The Immortal City

by Amy Kuivalainen

  She rested her hand on his. “Alexis, don’t continue if it’s going to upset you.”

  “I want to show you that night, so you know what we are up against if Thevetat’s worshippers rise again,” he said, lifting her hand to his bearded cheek, “but I’m worried it will frighten you away. It’s a horrific memory and…”

  “Alexis, look at me.” Penelope moved close to him. There was a frustrated helplessness in his eyes that seemed completely alien in someone usually so confident. “Can you feel the moira desmós between us?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said our fate is tied. That means not just future; it is past and present as well. I’m strong enough to see it because you were. And I know you’ll help me to understand. So show me. I want to see.”

  Alexis rested his forehead against hers. “Thank you for trusting me. Whatever you see, know that it can’t hurt you.” His hands tightened on hers and magic crackled around them. Penelope held onto him as they dropped into Hell.

  PENELOPE WAS standing on the rocky shore by a sea. Zo, Phaidros, and Alexis moved in front of her, dressed in leather and steel breastplates with pauldrons over their shoulders.

  “I can smell the camps from here,” Zo said as they hit the tree line.

  “Stay focused, the princess is a priority,” Phaidros hissed, a bow ready in his hands. Beneath them, the earth trembled, and they stilled.

  Alexis’s eyes went dark and feral as he drew a curved blade. “We need to move quickly and kill the priests. The magic in this place is about to shatter.”

  The memory moved, and they were climbing through a fence into a prisoner-of-war camp. Phaidros’s hand glowed as fire rose from his fingertips.

  Alexis was shadows and death. Penelope moved with him as he cut through guards and priests with detached ferocity. Zo followed closely behind him, breaking locks on cages that held other magic-users and prisoners.

  “The southern fence is down,” he instructed. “Get moving! Get to the ocean!”

  Alexis stilled his attack as the world took a giant breath and the mountain above them exploded, spewing clouds of ash.

  “We need to go!” he shouted to Zo and Phaidros. “Break the last of the locks and get these people out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving without Aelia!” Phaidros glowed with magic, shining despite the ash and blood covering him.

  “She isn’t here,” Alexis said. “We’ve searched the buildings. They must have moved her.”

  “No! She is here. I can feel her, Alexis. I can sense her magic.”

  Alexis, blood-splattered and furious, glared the other magician down.

  “If it were you, I’d do the same,” Phaidros said.

  “Poseidon drown you,” Alexis cursed. “Zo! Take these people and get out of here. Get to Nereus. Wait for us.”

  “Alexis, this volcano is going to blow! If Kreios and Abaddon are still here, they will be in the temple at the base of that thing. What use is finding Aelia if you all die trying to escape?” Zo tried to argue.

  “Just do as I say!” Alexis commanded, and Zo ran to obey. Alexis held his hand out to Phaidros. “Hold on. We can’t waste any more time.”

  “Thank you, Alexis. I owe you for this.”

  “Let’s survive first, then we can discuss debts.” Alexis drew his magic around him and they portaled, reappearing at a marble entranceway.

  “Be on your guard. We don’t know how many priests are lurking.”

  “You’re right. You should definitely go first,” Phaidros said. He knocked an arrow into his bow and gestured at Alexis.

  “Unbelievable,” Alexis muttered as he went through the door into the mountain.

  It was hot inside, the steam heavy with the smell of blood. They found the tunnel leading to the sacrificial areas and Penelope fought not to cover her eyes. Every few feet was an alcove, and inside of it, a body displayed in a horrific tableau.

  “Madness.” Alexis’s face hardened until it became something Penelope didn’t recognize.

  “Alexis, some of these people are…they are…”

  “Still alive,” he answered. He turned on Phaidros, gripping his face. “We are here for Aelia. We can’t rescue these people, but you can help them.”

  “Don’t ask it of me, Alexis…”

  “You said you owed me. I’m claiming it now. Put them out of their pain.” Alexis released him and brought his blade down on a priest who was rushing toward them. “Do it! I’ll hold them off.”

  Phaidros began to glow gold as he pulled the remaining life from the sacrifices around him, and Alexis fought his way through the attacking priests.

  Penelope covered her mouth with her hands in awe and horror. She never thought anybody could move as he did. He was death personified as he used his magic and blade to tear them apart. He was indestructible rage. He was justice.

  “Let’s move, Phaidros!” Alexis shouted as the last priest fell.

  “I can feel Aelia’s magic spiking. They are trying to rip it from her.” Phaidros pushed passed Alexis, taking another tunnel to their right. With each step, it grew hotter and darker.

  “There,” Phaidros hissed and released his arrows. Two men were standing by an altar in a cavern of rock and fire. The naked body of a woman was strapped down and bleeding. Phaidros’s arrows fell from the air as they collided with an invisible barrier.

  “You are too late, Defender.” A priest with gray hair and a long beard turned to them. His eyes glowed red with magic. “Our master is coming.”

  “You’ve doomed us all, Abaddon,” Alexis said, raising his sword. “The magic of Atlantis is breaking.”

  “Yes, and a new power will rise in its place.” The second man lifted two blades from the altar stone and smiled maliciously. He was a big man, almost as tall as Alexis, with a long braid of black hair and black eyes.

  “You’re a fool to follow him, Kreios,” said Alexis, his body starting to hum with power. “If you kill Atlantis’s magic, there will be nothing left to build upon.”

  “Thevetat will make sure that there is,” Kreios replied as he advanced on them. “I’ve been waiting for a chance to kill you, Alexis.”

  Alexis moved, disappearing and reappearing to clash his sword against Kreios’s long knives. The ground beneath him shook, and the earth split between them. Abaddon reached out for Kreios, and they disappeared in a hiss of ash and smoke.

  Phaidros ducked around falling rock and reached the altar. “She’s still alive!”

  Alexis hurried to join him, cutting the leather ties that bound Aelia to the slab. “Phaidros, she’s dead…” Aelia’s beautiful body had been carved to pieces.

  “No, she isn’t! I can feel the life in her.” Phaidros threw his cloak over her, wrapping her tightly and lifting her up, clutching her to his chest. Golden light shimmered under his skin as he fed his energy back into her body.

  “Don’t let her go,” Alexis said as he hooked his arm around Phaidros’s waist and the half-dead girl in his arms.

  Alexis portaled them out as the cave roof collapsed above them. Out on the beach, Zo paced as small watercrafts filled with passengers launched into the bay.

  “We need to get her to Nereus,” Phaidros said urgently, and Zo helped them into the small rowboat that would take them out to Nereus’s ship.

  Alexis helped him launch the boat as the volcano behind them exploded, shooting red fire into the night sky.

  PENELOPE CAME out of the memory with a gasp. Alexis held her shaking body as she struggled to reorient herself.

  “It’s okay, Penelope. I have you, I’m here,” he said. She curled into him, fighting the images in her mind.

  “Alexis…” What could she possibly say to ease a memory so old and full of pain?

  “I know,” he sighed, as if reading her mind. “I’ll stop if it’s too much.”

  “Just tell me. I don’t want to see any more.” A part of her hated that she was clinging to him like a frightened child, but she couldn’t bring herself to
let him go.

  Alexis kissed the top of her head and continued. “We had no idea of the full-scale destruction. We only thought of getting away from the explosions. We watched for days as Atlantis sank into the waves and then…there was just nothing. The sea had taken it all.”

  Ten thousand years later and the shock and surprise of it, the magnitude of the event, was still fresh for him. She could tell by the traumatized look on Alexis’s face, the ache in his voice. Penelope didn’t say a word, too aware of the horror she would never understand or be able to comfort him over. There was no way to measure that level of loss or grief.

  “We had supplies on the ship for the journey we had planned back to Atlas. We only thought about land. It didn’t matter where. Phaidros and Nereus worked on Aelia for days to keep her alive and break the black magic of the spell Abaddon and Kreios had carved into her body. Six weeks later, we landed in Egypt.”

  “And Aelia lived and is so beautiful now,” said Penelope, in awe of Nereus’s healing skills.

  “It took a long time for her to heal, and the wounds she had on her body were nothing compared to what was in her mind. She had magic as a priestess, but she wasn’t one of us, not in the beginning. She had dedicated her life to a god that had left us to die. She hated that she lived, and resented Phaidros deeply for loving her so much when she was such a scarred and twisted thing. She wanted to die, and he refused to let her kill herself. The rest of us have done our best to love them both and not interfere. Even as the centuries passed and she moved through her pain, the things she has said to Phaidros, and him to her over the years…well, they both have much to forgive each other for.”

  Penelope shook her head. “No wonder you were happy they were going to play the piano. Do you think she loves him?”

  “I think she has for a very long time, but both are so stubborn and bitter. Phaidros is worried what the appearance of Thevetat’s followers after so long will do to her. They are both tiptoeing around each other, but that’s better than the fighting.”

  “He’s bribing her with music, it would seem.” Penelope smiled.

  “He’s learned nearly every instrument on the planet, just in case she feels like hearing something.”

  “That’s ridiculously romantic,” replied Penelope, her heart aching from the sweetness of it. “You landed in Egypt, I should have guessed. Did anyone else make it who wasn’t an immortal magician?”

  “There were other ships in the harbor that night, but we lost them in the ash storms. For the next two hundred years we sought other survivors, but we never found any. If they were humans, they must’ve died long before we reached them. It’s just…us. The magic makes us live such long lives compared to humans, but we are not immortal.”

  “Does that mean if you gave up the magic you would die?”

  “I assume so. We would live out the years, age, and die like any mortal.”

  “And none of you considered doing it? Even after all this time?”

  “We have all thought about it at some point,” Alexis admitted. “But it wouldn’t just be losing magic; it would be having to live without it. It’s a vital part of who we are. It would be living a half-life…for what would a magician be without magic?”

  “A boring academic like me,” laughed Penelope.

  “You are far from boring, Doctor Bryne.” Alexis looked down at her, his eyes flecked with gold from the firelight. “If you were boring, you would never have found your way back to the palazzo. Your mind works differently from other humans. It fought the spell off out of sheer stubbornness.”

  “Let’s just say, when I saw you in the tower in your epic robe, you made an impression. Tonight is another spectacular edition.” Penelope touched the golden stitching of his sleeve. “Ottoman?”

  “Egyptian. I had it made when I was living there in 1266 during the reign of the Mamluk sultan Baybars I al-Bunduqdārī,” he said. “I had to put a preservation spell on it. They are similar to what we used to wear on Atlantis. Old habits, old comforts.”

  Penelope loosened her hold on him, relaxing enough to let her arms go, but still remaining close, their sides touching. “And how long were you a part of the Ottoman court?”

  Alexis’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “What makes you ask?”

  “Your thumb ring.” Penelope reached over and twisted the wide band of antique gold, admiring its tiny ruby and emerald stones. “It is a zihgîr, an archer’s thumb ring. Only a rich person in the court, one extremely skilled with a bow, would wear such a fine piece.”

  “You are incredibly observant. I thought you were a doctor of the Aegean.” Alexis pulled the heavy band off and passed it to her. It was heavier than it looked, the soft metal still warm from his skin. She slipped it over her small thumb, twisting it so the colors of the stones would catch the firelight.

  “Mediterranean and Aegean would probably be more accurate. You can’t study Greek legends without inevitably getting caught up in the Egyptians, Byzantines, and Romans at the same time. I’ve tried to have a wide world view when it came to studying Atlantis.” Penelope passed it back to him, too nervous that she might lose it. “So you spent most of your time in the East. Do you hold to a religion at all? Poseidon? Allah? The Christian God?”

  “None. I’ve lived too long and seen gods rise and fall with zealots and holy men of every stripe.” Alexis fixed his gaze out on the lights of the city. “If you are asking if I believe in something greater and indefinable that moves through the universe? Then yes, I do, but I wouldn’t limit it by simply referring to it with a word as dull and simple as ‘God.’”

  “What would you call it then?”

  He shrugged. “There is no word for it in any modern languages that would properly articulate it. I’ve walked the world, met with humans who held magic, talked and argued with the holy men of many faiths, and you know what they all had in common? The closer they came to understanding, the less they were inclined to put labels on it. It just is.”

  “Weirdly, I know what you mean. My dad was Irish Catholic but never passed the religion on to me; he felt it was too limiting. I’ve felt something though. Once.” Penelope took a deep breath. She had only ever told Carolyn the story, but after revealing so much of his own personal history, Penelope felt compelled to do the same.

  “I was diving in a shipwreck in the Bahamas, and I got trapped. My tank got caught on a fallen beam, and when I struggled, it collapsed onto my leg, trapping it against the reef.” Penelope crossed her arms, trying not to let the memory of it overwhelm her.

  “I was running out of air and was starting to think I was going to die. It could have been a lack of oxygen, but I began to feel like everything was going to be okay. I got this feeling that whatever I was born for hadn’t happened yet, that I couldn’t die until it did, and if I calmly waited, something would happen. And then this beam, I’m talking as thick as I am, this barnacle-encrusted thing that would’ve taken a crane to lift, floated just long enough for me to move my leg. I made it back to the dive boat, and it was nearly a year before I was game enough to go back in the water.”

  “When I got home, I told my friend Carolyn about it. She’s into miracles, divine interventions, crystal healing, guides…everything is possible in her mind. She got me into meditation to try and ease my anxiety over the incident, and it’s helped me a lot. I started taking lifeguard classes and slowly began diving again without having a panic attack halfway down. I don’t know if it would be classed as a miracle, but I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

  Alexis smiled widely at her. “The miraculous happens all around us, all the time. Humans of this age hate anything they can’t explain, so their mind glosses over it. I once knew a Sufi who could bend time, and it was no more miraculous to him than the sun rising every morning, and even the humans of that time dismissed it. There will always be those who will keep their eyes closed and remain willfully ignorant because the wonder demands too much of them. You’re brave to have forced yourself back
into the sea. Not many people would have done that.”

  “Well, I had a stone tablet to find.” Penelope grinned. “So, the fairy tale that is Alexis Donato grows from Turkish corsair to Egyptian alchemist, to friend of holy men, to magical philosophizer.”

  “I have been many things, lived many places, and had many names, but I’m no fairy tale,” he replied, leaning over to kiss her slow and soft.

  He wound his fingers through her hair, gently touching her ears and neck. It sent shivers across her skin, but this was a time for comfort, not seduction.

  “Thank you for telling me about Atlantis,” Penelope said, touching his warm cheek. “I know none of this can be easy on you. I never meant to bring any of this to your door.”

  “You’re not to blame. We are the only ones who’ll be able to stop them if Thevetat’s recruiting new priests to his cause. There is a magic here only magicians can defeat. The polizia would not stand a chance against someone with true power. Aelia, Phaidros, and Zo will accompany us to the Arsenale tomorrow night just to be sure that if priests turn up, we can stop them. My only concern is keeping you from their hands, and in mine.”

  “I’m pretty keen on you doing that too.” Penelope bit her bottom lip. “And seeing you in a tux will be pretty great.”

  Alexis’s expression turned devious. “Do you think a magician would wear something as mundane as a tuxedo to Carnevale?”

  THE NEXT MORNING, Penelope woke early, grabbed an apple from the kitchen, and headed to the Archives. Penelope had fallen asleep by the fire, her head in Alexis’s lap as he told her more tales. She had woken in her bed and had passed the night with surprisingly no nightmares.

  Worry twisted inside of Penelope as she walked amongst the stacks. She stopped briefly in front of one of the pillars she had seen from the elevator. It was carved with smooth symbols, a golden glyph at the top identifying what section she was in. She reached out and traced her fingers over the smooth carvings, admiring their beauty. Somehow she knew Alexis had made them for Nereus.