Atlantis: Gate (24 page)

“Whichever one Rachel leads us to.”

CHAPTER 16 480 BC

Leonidas left his army with orders to march northeast toward the Gates as soon as they consolidated after the victory at Antirhon. Then he and Cyra headed in that direction, both mounted on the fastest steeds they could cull from the city. When they reached where the road went over a mountain pass beyond the city, Leonidas halted briefly and looked back. He could see his army the red cloaks easily visible at this distance. The sun was low in the western sky.

He jerked the reins and followed Cyra, who had not halted. The track she was following headed into mountains, the peaks of which were shrouded in low-lying clouds. A cold wind was blowing steadily into their faces as they wound their way upwards.

“A great victory,” Cyra said, the words whipped away by the wind so quickly that Leonidas barely heard her.

“You fight well with words,” the Spartan King said.

“So it was not a great victory? You were outnumbered. And you said the enemy fights fiercest when they are defending their homes.”

“The Antirhonian army was militia,” Leonidas said. “They drill twice a year, between their time in the fields. Their commander was a fool to charge—they aren’t used to running that far with armor. But he had no real choice once he opened the gates. We would have out-waited them, let the fear grow in their bellies until they would have broken without a fight.”

“Even though he knew he would lose, he ordered the charge anyway?”

“Yes.”

“That’s insane.”

“It’s war.”

“Men.” The way Cyra said the one word indicated a wealth of feelings, none of them good.

“Did you see the women lining the walls of the city?” Leonidas asked. “Waiting to see the blood? It is not just men.”

“True,” Cyra acknowledged. “Your women lined the road and sang a hymn as you led the army off to battle. Perhaps the problem is that men have something that women need and women have something men need.”

Leonidas turned in the saddle. “What do you mean?”

Cyra tapped her chest. “I don’t think we’re complete. We’re all lacking something.”

“And that is?”

“I don’t know. But I do think that if we don’t change, there is no future for mankind.”

***************

Jamsheed had just finished relating to Xerxes what Leonidas’s response to the Persian offer had been. The Persian King had expected that answer, although he had hoped to gain more time.

“And their army?” Xerxes asked.

“Half has moved to the west. Half remains in Sparta.”

“The west?” Xerxes was puzzled. He was seated in his throne at the head of his dining table in the Imperial Tent. His generals were gathered around the table and Pandora was to his right rear. The army was stopped for night, with thousands of campfires around the tent, like a field of stars, indicating the expanse of the army. They had encountered no resistance and had already crossed a third of Greece.

“They secure the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth, my King” Jamsheed said.

“And none move north?”

“Three hundred, my Lord.”

“Three hundred?” Xerxes laughed. He had more than three times that number of Immortals gathered around his Imperial Tent. “What of this Spartan King?” he asked. “What kind of man is he?”

“He killed one of his own men in front of me, Lord.”

Xerxes leaned forward slightly. “Why?”

“The man deigned to speak for Sparta. Leonidas killed him without any warning.”

“So he is a man prone to rash action?” Xerxes asked.

Jamsheed frowned as he considered that. “No, my Lord, I do not think so. I believe he is a man prone to bold and decisive action if it is required.”

Xerxes laughed. “That may well be, but he marches west instead of north.”

“There is something else, my Lord,” Jamsheed said nervously.

“Yes?”

“There was someone with Leonidas, Lord. A priestess. From Delphi?”

“And?”

“Delphi is the home of an Oracle—a seer—a very famous one in whose words the Greeks place great weight. Leonidas was coming from Delphi when I met him, which was strange to start with as the Spartans as the least likely of all the Greek states to listen to Oracles.”

Xerxes was picking at the food on his golden plate. “The point?”

“This Delphic priestess knew of Pandora,” Jamsheed said.

Xerxes arched an eyebrow and half-turned in his throne. “She did? And what did she know of Pandora?”

“She said you should not trust her, Lord.”

Xerxes raised a hand as Pandora was about to speak, silencing her. “Did this priestess say why?” He turned back to Jamsheed.

“She said that the entire future of the world, east versus west, was in the balance.”

“That much is true,” Xerxes said, “but what does that have to do with Pandora?”

“The priestess also said that you should weigh the words of Pandora very carefully, my Lord. And that Pandora does not speak for Persia or for Greece and that you should find where her true allegiance lies.”

Xerxes nodded. “Wise words.” He twitched a finger, indicating for Pandora to come in front of him. “What do you say in response to the words of this Greek priestess?”

Pandora’s answer was quick. “She seeks to sow discord in your camp, my Lord.”

“And you?” Xerxes asked. “What do you seek?”

“Your victory over the Greeks, Lord.”

“But you also plan other things,” Xerxes noted. “Taking the child out of that town was one. What else do you have planned that I do not know about?”

“Nothing, my Lord. The Greek priestess lies.”

He turned back to his ambassador. “The three hundred Spartans. Where do they march?”

“I do not know, Lord. I received a report from a spy while I was on my way here. The spy only said they left Sparta and were moving to the north and east.”

“So they could be going to Athens? Perhaps a delegation?”

“No, my Lord. This morning I received another report positioning the three hundred north of Athens and marching hard. That report is several days old.”

Xerxes looked down the table to his senior general. “How long until we get to the pass?”

“We will be there tomorrow, lord.” The general cleared his throat. “Three hundred Spartans cannot hold a mile wide pass,” he added.

Xerxes shifted his gaze to Pandora. “True, they couldn’t.”

***************

Polynices’s fingers were torn and bleeding, yet he still joked as he lifted stones and put them in place. Blood oozed through his sandals but he showed no sign of discomfort as he moved about. The wall was now chest high and spanned the entire width of the narrowest part of the Gates of Fire. Torches were spaced ever ten meters and sputtered in the growing darkness.

The old warrior paused in the work as a well-mounted skiritai came galloping up the pass from the north. Polynices sat down on top of the wall, his feet dangling as he waited for the scout to ride up.

“Report,” Polynices ordered as the man dismounted.

“The Persians are less than a day’s march from here. If they march in the morn, they will be here before nightfall.”

“Have they sent out patrols?”

“No.”

Polynices found that strange. He could only assume that the Persians were so confident in their numbers that they felt no need to scout their path. The skiritai was looking about, first at the wall, then up at the sky.

“What is wrong?” Polynices asked, noting the strange look that had come over the man’s face.

“The sky was clear when I entered the pass,” the ranger said, “but now it is overcast and it appears as if it will storm.”

Polynices looked up. He could see no stars and the moon had not yet risen. There was a flicker of lightning inside a cloud above them. Polynices could have sworn the sky was clear just a moment ago when the skiritai arrived. A gust of wind blew off the mountain causing the ache in his old bones to match the pain from his feet and hands. He slid off the wall, wincing despite his best efforts as his feet hit the hard ground.

“Back to work!”

As if to emphasize the command, a long peel of thunder echoed off the mountainside above the three hundred.

***************

Leonidas pulled his cloak tight around his body, but the thin material did little to stop the freezing wind that found every niche in his armor and swirled underneath.

“Come on!” Cyra was ten feet ahead of him, gesturing. “Hurry!”

Leonidas dug the hard edge of his ox-hide sandals into the side of the horse. The animal was loath to move forward, fighting him as it had been for the past mile. They were on a narrow track in the mountains. To the left a rock face reared up almost vertically disappearing into the black clouds. To the right, the slope was almost as steep into a narrow valley.

Leonidas sensed that something wasn’t quite right about the land and as he tried to keep the horse moving he opened up his five senses to coalesce into the sixth sense he had been taught—the sense that was the unconscious mind picking up something from the senses that the conscious mind hadn’t yet acknowledged. After a few moments he realized what was wrong. There was no sound of water. Leonidas had been on many, many mountain paths that paralleled a ravine or valley and there was always the sound of water making its way downhill inside the low ground. He cocked his head to the right, thinking perhaps the sound of the wind was too much, but he realized there was no water in the low ground to his right.

The horse finally stopped dead and no amount of kicking or coaxing could make it go further. Leonidas leapt off, noting that Cyra’s horse had also refused to move.

“Do they know something we don’t?” Leonidas asked as he moved up next to the priestess. Both animals bolted back down the trail and were immediately out of sight.

“We’re near the Gate,” Cyra said.

“Gate to where?”

“Gate to the tunnel that will take us to the Gates of Fire,” Cyra began walking forward into the stiff wind, still moving up the path.

Leonidas felt the same sense of dread he had experienced at Delphi and on the Gulf when they met the Theran Oracle. He drew his xiphos and followed the priestess closely. The path was narrowing. From the worn stone beneath his feet he could tell it was an old path, but the untrammeled vegetation that grew among the cracks indicated it was rarely if ever used in the present.

The path appeared to end abruptly in a cliff face. Leonidas almost bumped into Cyra when she halted. The priestess turned to the right, and the King now saw that a narrow set of stairs were carved into the side of the mountain leading down. He stayed right behind Cyra as she descended. He counted as they went down and they reached the bottom after a hundred and twenty steps. They were in a streambed, but as Leonidas had noted, there was no water. Cyra turned to the left.

“This way,” she pointed.

“Where’s the water?” Leonidas asked.

Cyra shrugged. She began climbing through the stones and boulders, moving in what would have been upstream. The feeling of dread was growing stronger and Leonidas peered ahead into the darkness, searching.

Cyra abruptly halted. “There.”

At first Leonidas couldn’t discern what she was pointing at. Then he realized that there was a blacker circle in the darkness ahead. A blackness that seemed to absorb even the night air about twenty feet ahead of them.

“The Gate?” he asked, hoping that she would answer in the negative, but knowing better.

“Yes.”

Leonidas started to move toward it, but Cyra put a hand out and stopped him. “Not yet.”

Leonidas then realized something—he could hear water now. Splashing against rock, making its way downslope close by. But the trough underneath his feet was still dry. While he was still puzzling over this, the landscape was lit by a bolt of lightning. Leonidas could see that the black circle was about eight feet in diameter and at the lowest part of the streambed. He blinked because he could have sworn that behind the circle and to the left, where the notch in the side of mountain curved slightly, he had seen a waterfall of water coming down. A second bolt of lightning confirmed that, which confused Leonidas because the water had to be going somewhere.

“Soon,” Cyra had her hand on his shoulder and they edged closer to the circle.

“Where does this go?”

Her eyes were glazed over and her mind seemed elsewhere. “To the Gates eventually.”

“Eventually?”

A third bolt cut the sky.

Cyra nudged him and stepped forward. “Now.”

Leonidas had advanced toward enemy lines bristling with steel several dozen times in his life, but he was surprised to find his legs reluctant to move, as if they had picked up some degree of common sense from the horses. Still he forced his way forward behind Cyra. She reached out a hand and it disappeared into the black. She glanced once over her shoulder at him, nodded, and then stepped into the circle and was gone.

Leonidas took a deep breath and then followed. The blackness hit his skin with icy coldness, far chillier than the cold wind, which was suddenly gone. All was black and he felt pressure all around his body, then the next thing he knew, he was almost waist deep in water.

He blinked, looking about. There was light coming from above, but he couldn’t see the source. He was standing in the middle of a stream that also came out of the black circle just behind him. On either side was black land. The stream ran straight ahead toward a body of water so large that he could not see the other side.

“Come.” Cyra was to his right, standing on the black soil. Leonidas stepped through the water and then looked back. Seen from the side, the black circle had almost no thickness, less than a finger’s width. The water just came out of the one side, with nothing going on. Leonidas realized he was seeing the water that had been coming down the mountain on the other side of the gate, yet they had both come out facing the same way. He was confused, but had no time to ponder this bizarre situation.

“Hurry,” Cyra was tugging at his arm and speaking in a low voice. “This is a dangerous place.”

“Where are we?” Leonidas realized he was whispering also, a strong sense of dread tightening his guts.