by Dana Fredsti
Cam and Harcourt looked dubious, but neither said anything—there was nothing they could say. They left their parkas to mark where they had been, and set off through the only clear break in the tree line. Just a few paces through, they found a much larger clearing, its floor made of cracked pavement stones colonized by opportunistic grass.
“Nev Kawgh,” Cam said.
“Indeed,” Harcourt agreed.
An immense figure stood above them, a beautiful winged woman, nude but for a loose drape around her loins and legs, arms bent in an artful, beckoning pose as she gazed off to one side. Even in stone she exuded grace and movement, guarding a gatehouse flanked by huge columns. Bas-relief friezes decorated its walls, dripping with a riot of sinuous vines and moss. The vegetation was thick, preventing them from seeing anything beyond. Both the gatehouse and columns were crowned with dotted cornices and capped by spherical finials, like chess pieces.
Swanlike figures swirled around their bases.
At about ten times the height of a man, the woman stood in the center of the grand entrance, splitting it in two. Her spread wings formed a perfect arc, framing the entryway. Stylized carved beams radiated out from behind her. A heavenly cloud bore a single word.
CREATION
“What goddess is that?” Cam asked in hushed tones. “We should not trespass without offering our respects.”
“It’s only an angel,” Blake replied. “They just work for God.”
“Where and when do you suppose this curious citadel came from?” Harcourt stared up. “A sign in English, but inscribed on the walls of an ancient castle? High Medieval, or is it early Renaissance—”
“Harcourt,” Blake cut in, “did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Exactly.” Blake mimed a lock sign over his mouth. Harcourt started to issue an indignant retort, but was interrupted by the distant roar of something reptilian, large, and hungry. The professor kept his tongue and the three men entered the ruins.
Beyond the gatehouse there was no fortress citadel—only a cavernous tunnel largely hidden by the jungle. An enticing light shone from somewhere in its depths.
“Kha-Hotep?” Blake called. “Leila?”
No response.
They entered the tunnel and it curved down, plunging them in semi-darkness. As they proceeded, Blake ran a hand over the cave wall. It wasn’t rock, but plaster cleverly painted to resemble a cave. After a few twists and turns the tunnel ended abruptly in rubble—real rubble, not faux—followed by more trees that let in dappled sunlight.
Ahead was more cracked and crumbling pavement for them to follow—what appeared to have once been a wide thoroughfare. Buildings had once lined both sides, but the forest had reclaimed them so thoroughly that only traces survived. Wherever the shard had originated, there was no sign of its boundary.
What few buildings remained were bizarrely mismatched. Poking through the oaks and maples to the left, there was an ornate multi-tiered Chinese gate in red and gold—replete with dragons and auspicious good-luck symbols. Not far from it stood the bastioned ramparts and towers of a Norman castle. A huge oak effectively blocked its entrance.
Continuing onward, they reached the tree line and stepped into an open area. They had emerged into the heart of a lost city.
At first glance, it appeared as though they had stumbled upon a scenic avenue that ran along a grand lagoon, hundreds of feet across. Canals branched out and streamed under graceful stone bridges, still standing despite the best efforts of the flowering ivy to conquer them.
On either bank of the water lay tree-lined walkways—once idyllic parks now overgrown and wild. Across the lagoon lay ruins, in a mishmash of classical styles—huge Roman columns, golden Byzantine domes, slender Gothic spires, and more. The foliage had turned every building into a hanging garden.
“Every structure rivals Westminster Palace,” Harcourt exclaimed. “Perhaps we’ve discovered a lost city of antiquity. It’s remarkable!”
“Truly remarkable, given that they’ve developed radio,” Blake said, pointing to an old-style wireless telegraph tower. “Come on, we need to go back. No time for treasure-hunting— we’ve got to find Kha-Hotep and Leila, then find a way back to Antarctica, double time.”
“Could that be them?” Cam nodded toward a thin curl of smoke coming from one of the buildings.
Blake shrugged. “Let’s find out.”
* * *
From the cover of the trees, keen eyes spied on the newcomers. The scout—coyote-thin and grim-faced—turned to the others concealed deeper in the forest. He gave two sharp bird whistles, and held up three fingers.
They grabbed their weapons.
27
The Street of Thaumaturgi, Alexandria
1130 Ab urbe condita (AD 367)
In a less-reputable corner of the Rhakotis district, mystics, fortune-tellers, and dabblers in petty necromancy plied their trade. Theon, father to a young girl named Hypatia, despised such superstition, and forbade her to ever set foot there.
So of course she did.
Slipping away from the slaves assigned to watch over her, she approached a forgotten shrine that lay at the crossroads of two alleys, and found a wizened old woman haunting the doorway. One cataract-beset eye glared a baleful white like the full moon, the other gleamed black and eager as a crow’s eye. The ancient witch frightened her, but something in the crone’s beckoning finger made the girl screw up her courage and enter.
The shrine was very small, and they sat together on a thick black camelhide. In the sputtering light of a few seashells turned into oil lamps, cabalistic symbols trembled on the walls. The old woman meticulously cast pinches of salt to the four corners of the tiny room, and spat three times.
“What would your young Ladyship have?” she asked, holding out her palm to be crossed with silver. “The name of your true love? A cure to whatever malady might vex you? To speak with a shade of the dead?”
Hypatia drew herself up. This was base superstition indeed. She knew the soul was immortal, and upon death of the body, the purest ones would ascend to the higher planes, ultimately returning to the One—the source of goodness and beauty from which all things derived. Lesser souls would be purified and descend again, to be reborn in a new body.
“What do you know of the dead?” She meant it as a challenge, but the crone answered.
“Much indeed do I know, ever since Hecate sent a spider to crawl into my ear and whisper her ineffable wisdom. Sit, and I shall tell you of the di inferi, those who dwell below—of the chthonic ghost-gods, and the Erinyes, the Furies that take vengeance on the spirits of men.”
Curious in spite of herself, Hypatia kept her silence and listened to the white-haired woman’s rhythmic, almost musical, speech.
“Five are the rivers encircling Hades. You know the Styx, where all must pay Charon his obal ere they cross. Phlegethon, the blood-river of fire that boils souls, and Lethe, the waters of forgetfulness that drown all thought and memory. Cocytus, the black river of lamentation, flows into the river Acheron, the river of woe.
“Now, the souls of men, if they are good, become Lares in Elysium, or linger in Hades as Manes if even the Fates cannot decree whether they deserve well or ill. But woe betide them that die without proper burial, for having neglected the sacred rites, they doom themselves to become Lemures, dark and formless shades vagrant and vengeful, wandering ever-lost and insatiate upon the black earth.”
The old woman leaned in, and her whispered words made the girl’s skin crawl.
“Yet worse still are those wicked souls consigned to the depths of Tartarus, sunken as far beneath Hades as Heaven lies above the earth. There the damned take on the form of Larvae, their bodies becoming that of great, wriggling maggots, still wearing their own wretched human faces. The stinking pit writhes, rotten as a corpse, crawling with these foul abominations—the worms of the earth, twisting in unceasing torment, naught but food and playthings for the Erinyes and other dark unspeak
able horrors.
Ever and ever does their gibbering spite and anguish echo through eternity…”
* * *
Bright white became blue-black in an instant, as open arctic brilliance changed to blind night, subterranean and close. In the dark, it took a moment for Hypatia to realize her eyes were open.
Though she could see nothing, her other senses were under assault. The roar of a thousand groaning, keening inhuman voices buffeted her ears, and a mix of sulfur and some horrid animal stench filled her nose and mouth. Her eyes watered and she wanted to retch.
Where was Nellie?
Where am I?
Pain along her forearms and knees told her she must fallen forward onto a rough stone surface, though she had no memory of the harsh landing. Picking herself up, she came to her hands and knees and reached out for her companion. Her mittened hand fell upon something, but it scuttled away beneath her touch.
“Nellie? Where are you?”
The sound of her own voice was lost, drowned out by the cacophony. How many were here with her? Hundreds?
“Nellie!” She called out again and again, terrified that she might be alone in here with—who? What? Turning around in the dark, she had no sense direction, but slowly realized that the gloom was not complete. Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. Teasing, uncertain hints of shape and movement began to take forms she recognized—and she almost wished for blindness.
Everywhere, the ground seethed with squirming, man-sized shapes, howling their agony and outrage. Cold, unreasonable terror penetrated her at the sight. This had to be the Underworld, the black abyss, and the undead, quasi-human Larvae.
Tartarus.
The hell of her nightmares, come to life.
Hypatia screamed.
As far as she could see in the dismal murk, the wriggling forms surrounded her, glaring and howling. The stinking air made her fight to keep from vomiting. Trapped with the loathsome creatures—Éleos tou Énós! Was she about to transform into one of them herself? Oímoi! Her head spun. Suddenly unsteady on her feet, she felt herself slipping back into unconsciousness.
Something lunged out of the darkness and grabbed hold of her. She felt the fat coils of a Larva’s body, pulsating maggot-skin dripping with grave rot, caught a glimpse of a horrible demi-human face screaming unintelligibly at her. Shrieking, she recoiled and tried to escape its grasp, but couldn’t.
And then it spoke.
“Hypatia!” Nellie said, holding her tight. “It’s alright, it’s me, it’s me!”
The hideous image, conjured by Hypatia’s terrified imagination, vanished in an instant, to her palpable relief. She gasped, unable to talk, clinging to Nellie like a drowning victim to a bit of flotsam.
“We—we are…” She couldn’t finish. The thought was too ridiculous, and too terrible. We are damned to Tartarus. The agitated bodies of the Larvae squirmed all around them.
“We’re alright,” Nellie soothed her, stroking her head. “Come with me. I’ll get you out.”
“There is a way out?” Hypatia’s voice seemed small, like the child she no longer was.
“Of course there is. Let’s go.” Slipping an arm around her waist, Nellie helped Hypatia to her feet, walking her toward a dim silver-blue illumination.
“But the abyss… the Larvae…” Hypatia’s voice trailed off. Things were becoming clearer with each step. The reek of sulfur, fish, and sea rot gave way to fresher air, bitingly cold. She was glad for the parka and gloves.
“Look, it’s only a cave, see?”
Slowly the terror faded. No demonic worms swarmed around them, only a colony of indignant speckled gray seals, barking in alarm as they humped out of their way. Hypatia leaned her head against Nellie’s shoulder as they proceeded forward. The two stepped out of the cave’s wide mouth into welcome starlight, a sight that made Hypatia smile.
The universe made sense again.
* * *
Hypatia and Nellie found a place to sit overlooking the rocky shoreline. Covering the horizon to the south, the ocean lapped at the jumble of boulders, jagged on the seaward side. Behind their rocky perch, the land stretched away up into forested mountain country, snow visible on the trees even in the night. Tendrils of cloud and mist tangled their way down the mountains to the sea, and the cold air tickled their nostrils.
They began to assess their options.
“Do you think we can go back the way we came?” Nellie asked.
“I don’t know,” Hypatia replied, “but we should wait until first light to try.” Until then, however, they had to survive the bitter cold night. Hypatia looked back at the cave, still echoing with the howls of agitated seals, and hoped they could find a better shelter.
“Where do you suppose we are?” Nellie asked her. Grateful for something practical on which to focus, Hypatia leaned back for a better look at the panorama of sky above them, and pointed out one solitary point of white gold.
“That one is the polar star, Cynosura, the tentpole of the heavens. Were we at the North Pole, it would be directly above us. If at the equator, it would rest upon the horizon.” She pulled off her mittens and stretched out her right hand. “I would that I had my astrolabe with me, but failing that, we can improvise. The span from the tip of my thumb to the tip of my littlest finger is very nearly twenty-five degrees. So then…”
Hypatia measured the distance from horizon to star, starting with thumb-to-pinky, then added a bull’s head made with her other index and little fingers. “Adding another fifteen degrees…” She stacked the width of her little finger three more times. “… and one, and one, and not quite one more. So our line of latitude is a little less than forty-three degrees parallel north—or reasonably close to there.” She blew on her already-chilling hands and quickly slipped them back into her mittens.
“Bravo!” Nellie clapped, the sound muffled by her own mittens. “So where do you suppose we are?”
“Barbarian territory, I fear,” Hypatia replied thoughtfully. “Perhaps in the lands of the Franks or the Ostrogoths? The sea is to our south, so perhaps we are upon the north shore of the Tyrrhenian, or the Aegean. Or perhaps in Taurica?”
Nellie raised her eyebrows.
“The land of the Bulgars,” Hypatia clarified. “Across the Euxine Sea from Pontus.”
Nellie could only shrug. “Well, I’ve heard of the Aegean Sea, anyway. From all the mountains and forest, I supposed we might be in the New World. Canada, perhaps. Maybe British Columbia, above Puget Sound, or somewhere above the Great Lakes.”
It was Hypatia’s turn to shrug.
“This much I can tell you,” she said, pointing to the sky again. “Those stars, there? That is Aries the golden-fleeced ram, rising. So then, the sun is in Libra.”
“What does that mean?”
“This morning at the South Pole, it was the thirteen of February. Now we are at some time in November.”
Nellie mulled that over. “I wonder how many Novembers in the future we’ve come,” she said. “Or… but surely we couldn’t have been dropped into the past, could we?” Nellie thought of Leila and Kha-Hotep, and the rest of them, all snatched up and flung away to lord-only-knew where and when. She flashed on her last sight of Amber, terrified and stranded all alone in the sinister swirl of ghostlights.
“If that’s the case,” she murmured, “how will any of us ever get back?”
A tremendous roar answered her, startling them both. They jumped as a superhumanly deep, booming voice came echoing down from the mountains, howling out a stream of raucous laughter. Ducking down behind the boulders to hide, they peered into the gloom to look for the source of the sound.
Nothing. Only forest and mist.
Nellie turned to Hypatia.
“Perhaps the cave wouldn’t be such an awful place to spend the night, after all.”
28
Trekking over the crumbling pavement along the canal bank, Blake, Cam, and Harcourt could feel the ghostly echo of what was once a delightful place fo
r leisurely strolling to and from the stately buildings—now ruins. They passed statues, benches, and lampposts along the canals, all camouflaged by years of rampant plant growth. The walkways seemed more like trails through a riverine canyon.
The smoke Cam had spotted still lay ahead, and they followed the canal until it veered away at a right angle. At the juncture, fixed atop a high pedestal, stood another statue, this one of a warrior-king in chain mail holding a sword aloft, his surcoat decorated with crosses and fleur-de-lis. The statue had been vandalized: a crude, blackened skull design masked the white marble of the regal face, matched by a black horse skull painted on his mount.
A series of twisted glyphs, frightening and primitive, had been painted on his chest and cape, and on his mount’s caparison. Vines, lichen, and moss had colonized the pedestal, but the inscription was still partly visible.
VRCHAS
XPOSITIO
T. LOVIS
CENTENNIAL
– 1904 –
“Who is that rider supposed to be?” Harcourt asked, undisguised disapproval in his tone. “Charlemagne? Bloody vandals.”
“Andraste and Camulos,” Cam murmured, staring up with a look of dread. A human skull, with a collar of red and black feathers, was impaled on the upraised sword. The victim’s spine was still attached to the skull, and the spines of other victims had been lashed to it with sinew, forming a long serpentine chain that coiled down and around the king’s arm and body.
“Barbaric devilry,” Harcourt muttered.
“You alright?” Blake put a hand on Cam’s shoulder, making him flinch.
The Celt nodded wordlessly.
As they regarded the grisly display, Blake was all too aware that they had no weapons. He calculated the odds of them finding Kha-Hotep and Leila, and for any of them getting out of this place alive. Making up his mind, he nodded and pulled the other two in for a quick huddle.
“Here’s the plan,” he said, keeping his voice low. “We’re going to check out the source of that smoke. We slip in, we slip out. If Kha-Hotep and Leila aren’t there, we go back to our starting point and wait. For now, keep an eye out, and let’s hope the building isn’t the HQ for some bloody tribe that made this welcome sign.”
