The Dancer from Atlantis (21 page)

He sat up. Blackness filled his eyes. He thought: Burglars! and groped for the light switch. The scuffling in the corridor
ended with a thud. He was in the tmple of the Triune Goddess and his destiny was being played out.

‘Duncan,’ ran the whisper. ‘Duncan, where are you?’

He swung his feet to the cold floor and groped his way forward, barking his ankle on a stool. ‘Here,’ he called hoarsely.
These rooms had regular doors. When he opened his, he saw a lamp in the hand of Erissa.

She sped down the hallway. The flame was nearly blown out by her haste. But when she reached him, she could only stop and
say, ‘Duncan,’ and slowly raise fingers to his cheek. They trembled. She wore a stained tunic and a knife. Her hair was in
the dancer’s ponytail; the white streak and its new neighbors leaped forth against surrounding shadows. He saw that she had
grown thin. Her countenance was weatherbeaten and there were more lines than erstwhile in the brow and around the eyes.

He also began to shake. Dizziness passed through him. She laid her free arm around his neck and pulled his head down to her
bosom. It was warm and, beneath the rank sweat of strife, smelled like the maiden’s.

‘Dress,’ she said urgently. ‘We must be gone before somebody comes.’

Releasing him, she half turned and half shrieked. Through the murk Reid made out Uldin, squatting above the sprawled form
of Velas. Blood matted the Adantean’s locks. He had been struck on the temple by the pommel of the Hun’s saber. Uldin had
a knee under Velas’ neck and the edge to his throat.

‘
No
!’ Even then, Erissa remembered to set down the lamp.
The same motion sent her wheeling full around and plunging up the hall. She kicked. Her heel caught Uldin’s jaw. He went on
his back. Snarling, he bounced to a crouch. ‘No!’ Erissa said as if she were about to vomit. ‘We’ll bind him, gag him, hide
him in a room. But murder? Bad enough bringing weapons to Her isle.’

Uldin came erect. For an instant neither moved. Reid stiffened his knees and sidled toward them, wondering if he could get
in under that blade. The Hun lowered it. ‘We … swore … an oath,’ he said thickly.

Erissa’s own stance, of one ready to sidestep horns, eased a trifle. ‘I had to stop you,’ she said. ‘I told you, no needless
killing. If nothing else, mightn’t the traces of it bring alarm too soon? Cut strips from his loincloth and secure him. Duncan,
can you find your garments without a lamp?’

Reid nodded. Light would drift through his open door. Uldin spat on the fallen man. ‘Very well,’ the Hun said. ‘But remember,
Erissa, you’re not my chief. I swore only to stand by you.’ He fleered at them both. ‘And, yes, now you have your Duncan,
I no longer play stallion to your mare.’

She gasped. Reid went quickly back to his chamber. Fumbling in the half-illumination, he put on one of the Cretan outfits,
boots, puttees, kilt, and cap given him here. Over it he threw his Achaean tunic and cloak.

Erissa entered. He could barely see how her head drooped. ‘Duncan,’ she whispered, ‘I had to come. By whatever way.’

‘Of course.’ They stole a kiss. Meanwhile he thought: I’ll see her young self.

Uldin was dragging the unconscious guard into a room when they emerged. Reid stopped in midstride. ‘Hurry,’ Erissa said.

‘Could we take him along?’ Reid asked. The other two stared. ‘I mean,’ he faltered. ‘he’s a good man and … has a small daughter
No, I suppose not.’

They went out as the rescuers had come, by a side door giving on a wide staircase. Sphinxes flanked it, white under that low
moon which frosted the descending garden terraces and the distant heights. In between, the bay was bridged by light that passed
near the mountain’s foot. The Great Bear stood in the north, and Polaris, but that was not the lodestar in this age. The air
was warm and unmoving, filled by scents of new growth and chirring of crickets.

Reid could guess how entry was forced. The temple’s men
had never looked for attack. At night they posted one of their number in the corridor in sight of Reid’s quarters. Should
trouble arise, he could wrestle with the prisoner till his shouts fetched reinforcement from the inner building. Erissa simply
opened this unbarred door, peeked through and called him to her. She knew the layout, the procedure, and the words to disarm
suspicion. When Velas got close, Uldin rushed from behind her.

She blew out the lamp, which had obviously been burning in the hall. (Velas would have carried it with him. She’d doubtless
snatched it before it dropped from his grasp to the floor and shattered. How many would have had the thought or the quickness?)
‘Follow,’ she said. He expected her to take his hand, but she merely led the way. Uldin pushed Reid after her and took the
rearguard. They shuffled down half-seen paths until they reached shore: not the dock, but a small beach where a boat lay grounded.

‘Shove us off, Uldin,’ Erissa murmured. ‘Duncan, can you help me row? He catches too many crabs, makes too much noise.’ So
she must have brought the craft in alone, the last several hundred yards or more.

The Hun also made a clatter getting around the dismounted mast and yard, and Reid’s stomach twinged. But nobody called, nobody
stirred; in holy peace, the Goddess’ isle still slept. Very faintly, oars creaked in tholes and blades dripped. ‘Mid-bay,’
Erissa told Uldin, who sat silhouetted in the sternsheets as quartermaster.

When they rested, becalmed under moon and mountain on glass-dark water, Erissa said, ‘Duncan, this whole winter—’ and moved
over against him. He thought… he had too many thoughts whirling together… he made himself know what she had endured for his
sake, and was as kind as he was able.

The embrace didn’t take long. Uldin hawked. Erissa disengaged herself. ‘We’d best plan,’ she said unevenly.

‘Uh, l-l-let’s exchange information,’ stumbled out of Reid. ‘What’s happened?’

In short harsh sentences, she told him. At the end she said, ‘We docked today. Uldin stayed in the boat. If noticed, he’d
be taken for an outland slave whose foot must not touch Atlantean soil. Otherwise there could have been questions. I took
ashore a tale of distress and a bracelet to trade for respectable clothes.’ (Reid remembered anew that this was a world without
coinage – bars of metal were the nearest thing to a standard medium of exchange, and none too commonly used – and he wondered
belatedly if that was what he should have introduced.) ‘I witnessed the dancing, ’He had seldom heard such pain in so quiet
a voice. She swallowed and continued: ‘In the merrymaking afterward, folk mingling freely in streets and inns, I had no trouble
finding out what had become of you. Or what they were told had become of you. That story about your meditating was flat-clearly
a lie. Knowing you were in the temple, I knew what part it had to be and how best to get there when everyone had gone to sleep.
On the water, I changed back to this garb to spare the good that will be needed later. And we fetched you.’

‘I couldn’t have done the same,’ he mumbled. ‘Instead, I’m the fool who let out the secret, ’He was glad his back was to the
moon while he related.

In the end, she caught his hands. ‘Duncan, it was destined. And how could you have known? I, I should have foreseen, should
have thought to warn – to find a way for us to flee Athens before—’

‘Rein in,’ Uldin said. ‘What’ll we do now?’

‘Go on to Crete,’ Erissa repied. ‘I can find my parents’ house, where I… will be dwelling. And my father had … has the ear
of a palace councillor or two.’

Cold moved down from Reid’s scalp along his backbone and out to his fingertips. ‘No, wait,’ he said.

The idea had burst upon him. ‘We’d take days to cross the channel in this boat, and we’d arrive beggarly,’ he explained. ‘But
yonder’s the new warship. And the crew. I know where every member lives. They’ve no reason not to trust me. That ship will
speak for us, and, and maybe it’ll fight for Keft – Fast!’ His oar smacked into the lagoon.

Erissa’s followed. She matched him stroke for stroke. Presently his arms ached and his wind grew short. ‘How shall they leave
without the temple stopping them?’ she asked.

‘We must be seaborne before the temple suspects anything, ’Reid panted. ‘Let me think.’ After a minute: ‘Yes. One lad can
carry word to two more, who each tell two more, and so on. They’ll obey, at least to the extent of meeting at the wharf. And
the first I have in mind will follow us anywhere we say, over world-edge if need be. Dagonas—’

He stopped. Erissa had missed a stroke.

She resumed in a moment. ‘Dagonas,’ she said, and that was all.

‘How’ll we proceed?’ Uldin asked. Reid told them.

They tied up alongside the rammer and scrambled ashore. Nobody else seemed awake. Houses were pale beneath the moon, streets
guts of blackness. Dogs howled. The uphill run soon had Reid staggering, fire in his lungs. But he wasn’t about to collapse
before Erissa and … that swine Uldin … ‘Here.’ He leaned against the adobe wall, shivering, head awhirl. Uldin pounded on
the door for what seemed a long while.

It creaked open at last. A household servant blinked sleepily, lamp in hand. Reid had gotten back some strength. ‘Quick,’
he exclaimed. ‘I must see your master. And the young master. At once. Life and death.’

She recognized him. He wondered what was in his expression to make her quail. She couldn’t have seen Uldin or Erissa as more
than shadows. ‘Yes, sir, yes, sir. Please come in. I’ll call them.’

She led the way to the atrium. ‘Please wait here, sirs, my lady.’ The chamber was well furnished; this was a rich family.
A fresco of cranes in flight made vivid one wall; by another, a candle burned before the shrine of the Goddess. Erissa stood
for a bit while Reid paced and Uldin squatted. Then, slowly, she knelt to the image. Her hands were pressed together so tightly
that, however uncertain this light, Reid could see how the blood was driven from the nails.

The appearance of Dagonas and his father brought her to her feet. Perhaps only Reid noticed how the breath went ragged in
her throat or how red and white ebbed across her face. Otherwise she stayed motionless and expressionless. Dagonas looked
at her, and away, and back again. Puzzlement drew a slight crease between his large dark eyes, under his tumbled dark bangs.

‘My lord Duncan.’ The father bowed. ‘You honor our house. But what brings you here at so strange an hour?’

‘A stranger reason, and terrible,’ Reid answered. ‘Tonight the Goddess sent these twain, who made fully clear to me what those
dreams mean that have been their forerunners.’

He invented most of the story as he went along. The truth would have spilled more time than he, than anyone could afford.
Erissa, a Keftiu lady resident in Mycenae, and Uldin, a trader from the Black Sea who had come to Tiryns, had likewise
had troublous dreams. They sought the same oracle, which commanded them both to go to Atlantis and warn the foreigner in the
temple to heed his own visions. As further evidence of wrath to come, they were told that they would witness a human sacrifice
during the journey. This they took to be the shipwreck of the vessel they were on, from which they alone escaped. An Achaean
fisherman on the island to which they swam carried them here in his boat – miracle in itself – but said he ought not to land
on the holy isle; and when they brought Reid back, the fisherman was gone.

There could be no delay. Every person with any real civil or religious authority was in Knossos. Reid must bring his warning
to them and to the Minos as fast as possible. Never mind what the Ariadne had decreed. Let the new galley be manned and provisioned
and depart at once.

For the dream was that Atlantis would soon sink, in fire and wild waters. Let its people break off their feasting, let them
take every boat to sea and wait. Else they would join those sailors that the angry gods had already drowned.

‘I—’ The older man shook his head, stunned. ‘I know not what to believe.’

‘Nor did I, until this final sign came to me,’ Reid replied.

He had fabled and talked mechanically, his consciousness wandering; for he
knew
he woud reach Knossos where the girl awaited him. Now his mind came back. The man and boy, aroused wife and children and
servants who stood fearfully in the door, became real; they could love and mourn and die. He said to Dagonas, ‘Crete will
suffer wide destruction too. Won’t you help me rescue Erissa?’

‘Oh, yes, oh, yes.’ The boy started off at a trot which quickened toward a run.

His father’s voice stopped him: ‘Wait! Let me think—’

‘I cannot linger,’ Dagonas answered. He did briefly, though, gazing at Erissa. ‘You look like her,’ he said.

‘We are kin.’ Her tone was faint. ‘Go.’

The ship could not start before there was adequate light to steer by. But it took that long to gather crew and supplies anyway.
The food came from their homes, water from the public cisterns, by Reid’s command; he didn’t dare try dealing with officialdom.
As it was, he sweated while his boys hastened down the streets – torch in one hand, since the moon had descended
behind the western hills, streaming like a red comet’s tail; bucket or bundle in the other, or tucked beneath the arm or slung
across the shoulder – and thudded up the gangplank. Their families began to appear on the docks, an eddying of bodies in the
gloom, an uneasy rustle of voices which rose and rose as questions received a grisly answer. This brought other, nearby householders
forth. But most doors stayed shut. Folk slept well between their days of revelry.

Some decided to evacuate immediately. No few boats left, even before the galley did. Dagonas’ parents were not included. They
meant to carry the news from home to home till the corrida started and later ask that a public announcement be made. The assault
on Velas, when news of that got about, wouldn’t help; nor would offended lords spiritual and temporal who had not been consulted.
But maybe the example of the hundred or so persons who were already afloat would inspire – maybe, maybe—

We’ve done what we can here, Reid thought. We’ll keep trying elsewhere. Sixty miles or thereabouts to cross, and we average
three or four knots. The boat from Athens that we’re towing for insurance cuts that down a bit, but no matter, because we’ll
arrive by night in any case and have to lie out till dawn.