Banished Sons Of Poseidon

by Andrew J. Peters

  “I begged Eudoros to disavow that bargain and free the prisoners. Just as desperately, Eudoros told me he could not live without the stone. He had another plan. He would steal the stone from the New Ones, and the two of us would live together for eternity.

  “I could not do that. My eyes peered deeper into the vision that beguiled Eudoros. I did not see happiness. I saw fear and suffering.

  “I took back the amulet that kept us bonded, and I left him to make my way on my own. By the grace of fate, I found refuge with the Old Ones. From them, I learned about the terror the New Ones had imposed over their kingdom. I swore to help them win their freedom.

  “Eudoros did steal the stone, and he found me. When I refused to join him, he summoned a powerful spell that imprisoned me in the heavens, where I would live forever but never be able to reveal his treachery. Of course, he didn’t succeed in keeping the stone for himself. His mastery of its power failed him, and the New Ones retook it and kept him bound as their slave trader.”

  “You still say you love him after all that?”

  “I see that’s strange to you. He was the only person to have the courage to show me who I really was. That goodness was always inside him. His thirst for the stone consumed it, but it was never destroyed completely, only buried.

  “Even when he banished me, I knew he loved me still. His curse left a provision for my release. When the lie that had erased me from history was revealed, I would be freed. Maybe Eudoros thought of it as a secret oath that would reunite us when one of us had a change of heart about his bargain with the New Ones. Maybe he devised it as a mystery for some wise man to unlock and bring that bargain to an end. In either case, he sealed his reckoning in the curse that sent me away.”

  So it had been when Aerander spotted Calaeno in the sky and spoke her secret on the night when the sea rushed toward the Citadel to bury Atlantis in its entirety. That had allowed the heavenly princess to shine light on a portal to the underground so that Aerander and Lys could evacuate the highborn boys. That had allowed Aerander to tell everyone that the High Priest had been plotting against the kingdom. “Aren’t you angry that he banished you? He took away your life.”

  “At times it’s been horrid. I saw all, but I could do nothing.

  “I saw my father blacken his face with char from my funeral dais where they burned my chiton and my lariat as my only remains.

  “I saw my mother stare at illusions of her mind from the single slat window of her resting chamber. She had been confined to a locked vault beneath a watchtower because she had shredded her fancy clothes and needed to be helped to wash herself and eat.

  “I saw my eldest sister Alcyone torn from her true love to marry a ‘proper’ man. She became not much more than a brood mare to birth grandsons to continue the line of my father. I saw sickness and age claim every one of my family, some of them alone, without anyone to comfort them. I saw the deaths of every generation after them.

  “Have I been angry at Eudoros? Surely, I have. But it’s been my fate to watch over the world from the heavens. It’s been my fate to help our country at a time when people most needed me. Perhaps that was what my grandfather required from me in penitence for abandoning Atlantis so many years ago. I didn’t understand that all at once, but I feel no anger now, nor regret.”

  That seemed like a very steep punishment to Dam. He couldn’t figure how Calaeno had come to terms with it. Was it possible for anyone to be so forgiving? “When you were down here in Agartha, were you tempted by the stone’s power?”

  “I felt its magic, but I was born with a protection from its temptation. The same protection that you possess. As does Aerander.”

  Dam had no idea what she meant.

  “It is like the child who falls ill with the pox and lives through it to never suffer that sickness again, even when he is bedded with his stricken brothers and sisters.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s the bloodline, Dam. Long ago, my father was enchanted by a bit of the stone’s power, and so we are bonded to the stone’s mysteries, every generation down to you and Aerander. The few who know that story no longer speak to me, so I can only suppose how it happened. My grandmother Cleito had possession of the stone at one time. My father was her favorite, and it would stand to reason she summoned powers that would place him above all other men. Perhaps she did not know the stone minds its own mysteries. It can bless its beholder on one hand and curse him on the other. My father was invincible in battle, but he could not sire a son as even the simplest of men can do. That turned him to madness, and we come full circle to the beginning of my story.”

  Dam followed gradually. Though he did not feel bonded to the stone as she had said in any way that he could perceive, Aerander had once described it like a magnet buried in his gut that pulled him toward the stone. Dam had never felt that. He had something else to ask her.

  “Maybe that’s what happened when Zazamoukh used the stone to banish you? It backfired.”

  Calaeno chuckled mildly. “If you can call ten centuries of exile a backfire, I suppose. It was a strong curse, but you are right. Some airy tentacle of the stone might have reached into Eudoros’ heart, making true a longing that we would be reunited one day. It allowed me to return with the magic of the gods. I only wish I was powerful enough to breach the underworld. The snake queen Ouroborus sealed those portals to me.”

  Dam fell back on his present troubles. How much time had passed during their conversation? Hanhau and the others had been trapped in the mountain pass. The New Ones had reclaimed the stone. They would attack the city, where Aerander lay blind and crippled.

  “You know what you must do, Dam?” Calaeno said.

  Dam gazed heavenward. He wanted very much to know what she was thinking.

  “You must claim the stone and return it to the Old Ones.”

  He gaped absurdly. “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “It is a dangerous quest. But it was done by your cousin. Before that, it was done by Eudoros.”

  “Aerander had that special bond to guide him. I don’t feel anything like that.” Dam shook his head. “No. I’ve got to get up to the mountain pass. If I can find anyone who survived, we’ll make our way back to the city to warn people. Maybe we can organize a campaign to get the Oomphalos back. It’ll take more than one man. The snakes are powerful.”

  “I know the snakes as well as you. Better, I daresay. With their advantage, they will rush to avenge the murder of their queen. If you do not stop them, I fear there will be no city for you and your friends to return to.”

  “I can’t leave the others in the mountain pass while I go searching for the stone. They could be dying up there.”

  “You’ll be very little help to them without it.”

  Dam felt cuffed at his wrists. “I can’t steal the stone from the New Ones by myself. It’s impossible. Sure, you say two people have done it before. One of them is blind and nights away. The other is dead.”

  “The other is not dead.”

  Calaeno’s words hung in the air for a moment. But Zazamoukh had been swept up in the flood back on that tragic night, hadn’t he? No one had seen the priest since they had come underground. Dam did not want to believe the evil man could still be alive.

  “On the night Aerander returned to the Citadel, I shone a beacon to the portal to the underworld. There was time for a few score of your cousin’s friends to escape. And Zazamoukh.”

  Dam winced. He supposed that it was possible. Calaeno had said she could see everything from the heavens, though she couldn’t see into the underworld.

  “How could he still be living down here? He can’t live without the Oomphalos.”

  “I do not know. But it is certain he still lives. I was bound to the amulet by the magic he cast. If he were dead, the two of us would no longer be able to speak.”

  That took a moment for Dam to follow, and then it seeped in like a foul smell.

  “You must go to him to find out ho
w you can retake the stone.”

  *

  Dam felt broken and very hungry. He needed to find food, and he told Calaeno so. She suggested a route through the cistern cavern toward balmy, stillwater pools in the underground where seaweed and mushrooms were hedged around the water. At the far end of the cistern, the cavern narrowed to knobby passageway with crystallized walls of stone. Dam tramped that way for a stretch. Then he found a climb down to a lower bank of rock.

  He felt warmth and smelled a smoky current as from a shaft above burning lava. He followed those markers. Above him, water dripped from upside-down spires of rock, hanging like icicles. The water collected in little pools in the scarred floor of the cavern. Dam shone the light from his amulet around. Up ahead, he spotted a harvest of colorless mushroom buds. In a little pool nearby, he found slimy stalks of seaweed.

  Dam filled his mouth with the treasures. Only starved and at the end of his wits could he think of those underground dregs as delicacies, but they made a meal to fill his belly. That settled him a bit. Dam found a spot in the floor where the ground was dry, and he sat down to think.

  He could ignore what Calaeno had said and go looking for Hanhau. That was what his heart was telling him to do. Dam closed his hand around the iron wristband Hanhau had given him. Calaeno didn’t understand. His loyalty was to the men from his expedition and most especially to Hanhau.

  Dam’s thoughts rushed back on themselves. He could manage ignoring Calaeno’s advice, but what would Hanhau want him to do? Dam had a chance to take the stone and save the city from the New Ones’ assault. He had to try.

  Asking for Zazamoukh’s help was a hateful irony. Zazamoukh was to blame for the New Ones laying siege to Agartha the first time around. What made Calaeno think Zazamoukh would help Dam get the stone? Did she think she could persuade him herself?

  That was one heck of a reckless strategy. Zazamoukh could take the amulet for keeps, and Dam would have nothing to guide him through the backcountry. His countrymen would have no link to the above-world. They would never know how or when they could return to the surface.

  Whatever it was he had to do, he had to get going with it. The New Ones could be readying their attack. Dam emptied his thoughts and called out to Calaeno.

  “I’m ready. How do I find Zazamoukh?”

  “I am proud of you, Dam. This must be very hard for you.”

  Dam sighed. She had no idea how hard it was.

  “There is a lair in the depths of the backcountry, unknown even to the New Ones. Eudoros told me it was the place we were to hide after he had taken the stone. I pray he sought out that hideaway in his exile.”

  Chapter Five

  Calaeno’s instructions were to find a passage to a volcanic shelf below the cavern. Guided by a warm draft farther in, Dam traveled beyond the mushroom furrow and came upon a cleft in the floor where the stench of scalded rock was strong.

  His descent was nearly blind. He needed both hands to grip notches of rock while groping for footholds with his feet to make his way below. The amulet hung from his neck, not improving his view of the gulley much. Meanwhile, the air grew thick with heat. Faintly, Dam heard rumblings below like the sound of the Fire Canyon.

  Some yards down, he arrived at a landing and stopped to get his bearings. He had farther to go down that narrow gulley. Dam wished he had the rappelling cable they had used on their expedition. Even better, he wished he had his troupe to go with him. He gathered his breath as best as he could. The air was foul from the molten rock that burned below. How hot and choking would it be when he reached the bottom? Dam reminded himself that he had crawled from a tar pit, slain beetles as large as bulls, and kept pace with warriors driving up mountain cliffs. He sorted out another vertical descent.

  After a steep maneuver downward for a while, the gulley gradually rounded and opened up like a horn. Dam slid down with his legs in front of him. He arrived above a smoky bed of craters.

  Dam shone his amulet over that crater field. He could not see far, but it felt vast. He heard distant rumbles and hisses of steam. The floor was shattered with fine crevices. He wondered how stable it was. Dam called out to Calaeno for advice.

  “Can you see the molehills of lava?” she asked.

  Dam stared across the murky distance. Along the horizon, tiny, red caps sparked through the darkness. He reported that to Calaeno.

  “Make your way there. Beyond those hills, there will be an aerie. That’s where you will find Eudoros.”

  Dam felt pulled from two ends again. He had undertaken this mission to retrieve the stone, but he had also abandoned Hanhau, now many leagues above him.

  He had come this far. He had to forge ahead and hope to be speedy about it. Dam leapt down to the field, trying to make a gingerly landing. The floor didn’t give way from his weight. Dam trudged toward the tiny, fiery beacons in the distance.

  The fire-caps of the hills grew brighter on the horizon as he traveled, though they seemed to be always farther ahead. Meanwhile, sweat poured from Dam’s brow. He had never been so deep underground. The heat wrung the strength from his body. Dam soldiered on. It would make good sense for Zazamoukh to hole up in the smoking bowels of Agartha. Not even the snakes would have relished looking for him there.

  Dam arrived at his destination nearly before he had reckoned it properly. He understood then why Calaeno had called them molehills. The fire-caps came from mere cones of rock that had sprouted from the ground. He saw a cropping of them a few dozen wide and a few dozen long. None were more than twice his height. They were miniature volcanoes. Dam was relieved he wouldn’t have to climb them, though he would have to trek around them to avoid their spatter of lava.

  Dam skirted to one side and tried to make out his surroundings. A rocky bulwark some yards beyond the lava molehills looked like it completely hedged in the crater field. Training his amulet in another direction, he doubled back on an odd sight. It was a wall of fog, or steam. That was curious enough for Dam to explore. Steam meant a source of water.

  He ventured farther toward it, and he noticed rivulets racing by his feet in the grooves of the scorched floor. That water disappeared in the pores of the ground, certain to be boiled below. Dam followed the crisscrossing rivulets, anxious to find their source. He headed into a dense zone of fog like the cool breath of the sea at morning.

  The moisture coated his heated skin, which brought some relief, but he couldn’t get his bearings. The clapping of a vigorous rainfall tantalized Dam’s ears. He closed in on that sound. Mist pecked at his face. Dam shone his amulet in front of him, desperate to behold what all his other senses were telling him. Water must have found its way down from the crystallized mountain beds through a fracture in the ceiling.

  Dam didn’t see it, but he stepped beneath it. That fracture had created a minor cataract where the water spilled and rose from the ground in folds of steam. Dam craned his head back and stretched open his mouth to catch a drink. It was warm from the heat but still mercifully quenching.

  He passed through the cataract and arrived at the mouth of a cave. His amulet illuminated a steep passage inward. Surrounded by mist from the cataract, Dam took account of the exterior as well as he could. It was a tall shaft of rock. The cave led up to its height. That certainly could figure as an aerie.

  Dam called up a psychic bridge to Calaeno. He described what he had found.

  “Yes,” she said. “You must climb to its pinnacle. There’s a berth inside that was to be our hideaway.”

  Dam’s heartbeat quickened.

  “What am I supposed to say to him?”

  “Whatever you can to win his help.”

  The last time he had seen Zazamoukh, Dam had bashed him on the head with the butt of a xiphos. That didn’t put him in a very favorable bargaining position. He told that to Calaeno. Didn’t it make more sense for her to try talking to the priest?

  “Better to use the amulet as a bargain when you absolutely must. He will want to talk to me, and that could slow you down
from your task. Remember, he has reason to hate the New Ones as much as anyone. They kept him as their pawn for centuries, and he was never paid with the prize he craved. Without the stone, he’s a dying man.”

  Dam drew a breath. Best to get on with it rather than being plucked to shreds by his nerves. He told Calaeno he was going in.

  “Dam, you mustn’t hurt him. No matter what he says. Promise me.”

  He gave her his promise, and then he climbed into the cave.

  Chapter Six

  It was a twisted, rock-strewn climb up through the cave—a cruel stairway to a cruel man’s home. In spots, the walls of the passage had crumbled and piled high to the ceiling. Dam had to scale forward on his hands and knees, scraping his legs along the way. There was no light and no trace of habitation until he neared the top. A loathsome fug of urine, the stink of unwashed men, and the cloying odor of rot assaulted him. A pale aura of light bled into the passageway like the cast of the setting sun.

  Dam climbed to the lip of a hardscrabble slope and arrived at a hollow. The space was still and dank. Dam shone the amulet around. It was a pocket that looked to be the size of an antechamber.

  The source of the room’s strange illumination was a glowing tin bucket on the floor. Dry fish bones and soiled cloths were scattered around. Dam searched the space beside the bucket.

  Reptilian eyes stared back at him.

  Dam kept the amulet trained on the priest and reached over his shoulder to withdraw his sword from its sheath. He had subdued the priest before, and he was not afraid to do it again if the situation required it. By the man’s position, he appeared to be laid out or hunched low to the floor. Dam climbed into the den.

  Zazamoukh’s thirsting voice halted Dam’s steps. “Is that death come for me? I thought my prayers had warded you away. Are there no gods left to hear the living?”