Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

Herakles spun around its long axis as it slipped across the lagoon, one bank of rowers digging in while the others held their oars, shining with seawater, high in salute. Thyatis sat down, taking her place at the first rank of oars. The galley completed its evolution, and the gleaming walls of the city, bright with summer flowers and the muted splendor of the statues and temples, rose up before her. Facing the stern, Thyatis watched the sea cave as it receded. It hurt more to leave than she had expected.

Herakles moved swiftly across the water of the lagoon, leaving a fine curling wake in the crystalline water. Behind her, Thyatis could hear the booming roar and thunder of waves in the passage. At the base of the stern, an elderly woman raised a hand, her head cocked to one side. The rowers halted their stroke and shipped oars a half-length. The ship slid forward, carried by momentum into the passage. Vast, dark volcanic walls rose up, closing off the sky. The temperature dropped, and a wind picked up, driven out of the bowl of the lagoon. The steerswoman leaned on the oars, guiding them down the narrows. A dozen yards were all that stood between the walls of the passage and the sides of the ship.

All this Thyatis ignored, watching the distant black cavity of the sea cave until at last, as the passage turned a little, it disappeared from view. At that last moment, as the jagged cliffs closed off the view of the lagoon, there was a momentary bright red flash, an eye winking in darkness, and then the hidden city and all that it contained were gone.

The tumultuous sound of the waves in the entrance to the passage rose higher and higher, drowning out even the loudest shout. The current picked up, rushing through the passage, a swirling boil of violent waters. Only twice a day did the passage run out, pulled by the sun-and moon-tide in conjunction. At these times, carefully charted by the astrologos of the Temple, it was possible for a ship to escape the island. Otherwise, only ruin waited for any ship foolish enough to dare the sharp volcanic teeth of the passage or the reefs beyond. Now they ran with the current, the ship bucking and twisting as the sweep of the waters swerved first against this cliff face and then against the other.

Suddenly, darkness closed in around them-they were in the heart of the passage-and then sunlight fell upon them again; they were in the Crucible, where the passage turned a little, making a bowl that in all other times was a howling whirlpool. The Titans flashed past, their massive graven arms and legs standing out from the cliffs. Even now, when she had seen them before, Thyatis felt a chill at the grim faces that loomed out of the rock, half entombed, a hundred yards high. Then they were gone, and the steerswoman leaned hard into the current. The old woman at the base of the stern made a sign, and the rowers prepared to unship oars at her signal.

Herakles burst forth from the wall of Thira, a wooden bolt shot from the engine of the passage's wave surge. For a sickening instant the ship rode up the side of a massive breaker that was gathering itself up to smash into oblivion on the crags of the island. The old woman's hand slashed down, and the rowers struck the water as one, their oars biting into the curling green wall that loomed over them.

The ship shuddered as the oars caught the water and dug deep. Herakles surged up the rising wall, already raised twenty feet or more by the growing mountain of water. The prow suddenly cut free of the top of the wave, spearing into the air, and a fierce shout from behind warned Thyatis to ship her oar as fast as humanly possible. Herakles' limbs scuttled back inside the body of the galley as the ship tipped and then rushed down the back slope of the wave like a thrown javelin. It splashed deep, the nose of the ship digging into the valley of water between the wave and the open sea, then surged up again, spilling bright water over the foredeck.

Thyatis laughed in joy at being alive, drenched as she was, and she and the thirty-nine parthenos slid oars out. As one, they pulled and the ship leapt forward, on the open sea at last. Herakles surged forward, foam boiling at her prow, the wine dark sea open before her. The steerswoman began to sing, her strong voice rising above the creak of the oars and the murmur of the sea.

Behind them the crag of Thira rose, barren and bleak, a sullen black thumb thrust from a turbulent ocean.

– |The sun settled on the horizon, a great orb of red and gold, turning the wave tops and the sea into an ocean of fire. The sky, clear and cloudless, shaded from pale gold to pink and then to the deep of night. Stars began to gleam in the firmament above, slowly crowding the eastern sky. Shirin walked alone on the northern shore of the island, her bare feet leaving a long line of tracks in the fine black sand of the narrow beach. The moon was rising, huge and yellow, over the eastern rim of the world. Soon the sea would disappear into a black void, marked only by the phosphorescence of the breakers: The Princess was troubled and had been sent away from the day's training by Mikele.

Your mind and body are far apart, the Chin woman had said. Go find them.

Shirin stopped, feeling the edge of the surf curl up over her toes. The water was warm and it spilled around her ankles, sighing. She looked out over the waters. Somewhere to the north and west, her friend sped away from her, driven by wind and oar toward distant Rome. Rome and her children and her uncle. Her family was far away, and she was alone. "Is this what I want?" she spoke aloud, though there was no one to hear her. Shirin bent her head in thought, casting her mind ahead, over years and decades that might come. Some things made her smile, others frown. So she walked, under the moon, alone on a deserted beach by an empty sea.

The Forum, Roma Mater

The sun stood high in the sky, shedding its beneficent rays upon glorious Rome.

Galen Atreus, Caesar, and Augustus, wiped sweat from his brow as he came to the last and highest step of the great staircase that vaulted up from the floor of the Forum to the gatehouse of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Behind him, filling the plaza of the Forum to capacity and beyond, sixty thousand Roman citizens raised their voices in a chant of victory. Here, from the height of the Capitoline hill, looking back upon them, Galen saw a shimmering sea of color and upturned faces. The beat of their voices in the air washed over him like the surf of some fantastic sea. He raised his arm, saluting them, proclaiming victory. Their voices raised up again, and the sound was a storm on the height.

"Ave! Ave, Imperator!"

At his side, Galen felt his brother raise his arm as well, and then the ranks of legionaries both in the plaza below and arrayed along the sides of the steps. Each man saluted the city and the people, and there-across the plaza-on the steps of the Curia Julia-the senate of Rome. The senators, as one, raised their arms in reply and great horns sounded, winding a long, solemn note. At this, the lictors and attendants who had preceded Galen up the long staircase turned and entered the platform that housed the Temple of Jupiter.

"Has our brother returned?" Galen whispered out of the side of his mouth as his Imperial party entered the temple. Ranks of praetorians lined the portico, their armor gleaming and bright. The clang of their salute, mailed gloves on cuirasses, was sharp as he passed between them.

"No," Aurelian whispered back. "He came to see me a month or so after you left, saying he had struck upon some secret business he had to deal with. Then he vanished."

Galen bent, kneeling, and bowed his head before the statue of the King of the Gods. At his side, staunch Aurelian on his left and the white-haired Gregorius Auricus on his right, his companions knelt as well. Outside, in the bright sun, the voices of the crowd were raised in song.