Mneseus of Atlantis had not spoken since the battle. He sat, his unstrung bowstaff in hand, on the edge of a machine housing, but his head was bowed, and his left hand covered his face.
Slowly, he raised his face. His eyes were wet and red.
Mneseus said: “I shall speak. Noble sirs, ghosts of the future, my descendants, hear me: it is seen that there were neither bride nor child among those stirred again to life in the dark coffins. Is it not strange, that men only were brought to life, and no sister, no daughter, no mother of our race, glancing-eyed, dark-haired, with shining limbs?
“Once, I stood beneath the bright sun all-seeing, beside the wine-dark sea. The Sybil of the Serpent-Shrine at Dolphins, she said that there is a land beyond the fields of Asphodel: Father Time, Chronos, would perish, and the Eternal Universe, Ouranos, will halt the turning of the years. The grate of Hades would be stove in, and the shades made flesh again. All lovers would be reunited.”
Mneseus was a very dignified-looking fellow, polite and grim in the way soldiers who have seen too much combat often have. Even jolly little Huc-huc Pounce (back before the dire-worms took him) had not been able to make Mneseus laugh. He dated from somewhere older than 4000 B.C.
Abraxander-the-Threshold had conjured him a voluminous white mantle, which he wore draped over his chest and arms like you might see in classical sculpture.
His shirt was linen and his leather skirt was hemmed with gold pebbles. Shields or plates of bronze and oxhide hung over his chest and back: there were shining greaves on his calves, and he wore a leather sleeve on his right arm to protect it from the bowstring.
His helm was of a design that looked strangely modern to me: it looked like a flat pie-plate of bronze, tied in a complex tangle with two ribbons under and around his chin. Atop the helmet was a coronet of white poplar leaves, tied with purple ribbon. He had insisted Abraxander create for him a flask of oil, with which he anointed his limbs, so that they shone: he seemed to think this more important than his tunic or mantle or skirt.
A small cylindrical quiver of metal hung over one shoulder, and his arrows clashed when he ran. He was the swiftest afoot of all of us, fleeter even than He-Sings-Death.
The bow shot silvery arrows tipped with ampoules of glass and metal. There was some sort of magic or forgotten science to arrowheads, for he had to prepare them or charge them with an amber rod he wore at his belt. When the arrows were charged, there was a smell like summer lightning in the air. When he shot a monster with an arrow, even the smallest wound would make the monster dance and leap, limbs jerking, and drop dead.
Was it an electrical charge of some sort? I kept expecting a flash of lightning or a thunderclap to come from the flying shafts of the wizard from Atlantis, but it never came. When he strung his bow, there was just a silent sense of pressure in the air, like you feel before a thunderstorm.
Mneseus held the bow unstrung now, and he was seated on the edge of a machine casing, but his posture was kingly, and the bowstaff in his hand seemed a scepter.
Mneseus looked up at He-Sings-Death, and stared him eye to eye, and called out in a ringing voice: “Now is the time, is it not? Now is the hour when Ouranos, who created Cosmos from Chaos, returns from exile to claim his kingdom, and end the tyranny of Time, his wicked son. And—? And—?”
He lowered his bow staff and waved it left and right, pointing to one side of the chamber, and the other. I looked. There were tall square shapes, like abandoned machines, things that looked like dull tall mirrors, and, in the center of the room, the very wide sunken amphitheatre of chairs, all facing the floor of glass. There was that mysterious light shining from the sunken glass floor in the center of the chamber.
“I see her not,” He said at last, dropping his hand.
I said, “Pardon me, Your Majesty, but for whom would you be looking?”
He looked at me. His eyes were tilted, like the eyes of a Chinaman, but the pupils were silvery, a color I had never seen in a human before.
He said softly, “My queen, the witch Parthenope. She repented of her crimes, freed the maidens of her tower, and consented to age and die as other women do. She threw her bowl where she mixed poisons into the sea, though the hag-goddess of the dark of the moon was angered at her for her ingratitude. My queen used her wisdom thereafter to heal the sick, and to calm the storms at sea. When she perished, a pine tree grew up upon her grave. The augurs told me this was a sign of everlasting life. A halcyon nested in the branches.
“Where is she?” Mneseus continued. “All lovers are to be reunited at the end of time. Now is the Eschaton. Where is my wife?”
The voice of Mneseus was heavy with grief.
He-Sings-Death still menaced him with his javelin.
I said to He-Sings-Death, “Mr. Singer, you told us the devil cannot weep, but His Majesty clearly has been. Put down the weapon, and let us use our wits to find the traitor here.”
He-Sings-Death hesitated.
Mneseus looked at him with contempt. “Strike, then, barbarian, and rid this iron hell of one more grieving soul. What care I for your suspicions? None are worthy to stand in judgment over me. Strike! And pierce my heart: it is pained with weeping, and no more to be called a man's heart. Where, O Hercules! Where is my virtue gone?”
All at once he stood, put his sandal to his bow, bent and strung it. In one smooth motion he snatched an arrow from his quiver, touched it to the amber at his belt, fit it to the string, and raised the bow and drew the string back to his ear. The room throbbed with an unseen power: I smelled lighting in the air.
He pointed the arrow at He-Sings-Death. “You stood idle while my shining hands strung my death-bestowing bow, which slays men. Why did you allow me? That was folly.”
He-Sings-Death smiled, but his voice shook. He had seen what the arrows of Mneseus could do.
The painted Cave Man said, “Three spirits made the world: He-Knows-All, He-Gives-Gifts, He-Spares-Men. He-Spares-Men has told us that it is wrong to kill a brother. But I do not know what you are! Are you a man who eats flesh cooked with fire, as other men do? Or are you the serpent hidden with us? If you are not the serpent hidden with us, why did you say poison words into my ear about Captain Powell, He-Holds-Iron-Thunder?”
Because of the strain of holding the bowstring taut, Mneseus could only speak through clenched teeth. “Hah! Is mine eye the only open eye here? None other has seen it. Enough! I am not your tutor, barbarian. I am armed, and you have taken weapons up against me. Will you strike now? Or else I let fly!”
I said, “Your Majesty, you seem to know things, even what a person is thinking before he speaks. Are you a mind-reader? Is there someone among us who is not thinking like a human being?”
Mneseus said, “My daemon speaks to me. Why were you spared? I saw the Cold Hand pluck men up from your left and right. I saw the Pyramid pass over you. I saw the envenomed snow fall softly on the faces of the men. But not on your face. Always, always, men die to the side left of you, and to the right, and before you and behind, but you are spared. They do not smite you. Have you taken their coin?”
I said, “Ydmos said the traitor might be possessed without the traitor himself knowing it. Might it be me?”
Mneseus now swung to turn the bow toward me. I smelled ozone.
He said through clenched teeth. “A cold hand touches my neck. There is a ker among us, sleeping, perhaps, like a dragon coiled in the bottom of the belly. From time to time, it stirs, but it does not wake. It is near: perhaps it is in me. Or you! Do you understand me? You yourself, Pwyll, said it might be you, but unknown to you. So it might be of any of us. There is one solution. The door is open.”
“Door? What door?”
The muscles in his arm were trembling, but the arrowhead was steady, and he did not relax his draw. Mneseus hissed: "The door through which we were pulled to come from there to here. The door the fifty-headed hound must guard.”
Ydmos said softly, “He means the Capsule.”
The words did not mean much to me, but something in his tone made a shiver go up my spine.
I said, “With three mind-readers here, we cannot figure out which one of us is inhabited by this – this thing?”
Mneseus said sharply, “This is no riddle for us to puzzle over and solve! There is no solving of this, only ending! It lives in one of us. When we all slay ourselves, it dies, and whatever it had hoped or planned for us to do, whatever dark purpose moved this thing to break us from our deadly graves, that hope is dashed, that purpose is no more.”
The arrowhead was less than two yards from me. The bowstring creaked under the tension.
When Mneseus swung his arrow to cover me, I raised my rifle to my shoulder, but I did not point it away from my previous target. I did not want to shoot from the hip a weapon that had so much kick.
