The Basingstoke Chronicles (21 page)

Another torch glowed further down. My own burned a pungent sulfurous oil. While
perfect for long-lasting combustion, its smell lingered a great deal longer, much to my regret. I
was transfixed, though, by the story told down either side of the staircase.

Allow me to summarize.

The tale concerned the coming together of man and bear, after the arrival of the
extra-terrestrials, from bitter enemies to great companions in an unprecedented cooperation between
the two species. Even a hunting partnership developed between men and bears. It could be called
a domestication of the bears, but perhaps equally so the domestication of man.

The final two portrayals were identical to the great statue watching over the market
ellipse of Yaku. It showed a man and a bear side by side, the latter alert, his snout raised to sense
the many dangers facing them.

So, the extra-terrestrials had ushered in an era of civility, of hope, of possibilities. The
two dominant species of that time together as great companions? Only creatures of noble bearing
could have conceived it. This bond between man and bear was clearly as old as civilization itself,
but had since been strained, even broken by religious dogma. Nonetheless, Darkly protected me
as he would one of his own. This, I felt, was nothing less than an ancient loyalty re-forged. By
some inexplicable vestige of that instinct the bear and I had become close friends. Such was the
strength of the kinship between our two species long ago.

Briefly level, the passage rose again at the bottom of the steps. The amber glow I had
glimpsed on the way down belonged to two more torches on the way up.
This place has been
visited recently.
The corridor widened. My heart raced. At the end, shrouded in shadow, a
raised platform barred the way.

I had an inkling of what to expect. My torch illuminated patterns on the walls and floor
remarkably similar to those in the visitors' crashed vessel. While initially a riot of swirls, the
shapes soon adopted angular designs. The decor just before the dead end could easily have been
Incan or Aztec.

My eyes widened as I crept. I felt as one trespassing on the most sacred of ground.
The gods of Atlantis?
Two gigantic skeletons, sixteen feet long, with twelve arms laid
across their slender chests, rested at peace just a few inches away. They were identical to the one
entombed in their craft. The sight was at once surreal, inspiring and sickening. What had
happened to these extraordinary ambassadors? Where had they come from, and why were they
kept here in secret, deep in the innards of the ziggurat?

Inspecting the skulls more closely, I noticed something very suspicious. A similar,
jagged depression on the side of each head, as if something hard and blunt had hit them. A
solution sprang to mind which, to my surprise, seemed to fit the history of Apterona as told by
the old time-traveler.

The creatures were murdered!

This would account for their sudden disappearance long ago. More troubling was that the
original Kamachej had sought to hide their bodies. This pointed not only to his complicity in the
murders, but to the heritage of his crime having been passed down to his successors, including
Vichama Supay, as part of a distorted, dangerous ideology. That he had visited this tomb recently
suggested that whatever he now had in mind was linked to this travesty of power passed on by his
forebears.

It suddenly made perfect sense. The Kamachej assumed his land was about to be wiped
out by a great flood, and his people with it. What could be better, then, for a King desiring the
traditional, uncontested loyalty of his subjects, than to see the free thinkers eradicated before his
eyes. If he knew of the flood and they did not, he could seek refuge until the flood subsided, and
start the civilization again from scratch.
A genocidal Noah's Ark.

All he needed was a number of royal, loyal guards and handmaidens for propagation,
and enough supplies to survive the flood. The mountains to the east would provide ample
protection from a tidal wave, especially one of the highest peaks. There the royal retreat would
retain for the Kamachej absolute power, while Apterona, and the entirety of its people, were
washed away.

My fist clenched on the handle of my torch. In its violent flame I glimpsed the fiery
apocalypse of my own vision.
Well, in that case he's going to fail on all counts.

Turning to face the corridor, I thought no more of the extraordinary skeletons, or of how
hopelessly lost I was. The Kamachej had left me to die, and likely my friends, too. Only two
things now mattered--to find them and the bears at all costs, and leave Apterona without
delay.

A mute fury propelled me. I returned up the stairs leading from the crypt, seeking to
attack the maze before me.
The key is to find that cell.
My bearings were approximate at
best.

One floor down.
I reached the junction where I had found the torch, and decided
to jog from there. The only untried corridor offered no break in its walls for at least a hundred
feet. I raced excitedly down a new flight of steps. This brought me to the correct floor. From
there, with canny orienteering, I figured the location of the cell holding Darkly and his
family.

Only one door shook on its hinges. As I slid the iron bar free, two tonnes of
Ursus
atlantius
spilled out into the corridor, almost crushing me. Darkly shunted the others aside.
With infinite joy and abundant saliva, he licked my face and neck, before waiting obediently for
my next move.

Imagine seven pairs of huge, adoring eyes staring up at you, filled with hope, reflecting
your incandescent torchlight. Was there any way I could fail? Not until I had seen every one of
them, and my friends, to safety.

Retracing our path through the empty ziggurat, we eventually found the garden of red
leaves and blue flowers. Morning was almost upon us. The balcony overlooked the eastern
continent, a hidden realm cooking in the fumes of death, the doomed cinders of a lost
civilization.

The great mist appeared to have risen since the previous day. It now towered above the
lowest peaks and seemed darker, thicker, more polluted. The series of earth tremors we had
witnessed in the days before concerned me. The last two had been more violent. Was this
enormous swell of fog due to seismic out-gassing? Were we standing on the joint of some
tectonic shift? Indeed, the precursors of destruction had bared themselves all about us:
earthquakes, animal migrations, the Royal retreat, the ticking legacy of Atlantis itself.

How much time do we really have?

I sped to the main staircase, where I came upon two men dressed in attire that seemed
oddly threatening. The reason soon dawned. The cloths covering their private parts and the
string-net masks over their faces made my blood boil.
That
was what the assassins had
worn on that first day in Yaku.
So the Kamachej was behind the attack after all!

The bears gave away our position with reckless roars. There was no turning back.
Unarmed, I had to find a way past the spears of these deadly warriors, in a passage no more than
six feet wide.

I opted for a round of diplomacy. If I were to fall, who would be left to free the others
from imprisonment, if that had indeed been their fate? In any event, I thought it worth a try.
"Guards of the Kamachej, we have no quarrel. As a guest of His Majesty, I simply wish
to pass by. Will you not step aside for a weary traveler and his companions?"

They stood rigid, side by side across the exit. One of them replied, "We shall, Lord
Henry Basingstoke, if you will tell us how you managed such a miraculous escape from the
river." He removed his mask, and I immediately recognized him as one of the guards who had
accompanied us on our northward journey.

But the awe in his words suggested Vichama Supay had not notified him of my return or
imprisonment. I smiled hopefully.

"A good question, my friend," I replied.

There I recounted what had happened that night, everything before the ziggurat. His face
revealed equal parts delight and skepticism, and he eyed the bears closely, yet not, I fear, as
closely as they eyed him. His partner nudged him, and they whispered together. The second
guard finally spoke up. "What is your business on the other side of the palace? His Majesty left during the night.
It is strange he did not warn us of your presence."

"He more than likely forgot. I understand he's been busy of late."

"An understatement," said the first guard. "Close to two hundred people left the Palace
last night, including His Majesty and the Queen. There are but a handful of us left, and we have
sworn to let no one enter. My own wife and child traveled eastward with them."

"Mine, too," said his comrade.

Vichama Supay, it seemed, was not above wrenching families apart in his genocidal
scheme. And he had taken the Queen with him, possibly by force.

I felt confident they would assist me if I tweaked my story a little. One of them had, after
all, shared our apocalyptic vision.

"My business is to find your prince, Puma Pawq'ar. By chance did he leave with the
Kamachej last night?"

"No," replied the first guard.

"Do you know where he is?"

"I was placed on watch shortly before His Majesty Vichama Supay left, and to my
knowledge, the prince has not left the palace at all since his arrival."

"And the others who escaped the river with you?"

"Likewise, they have not passed through this archway. They must be resting with the
prince in his quarters."

It was just as I had suspected. Vichama Supay's entire deception depended on his
populous being unaware of the cataclysm. My friends were therefore liabilities, as was I. Short of
murdering his own son, the only option open to the Kamachej was to imprison us.

"I require just one more favour," I added. "Would you be so good as to show me to the
prince's quarters?"

"Follow me, Lord," he said.

As I passed the great golden arch, I peered out over the western continent. Distant lines
of people wound slowly toward us from each of the three settlements, waking the slopes with a
strange new unrest.
All those people coming here?
The guard had obviously not noticed
it. I chose to stay silent in case he became alarmed and returned to his post. Oblivious, he led us
deep inside the ziggurat, ever downward.

We finally arrived at a locked wooden door, which the man refused to touch. I unbarred
it and, dispensing with the formal etiquette, wrenched it open . The guard and I entered together.
There were four figures inside, whose deafening cries of joy rang as sweet peals in my heart.
Rodrigo, K'achita, Pacal Votan and Puma Pawq'ar raced to greet me.

"Lord!"

"Baz!"

At that moment, as the bears filed into the room, I heard the door slam shut behind us.
Whipping my head round, I saw no sign of our escort. An excruciating despair flushed through
me.
No! Please, no!
The sly guard had waited patiently for a way to dispense with me,
and here it was, handed to him with unforgivable ease.

But when I lunged for the door, it opened without trouble. Streaks of blood smeared the
walls and floor of the corridor outside. The guard's dead body lay torn apart at the neck. Darkly
had apparently waited in the corridor, behind the open door, in case of another imprisonment. As
the guard must not have been aware of this, his attempt to lock us in was cut brutally short.

On top of instinct, the bear had also displayed a canny intelligence. Having trusted the
guard completely, I now felt like a complete buffoon. Darkly, on the other hand, had saved the
day yet again.

"My friends," I said, turning to the captives, "I bid you greet a most extraordinary
animal."

The four of them bowed as one, a gesture to which the bear didn't even bat an eyelid.
Instead, his nostrils flared and his spattered jaw quivered, awaiting, as always, my lead.

I insisted we exit at once. Where there should have been five captives, there were only
four. The time-traveler was not with them.

Rodrigo assured me the old man had disappeared some time between disembarking from
the longboats and entering the ziggurat. "Without warning or explanation," he added. "I've never
known anyone go from saying too much to saying nothing, and all the while retain the same air
of mystery."

I pondered that for a moment, after which I gave no further thought to the old traveler.
Puma Pawq'ar was the only one who acted out the gravity of our predicament. His solemn,
stubborn temperament was more akin to that of the bears. He had, after all, been tasked with a
tremendous burden, one which must have weighed on him like the sky on Atlas. Through the
abdication of his father, the Prince had now inherited perhaps the most unenviable reign of all
time, over the final days of Atlantis.

Stopping at the ziggurat entrance, the twelve of us observed something absolutely
unprecedented.

The Apteronians' migration had grown exponentially. It was inching over each and every
hillock like floodwater during a inland overspill. I had no idea what had provoked this migration,
only that it was headed straight for us.

"Someone must have leaked the news," said Rodrigo, calm as ever.

"But which news?" asked K'achita. "The disaster or the abdication of His Majesty?"

"By the number of people and their destination, I'll say both," I replied.

Both Puma and Pacal agreed. Darkly and the bears pressed between us and prowled the
highest steps, unable to settle. The mass of Apteronians drew nearer. The first of them filed along
the river, through the cleft of two hills a quarter mile to our left.

Individuals, couples, entire families tentatively approached the base of the ziggurat.
They gazed up at us and pointed. Their collective whispers soon surrounded the palace like a
tumultuous sea. Dawn light shone over the crowd. The colors of their clothing formed a shifting,
swirling rainbow.