Read The Elementals Online

Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

The Elementals (16 page)

She stared at him with wide green eyes.
He swore under his breath and started in the direction he had pointed, drawing her with him by putting one strong arm around her trembling shoulders. “I think this is the way toward the Zeus Gate,” Hokar said to no one in particular. “It's the gate nearest Arkhanes.”
The mention of Arkhanes made him think of his little house there with a sudden, fierce longing. Everything in that house was Thracian in style. Familiar. His own.
He would take Ebisha there.
Someone wearing the stiff formal headdress of an offical stumbled past. “Which way to the Zeus Gate?” Hokar shouted at him. But there was no answer. The goldsmith's voice was lost in the wordless scream that was becoming the voice of Labrys.
People were running everywhere. The press of bodies shoved Hokar and Ebisha until passing through a doorway, they found themselves on the colonnaded porch that overlooked the Great Central Court. Below them people scampered across the mosaic tiles like a nest of disturbed ants. “The Minos has deserted us!”
someone cried. “He has evacuated his family and left us here to die!”
The last restraint dissolved. Whether the rumor was true or not, it was enough to instill blind panic.
People began clubbing each other with their fists, fighting for space, for air, for access to an exit, or just to relieve their unbearable emotions. Meanwhile the floor beneath their feet heaved and buckled like a living thing.
Ebisha screamed and clung to Hokar. He could hear her gasping names—the names of gods, he supposed—but they were not names he recognized.
Everyone seemed to be crying some name aloud. Some called on their mothers, others cursed or prayed to The Minos. Or Poseidon. Or Zeus. Or any of a hundred other deities, large and small, the particular image of a particular belief to which one might cling when the world was collapsing.
Nothing stopped the collapse, however.
The crowd was a mob, a mindless sea that moved like a tide first in one direction, then another, sweeping Hokar and Ebisha along with them.
Ebisha had one frightening glimpse of a great dark hulk lying on the floor of the court below. It was the corpse of the last bull to have been sacrificed to Poseidon. Forgotten now. The sacrifice refused.
“Hokar!”
The goldsmith heard his name, but in the melee he could not tell who was calling him.
“Hokar! Over here!”
He craned his neck. Then he saw a slim arm waving frantically.
“Hokar! It's me, Meriones!”
The musician hurried toward them, twisting and weaving through the crowd. When he reached Hokar he managed a harried grin of relief. “What are you doing here?” he asked his friend.
“Trying to find a way out. I got lost. What are you doing here?”
“Trying to find a way out. I was in this part of the palace looking for a place to hide your, ah …”
“My gold? You have it?”
“I do. But we don't have time to worry about it now. After we get … Look out!” Meriones cried suddenly. He grabbed Ebisha
and pulled her aside just in time to keep her from being trampled by a clot of running men.
“What are you doing with this woman?” Meriones asked Hokar while Ebisha stood, panting, flattened against a wall.
“Trying to get her out too. I want to take her with me to Arkhanes. But there's a rumor that the gates have all been barred.”
“Possibly,” Meriones conceded. “But even if they are, there are many ways out of a palace as big as Labrys. Not everyone goes in and out through a public gate, Hokar. I haven't been here all these years without discovering that. I was just trying to decide which exit to use myself. I don't think anyone will question us under the circumstances.”
“You talk too much!” Hokar snapped. “Just get us out of here if you know a way!”
Meriones nodded. “Come on, then. And bring her,” he added, nodding at Ebisha. “Let's leave before the ceiling falls on us.”
Taking a deep breath, Meriones plunged into the swirl of the crowd like a bather diving into a cold sea. Hokar glanced up at the ceiling, turned pale, hooked Ebisha with his arm and ran after Meriones.
For a measureless eternity they struggled through packed passageways and crowded corridors. Meriones, who was shorter than Hokar, kept disappearing. Finally Hokar caught hold of the fold of hair at the nape of his friend's neck and held on with all his might, though the pull brought tears to Meriones' eyes. Hokar dared not let go. If they lost Meriones he and Ebisha would be truly lost.
They ran up some steps and down others, scuttled across audience chambers, dodged through counting rooms, sidled along narrow passages meant only for slaves, and eventually emerged from a steep stairwell to find themselves on the lowest level of the palace. The walls of unplastered stone smelled of niter. A pervasive gloom was relieved only occasionally by a few plain bronze lamps burning in small niches set into the walls.
They had left the maddened crowd behind, but its roar could still be heard, echoing through the labyrinthine corridors of the palace.
Meriones paused, looking around. “There is an entrance down here somewhere that gives porters coming up from the sea direct access to the main storerooms. If we can find—”
He was interrupted by a thundering crash almost directly above their heads. The walls around them vibrated, the huge blocks of stone ringing like gongs.
“It's going to fall on us!” Ebisha cried. “We'll be crushed!”
The goldsmith folded the woman in his arms and bowed his head over hers protectively, as if he meant to take the weight of the palace on his shoulders rather than let it touch Ebisha.
In that moment, Meriones envied his friend. “It won't fall on us if we can get outside,” he said urgently. “Come on!” He began running again.
They followed him through unlit areas floored with bare earth and rubble; stumbling, their breath burning their throat, the world they knew disintegrating around them.
“Here we are!” Meriones whooped suddenly, plunging toward a common planked door standing ajar in the thick wall.
The trio emerged into a daylight they scarcely recognized as daylight. The sky was as dark as mid-winter dusk, but with an evil yellowish cast.
The porters' entrance was let into a north-facing wall in the foundations of the palace, and had been abandoned at the first tremor of the earth. A flagged pathway led away from the doorway, but Meriones did not follow the paving. Instead he hurried away from the palace at an acute angle, making for the open ground beyond. Here the land began to slope upward, out of the royal valley.
The trio climbed the slope in silence, trying not to hear the screams and crashes coming from Labrys behind them. Other people ran past them from time to time, their faces distorted with terror.
Meriones led the way to the rim of the valley. There he paused. “You said you wanted to take Ebisha to Arkhanes,” he reminded Hokar. “You'll want to go that way.” He pointed.
Hokar's jaw dropped. “Aren't you going with us?”
“I can't, I must go home to my wife. I should never have left her this morning. I wouldn't have, if I'd thought things were going to get so bad.”
“And they may well get worse,” Hokar warned. “If we're separated now, we might never see each other again. Stay with us, Meriones, let's all help each other. Don't try to go back to Kn
sos
now, you might not make it. Stay with us,” he repeated, putting all the strength of his personality into his urging. “Please!”
Just for a moment, Hokar thought he could hold Meriones. Then the earth shuddered as if Poseidon Ennosigaion was stalking across the land on giant feet, rumbling destruction with every stride.
Ebisha flinched and gasped.
“I have to go home to Tulipa!” Meriones cried frantically.
Hokar unleashed his temper. “Go, then! Desert your friend. Be a coward, who cares? Who needs a wasp-waisted lyre player? I can take care of Ebisha without you!”
Meriones blinked. Then he gave a thin-lipped nod, turned on his heel, and hurried off in the direction of Kn
sos.
Hokar stared after him with rising dismay. When the musician was almost out of earshot, he relented and called out, “Meriones? My friend? Be … careful!”
Meriones heard. He paused and turned around long enough to give Hokar a Cretan salute. Arching his back like a bow, he made a fist and pressed his knuckles to the Palace of the Brain. “My friend,” he echoed. “Try to be … cheerful.”
Then he spun around and ran for home.
He had run for some distance before he became aware that his movements were being hampered by a bulky object thrust between his loincloth and apron.
He had forgotten to give Hokar the stolen gold.
A dead calm lay on the sea. On board the Qatil, Tereus felt his hackles rise. “Pull!” he yelled at his oarsmen. “PULL!!!” But it was too late. A growling roar, far away at first, swiftly came
closer, increasing in volume until the ship's timbers vibrated and men clapped their hands over their ears. It sounded as if the ocean floor was being wrenched apart.
The roaring grew to unbearable intensity then doubled; trebled. A tremendous thunderclap reverberated throughout the Aegean Sea, slammed across the Ionian Sea, rang the waters of the Mediterranean like a giant bell.
While the world still shook with its force, a second thunderclap boomed with enough power to dwarf the first. Then, impossibly, there was a third, mightier and more terrifying than anything that had gone before. It was a sound to freeze the blood and stop the heart. It was a sound to announce the end of the world.
Geysers of steam shot upward, hot fountains jetting from the sea bed into the sky. Pumice and ash rained down to meet them. The air stank of strange gases released from the bowels of the earth. When horror had exceeded all limits, with one final gigantic blast the world exploded.
A volcanic eruption mightier than any within the memory of mankind tore the entire side out of the island of Thera and hurled it into the sky. A monstrous flower of incandescent light blossomed, burning white, hot beyond heat, setting the air ablaze and drawing all breath, all life into itself. An enormous pillar of boiling smoke, shot through with orange sparks like evil eyes and lit from within by a lurid glow, rose from the disemboweled island. The cloud mushroomed upward, billowing into a burning sky.
The first shock wave rapidly radiated outward. It hit the
Qatil
like a battering ram. Tereus fell face forward on the deck, clawing long splinters out of the wood with bloody fingers. He screamed and did not know he screamed.
Outraged, the sea rose on its hind legs to bellow fury at the heavens.
Meanwhile, Meriones was pounding down the familiar road that led to Kn
sos, his house, his wife. He hardly noticed when the white hound darted out from somewhere to join him. The animal was whimpering with terror. Man and dog ran together, fear making them lightfooted.
They had gotten as far as the long hill commanding a view of the harbor when the voice of Poseidon thundered across the sea and knocked Meriones flat on the earth.
He lay dazed, then pulled himself to his hands and knees, spitting earth and pebbles. The god again cried aloud, with a great booming voice. Meriones wet himself in his terror and drew up into a ball, waiting to die.
The god roared with the greatest anger that had ever been unleashed in the world. Meriones knew he was dead. He thought his heart stopped.
But he did not die. He lay helpless while the tremendous explosions echoed and reechoed throughout Crete. Eventually, the musician realized that he was still alive. Probably. He got to his knees again, very shakily, and tried to find the courage to stand.
The ultimate blast slammed across the sea, threw him on his face once more as the whole world rocked on its foundations. The northern sky caught fire, became a sea of molten flame.
Meriones did not try again to stand. What was the use? He lay with a calmer mind than he expected, his head turned sideways, cheek pressed against the road. “This is the end,” he heard himself say. No one contradicted him. But somewhere close by, a dog whined piteously.
Meriones shifted enough to be able to see the white hound lying in a heap beside him. He reached out and drew the dog against his body. It did not seem any more injured than he was. Merely scared to death.
Scared to death. The term had new meaning. It meant being so scared that fear itself was slain and one waited placidly, like a bull awaiting sacrifice. Looking at the ax.
Listening for the voice of the god.
Then the god fell silent. Seventy miles to the north, the sea was rushing in to form a seven-mile-wide lake of boiling water and steam embraced by the ruined crescent of lava cliffs that was all that remained of the island of Thera.
From the shock of that monstrous reforming a great wave spread out and moved across the sea. In deep water it was like a ripple traveling across a pond when a stone is dropped in. But as the giant ripple neared the land and the sea bed was shallower, the wave swelled upward, building into a mighty wall with a crest towering hundreds of feet into the shocked sky.
With the speed of the gods, the wall of water rushed toward Crete.
Meriones felt a certain disappointment that he was not dead. Instinct told him the dead might be the lucky ones. But he was unquestionably alive. Slowly, expecting to be knocked down again at any moment, he got to his feet and examined his bruises. They were numerous but not serious. Then he turned the same attention on the dog. It had no broken bones but whined continually, a thin, high-pitched moan that did not sound like a dog at all.
He picked it up and cradled it against his body. The feel of another warm and living being comforted them both.
Meriones' gaze moved along the road toward Kn
sos, noting how the paving slabs had heaved. For the first time he realized there were a few other people on the road. He saw them as dark lumps illuminated by the hideous light of the flaming sky. Some of the lumps were stirring, groaning.
Others lay unmoving and silent.
Meriones thought suddenly of Hokar and Ebisha. What had happened to them? Should he go back? He looked over his shoulder, indecisive, then thought of Tulipa and whirled around again, gazing toward the city and the harbor …
… and stood transfixed.
The cloud that had been Thera was clearly visible on the horizon, glowing like a firebed. In the foreground of this horror were the residents of Kn
sos, staggering away from a city reduced to rubble. They resembled the survivors of a destroyed army. Some wept, some cursed, some moaned in pain. Some whimpered like the white hound.
The foremost reached Meriones and passed him, unaware of him. They had no thought but horror and escape. They went on, leaving Meriones staring.
He saw the wave come up out of the sea. But it could not be a wave. It could not be anything known and familiar. It was a giant, malevolent entity from an underworld that spawned monsters. Irresistible, it sped toward the harbor where the masts of the fleet still rose like a forest of sticks.
The tidal wave slammed against Kn
sos, smashing the glory of the world's largest fleet into splinters. In the blink of an eye the forest of ships was devoured by the ravenous sea. Its appetite unassuaged, the monster swallowed the shoreline and gobbled up
the ruined city beyond, crushing everything beneath a mammoth wall of water.
Staring, unbelieving, Meriones waited, fully expecting the tidal wave to continue inland and cover Labrys in the valley, then rage up the slopes of the mountains themselves, putting an end to one insignificant musician and the brilliant world of Crete.
It came very close.
But the land had a strength of its own. As the tidal wave swept across it the earth robbed the waters of their energy. At last they fell back, exhausted by their own fury. The water drained off toward the sea with a ghastly sucking noise, leaving a spoor of dirty foam and piled mountains of unidentifiable debris.
Still Meriones stood, and stared.
He did not know how much time passed. It seemed eons. Surely he had been watching there since the birth of the world, witness to the contest between land and sea for supremacy.
Where a rich seaport had been was now nothing. The little yellow house was gone. Tulipa's goat was gone. The olive tree was gone.
Tulipa was gone; gone with Kn
sos.
Its streets had disappeared beneath the mud and slime that frescoed the site. The stench of the sea bottom floated up to Meriones and he bent to one side to vomit, spewing out his horror without ever turning loose of the dog clasped tightly in his arms.
Kn
sos was gone.

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