A big event lies just ahead: the Rite of Anointing. Preparations are already in full swing and the whole city is involved in them.
You will recall that this is the third of the four major rites that a prince must undergo, following the Rite of Designation and the Rite of Joining, before he is ready to become Grand Darionis of Athilan. Apparently in this one the heir to the throne receives certain great revelations that every king must know. What these revelations might be, Ram has no idea. But the prospect of finally finding out has him terrifically excited.
Me too, I have to say.
Its another few weeks, now. Were both going to have a tough time waiting for the days to pass.
The one thing Im afraid of now is that the folks back at Home Year are going to give me the hook just before the rite. That really upsets me; knowing that the clock is ticking all the time. And then Ill never find out what the mysteries were.
How much more time here do I really have? Thats the big question. I dont know. You remember in one of my first letters I told you that I had lost track of the count of Home Era days. The information you sent helped a little, but not enough. I may be as much as a week off in my count. On top of that, its unclear to me what the exact day when theyre supposed to pull me back is. Six months, they said, but do they mean that right down to the day, or is it just a rough figure? So I might have another two weeks here, a month, maybe even six weeks. I cant tell. And I want to stay here as long as I can, Lora. For obvious reasons Im not looking forward to going back there and facing the music. But aside from that I simply dont want to leave. Not yet. Not until Ive learned everything I can possibly learn about this place.And I have a feeling that the Rite of Anointing is going to tell me plenty.
Hope to hear from you soon.
With all my love
Roy
11.
Day 36, Golden Days, Great River.
Another long silence from me, I know. I was holding off, so I could describe the Rite of Anointing to you. Well, the Rite of Anointing has now taken placeit was three days ago. The mysteries have been revealed. It was a tremendous eventand also tremendously upsetting. A fantastic experience. Completely overwhelming, the kind of thing that takes absolute possession of you and wont let go. Both Prince Ram and I were pretty badly shaken up by it all. And so Ive needed a few days just to think about what happened, to come to terms with it, to understand my own reactions and feelings. Im not sure I really have a handle on it even now.
Let me seewhere should I start?
At the beginning, I guess. The morning of the day of the Rite of Anointing. It was one of those magnificent springlike Athilantan days, warm golden sunlight, clear crisp blue sky, that make the fact that we are actually living in the Ice Age seem like such a joke. (Every day is springtime in Athilan. Something like the best days California can do, but even lovelier.)
The Prince had fasted all the previous day, and had stayed awake all through the night, praying and chanting. We had no contact with each other. I took care to keep myself well below the threshold of his consciousness. Obviously he didnt want to be disturbed, and I didnt want to disturb him.
At dawn, his personal slaves led him to the great marble bath chamber of the palace, and bathed and anointed him with perfumes and oils. They dressed him then, in a magnificent robe of pure white cotton bordered in purple richly brocaded and trimmed with cloth of gold. From the bath chamber he went to a small, very austere chapel on the ground floor, where for a time he prayed in front of column of shining black stone.
Now his family came to him: first his sister Princess Rayna, then his younger brother Prince Caiminor, and then his mother, Queen Aliralin, whom I hadnt encountered before. (A slender, stately, very queenly woman of great beauty. She had been on the north shore of the island, it seems, in a religious retreat.)
As they went before Prince Ram, each one knelt to him, even his mother, and with outstretched hands silently offered him a shallow cup of polished pink stone that contained a small quantity of some aromatic wine. He sipped very solemnly. One wine was ruby red, one was golden, one scarcely had any color at all. Each affected him in a slightly different way. The overall effect was not one of making him drunkthe wines of Athilan dont seem to make anybody drunkbut nevertheless transforming his spirit, giving it a glow, a radiance, that it had not had before.
Then his father came to him, bareheaded but clad in the most sumptuous royal robe imaginable, deep purple with great flaring shoulder-pieces of rich scarlet, and loomed before him like a god. He didnt speak a word, but simply extended his hand to Ram, drew him from the chapel, walked with him out of the palace and down those myriad steps to the great plaza out front. A chariot was waiting, drawn by two of the fierce, snorting little horses that the Athilantans use.
The entire population of the city, so it seemed, had turned out to see the royal procession go by. The route was a grand circle through the city. We went westward, first, down the Concourse of the Sky almost as far as the waterfront, then around to the north along a broad curving boulevard, paved with shining pink flagstones, called the Avenue of the Gods. There were cheering crowds everywhere, calling out to Ram.
Thilayl! they yelled. Highness!
And also: Stolifar Blayl! Which is part of his secret formal name, and means Light of the Universe, and apparently is only spoken aloud on the Day of Anointing.
The purpose of the procession, which took hours, was simply to display Ram to the populace. By midday, we were back almost exactly where we had started, in the zone of temples and palaces at the center of the place. The sun was high and bright, now, glinting off the white stone facades of Athilan.
We went around to the eastern side of the sacred district, where the land starts to slope up toward the foothills of Mount Balamoris. Here, overlooking the entire city, is the glorious Plaza of a Thousand Columns, one of the most magnificent public spaces any city ever had. Just beyond the north side of the plaza stands an unassuming, windowless little building made of big blocks of black granite. This is the House of the Anointing, where royal powers are conferred on the members of the ruling family of Athilan.
Walking barefoot, side by side, Ram and his father went in. It was dark within except for a single shaft of noonday light that pierced a twelve-sided opening in the ceiling. The King formally touched fingertips with his son, and they embraced; and then, without a word, the King left the building.
Ram knelt beneath that shaft of light.
Three figures in priestly robes appeared from the darkness beyond. Smooth white masks, unbroken except for tiny eye-slits, completely hid their faces. They loomed above the kneeling Ram and lightly brushed his forehead with a thick, sweet oil. The Anointing, this was. Then they commenced a slow rhythmic chant, speaking in the ancient form of the Athilantan language which is used for epic poetry and religious scriptures, and whichlike Latin in our own day hardly anyone here really understands. Certainly Ram was able to comprehend just a few scattered phrasesall cliches, things about his high royal heritage, the grave responsibilities that were to be his, et cetera, et cetera.
Then, just as his sister and brother and mother had done much earlier that day, each priest in turn offered Ram a shallow bowl of polished stone to drink from. The wine, if wine it was, had a light, spicy taste, and it was giving off gentle fizzy bubbles.
The priests withdrew.
Ram knelt, head down, waiting.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, a dreamlike state began to take possession of his mind. A darkness, a dizziness, overtook him. The narrow golden beam from above grew dim. Swirls of color swept back and forth like waves, like billowing curtains, in the black depths of the House of Anointing.
Visions came to him.
Everything was turbulent and unclear at first. Then his mind became a screen, and he saw, and I saw with him, the night sky, the vastness of space, meteors rushing past, stars and galaxies, great surging comets.
The focus changed. Now his mind drifted down to the surface of the old world of Romany Star, as it had been before its destruction. The wickerwork houses, the streets of woven reeds, everything supple and pliant, shifting in the slightest breezes. And the people of Romany Star quietly going about their tasks, living busily, happily
Until the sun began to swell, until that great red eye came to fill the heavens
Motionless, impassive, Prince Ram and I watched once again the destruction of his peoples original world. The prayers, the outcries, the dry wind, the scorching heat, the first pale puff of flame, the smoldering houses, and then the holocaust, a world afire, everything transformed into ashes in a moment, while the sixteen gleaming starships rose desperately into the heavens with their little load of lucky escapees
The migration, then, we watched. The years of wandering-through space, searching for a habitable planet. The first wondrous glimpse of Earth, blue and shining in the black bowl of night. The survey party landing, going forth across the bleak chilly continents to find a place where the Athilantans might live. The discovery of the warm lovely isle lapped by a kindly ocean. The sixteen ships plunging downward, bringing the wanderers at last to their new home.
Prince Ram and I were eye-witnesses, within a span of just moments, to the entire history of his race. The wine, the drug, whatever it was that had been in those shallow stone bowls, had cut him free from the bonds of the time-line, and he drifted untethered through the ages, roaming the whole past without restraint, without boundary.
We saw the city being built. Harinamur the One King, the original one, amidst his people, laying out the avenues and boulevards, selecting the sites for the temples, the palaces, the parks, the marketplaces. Workers using cunning devices swiftly carving slabs of marble from the hillsides. This city would be nothing like the old lost home on Romany Star. There, everything had been lithe, delicate, yielding. Here they would build of stone.
The city arose. And the people of Athilan went forth from it into the frosty hinterlands beyond, and made themselves known to the savage people who dwelled there, and built an empire linked by the first roads and the first ships this world had ever seen.
We watched the city grow. We watched it flourish. Brilliant sunlight glinting off the palaces of white stone. Magnificent villas climbing the green slopes of Mount Balamoris. The harbor crowded with ships, bearing goods from every quarter of this splendid untouched planet.
And thenthen everything changed. In a moment. In the twinkling of an eye.
First came a darkening of the sky. Then a strand of black smoke rising from the summit of the mountain. A sudden tremor underfoot. I was caught without warning by the shift in the tone of the vision. Ram, deep in his dreams of the past, had no idea at all of what was coming. But, after a moment, I did.
I saw now that in the Anointing he was able to wander both forward and backward in time. He had had a vision of this great citys founding. And now he was going to be shown its doom.
Oh, Lora, if I could have spared him the sight! If I could have covered his eyes and kept him from seeing the death of Athilan, I tell you I would have done it! But I had no power. I was only an insignificant passenger crammed into a corner of his dreaming mind.
And so we watched it together.
The flames bursting from the mountain. The smoke staining the pure clear sky a dirty dingy gray. The sudden rainfall of small light pumice stones clattering down everywhere. Then the thick clouds of ash bursting forth. The mighty tremors running through the ground. Huge slabs of marble dropping from the facades of buildings. The columns of the Plaza of the Thousand Columns moving crazily from side to side, then tumbling as if struck by the side of a giants hand.
The earth shakingheavingsplitting openstreets cracking, houses falling, pavements vanishing into newly created abysses
The sky turning black
The sea rising
A great terrifying groaning sound filling the air, coming not from the throats of the populace but from the earth itself. Flames everywhere. The roar of the water as it rushes forward onto the land. Lava spilling down the sides of the mountain and pouring into the city. Earthquake, flood, volcanic eruption, everything at once. Destruction on all sides. Doom. Doom. Doom.
A few ships putting out from the harbor, struggling against the fantastic heaving of the waves. A pitiful band of refugees, once again setting forth to save themselves as Athilan is brought down into ruin, just as Romany Star once had been.
The surface of the land subsides. It just drops downward into itself, as if everything that had been supporting it had gone up in the eruption. The sea comes pouring in, and nothing can hold it back. Theres a different sound now, a strange taut high-pitched one, like the thrumming of some immense insect, growing louder, louder, louder, until it fills every space and there can be room for nothing else anywhere in the world. Its the sound of the city dying. And then it stops, with awful abruptness, with a crack of silence followed by a great stillness.
The stillness goes on and on.
The sky is clear again, blue with a golden sun, and the hugeness of the sea spreads before us.
Of the island of Athilan there is not the slightest sign. It has been devoured; it has been swallowed up; it has vanished beneath the surface of the water as though it had never existed.
The vision ended. Ram didnt move. He knelt there as though hed been clubbed. Through his numbed mind there ran, again and again, ghastly scenes out of the last hour of Athilan.
Then the door of the House of Anointing opened, and the three masked priests returned. With them was the King. He wore no mask; and his face was stark and stern as he knelt over his son and drew him gently to his feet. From his look, I realized that the King knew what Ram had seen. He had seen it himself, years before, on the day of his own Anointing.
So this is the mystery that the princes of this empire are shown as they enter into full manhood. They are pulled loose from the framework of timehow, I cant even guess and allowed to float freely, backward and then forward. And they are shown the fate that awaits this greatest of all cities.
What a shattering thing to learn! To discover that all striving is in vain, that discipline and ambition, hard work and planning, prayers and rituals, lead only to fiery doom and watery destruction! Why, then, bother to take on the burdens of being a king? Everything is pointless. Nothing you achieve can possibly withstand the coming fury. Your homeland will sink beneath the sea and be forgotten. What a devastating lesson that is!
No wonder Ram had crouched there in a stupor of shock and defeat.
When he left the House of Anointing with his father and the three priests he walked as a prince must walk, straightbacked, square-shouldered. But his eyes were bleak and his mind still lay locked in gloom and torment and cold despair. And thats how he has been, these three days past. A cloud of seemingly unbreakable depression hangs over him. He wont speak to anyone, he doesnt eat at all, he remains in his room.
I cant say I feel a lot better myself. The waves of sorrow-and amazement and horror that come from Rams mind have seeped into my own, and my mood is gray and chilly. Theres no use trying to kid myself with cheery little uplifting cliches. Ive been forced right up against the underlying truth of things. What a dark and cruel place the world is, for all its beauty, for all its wonder! We have miracles around us on every sidea spiderweb is a miracle, Lora!but also we have violence, insanity, terrible disease, sudden death. The same Nature that brings us the mountains and the rivers and the green glistening meadows brings us the hurricane, the earthquake, the flood of redhot lava rolling toward the city.
That Atlantis was one day to be destroyed was hardly any secret to me when I came here. But even so, it was a truly miserable experience to be forced to watch at close range as the news of the citys inevitable doom was brought to someone who has spent his entire life preparing to be its king.
I wish I could do something for him. But he doesnt want to talk even with me. My few attempts at making mental contact have been hurled back with furious snarls. He needs to work this thing through by himself, entirely by himself.
I suppose the Athilantans see the Anointing as a necessary part of the education of a future Grand Darionis. But to me, right now, it seems terribly cruel, a needless disillusionment. It utterly pulls the rug out from under you.
Everyone wants some way of seeing into the future, of course; but these people actually have one, and look at the damage it does. If I were going to become Grand Darionis of Athilan in a few years Id just as soon be spared the knowledge that the whole place is fated eventually to go down the tubes regardless of anything anyone do.
I did, by the way, get your last letter just before all this happened.
Im glad to hear you backing me up on the theory that the Athilantans came here from another world. Somebody else might just have shrugged and said that poor Roy has gone completely nuts. Instead you went and peered into Governor Sippurilayls memories of his boyhood history lessons and found that hed been taught the same story Ram had. Of course, that doesnt mean its true; but I think it is, and apparently so do you. Thanks for your support. A good guy, you are. I dont need to tell you, do I, how much you mean to me, how deeply I miss you, how eager I am to see you again?
And thanks also for the revised calendar information. Using the data you sent, I was able to sit down finally and plot everything out the way I should have done a long while back. I see now that my stint in Atlantis is just about over. Six days more, maybe seven, and theyll be yanking us back to our sleeping bodies up there in Home Year. So well actually be together again soon. I feel good about that, you can bet. But I hate the idea of leaving Atlantis at a time like this.
My God, these have been an awful few days.
With much much love
Roy
12.
Day 42, Golden Days, Great River.
This is my last letter. Well be home soon. In fact you wont even get to read this, because it cant possibly reach you out there in Naz Glesim before we leave. But I need to set all this down on paper anyway, just to get everything clear in my own mind. Lets pretend that youll get it next week, although you wont, not here. But youll be hearing it from me next week in person, up in Home Era.
The basic situation is this: Ive been breaking rules again. In a big way. Im beginning to think Im suffering from some kind of compulsion to go against everything we were trained to do when we became time observers.
What happened was that I decided that since Ive got very little time left to spend in Atlantis, I would save the city from the doom thats bearing down on it before I have to leave. Thats right. All by myself I would spare this great civilization from destruction.
I dont mean that I came up with some way to defuse that volcano or to keep the earthquake from happening. All I did was go to work on Prince Ram, trying to convince him to order an evacuation to some safer place while there was still time.
I should tell you that Ram had come up out of his state of deep gloom by this point. On the fifth morning after the Rite of Anointing he awakened in a perfectly calm, cheerful mood. He prayed, he swam about eighty laps in the palace pool, he ate an enormous breakfast, he met with his father and tackled a colossal stack of official reports that needed to be scanned and approved. It was as thought the Rite of Anointing had never taken place. He was absolutely his old self again. No trace remained of the dark, bitter, agonized frame of mind that had gripped him since the day of that terrible revelation.
This is evidently a familiar pattern for the Prince. Remember how upset he was when he first found out that a demon was hiding in his mind? Trembling, shaking, pressing his hands violently against his head to drive me out? But then he calmed down completely. In the Labyrinth, again, he got pretty excited while he was trying to work that exorcism on me; but once he realized that he had failed to expel me, he became so cheerful and tranquil that I wasnt sure he knew I was still there. Hes extremely tough and well balanced. Something strange can really get to him and shake him; but in his steady, determined way he works on it, gets control of it, regains his poise. And then every things all right for him again.
He said to me,Youve been very quiet lately, wizard.
I didnt think you needed to hear from me. Youve had enough to handle.
You saw what I saw? The destruction of the city?
Yes.
And what do you think, wizard? You know all that is to come. Was it a true vision? Or only a bad dream, a nightmare designed to test me?
I could have given him false consolation then, I suppose. I could have lied, and said that what he had seen was a fever dream, a fantasy, that Athilan would endure forever and a day. But Im not much good at lying. And I knew that he wasnt looking for lies from me, or consolations, or anything else that might make him feel good for a moment at the expense of the truth.
So I said,The city will be destroyed, Prince.
Truly.
Truly, yes. In my era nothing will be remembered of it except that it once existed. And many people will think that even that is only a foolish tale.
Destroyed and forgotten.
Yes, Prince Ram.
He was silent for a while. But I was monitoring the flow of his moods, and there was no return to the bleakness that had gripped him in the days just after the Rite of Anointing. He was calm. He was steady.
He said at last,How far in the future is the time of destruction, wizard? Ten thousand years? Five thousand?
Perhaps ten thousand years. Perhaps much less.
Perhaps it will happen this year, even?
I dont know, Prince.
A wizard should know the future.
But your calling me a wizard doesnt make me one, Prince. What you speak of as the future is the remote and misty past to me. I have no way of knowing when Athilan perished. Believe me, Prince.
Another period of silence. Then he said:
I believe youwizard.
And then I said, taking myself completely by surprise,Prince, you need to save your city while theres still time.
Save it? How could I possibly save it?
Leave this island. Lead everyone across to the mainland. Build a new Athilan in some place that will be invulnerable. And it will endure forever.
I felt undertones of amazement coming from him. I tell you, I was amazed myself at what I was doing.
But I couldnt help it, Lora. I was caught up in the crazy rapture and wonder of my scheme.
I told him where to erect his New Atlantis.Go to North Africa,I said.Its warm there. Theres a place called Egypt, where a mighty river flows out of the heart of the continent. Your ships can get there easily from here, by sailing east and south. The land is fertile. Youll have access to the sea. Theres stone to build with. You can create a new empire ten times as great as this one, one that will spread around the world.
Or else,I said,go further east, to a place known as Mesopotamia. There are two rivers there, and its warm there too, and the land is perhaps even more fertile than in Egypt. And from there you can expand ever eastward, to a land called India, and one called China. Youll be better off there than in Europein the mainland right here. Europe will be locked in ice for many more thousands of years. But ChinaIndiaEgypt
I was berserk, Lora.
I was grossly interfering with the past. Not only had I opened direct contact with my own time-host, but here I was trying to get him to take a course of action that would beyond any doubt change the entire direction of history! Carried away by my own brilliance, I was telling him to go and found Egypt long before the Pharaohs would. Or better yet to create his new kingdom in Sumer or Babylon, and then to colonize the Orient, andthis part didnt even matter to me, so crazed was I, so eager was I to be helpfulset up a Second Athilantan Empire that might become so powerful it would last on and on right into what you and I think of as historical times!
How about that? A tremendous sprawling kingdom ruled by extraterrestrial aliens, dominating the world for the next twenty thousand years, while none of our real history gets a chance to occur! No Greece, no Rome, no England, no United Statesonly eternal Athilan, all-powerful, reaching out in every direction, controlling everything! What a vision! What lunacy, Lora!
I offered to draw maps for him. I offered to give him geographical lessons. I promised to ransack my brains for every detail of what I knew about the Paleolithic Near East.
He let me rave for a long time.
And then he said, finally,What a rare vision this is. What a wondrous scheme.
Yes,I said, sure that I had convinced him.
And then: But you know I would never do anything like this, wizard. Not even if I were Grand Darionis today, and I knew that the calamity would fall upon us in ten months time, would I do such a thing.
I was caught off balance.
You wouldnt?
He laughed.Why do you think the princes of Athilan are shown the vision of the Rite of Anointing?
I said, really flustered nowWellits becauseI would assumethat is, it seems to me that its done in order to prepare you for the eruption. In case you happen to be the one whos King at the time when it actually takes place. So that you can plan to take protective measures, arrange a safe evacuation, things like that.
No. Not at all.
Why is it done, then?
He paused a moment. Then he said,To teach us that even though we are kings, we are as nothing in the hands of the gods.
I dont understand.
You are no wizard then.
I have never pretended to be one.
He said,The gods have decreed that Athilan one day must perish, just as they decreed the fiery death of Romany Star. Dont you think that we were aware that that would happen, too? And this city came out of that one. New greatness flowers out of lost greatness. It is our destiny, wizard, from time to time to be chastised by the gods, to be driven forth in sorrow from our homes, to begin anew, to create that which never existed before to replace that which was taken from us. Do you think we dare defy the gods? Do you think we dare thwart their will? We must accept what comes to us. That is the lesson of the Rite of Anointing. That is the thing I had to learn, if I am to be Grand Darionis some day. The vision was a test, yes. And I have passed that test.
Your ancestors knew that Romany Star would be destroyed? And they did nothing to save themselves?
They built sixteen starships, and loaded aboard them whatever they could. The rest they left behind to face the flames. And when the catastrophe comes to the isle of Athilan, we will have ships ready, and once again we will save what we can. The rest will be destroyed beyond recovery.
I said, bewildered,I cant believe that youll just sit here like sheep and take no action, even though you can seethe future and you know that the future holds destruction for you.
Tell me this, wizard. In your era, do people still die?
Yes. Of course.
And yet you go about your daily lives, doing your work and making plans for the future and seeking always to better yourselves, even though you know that in twenty or thirty or fifty years you will certainly be dead? You dont simply give up and lie down, the moment you discover that death is inevitable, and abandon all striving right at that point?