“Shove us off, Uldin,” Erissa murmured. “Duncan, can you help me row? He catches too many crabs, makes too much noise.” So she must have brought the craft in alone, the last several hundred yards or more.
The Hun also made a clatter getting around the dismounted mast and yard, and Reid’s stomach twinged. But nobody called, nobody stirred; in holy peace, the Goddess’ isle still slept. Very faintly, oars creaked in tholes and blades dripped. “Midbay,” Erissa told Uldin, who sat silhouetted in the sternsheets as quartermaster.
When they rested, becalmed under moon and mountain on glass-dark water, Erissa said, “Duncan, this whole winter—” and moved over against him. He thought ... he had too many thoughts whirling together ... he made himself know what she had endured for his sake, and was as kind as he was able.
The embrace didn’t take long. Uldin hawked. Erissa disengaged herself. “We’d best plan,” she said unevenly.
“Uh, I-I-let’s exchange information,” stumbled out of Reid. “What’s happened?”
In short harsh sentences, she told him. At the end, she said, “We docked today. Uldin stayed in the boat. If noticed, he’d be taken for an outland slave whose foot must not touch Atlantean soil. Otherwise there could have been questions. I took ashore a tale of distress and a bracelet to trade for respectable clothes.” (Reid remembered anew that this was a world without coinage—bars of metal were the nearest thing to a standard medium of exchange, and none too commonly used—and he wondered belatedly if that was what he should have introduced.) “I witnessed the dancing.” He had seldom heard such pain in so quiet a voice. She swallowed and continued: “In the merrymaking afterward, folk mingling freely in streets and inns, I had no trouble finding out what had become of you. Or what they were told had become of you. That story about your meditating was flat—clearly a lie. Knowing you were in the temple, I knew what part it had to be and how best to get there when everyone had gone to sleep. On the water, I changed back to this garb to spare the good that will be needed later. And we fetched you.”
“I couldn’t have done the same,” he mumbled. “Instead, I’m the fool who let out the secret.” He was glad his back was to the moon while he related.
In the end, she caught his hands. “Duncan, it was defined. And how could you have known? I, I should have foreseen, should have thought to warn—to find a way for us to flee Athens before—”
“Rein in,” Uldin said. “What’ll we do now?”
“Go on to Crete,” Erissa replied. “I can find my parents’ house, where I ... will be dwelling. And my father had ... has the ear of a palace councilor or two.”
Cold moved down from Reid’s scalp along his backbone and out to his fingertips. “No, wait,” he said.
The idea had burst upon him. “We’d take days to cross the channel in this boat, and we’d arrive beggarly,” he explained. “But yonder’s the new warship. And the crew. I know where every member lives. They’ve no reason not to trust me. That ship will speak for us, and, and maybe it’ll fight for Keft—Fast!” His oar smacked into the lagoon.
Erissa’s followed. She matched him stroke for stroke. Presently his arms ached and his wind grew short. “How shall they leave without the temple stopping them?” she asked.
We must be seaborne before the temple suspects any-thing,” Reid panted. “Let me think.” After a minute: “Yes. One lad can carry word to two more, who each tell two more, and so on. They’ll obey, at least to the extent of meeting at the wharf. And the first I have in mind will follow us anywhere we say, over world-edge if need be. Dagonas—”
He stopped. Erissa had missed a stroke.
She resumed in a moment. “Dagonas,” she said, and that was all.
“How’ll we proceed?” Uldin asked. Reid told them.
They tied up alongside the rammer and scrambled ashore. Nobody else seemed awake. Houses were pale beneath the moon, streets guts of blackness, Dogs howled.
The uphill run soon had Reid staggering, fire in his lungs. But he wasn’t about to collapse before Erissa and ... that swine Uldin.... “Here.” He leaned against the adobe wall, shivering, head awhirl. Uldin pounded on the door for what seemed a long while.
It creaked open at last. A household servant blinked sleepily, lamp in hand. Reid had gotten back some strength. “Quick,” he exclaimed. “I must see your master. And the young master. At once. Life and death.”
She recognized him. He wondered what was in his expression to make her quail. She couldn’t have seen Uldin or Erissa as more than shadows. “Yes. sir, yes, sir. Please come in. I’ll call them.”
She led the way to the atrium. “Please wait here, sirs, my lady.” The chamber was well furnished; this was a rich family. A fresco of cranes in flight made vivid one wall; by another, a candle burned before the shrine of the Goddess. Erissa stood for a bit while Reid paced and Uldin squatted. Then, slowly, she knelt to the image. Her hands were pressed together so tightly that, however uncertain this light, Reid could see how the blood was driven from the nails.
The appearance of Dagonas and his father brought her to her feet. Perhaps only Reid noticed how the breath went ragged in her throat or how red and white ebbed across her face. Otherwise she stayed motionless and expressionless. Dagonas looked at her, and away, and back again. Puzzlement drew a slight crease between his large dark eyes, under his tumbled dark bangs.
“My lord Duncan.” The father bowed. “You honor our house. But what brings you here at so strange an hour?”
“A stranger reason, and terrible,” Reid answered. “Tonight the Goddess sent these twain, who made fully clear to me what those dreams mean that have been their forerunners.”
He invented most of the story as he went along. The truth would have spilled more time than he, than anyone could afford. Erissa, a Keftiu lady resident in Mycenae, and Uldin, a trader from the Black Sea who had come to Tiryns, had likewise had troublous dreams. They sought the same oracle, which commanded them both to go to Atlantis and warn the foreigner in the temple to heed his own visions. As further evidence of wrath to, come, they were told that they would witness a human sacrifice during the journey. This they took to be the shipwreck of the vessel they were on, from which they alone escaped. An Achaean fisherman on the island to which they swam carried them here, in his boat—miracle in itself—but said he ought not to land on the holy isle; and when they brought Reid back, the fisherman was gone.
There could be no delay. Every person with any real civil, or religious authority was in Knossos. Reid must bring his warning to them and toithe Minos as fast as possible. Never mind what the Ariadne had decreed. Let the new galley be manned and provisioned and depart at once.
For the dream was that Atlantis would soon sink, in fire and wild waters. Let its people, break off their feasting, let them take every boat to sea and wait. Else they would join those sailors that the angry gods had already drowned.
“I—” The older man shook his head, stunned. “I know not what to believe.”
“Nor did I, until this final sign came to me,” Reid replied.
He had fabled and talked mechanically, his consciousness wandering; for he knew he would reach Knossos where the girl awaited him. Now his mind came back. The man and boy, aroused wife and children and servants who stood fearfully in the door, became real; they could love and mourn and die. He said to Dagonas, “Crete will suffer wide destruction too. Won’t you help me rescue Erissa?”
“Oh, yes, oh, yes.” The boy started off at a trot which quickened toward a run.
His father’s voice stopped him: “Wait! Let me think—”
“I cannot linger,” Dagonas answered. He did briefly, though, gazing at Erissa. “You look like her,” he said. “We are kin.” Her tone was faint. “Go,”