But I had only two choices, to reveal myself or to put him into trance and calm him down. I opted for the second choice, and he slumped and lay still.
For a time I was afraid to do anything else. Then, gradually, I began to explore the upper levels of his mind.
What I discovered was—as I suspected—that I hadn’t done a complete enough job of editing out the memory of seeing your letter. He remembered just enough of it, and of the earlier letter of mine that he had seen that time when his steward had walked in on him aboard the ship. That led him to think about the odd stumble he had taken that afternoon, and the “stroke” he had suffered when I originally entered his mind weeks ago, and the strange sorenesses in his arm, and various other little curiosities directly related to my presence within him. And he had jumped to exactly the correct conclusion. The Prince is a highly intelligent man, you know.
I couldn’t hope to cancel out all his justified suspicions by tinkering now with his mind. That would involve so much messing around that I’d certainly do great damage. I couldn’t leave him conked out on the floor, either. So I settled for reaching in here and there and returning his hormonal flow to make him as calm as possible. And then I brought him out of trance.
He sat up, frowning, shaking his head. But he didn’t try to communicate with me again. Simply arose, paced around the room a few times, put his head out the window, took three very deep breaths. And called his steward, and asked for a flagon of wine. Sipped a little of it. Sat staring at nothing in particular for a while, his mind almost blank. Finally said his prayers, got into bed, dropped into a deep sleep. Now it’s almost morning. He hasn’t awakened.
My whole mission’s in danger now. I’m going to have to be extra careful about everything I do. I know he’s still convinced that there’s a demon in him. And he’s right. The intensity of his reaction was truly frightening. I don’t want him driving himself into seizures of some sort—or having a mental breakdown that could affect his position as heir to the throne. Probably I can take the risk of continuing to use him to write these letters while he’s under trance, but otherwise I’ll have to lay low. If worst comes to worst I may even have to abandon the whole project and return ahead of schedule to Home Era. We’ll see. Keep your fingers crossed for me, love. More later, I hope.
Continued, the following day.
They have had a rite of exorcism to drive me out of the Prince’s mind. Obviously, it didn’t work. Even so, my position remains very precarious.
The first thing Ram did upon awakening was to summon the Counsellor Teneristis, who is a vizier of the realm and has been the Prince’s special mentor for many years. Teneristis is a very short, brusque old man, businesslike and tough, with two thick tufts of wiry white hair that stick out comically from the sides of his head like horns. There’s nothing in the least comic about him, though.
The Prince said, “There is a demon in me. It turns my mind dark and makes me see and do things I do not understand.”
“You will go to the Labyrinth, then,” Teneristis replied instantly. “You have sinned, or no demon could have entered you. And in the Labyrinth you will be purged of your sin.”
The Labyrinth! Shades of Theseus and the Minotaur! But this isn’t Crete and the myth of Theseus won’t be invented for more thousands of years than I want to think about. The Labyrinth of Athilan isn’t a prison for a monster, it’s a holy sanctuary, located in a maze of dark musty caverns halfway up the flank of Mount Balamoris. My guess is that the caverns are natural ones, most likely part of the intricate geological plumbing that lies beneath most volcanos—all those tubes and vents and conduits and whatnot that a volcano creates as it rises. This volcano has been dormant for a long time and the Athilantans have honeycombed these warrens along its slopes with a network of sacred shrines.
It’s a beautiful mountain. So peaceful, so lovely, that you tend to forget that one morning in the very near future it’s going to come roaring back to life and destroy this whole fantastic civilization.
Alone, the Prince rode out in the early mists of morning through the white and glittering streets of Athilan, past temples and palaces, past villas and parks, up the glorious green slopes of the foothills of Mount Balamoris. And tethered his horse, and knelt, and prayed. And walked without hesitation toward the narrow mouth of the Labyrinth.
It was a bare slit, unmarked, unadorned, fairly high up the mountain. He stepped through it into an eight-sided chamber lined with white-and-blue tiles that led to a paved passageway heading inward and downward. The chamber was lit by three electrical lamps that gave off a rich golden glow. The passageway wasn’t lit at all beyond the first twenty paces. Dimness engulfed him, and then even the dimness gave way to the complete absence of light. For what seemed like hours he spiraled down and down and down, far beyond the reach of the deepest beam of light, into a realm of terrifying darkness.
In that utter blackness your only guide is the sequence of smooth high-relief carvings on the walls. You grope your way, feeling for the age-old holy images, “reading” the walls with your hands. There is a logical pattern to the order of the images that makes sense to an Athilantan, though not to me, and so long as you can summon up the proper passages from the religious teachings you have studied, you’ll be able to find your way. If you become confused even in the slightest detail, you get lost immediately and the chances of your being able to get out again are extremely small. So Teneristis was taking a considerable risk with the heir to the throne by sending him to the Labyrinth.
The Prince didn’t seem worried. He moved along briskly, passing his hands over this carving and that one. He appeared to know what to expect as he went, and he always found it. There was only one moment—a bad one—when he paused after stroking one of the carvings and a jolt of uncertainty went through him like a spear, leaving a trail of jitter-hormones in his veins. But he halted, took a few deep breaths, forced himself to a state of icy calm, touched the carving again.
This time he found the clue that he had missed before, a double zigzag of lines to the left of the main image.
Breathing more easily, he went onward.
And on and on, down and down.
The walls of the passageway were narrower here, and lower. He had to stoop and shuffle. The air grew warmer. He was wearing nothing but a loincloth, but even so, he became slippery with sweat. Though his mind was at ease— cool, confident—there was the awareness of danger not very far from the center of his soul. All he needed to do was take one wrong turn and he would lose himself beyond all hope. A terrible death, alone down there in the sweltering darkness, crying out for food, for water, for light.
Then I felt his heart thump with joy and he came suddenly around a sharp bend of the corridor into a place where he could actually see.
This was the end of the line, the core of the Labyrinth, the penitential chamber.
It was a circular room, dome-roofed, with an opening in the floor at its very center. Light came up through that opening—red, flickering light, the flaming heart of the world glowing up through the bowels of the volcano. Peering over the edge, Ram could see, and I saw with him, rosy pools of fiery lava far below, sluggishly tossing and stirring. Gusts of hot wind rose from them. And, staring down into that distant churning furnace, I saw the death of Atlantis waiting to burst loose.