The Ship from Atlantis Page 7

  "The Vimana? In truth, it is coming to meet us and I must send it back. I have been in touch with it all these white months, guarding it from drifting in too close in storms and helping it to avoid floating ice. It wants Uo be with us, but that is no purpose of mine at present. There are other plans."

  She looked steadily in that direction for some time and he could not tell when it disappeared, but looking up later from his even paddling he found that the gleam had gone.

  They labored on and on, farther than the bravest fisherman had ever dared to go out into the waste. Nunganey was silent, teeth clamped tight, looking ever and again at his strong new bow to give himself courage. Gwalchmai had helped to make it, but the Abenaki had strung it with a bowstring twisted from his mother's hair, that it might avenge his sister and never miss. He thought of her often, but deepest in his heart, stronger even than family ties, were thoughts of Cosannip, his comrade and brother by the rites of mingled blood.

  Corenice still wore her stout hide garments and the hood which covered her resplendent hair. As an additional disguise she had stained her face and hands with dye of berries and roots until now she seemed sister in hue to the Hien.

  So they appeared to be what they hoped to be taken for, three native fishermen, blown out to sea aganst their will.

  The canoe rose and fell upon the hills of ocean as the stately rollers marched under on their lonely parade from the far coasts of Europe. A little after midday, Nunganey raised his paddle and pointed ahead.

  The prow dipped and the others could not see what he had indicated. On the next high wave a tall thin pinnacle of black rock showed plainly, though far away, like an upright needle almost buried in crumpled satin.

  "Akuinekl" muttered Nunganey.

  "Nor-um-Bega!" Corenice corrected softly.

  An hour later, favored by a following wind, they were close enough to see foam clots and streamers drifting by-born, Gwalchmai thought, where waves crashed against that stony obstacle. But as they drew nearer, he could see that the dashing spray did not actually touch the rock at all. Instead, the waves went creaming up and up toward Heaven, flatly and high, some little distance away, bubbling back, sliding down again as though a wall of glass lay between the peak and the attacking surf.

  Yet there was nothing tangible to be seen, except an almost imperceptible turbulence in the air, like the convection currents of heat which go streaming up from hot iron, or a ledge of blistering rock on a scorching summer day.

  To the left lay quieter water. Into this they steered, avoiding the turmoil of crashing breakers ahead. Here, bobbing less furiously, though still fighting eddies and sucking whirlpools, they could discern that not far beyond lay an end to the water, a rim over which it could not pour, a titanic hole in the ocean I

  Forging through little choppy waves which, on the lee side, lapped up against the phantasmal barrier, they approached it closer. The voyagers soon saw through it, far below, the shining roofs of stone buildings, glittering metal plate on spire and dome and pinnacles, gay paint on low stone mansions and high facaded temples.

  Broad white paved streets and avenues geometrically divided the blocks of buildings, and velvety green grass in park and plot was set about it all, like a toy city erected upon a carpet.

  And all a hundred feet below the level of the broad Atlantic, with nothing more substantial than a breath of quivering air between that land of glamor and the ocean's fury!

  "As Atlantis sank and the glaciers melted, the waters were released into the oceans. The sea level rose on all the coasts of the world. It lifted here as well and at the same time the island settled lower. Through the ages the power units have lessened in strength. Although the ocean cannot seep through the force wall, the islanders devised a way to pierce it at its upper edge where it is attenuated and much weaker," announced Corenice.

  "It is like the magic ring of smoky air within which Viviene ensorceled Merlin, in the wood of Broceliande," Gwalchmai said. "No one could enter or leave until she decided to set him free."

  Nunganey only clutched his medicine bag for protection, but his lips moved silently as he stared down, while they drew closer to that uncanny edge. New vistas continued to open to their gaze and the men were bemused with wonder.

  A strong wall of masonry, dividing the island into two segments, separated the city proper from the tilled fields beyond. Gwalchmai could catch the twinkling gleam of hoe or shovel as laborers toiled, too far away for eye to make but their form or dress. The wall was pierced centrally by a single, high-arched gateway, closed and guarded, for he could see the flash of golden armor as a sentry paced his walk. Other glints on the wall proved that it also was patrolled.

  Among the fields were set wickams and long houses for the slaves and further yet stretched mile upon mile of forest, interspersed with roofless stone ruins as though there had been other cities now abandoned and overgrown. The tossing green conifers held a scattering of birch and hard woods, thickly covering hills and swales, and out of the dense forest ran a silver streamlet, feeder for a large lake, bisected by the high stone wall. Evaporation from the lake obviously equaled its intake, supplemented by rainfall, so that there was neither dearth of water nor danger of flood.

  So lost in these sights had all become that they had no eyes for anything closer at hand, until a loud hail startled them. Looking up, they saw on the peak, less than twenty yards away and about the same distance above them, a crouching white-robed man, peering over the railing set around the platform he stood upon.

  He held a mallet poised over the trigger of a stone thrower, which was cranked back and ready. A massive boulder lay in the hopper.

  "He says not to move away or he will sink us!" whispered Corenice.

  While they still gazed upward, observing now that the mountain was artificial, for the jointings between the black blocks of Cyclopean masonry were clearly to be seen, the sentinel lifted a long trumpet and sent a harsh braying across the city.

  Gwalchmai had seen pictures, in his god-father's books, of the pyramids of Khemi, and he had climbed the Mian earth mounds and the myriad steps between the terraces of the teocallis of Tolteca, but this edifice was unlike them all. It much resembled the ziggurats of Babylonia, in the respect that a steep railless ramp wound from base to top in seven decreasing spirals. However, there was machinery where the sentinel stood in the place of the temple sacred to Nabu.

  The ramp now bustled with life and movement. Groups of brown and red-skinned slaves came running up, urged to haste by occasional white, red-haired overseers, busily plying metal tipped scourges as though they loved their work.

  The slaves stopped on a broad platform, a little above the water level, seizing windlass cranks, bending to their toil as though their very lives depended upon their efforts. The top of the tower revolved, the sentinel walking around to keep the canoe in view, and the three could see a long beam swinging around like a giant's arm. A large, oval box of metal, shaped like a huge closed clamshell, swung from cables at the beam's end.

  The sharp edge of this was forced into the area of disturbed air, which boiled and eddied about it as it squealed and the box, lowered by its cables, slapped into the nearby waves, filling the canoe ankle-deep with water.

  The flanges separated then, the upper one raising and swinging back, and the guard above motioned them to enter. Gwalchmai and Nunganey hesitated. That open-jawed black clam looked so much like a trap to crunch them I

  "This is what we came for, isn't it?" Corenice said daunt-lessly, and she stepped over the rim. The others followed and their little canoe went bobbing away, their last sight as the lid snapped down over their heads and they felt themselves being raised in air.

  It was dark as night in the windowless lift and they could not see one another, but they clung together to avoid falling, while it swayed beneath them and the whole fabric rocked and creaked, complaining noisily as ungreased cogs drew the beam and chamber back through the bubble-thin wall of force.

  Th
en the lid of their conveyance swung up and a flood of sunlight dazzled the dilated pupils of the two men. The gaunt faced guard peered in upon them. His look was strained and wild, and his unkempt, dingy white hair flew free about his head and shoulders.

  "Who are ye, strangers?" he creaked in Abenaki. "Why do ye come of choice to Nor-um-Bega?"

  Nunganey spoke up proudly: "These be Glooskap and his mate, Bumole, the Night Woman, come to visit Hobba-mock the foul—and I am Nunganey the Abenaki, from Ati-nien, their friend and guide!"

  The hawk-faced ancient laughed—a short, unpleasant sound, with disbelief in it—and they could see that his lips were chewed and ragged. His shoulders and arms bore marks of teeth, white scars and new wounds, some scarcely healed, as though in fits of pain or madness he had gnawed at his own flesh in wolfish passion.

  "This has been my home since I was whelped," he growled, "and never before have any come here willingly. Since you are among us, believe now you will surely not go away. Strong men are useful!"

  His • sharp eyes peered into the shadow of the girl's hood and Gwalchmai feared lest the disguise be pierced, but he only favored her with a sour smile.

  "And Caranche, our king, will be well pleased to entertain you, Woman of the Night!"

  Yet he helped her courteously enough to step over the rim of the lift, as Corenice pretended timidity in crossing to the platform, extending her gloved hand to be swallowed up in his wrinkled yellow-nailed paw. Several metal boats were bottom-up on the platform, ready for launching, and an oar rack was near by. Avoiding these, she stepped aside and her companions, needing no such assistance, jumped down with their hands close to their weapons. No attempt was made to disarm them.

  Nunganey narrowly eyed the docile slaves as they filed down the ramp, urged on by the stinging whips. Cosannip was not there, his sad face announced, as the three followed the lead of the old man and joined the tail of that dreary procession.

  "Baraldabay am I," the guard remarked. "Keeper of the Tower. Too old for war, too tough to die. I bide here and watch the Killers go and come and long for death myself. But I am forgotten, it seems, so I live on and on in this dull hole and never go a-roving. It is worse when the moon is full and the mood comes upon me to slay. Perhaps I shall ask for one of you. You are the first who ever came here unless they were brought."

  "And perhaps we will be the last," supplemented Core-nice, very softly, with a somber ring in her voice like a funeral bell.

  Baraldabay obviously felt that his position was one without honor and was morosely glad to have someone to talk with, even if only for a few moments. As they passed lower along the circling ramp they went by bays curved into the ziggurat's walls. Here were more close-packed arrays of metal longboats, upside-down on rollers, where the crane jaws could easily grip them and carry them through the thinnest part of the force wall.

  Corenice asked, "Will you tell us something of your pastf"

  "In the beginning, we Nor-um-Begans were a mighty people. It is said that large ships regularly plied the seas between this place and Atlantis, our homeland—"

  Corenice and Gwalchmai exchanged quick glances.

  "That was when our shores were above the sea. Then danger threatened our beautiful colony. The land sank and the sea rose. Around our island, to preserve us, was set the charmed wall of invisibility, so strong that nothing could penetrate it at its base and only with much difficulty at the top."

  Gwalchmai wondered if this horrible old man was really as mad as he seemed. Had time perverted their history until the truth was no longer known? Did he not understand that he was a descendant of generation upon generation of inbred criminals and wanton murderers? A denizen of a penal colony?

  "It is said that the original population of the island was divided into two classes—normal people like myself and others who were so impossibly good that they were impossible to live with.

  "The latter were the first settlers, old soldiers from a war who had come bringing their women. They thought killing was a sin instead of being the proudest means of gaining honor! My ancestors came later, a few at a time, and they knew better. They grew stronger and stronger in numbers, until their descendants far outnumbered the earlier colonists* offspring.

  "A high, guarded wall divided the island between the two classes. They held it and also the tower, where they worshipped Hun-ya, the square-eyed witch, who is our goddess of battle now. By way of the tower they lifted in their supplies and their wall kept us away from it, so we could not leave if we chose. We were their prisoners, but one night my forefathers carried that wall and put all upon it and in the city to death!

  "That marks the real beginning of our glorious civilization. We stormed out upon the mainland in our thousands, establishing cities, developing the wilderness, subduing the savages—"

  Nunganey grunted.

  "We wiped away the budding and rival empire of the Horicon. Later by many, many years we smashed the Tal-agewi—they who began the mound cities the Mians finished, in the interior valleys, when they came up from the Hot Lands of the South. Those were good days, our best days!"

  His eyes glistened like a gloating spider. Then his voice dropped and sadness crept into it:

  "But I never saw them. It was all over and done before my time, those days of glory, long ago! Constant battling sapped our strength. No other enemy was worthy of us and our cities turned their axes against one another. One by one, the forest took them back again. Our women grew less fertile and we were too proud to mate with the savages, unless for an hour, with any by-blow from the union slain at birth, lest the purity of our noble race be impaired.

  "Finally Nor-um-Bega, Island of Heroes, took back all that were left of her mainland "colonists and we are what remains.

  "Only once, in all my life, have I known the joy of fighting in a great army. Twenty years ago, every man and boy of us allied ourselves with the savages, for the sport of war, and helped to destroy the Mian Empire of Tlapal-lan. We fought to reach that country, fought in the war and fought to reach home again!

  "Hun-ya! That was a great killing!"

  Corenice gestured at the encircling wall of jade-dark water, one hundred feet high, its gentle hundred mile curve smooth as polished glass around the sunken country, and Baraldabay followed her gaze.

  Sun rays slanted down through it, in parallel beams, quivering with the turmoil of waves high above the level of the street where they now stood. Bathed in this fluctuating light they walked along. A swimming school of cod followed their progress, peering in upon them, marveling, gaping goggle-eyed at the strange two-legged denizens of this underwater aquarium. As at some signal they whirled and went as one about their private business.

  "Why do you continue to live here when the mainland would be so much safer?"

  Baraldaby was amazed. "Why not? This is our home!"

  "Are you not afraid that someday this may tumble in upon you and destroy you all and everything you possess, including your fair city and its wealth?"

  The oldster grinned.

  "Nay, lady, that can never be. Long ago it was prophesied by the sorcerers who set the magic wall here to protect us that never by any will of ours should it be torn down.

  "Never—'until the Thunder Eagle should come to Nor-um-Bega!'"

  "What does that mean?" asked Corenice.

  "No one knows exactly. There is a semblance of a monstrous eagle in the sky, outlined in light, seen when the Fire Children play along the Road of Ghosts, during the cold of winter when the nights are cloudless.

  "Some superstitious ones think the prophecy refers to this phenomenon, but often and often it has been a good omen for us. It has predicted great victories for us in the past. It must be Hun-ya's pet. The Killers time their spring raids by its last appearance. It is quite harmless."

  Gwalchmai saw Nunganey motioning him urgently to fall back a little out of earshot.

  "My people know that Thunder Eagle," he quickly muttered. "The bird lives on Sleeping Giant Cape,
on the northern shore of the Inland Sea. If it stays in the sky above the cape, war involves the people of the north countries, but if it moves across the sky, the war takes place in the direction the Eagle travels.

  "It never fails to mean sorrow for someone. Sometime it will hang over Akilinek and all the Abenaki will rejoice!"

  "Maybe, brother, but I have remembered only now a thing which I had long forgotten."

  "And that is?"

  "My name I I am called Gwalchmai, not Glooskap, and that word means—Eagle!"

  The road they followed diverged from the ocean wall, curving into the suburbs, and as they progressed deeper among the houses they could see that the beauty of the city was viewed best from afar, like that of a woman, once lovely, who retains in age only her dignity of form and carriage.

  Beyond a columned portico, a slovenly man was chopping wood upon a tesselated marble floor and the carven pillars were wantonly hacked and defaced as if in some fit of maniac fury.

  Between the knife-thin jojnts of the paved street, grass had found its way and tree roots in thickening had raised and displaced stone slabs weighing many tons. Often they went around or over heaps of rubble, where house walls had collapsed into the streets, so long ago that upon some grew stately oaks, feeding upon the rotten wood of their fallen ancestors before them. Many otherwise pleasant homes stood roofless to the sun and rain, with leaves and mold knee deep over fine mosaics, fountain bowls and toppled statues of marble.

  Never, apparently, was anything repaired. Nowhere could be seen anything new.

  No dogs, cats or other pets rambled about, and such children as were visible scowled at the passersby with such wicked, knowing looks that Gwalchmai wondered if they ever played and if so what their games could possibly be.

  Some women had built a cooking fire in the center of-a little square, where, judging by the refuse strewn heedlessly about, most of the surrounding houses seemed to be occupied, and above it meat was stewing for the evening meal.

  The cauldron was silver and had never been intended for that purpose, but its deeply chased engravings were blurred with soot and the design could not be seen.