I know, Lora, I know, I know. Im serving the cause of knowledge by doing what Im doing. And my training is supposed to help me get past these expectable feelings of guilt and shame.
But the longer I stay in Prince Rams mind, the better I get to know him and the more I admire him. He is a strong, capable, intelligent, determined, disciplined, princely fellow. He has his flawswho doesnt?but hes basically a very good person who is going to be a great king some day. And the more I get to like him, the less I like myself for skulking here, invisible and imperceptible, inside his head. Im coming to hate the sneakiness of it: eavesdropping on his conversations and even his most private thoughts, and putting him into trances that he doesnt in any way suspect so that I can use him to write these letters for me.
I want to let him know that Im herea visitor from the remote future who has come to study the great and glorious Athilantan empire in its heyday. I want to ask his permission, I guess, for continuing to occupy my hidden perch within his mind.
Dont worry. I havent given him even the slightest hint so far. But in the past week Ive come close, a couple of times, to making actual conscious-level contact with him. And the temptation isnt going away. If anything, its getting stronger.
For the time being, Im being very cautious about the degree of mind-entry Im allowing myself with the Prince. Mostly I limit myself to low-level passive observation, simply monitoring minute-by-minute sensory information: what he sees, what he hears, and so forth.
Im not trying to do any digging into the deeper stored data of his mind. Thats the easiest way, of course, to make your host suspicious that something peculiar is going on in his head. And what Im afraid of is that if he expresses any sort of suspicion that he has been possessed or inhabited or somehow taken over by an alien spirit, Im going to blurt out the whole truth to him in a wild rush of confessional zeal. I dont dare risk that.
This is creating some serious disadvantages for me.
For example, without taking a deeper look into his mind, I have no way of understanding the significance of the unusual and apparently very important ritual that the Prince and his father performed last night.
In late afternoon a messenger came to the Prince and said, It is the night of Romany Star.
Im sure thats what he said: Romany Star.
The Prince, who had been relaxing after a strenuous workout on horseback, immediately called for his slaves, who bathed him, sprinkled him with some kind of aromatic oil, and clothed him in a shining scarlet robe (which looked very much like silk. Is the silkworm native to Athilan, or do their ships travel as far as China?) and a little silver coronet. Then he went to the uppermost floor of the palace, where there is a staircase leading to a roof-top garden.
King Harinamur was waiting for him up there in the garden, wearing a silken robe even showier than the Princes, and a beautifully worked golden coronet. There was nobody else present, no priests, no slaves.
Darkness began to fall. Father and son, working quickly, took long slender twigs and branches of some delicately colored aromatic wood from a storage chest against the wall, and arranged them on a little altar of green stone (jade?). Then they waited, standing stock still, staring rigidly at the sky. They were both looking at the same sector, almost directly overhead. I could feel Prince Ram slipping into a kind of trance of his own accord. His pulse rate rose, his eyes were dilated, his skin temperature dropped.
The stars were appearing, now. The unfamiliar constellations of the Paleolithic sky blazed above us. Rams head was thrown back, his eyes were fixed. He scarcely even blinked.
I see it, he said after a time, in a strange throaty voice, like a man talking in his sleep.
Do you, so soon? said the King. Yes, young eyes would.
Above the Great Whale. To the left of the Spear.
Yes. Yes. I see it too. Hail, Romany Star!
Hail, murmured the Prince. Romany Star!
And then they began to chant, slowly, solemnly, in the ancient priestly language.
I was too awedfrightened, evento try to penetrate Rams mind and seek the meaning. They were like two statues, motionless but for their lips, staring up at that star and uttering their prayer to it. I think I know which star they were looking at: a brilliant one, a giant. It seemed to be of a reddish color. Im no astronomer and I couldnt even begin to guess which star it was, and in any case the sky over Athilan is nothing like the sky we see back in Home Era.
Ram dropped deeper and deeper into trance. He seemed scarcely conscious now, and his father the same. The prayer went on and on, slow, somber, profoundly moving even though I couldnt comprehend a syllable of it. It was like some long, intricate poem. No: it was more like a prayer for the dead. Tears were quietly rolling down Rams cheeks as he spoke.
Now they knelt and lit the twigs they had placed on the stone altar, and curling wisps of fragrant smoke rose above them. Calmly Ram began to rip his splendid silken gown to shreds; and calmly the King did likewise. They tore those gowns to ribbons, and cast the ribbons into the flame, so that they stood naked by the altar, wearing nothing but their coronets of gold and silver. And then they removed the coronets too, and crushed them in their bare hands, and tossed them on the fire.
The rite, whatever it was, was over.
Naked, still entranced, the King and the Prince turned and slowly made their way back into the palace. No one dared look at them. They parted, without a word, in the grand hallway, each going to his own suite. Ram went to his bedroom, lay down without bothering with the usual evening prayers, and fell instantly asleep. And that was the rite of Romany Star.
I dont have any idea what it was all about. But it was obviously more important than any of the other religious rites the Prince has taken part in since Ive been here. He treated all the other ones simply as mere tasks, part of the job of being a prince. This one moved him deeply. This one shook him to his depths. I need to know why. If I were in better shape myself, Id scout around in his mind until I found out. But right now I dont dare make any sort of contact with him at that level. I simply dont dare.
Roy
7.
Day 11, Western Wind, Great River.
A big day for me.
The first letter from you in Naz Glesim came in today, with the regular diplomatic packet! I must have read it a dozen times. It was such an incredible joy, hearing from you after all this time, these weeks and weeks of being cooped up by myself inside Prince Rams mind.
I have to confess it now; I was getting a little paranoid about not hearing from you. I know, I know, it takes forever for couriers to get from one end of the empire to the other. So I couldnt really have expected an answer from you any sooner than this. But here I was, sending off pages and pages of stuff to you and never getting even a postcard back, so to speak, and the time was passingpassing very slowly, let me tell youand it seemed like years had gone by. I wondered if you were too busy to write. Or just didnt want to bother. And various other unworthy thoughts. It also occurred to me that something terrible might have happened to you. The time-travel process isnt absolutely safe, after all.
I kept all these worries to myself when writing to you. Or tried to, at least. But now none of it matters, because I know that youre all right, that you still care, that youve been answering my letters as soon as you could. And so on and so forth. And how glad I am!
The officials who sort through the stuff that Provincial Governor Sippurilayl sends to the capital from Naz Glesim must have been very puzzled indeed to unroll a scroll addressed to Prince Ram and discover that the whole thing was in some unknown kind of writing. But they came to the only logical conclusionthat it must be written in code, and therefore very importantand they brought it to the Prince right away.
Now came the ticklish part. The Prince glanced at it and thought it was all just some crazy scribble, and to my absolute horror he started to toss it in the fire. I had to override him and pull him back to his desk, right in front of the officials who had brought him the scroll. He stopped short, struggled against my override for a second, almost fell down.
God knows what they thought was happening to him another stroke, maybe. Ram didnt understand it either. But he waved them quickly out of his office, perhaps because he was embarrassed at having them see him staggering around like that and was afraid it might happen again in another minute.
The instant they were out of the room, I put him in trance and read your letter. And re-read it and re-read it, hungrily. It was so wonderful hearing from you at last that I came close to breaking into tears. (With Prince Rams eyes!) Then when I knew your letter practically by heart I had the Prince roll it up and hide it away in the alcove where I keep letters waiting to go to you, and I awakened him, after trying to wipe from his memory all recollection of what had been taking place.
If Im lucky, he wont recall a thing about the strange scroll with the peculiar writing on it. More likely hell be left with some vague, misty impression of having been looking at a document that made no sense to him. My hope is that the Prince will think that he dreamed the whole thingthe way someone can dream of picking up a book in Greek or Arabic and is able, in his sleep, at least, to read it with complete understanding, even though he cant remember a word of it afterward.
At any rate, you sound happy and healthy and generally in great shape, and Im glad for you. Im relieved to hear that the weather isnt as awful as I feared. Cold, yes, but thats only to be expected in Ice Age Europe, and at least it hasnt been snowing much. The description you give of the house where youre living, made entirely of mammoth bones, is fascinating. The foundation of mammoth skulls, the wall of mammoth jawbones stacked crosswise like that, the huge thighbones forming an entrancewayI guess thats what passes for a grand mansion out Naz Glesim way. Naturally the Athilantan Provincial Governor would have the best accommodations, such as they are.
Very interesting about that ugly, shaggy-looking character with the receding chin and the sloping forehead who was seen skulking around outside the village. Do you think theres really any likelihood that hes a Neanderthal? My understanding of these things is that the Neanderthals have been extinct for a long time now, fifteen or twenty thousand years, at least. But I guess its possible that a few of them still linger on in the back woods, drifting around like sad displaced outcasts.
(We keep finding out, dont we, how little we actually knew about prehistoric man in the days before time exploration began! Of course all we had to go by was a little scattering of skeletons that had survived by flukes here and there, and an assortment of stone tools and weapons. And out of that we conjured up some kind of notion of hundreds of thousands of years of human life. It was a pretty good guess, I suppose, considering the data we had. But now that were actually back here seeing it for ourselves, how different it all looks. Neanderthal Man isnt completely gone after all, if your idea is correct. And the Paleolithic Homo sapiens people have a much more elaborate culture than we ever imagined. And then, of course, there are these spectacular Athilantan folk, whose existence we never even remotely suspected, dominating everything, operating a modern technological civilization all the way back here. With electricity, no less.)
Now that I know you are in fact getting my letters, and are able to write back, Ill probably write more often. And I hope you will too. It was magical the way hearing from you dissolved the terrible sense of isolation Ive been feeling, the miserable loneliness, the fidgety worrying about problems that didnt really need to be worried about. I can hardly wait for the next one from you.
Of course its risky, isnt it? Not only because we have to take control of our hosts body to write our letters, but because having all these bizarre scrolls in an unknown language traveling back and forth is eventually likely to make someone suspect sorcery, or espionage, or something else serious. There could be an investigation, I suppose. But its worth it, despite the risks, dont you think? Im absolutely convinced of that. Getting that letter from you this morning was one of the great moments of my life. To find out that youre okay, to hear about what youve been doing these past weeks, to read those words, I love you. Now I want the next letter. And the next. And the one after that.
Got to stop now. More later.
And now it is latera little before dawn.
Big trouble. The Prince knows Im here.
Although I havent been monitoring his mind deeply for some time now, for reasons which you already know, I cant help but be aware of the mental vibrations he gives off. When hes excited, I feel it. When hes angry. When hes tired. When hes tense. Its a constant broadcast that I automatically pick up.
Today, a couple of hours after the episode of the arrival of your letter and my overriding of his attempt to throw it on the fire, I began detecting a new and troublesome mood in him. It was somewhere between anxiety and anger, and it was growing stronger moment by moment, a slow, steady buildup of tension that had to be leading to some sort of explosion.
That was pretty scary, feeling him ticking away like a bomb. I was tempted to reach in and try to defuse him before he went off. But I didnt know where to reach or what to defuse. So I waited uneasily, wondering what was going to happen, while he went on working himself up.
Then at last he spokementally, loud and cleardirectly to me. It was like a bomb going off right in my face:
Who are you, demon, and why are you within me?
Remember when I said that what we really are is demons, taking possession of the minds and bodies of our hosts? Thats the way Prince Ram sees it too.
I was totally stunned. I didnt know what to say or do or think.
This was my chance, if ever there was one, to make direct contact with the Prince. As you know if my more recent letters have been getting through to you, Ive been fighting that temptation for days. Successfully. This sudden shot in the dark from the Prince might easily have broken through my will to resist Observer Guilt Syndrome. But it didnt. When the chips were down, I found myself maintaining total silence after all, just as our training tells us to do. I kept myself sealed off, allowing just minimal contact with Prince Rams mind.
But he kept after me.
I know you are there. I feel you hiding in my mind.
I remained silent. What could I do? Tell him he was imagining things? Any contact I made would have the effect of revealing me, of confirming my presence.
Who are you, demon? Why do you assail me?
He was growing more excited moment by moment. He trembled and shook. His heart was pounding and there was a throbbing like a hammer blow in his temples. He knelt and covered his face with his hands. Then he pressed his hands to the sides of his head with tremendous force, as if trying to drive me out by sheer pressure. He focused all his power of concentration on the task of expelling me from his mind.
Of course none of this had any effect on me. But the strain on the Prince was fearful. Every muscle of his body was writhing. His eyes bulged, his breath came in wild gasps, sweat broke from all his pores. Stress hormones flooded his system. There was such internal violence going on all over him that it was scary. Could he harm himself like this? I didnt know.
But I had only two choices, to reveal myself or to put him into trance and calm him down. I opted for the second choice, and he slumped and lay still.
For a time I was afraid to do anything else. Then, gradually, I began to explore the upper levels of his mind.
What I discovered wasas I suspectedthat I hadnt done a complete enough job of editing out the memory of seeing your letter. He remembered just enough of it, and of the earlier letter of mine that he had seen that time when his steward had walked in on him aboard the ship. That led him to think about the odd stumble he had taken that afternoon, and the stroke he had suffered when I originally entered his mind weeks ago, and the strange sorenesses in his arm, and various other little curiosities directly related to my presence within him. And he had jumped to exactly the correct conclusion. The Prince is a highly intelligent man, you know.
I couldnt hope to cancel out all his justified suspicions by tinkering now with his mind. That would involve so much messing around that Id certainly do great damage. I couldnt leave him conked out on the floor, either. So I settled for reaching in here and there and returning his hormonal flow to make him as calm as possible. And then I brought him out of trance.
He sat up, frowning, shaking his head. But he didnt try to communicate with me again. Simply arose, paced around the room a few times, put his head out the window, took three very deep breaths. And called his steward, and asked for a flagon of wine. Sipped a little of it. Sat staring at nothing in particular for a while, his mind almost blank. Finally said his prayers, got into bed, dropped into a deep sleep. Now its almost morning. He hasnt awakened.
My whole missions in danger now. Im going to have to be extra careful about everything I do. I know hes still convinced that theres a demon in him. And hes right. The intensity of his reaction was truly frightening. I dont want him driving himself into seizures of some sortor having a mental breakdown that could affect his position as heir to the throne. Probably I can take the risk of continuing to use him to write these letters while hes under trance, but otherwise Ill have to lay low. If worst comes to worst I may even have to abandon the whole project and return ahead of schedule to Home Era. Well see. Keep your fingers crossed for me, love. More later, I hope.
Continued, the following day.
They have had a rite of exorcism to drive me out of the Princes mind. Obviously, it didnt work. Even so, my position remains very precarious.
The first thing Ram did upon awakening was to summon the Counsellor Teneristis, who is a vizier of the realm and has been the Princes special mentor for many years. Teneristis is a very short, brusque old man, businesslike and tough, with two thick tufts of wiry white hair that stick out comically from the sides of his head like horns. Theres nothing in the least comic about him, though.
The Prince said, There is a demon in me. It turns my mind dark and makes me see and do things I do not understand.
You will go to the Labyrinth, then, Teneristis replied instantly. You have sinned, or no demon could have entered you. And in the Labyrinth you will be purged of your sin.
The Labyrinth! Shades of Theseus and the Minotaur! But this isnt Crete and the myth of Theseus wont be invented for more thousands of years than I want to think about. The Labyrinth of Athilan isnt a prison for a monster, its a holy sanctuary, located in a maze of dark musty caverns halfway up the flank of Mount Balamoris. My guess is that the caverns are natural ones, most likely part of the intricate geological plumbing that lies beneath most volcanosall those tubes and vents and conduits and whatnot that a volcano creates as it rises. This volcano has been dormant for a long time and the Athilantans have honeycombed these warrens along its slopes with a network of sacred shrines.
Its a beautiful mountain. So peaceful, so lovely, that you tend to forget that one morning in the very near future its going to come roaring back to life and destroy this whole fantastic civilization.
Alone, the Prince rode out in the early mists of morning through the white and glittering streets of Athilan, past temples and palaces, past villas and parks, up the glorious green slopes of the foothills of Mount Balamoris. And tethered his horse, and knelt, and prayed. And walked without hesitation toward the narrow mouth of the Labyrinth.
It was a bare slit, unmarked, unadorned, fairly high up the mountain. He stepped through it into an eight-sided chamber lined with white-and-blue tiles that led to a paved passageway heading inward and downward. The chamber was lit by three electrical lamps that gave off a rich golden glow. The passageway wasnt lit at all beyond the first twenty paces. Dimness engulfed him, and then even the dimness gave way to the complete absence of light. For what seemed like hours he spiraled down and down and down, far beyond the reach of the deepest beam of light, into a realm of terrifying darkness.
In that utter blackness your only guide is the sequence of smooth high-relief carvings on the walls. You grope your way, feeling for the age-old holy images, reading the walls with your hands. There is a logical pattern to the order of the images that makes sense to an Athilantan, though not to me, and so long as you can summon up the proper passages from the religious teachings you have studied, youll be able to find your way. If you become confused even in the slightest detail, you get lost immediately and the chances of your being able to get out again are extremely small. So Teneristis was taking a considerable risk with the heir to the throne by sending him to the Labyrinth.
The Prince didnt seem worried. He moved along briskly, passing his hands over this carving and that one. He appeared to know what to expect as he went, and he always found it. There was only one momenta bad onewhen he paused after stroking one of the carvings and a jolt of uncertainty went through him like a spear, leaving a trail of jitter-hormones in his veins. But he halted, took a few deep breaths, forced himself to a state of icy calm, touched the carving again.
This time he found the clue that he had missed before, a double zigzag of lines to the left of the main image.
Breathing more easily, he went onward.
And on and on, down and down.
The walls of the passageway were narrower here, and lower. He had to stoop and shuffle. The air grew warmer. He was wearing nothing but a loincloth, but even so, he became slippery with sweat. Though his mind was at ease cool, confidentthere was the awareness of danger not very far from the center of his soul. All he needed to do was take one wrong turn and he would lose himself beyond all hope. A terrible death, alone down there in the sweltering darkness, crying out for food, for water, for light.
Then I felt his heart thump with joy and he came suddenly around a sharp bend of the corridor into a place where he could actually see.
This was the end of the line, the core of the Labyrinth, the penitential chamber.
It was a circular room, dome-roofed, with an opening in the floor at its very center. Light came up through that openingred, flickering light, the flaming heart of the world glowing up through the bowels of the volcano. Peering over the edge, Ram could see, and I saw with him, rosy pools of fiery lava far below, sluggishly tossing and stirring. Gusts of hot wind rose from them. And, staring down into that distant churning furnace, I saw the death of Atlantis waiting to burst loose.
Here he crouched, head pressed against his knees. Here he prayed to be liberated from the spirit that had invaded him.
He named the names of gods. He named the names of kingsthe secret names, the names they had worn as princes, before they became the newest Harinamur. He called upon all the forces of the universe to free him from
Me.
The words came pouring out of him in a wild, keening howl, weird and strange-sounding. I have strayed from the path of my fathers, he cried, sobbing. I know not how, but I have sinned, and I have been punished for my sin, and now I am accursed. Tell me my penitence, O gods! Tell me how I can set myself free!
And knelt there, shivering in the volcanic heat, waiting for the grace of his gods to descend upon him.
For one crazy instant I actually thought it was going to workthat I would be scraped from his mind and hurled into some unthinkable limbo. It was terrifying. Whirlwinds swooped and roared about me. The walls of the chamber seemed to be closing in on me. The mountain was pressing down.
Ram seemed completely in charge, Ram and his gods. I could feel him searching around for me, trying to get a grip on me and pry me loose.
I had to fight like awell, like a demon. I pushed him away from me, set up defense blocks around myself, fled down the corridors of his mind. There were moments when I felt him seizing me, prying me free, thrusting me out.
I suppose there must have been some way for me to take control of his mind and keep him at bay, but just then that didnt seem possible. I was on the run. For one long scary moment down there in that sweltering room in the belly of the mountain, he had the upper hand and I was helpless. I hunkered down tight and tried to make myself very small within him, invisible, unfindable.
And the moment passed. I reached out and linked myself to his mind again, and found the levers of control. I felt the pressure ease. I was the rider again, and he was the vehicle. I was safe.
The whirlwinds died away. Everything that had been crowding close upon me now retreated. After a time Ram rose from his crouch.
He was very calmrelaxed, even. Did he think he had succeeded in expelling me? Perhaps. Perhaps. Or maybe he was simply content to have come so close to victory over me. He swung his arms cheerfully, he stretched his legs, he filled his lungs, like an athlete who has just completed a grueling match and is beginning to unwind.
And started back up the winding passageway, feeling his way quickly, carving by carving, until in a surprisingly short time he had reached the mouth of the cavern.
As he stepped out into the bright afternoon sunlight he saidinwardly, speaking directly to me
So even the Labyrinth is of no avail.
His words hit me like blows.
You have not fooled me, demon! I know you are still there. But I will not let you rule me. I will not let you be my master.
There was a strange new strength flowing from him. He was determined now to fight me to the finish, and I knew it.
Can he possibly do it?
Hes strong and tough. But I know how to operate his mind, and he doesnt know how to operate mine. Not really. He was close, back there in the Labyrinth, but not close enough.
Still, I could feel him resisting me when I put him in trance to write this last section of this very long letter. I was able to win out, of course. But the next time it could be a lot harder. I have a real tiger on my hands.
The situation looks messy. Ill try to keep you posted. That may not be so easy, though.
Roy
8.
Day 18, Western Wind, Great River.
Where I left things in the last letter, it all seemed pretty dire. But actually Ive had a few days of respite. Much to my surprise, Prince Ram has been behaving as though the exorcism in the Labyrinth really did work and the evil spirit has been cast forth from his soul. At least, thats what he told Counsellor Teneristis when he returned to the palace later that day. And he hasnt tried to aim any more direct communications my way.
I have these four explanations for the way hes acting:
1) He really has convinced himself that the exorcism must have worked, despite what he said to me as we were coming out of the cavern.
2) Hes trying to fake me out, so that he can blindside me when he thinks my guard is down.
3) Hes afraid that Teneristis, upon hearing that the Labyrinth didnt do the job, will send him off on some even more dangerous and strenuous pilgrimage that he really doesnt want to undertake.
4) With the Rite of Anointing coming up very shortly the grand ceremony by which Prince Ram becomes virtual co-monarch with his fatherhe simply doesnt want to have to deal with the distraction of thinking about the demon that may or may not be possessing him.
Any or all of these four may be correct. Or none.