Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

“Right, by Ares!” Theseus exploded.

Gathon nodded thoughtfully. He could doubtless see the plan was a compromise which allowed the Athenians to keep hostages and exploit their knowledge, more useful than Reid’s. However, this was a portentous, ambiguous affair; caution was advisable; and the Ariadne did have the Keftiu in her spiritual keeping.

This is what was foreordained, Reid knew. The sense of fate took him again, as it had done beneath the moon on Kythera; but now it felt as if he were a raindrop hurled along on the night wind.

They left a lamp burning. The glow caressed Erissa like his hand. “Does it make me look young?” she whispered through tears.

Reid kissed her lips and the hollow beneath her throat. She was warm in the cold room. Her muscles moved silkily across his skin where they touched each other on the bed; the odor of her was sweet as the meadow of the nymph. “You’re beautiful,” was the single poor thing he could find to say.

“Already tomorrow—”

A day had passed in preparing for the voyage. He and she had spent it together, and the hell with what anybody thought.

“We dare not wait, this time of year.”

“I know, I know. Though you could. You can’t be wrecked, Duncan. You’ll come safe to Atlantis. You did.” She buried her face against his shoulder. He felt the wetness of it. Her hair spilled across his breast. “Am I trying to cheat that girl out of a few days? Yes. But no use, is it? Oh, how glad I am we know nothing about what happens to us after next springtime! I couldn’t bear that.”

“I believe you could bear anything, Erissa.”

She lay breathing awhile. Finally, raising herself over him and looking down, she said: “Well, it need not be utter doom. Why, we may even save my people. We may be the blade the gods use to trim back a destiny that grew crooked. Will you strive where you are, Duncan, as I’ll strive here while I wait for you?”

“Yes,” he promised, and in this hour, at least, he was honest.

Not that he believed they could rescue her world. Or if they were able to—if human will could really turn the stars in their courses—for to change what had been would be to change the universe out to its last year and light-year—he would never condemn Bitsy to having never been born. Yet might he not imaginably find a door left open in this cage of time?

Erissa fought to achieve a smile, and won. “Then let’s mourn no longer,” she said. “Love me till dawn:’ He had not known what loving could be, before her.

The eeriness of the fate that waited for him could not take from Reid all his wonder at coming to lost Atlantis.

It rose from a sea which today was more green than blue, whitecaps running like the small swift clouds above. Approximately circular, a trifle over eleven miles across, the island climbed in rugged tiers from its coasts. Where cliff or crag stood bare, the stone showed blacks, dull reds, and startling pale pumice below. From the middle, the cone of the mountain loomed in naked lava and cinders. A trail could be seen winding up to the still quiescent crater. A lesser volcano thrust from the waves not far offshore.

At first view the overlay of life was unspectacular. The word that crossed Reid’s mind was “charming.” Fields, autumnally ocher, were tucked into pockets of soil; but most agriculture was orchards, olive, fig, apple, or vineyards which now glowed red and purple. Still more of the steep land was left in grass, pungent shrubs, scattered oak or cy-press made into bonsai by thin earth and salt winds. Reid was surprised to see that it pastured not the elsewhere omnipresent goats, but large red-and-white cattle; then he remembered that this was the holy place of the Keftiu and Erissa (today, today!) danced with those huge-horned bulls.

Farmsteads lay well apart. Their houses were similar to those in Greece or throughout the Mediterranean countries, squarish flat-roofed adobes. Many had exterior staircases, but few windows faced outward; a home surrounded a courtyard whereon the family’s existence was centered. However, the Keftiu were distinctive in their use of pastel stucco and vivid mural patterns.

Fisher boats were busy across the waters; otherwise no vessels moved except Diores’. A cloud mass on the southern horizon betokened Crete.

Reid drew his cloak tighter about him against the chill. Was Atlantis no more than this?

The ship rowed past a lesser island which, between abrupt cliffs, guarded the mouth of a miles-wide lagoon. Reid saw that the great volcano stood in the middle of that bay. He saw, too, that here was indeed a place legend would never forget.

Off the starboard bow, a city covered the hills that rose from the water. It was at least as big as Athens, more carefully laid out, delightful to the eye in its manifold colors, and it needed no wall for defense. Its docks were mostly vacant, the majority of ships drawn ashore for winter. Reid noticed several hulls being scraped and painted on an artificially widened beach some distance farther off; others were already at rest in the sheds behind. A couple of warcraft, fishtailed and eagle-prowed, were moored at readiness, reminders of the sea king’s, might.

Here in the sheltering heart of the island, water sparkled blue and quiet, the air was warm and the breezes soft. A number of small boats cruised around under sail. Their gay trim, the women and children among their passengers, marked them as pleasure craft.

Diores pointed to the Gatewarden isle. “Yonder’s where we’ll go,” he said. “But first we tie up at town and get leave to come see the Ariadne.”

Reid nodded. You wouldn’t let just anybody onto your sanctum. The isle was superbly landscaped; terraces bore gardens which had yet some flowerbeds to vie with arbors turning bronze and gold. On its crest spread a complex of buildings, only two stories high but impressively wide, made from cyclopean blocks of stone. These were painted white, and across that background went a mural frieze: humans, bulls. octopuses, peacocks, monkeys, chimeras, a procession dancing from either side of the main gate to the pillars which flanked it. They were bright red, those pillars; Erissa had told Reid the column was a sacred symbol. Another sign was inset in gold over the lintel: the double ax, the Labrys. The third emblem curved on the roof above, a pair of great gilded horns.

“Will we have a long wait?” he asked. A part of him marveled rather sadly at how, no matter what adventure or what contortions of destiny, most time got eaten up by ordinariness. However taciturn his forebodings had made him on the voyage here, he had not been spared hours of prosaic chatter. (And no serious talk. Diores had skillfully avoided letting that develop.)

“Not us,” the Athenian said, “after she hears we’re from Prince Theseus.”

That mention of heir rather than king hauled Reid’s attention to the sharp gray-bearded face before him. “Are they close friends, then?” he flung out.

Diores squirted a stream of saliva leisurely over the side. “Well,” he said when he had finished, “they’ve met now and again. You know how the prince has traveled about. Naturally he’d look in on the Ariadne. Be rude not to, wouldn’t it? And she’s less of a snob about us Achaeans than you might look for, which could be helpful. Got a bit of Kalydonian blood in her, in fact, though born in Knossos. Ye-e-es, I expect we’ll be well received.”

The unseasonal arrival of a ship drew a crowd to the wharf They were a carefree lot. Teeth flashed in bronzed faces, hands flew in gestures, words and laughter spilled forth. There was no evidence of poverty; Atlantis must wax rich off the pilgrimage trade as well as its mundane industries; yet the Greeks had spoken to Reid, with considerable envy, about a similar prosperity throughout the realm of the Minos.