his life as segmented by disasters. Each crosshatch closed off the past and ushered in a new journey.
The first trial had been the death of his parents, a stitch in his skin barely past the start of the line in his palm. The second trial, a fingertip’s distance farther, was the betrayal of House Atlas on his thirteenth birthday, which had sent him on a new course in the priesthood. A melon seed’s length from that, the third trial, in a long, crooked slash, had been when the world was washed asunder.
Those three trials had been plenty, and Dam hadn’t troubled to tempt some mischievous god to turn supposition into truth by guessing what the next crossing in his life’s trail could mean. He understood now. It was the night when lightning and thunder had burst up from the floor of the underworld, and the Oomphalos had been stolen. The life he had known was lost to him. A new path had begun.
As soon as Dam had heard the news that a house had been set up for the wounded, he volunteered to help, as did the other novice priests, Hephad, Deodorus, and Tibor. They had none of the convalescent herbs or salves they had been taught about in their training, but they had water to wash the grime from the men’s wounds, rags to bind the skin to stop the bleeding, and water-soaked compresses to ease the men’s fevers. They had chamber pots, and they knew to cover a man with a sheet so he could relieve himself with dignity.
Three dozen people had been recovered from the collapse of the tower, half of them dead. They had been thrown and crushed by the eruptions in the square, and some had deep, charred welts in their flesh from the bursts of fire and scalding smoke. The fallen had included the two warriors who had been at their posts by the tower gates when the second explosion had ruptured the yard. The rest had been mostly Old Ones who had arrived soon after to try to save the Oomphalos from the attack.
In the underground dwellers’ tradition, they washed the bodies and set them on a pyre of coals so that they would not rot. While the bodies had smoldered down to bones and ashes, they had scored a plot of rock with giant concentric circles. The largest had been forty strides across. That represented to them nature’s eternal cycle, and in the inner, smaller circle was the cycle of man. There, they had used their pick axes and hammers to dig out a shallow grave in which to place the bones. They mounded high the communal grave with the rubble from the tower yard. They were a people born from stone and returned to stone, as Hanhau had told Dam.
Of the Atlanteans, only two had died. One was a boy named Hiero, a thirteen-year-old cousin of Dardy’s. He had been swallowed by the tower’s sinking crater while trying to pull a warrior to safety. Both had been buried in the merciless fall-out of stone. They discovered Koz in the fissure of a crater bed. The boy had been blackened with the dusty fuel that he had used to burst open the floor beneath the tower.
An explanation had come together. After Calyiches and his friends left the hall, Koz snuck away and crept into the work-shafts beneath the square. They stockpiled their fuel of niterbats in the underground passageways for managing the fountain’s system of beacons and water ducts and appointed Koz to set it off with flints while everyone had been celebrating Aerander’s victory in the hall.
Had Calyiches told Koz he could scuttle out of the tunnels after the blasts, or they would come and fetch him? Had Koz been dumb enough to believe that? Could his own brother Leo have been so cold-hearted as to let him die?
Koz would never be able to answer those questions. His body had been burnt and blistered almost beyond recognition. The circumstances slightly modified the abomination of his deeds, indicating Koz had been a pawn of the others. They had razed man and monument to steal the Oomphalos, sparing no loyalty to their accomplice. Koz had been given the rites of burial and a crumbled, fire-scorched stone as his marker in the polyandrium. Calyiches’ party had overpowered the tunnel wardens that night and made away into the backcountry.
Pyrrah and the other women helped out in the infirmary, as was their nature. They spooned broth into men’s mouths and sat with them to calm their fears. Those women were brave and devoted. They didn’t hesitate to visit even the most mangled and bloodied of the wounded, always with a smile and kind words for each man about what he had done to protect his countrymen. Dam wondered at times if they had taken up the wounded as surrogates for the husbands and the children they had lost in the flood.
Some underground dwellers were able to set bones with metal stints and braces so they could heal. Most horribly, surgeries had to be performed with saws and fire-stoked cautery prods to remove festering limbs and prevent the rot from spreading. The patient’s screams were scalding and lingered in Dam’s head like echoes.
It occurred to Dam from time to time that if they had the Oomphalos, it would speed the course of the men’s healing and spare them some agony. It might even save the lives of some who were sallow and wasting with fever. But the magical artifact was gone. They had only the tools of rudimentary care to keep the wounded alive.
Dam had not prayed since he had left the priests’ precinct. What he had learned about the High Priest Zazamoukh sent his faith adrift and made him ashamed of having served as an accomplice to his treachery. But one night when he and Hephad returned to their house to sleep, Dam joined Hephad at the altar his friend had set up in a corner of the room.
He remembered Aerander’s question when they were at the polyandrium. Dam had wondered about many things since the disaster at the tower.
“Do you think the gods of our world hear us down here?” he asked Hephad.
Hephad nodded. Even after he had been so cruelly punished by the High Priest Zazamoukh, his faith was unwavering. Others would say that Atlantis had been abandoned by Poseidon or banished by Him. For Hephad, that was all the more reason to keep up his ritual devotions and push those traditions on the other boys. He had chiseled stones into fetishes—their patron Atlas, his mother Pleione, and the Great Poseidon—and set them on the altar shelf. That night, Hephad’s faith no longer seemed foolhardy. Dam sat down with Hephad at the altar like they had so many mornings before when they had been novice priests.
They made oblations of snippings of hair and let them burn in the altar’s tin lamp. Dam shut his eyes and asked Pleione, the mother of mercy, for miracles. That men who bled from their bowels might be brought back from the edge of death. That the freed prisoners who had clung
to life by the radiance of the Oomphalos might survive until the relic was recovered. That Lys, whose hand had been shattered by a fallen boulder, might make it through without an amputation. That Dardy, who had broken his leg in two places, might walk again.
Most of all, Dam prayed to the goddess to grant mercy to Aerander. Many nights had passed and still Aerander could not raise himself from his pallet. Worse, he shivered awake at times with cries that rang through the infirmary, grasping out for someone to explain why he couldn’t see.
“Dam.” A voice called Dam’s attention away from his prayers. Someone had spoken his name. Dam realized that tears were running down his face. He wiped his eyes with his apron and looked to Hephad.
“Dam,” Hephad said again. His voice jolted Dam for a moment. Hephad turned his head to hide a grin.
“When? How long have…”
“Since the day we found the kittens.”
That was some time ago—the only bright spot since the night of terror. The kittens had been discovered locked in a vacant storage vault in the lower warehouse district of the city. Calyiches and his friends must have lured and trapped them as a ploy to cast suspicion on the Old Ones and to distract people from voting. The kittens had grown even bigger. Like leopard cubs, they could stand on their hind legs and reach their paws to Dam’s waist. Whatever enchantment the Oomphalos had cast over them hadn’t worn off when the magical stone was taken away.
So it was with Hephad’s regrowing tongue.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dam said.
Hephad frowned. “It didn’t seem right.”
Dam tried to retrace time since they had found the kittens. Everything blurred together in his head. Their routine a cycle that had repeated too many times. They woke. They went to the infirmary house. They split off to opposite sides of the room, emptying chamber pots, changing dressings, changing the bedding of the soiled pallets, and sponging off the men who coughed up blood and turning them on their sides. Dam recalled one, maybe two times when he and Hephad had taken a break together to drink some soup at a bench outside the house. When Deodorus and Tibor had come by to relieve them, Dam discussed the men they were most worried about, but Hephad never said anything. Then Dam and Hephad dragged themselves to wash up in the yard and lay down on their beds. Each night, sleep had overwhelmed them quickly.
Dam poked Hephad in the ribs. “You should tell Attalos, at least.”
A blush blazed across Hephad’s face. Dam and Hephad had never talked about it, but it had become pretty obvious that Hephad and Attalos were more than friends.
“Already did.”
That earned Hephad two pokes in the ribs and a pounce on the shoulders. Dam hovered over him. “Did you tell Attalos like this?” He opened his mouth and lashed his tongue lewdly.
Hephad giggled. “Stop.”
Dam pinched at his sides, and then he gave Hephad a reprieve. A thought occurred to him.
“Tell Aerander tomorrow. He’d want to know.”
Chapter Two
The theft of the Oomphalos had taken away any sense of day or night, and everyone around the Honeycomb seemed to drift like ghosts consumed by their private worlds. They slept until they didn’t need to sleep any more, and they rested when their bodies ached for it. When Dam next awoke, by some rhythm of nature he felt it was time to relieve Deodorus and Tibor at the infirmary, just as he had felt it numerous times before. Dam looked across the room, cast in the flickering flame of the altar, and he saw Hephad stirring with a yawn. They made their “morning” oblations at the altar, dressed in clean aprons, and headed to the infirmary.
The stench of urine and bile was hard to manage each time they first arrived. But as Dam swam into the fug of the infirmary, his nausea always subsided, and he scarcely noticed the foul odors after a while. He took account of the rows of pallets like every other day. An empty pallet could signify hope or tragedy. A few of the men with milder injuries had gotten better and been moved to their homes. A few had been removed for funeral rites.
That day, he noticed the empty space where a warrior named Teochin had been languishing after the amputation of both of his legs. Lately he had complained of an agony gripping his abdomen. That was a very serious stage of affliction, Dam had learned. Deep flesh wounds, like the kind soldiers incurred in battle, could lead to a disease of the intestines. When those organs were afflicted, the man could not be nurtured with food or drink. The end of the warrior’s suffering struck Dam as merciful. Amputations were always chancy. It was hard to tell whether or not the bad blood in the lost limb had already traveled deeper into the body, causing the organs of the gut to rot.
Before they started their routine, Dam led Hephad to the far end of the room, where Aerander had been laid out for care. Lys lay on a pallet beside him. Dardy was on the other side. They were the only boys left in the dormitory. Dardy’s brother Evandros had been well enough to limp out on metal crutches with his leg in a brace some time ago.
Lys noticed Dam and Hephad’s approach. He propped himself up gingerly with his good arm, and he called out to Aerander. Aerander struggled to raise himself up on his elbows. The crown of his head was wrapped in cloths down to his brow. His unseeing eyes worried around the room.
It hurt Dam to see his cousin’s complexion so pale and the boyish roundness of his face wasted away from the strain of his injuries. But there were encouraging signs that day. Aerander looked more alert and more aware of his surroundings. Pleione had bedded herself at his feet. Hephad had brought the cat to the infirmary to lift the men’s spirits. For her to take to Aerander that way, he must have eased off from his waking fits.
Dam nudged Hephad forward, and he knelt beside Aerander. “Good morning, Aerander.”
Aerander’s face shrunk up. He turned toward the voice. “Hephad?”
Hephad grinned shyly. “Yes.” Aerander reached out to him, and Hephad pressed their hands together. Dam drew up on the other side of his cousin, near Dardy, who cocked his head to take part in the visit. Both of Dardy’s legs had been fitted with metal braces.
The five boys talked about the miracle of Hephad’s healing. Lys and Dardy wanted to see his tongue, so Hephad showed them his mouth as though he had caught a prize fish in there.
“You look better,” Dam told Aerander.
“I feel a bit more so. The nightmares haven’t been as bad. That’s the only time I can see—when I’m dreaming. Last night, Father visited me.”
Lys broke in. “The medic says the sight sometimes comes back even in the worst of cases.”
“Of course it does,” Dam told his cousin. The medic was their most knowledgeable healer. Her name was Sacnite. She was a white-haired woman from the oldest generation, the Children of the Aerie. She had been setting bones and sewing up wounds since before Hanhau’s parents had been born.
“Father said he’s looking over all of us,” Aerander told Dam. “He wants us to know that Hiero is doing fine. He’s joined his father and his mother and sisters now.” Aerander winced and lay back on his pallet. The others quieted. Dam craned over him.
“He gets dizzy after a spell, that’s all,” Lys said.
Hephad looked to Dam. “We should let him have his rest.”
Aerander’s hand fumbled around at his side to touch Dam’s hand. “It’s all right. Dam, stay with me for a bit.” Dam glanced at the others. Hephad nodded and went off to do his rounds. Lys and Dardy lay back down.
Dam gathered together the bedding beneath Aerander’s head so it would be more comfortable for him. The shredded cave moss was damp with sweat. It could have used refreshing, but it seemed cruel to bother his cousin with that while he was laid out so feebly. “You don’t have to talk. We’ll just sit together for a while.”
“I need to talk to you,” Aerander said. He swallowed and cleared his throat with some effort. “Dam, we have to get the Oomphalos back.”
Dam squeezed out a wet cloth from a nearby bucket, dabbing it on the sides of his cousin’s face. “We w
ill. As soon as you’re better.”
“No. Not when I’m better,” Aerander said. “It will be too late.”
“You keep resting and getting better every day, all right?” Dam said. “There’s no reason for you to be worrying about anything else.”
“Dam, I might never get better. I won’t be any use to anyone if I can’t see.”
“That’s not true. You’re the King of Atlantis.”
“So I am. And I need your help. You’ve got to stop Calyiches before he gets back to the surface.”
Dam sat back on his heels. Him? What made Aerander think he could do anything to stop Calyiches?
“Dam, it’s our only chance to return home. I promised the freed prisoners. I can’t organize an expedition like this. There isn’t much time. Calyiches already has a good lead.”
Dam bit his lip. He had thought about the same thing in his spare moments. A shameful hope was buried deeper in his consciousness. If they gave up their mission to return to the surface, they could stay in the underworld where Dam knew his place and could be with Hanhau. Dam knew that was selfish. He had been praying for Aerander to get better, but that might not happen without the power of the Oomphalos. He couldn’t deny Aerander his help.
But how would anyone find Calyiches? He could be anywhere in the backcountry. He could have found a portal to the surface already.
Aerander’s breaths turned shallow. His lips moved weakly. “Promise me, Dam.”
Dam squeezed his hand. “I promise. Now rest.”
*
After Dam had finished taking care of the men on his side of the infirmary, he went to find Hanhau. He had a good idea where he was likely to be. Teochin had been taken away for burial rites. The warriors would have gathered to pay their respects.
Banished Sons Of Poseidon Page 11
