Atlantis Fallen (The Heartstrike Chronicles Book 1)

by C. E. Murphy

  "The University liked his donation. We rebuilt it from the inside out for this project. The equipment's not quite as modern as I'd like, but funding doesn't keep up with technology."

  "I'd ask if there have been funding problems, but I spent the last decade in research."

  Ghean shot Lorhen an amused look. "Have they gotten stingy?" she asked, deliberately not naming the Keepers aloud. "When I worked with them, they were remarkably generous."

  "You probably fluttered your eyelashes at the bureaucrats. I didn't even recognize my own boss. Funding wasn't a particular concern of his, not for someone who insisted on chasing wild goose tales without any sort of verification over centuries at a time. Really, I don't know how skeptics like that get into the organization." "

  Michelle Powers, flushed pink with heat, joined the pair as Lorhen finished speaking. "Dr. Adams?"

  "The same," Lorhen agreed, and offered his hand. "Dr. Powers, I presume."

  "A pleasure. You're younger than I expected." She took his hand and offered him a cursory smile, the kind that women put on in order to prevent male coworkers from considering them bitchy. A genuine smile tugged the corner of Lorhen's mouth in return, and it warmed Powers' smile considerably.

  "I'm older than I look," Lorhen promised her. "No one wants to take me seriously because my face doesn't seem to want to age. I expect I'll be grateful for that in a few decades. In the meantime—well, Mary told you I'm something of a recluse. An inability to look properly old and stuffy is part of why I am." Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Ghean lift a hand to cover a broad smile.

  "Well, that's a trait you share with Mary. I've known her six years and I swear she hasn't aged a day."

  Ghean let her smile come through. "I'm short and exceptionally good at applying makeup. It creates a facade."

  "I'm good at applying makeup," Powers said dryly. "If I'm good, you must be a wizard. Mary said you two were old friends, Dr. Adams. Was she always this modest?"

  "Mmm," Lorhen said thoughtfully, then shook his head. "No. It wasn't that she thought the sun rose and set on her, mind you." He warded off Ghean's pretense of a blow with mock alarm, cringing back with a smile before straightening. She folded her arms, deliberately pouting, and Lorhen couldn't help another smile. "The sun did rise and set on her," he said, watching the tiny woman. "She just never knew how much light she brought with her."

  Ghean's expression softened a little, and Lorhen looked away to catch Powers' look of amusement. If he was getting sentimental, at least there was an audience to enjoy it. The tense exchange at the B&B seemed to have blown over. Lorhen was relieved; he'd handled it inelegantly, and had no desire to spend several days cooped up with an edgy Timeless.

  "I'm sorry you weren't able to join us at Saturday's dinner party. It was something of a fundraiser, but there were a number of ancient-world scholars there. I'm sure your input would have been fascinating. Mary said you weren't feeling well after the long plane flight."

  Lorhen's eyebrows went up a little. "A little of that, and a little terminal shyness, I think it was. I've never thought my social skills were my strongest point." He looked over Powers' head at Ghean, one eyebrow lifting higher. Ghean shrugged, failing to look even slightly apologetic. Lorhen grinned in spite of himself. The conversation hadn't blown over. Ghean had deliberately failed to mention the dinner in retaliation for his honesty. It made him something of a boor in the eyes of his new colleagues, and that, evidently, leveled the playing field. "Touche'," he mouthed at Ghean, and her lips twitched in acknowledgment.

  "…you specialized in ancient languages? Is that correct, Dr. Adams?"

  Lorhen blinked, turning his focus onto Dr. Powers again. "Logan," he said absently. "We're going to be working together, after all. No need for such formality. Myths and languages, yes. They tend to go hand in hand. It's difficult to decipher old texts if you know nothing of the language. I like to think of myself as a purist, translating as accurately as possible."

  "It's a pity we'll never know how accurate any of our translations are," Powers said. "There are moments when I reel with the arrogance of trying to choose the best words for languages dead thousands of years."

  "Oh? Are you a translator, Dr. Powers?"

  "Michelle," Powers corrected, "if I'm supposed to call you Logan. No," she added hastily, "not myself. Man in general, I meant."

  Lorhen twisted half a smile. "From the myths and legends we do have, I think it's safe to say that arrogance is a failing mankind has had since history began, and no doubt long before."

  Ghean eyed Lorhen, murmuring, "You would know," before saying, more audibly, "They've finally got the gangplank down. Shall we board?"

  The ship managed to be bigger inside than it was outside, though it wasn't small from the outside. They were conspicuously abandoned by on deck by Dr. Powers, so Ghean showed Lorhen down to the tiny cabin that was his quarters. "It's a little isolated," she said, navigating the narrow passageways, "but I thought you might prefer that. Michelle's cabin is down on the other end, next to mine. She tried very hard to exchange yours for hers."

  Lorhen smirked. "She and Cathal should talk," he said softly, and glanced into the cabin. He had no more than two inches of clearance above his head. The decor was compact, unattractive, and extremely functional. A hard-looking bed with a blanket turned at military corners filled one wall; a shelf above it with webbing across the opening allowed a place to store luggage. Lorhen dropped his small suitcase on the bed for the moment, turning to survey the rest of the room. A desk and a closet took up the other long wall; if he stood in the middle and stretched his arms, he could touch both walls.

  "Small," Ghean said dryly, "but you weren't expected."

  "Why do I have the feeling you insisted that I would be content with standard quarters, despite having handed over an obscene amount of money to your excavation fund?"

  Ghean flashed a smile. "Because it wouldn't make any sense to donate all that money and then use it to fix up a room so you could live in indulgent comfort while joining us on the explorations."

  Lorhen snorted. "Of course. Well, it's fine. I've lived in worse."

  "Besides." Ghean's smile was abruptly underscored by a veneer of steel. "It's my party, and I don't want anyone to forget that. Including you."

  For a moment Lorhen was captivated by the zeal in her eyes. Reflected in the excitement there was a girl anticipating a journey home, her wedding day, a lifetime with her beloved. The motion of lowering his head to kiss her was checked just as the muscles began to tense; instead, Lorhen lifted a hand to flick a salute at her. "Aye, aye, ma'am."

  She ignored him. "There are reports in the conference room, or what we call the conference room, anyway. It's actually the mess hall. You may wish to look at them. They detail what we've found so far. You'll probably want the information so you don't overstep the limits of our current knowledge."

  Lorhen nodded. Leaving his coat behind, he followed Ghean through the narrow halls to the galley. As she opened the door, he laughed. "Where do you actually eat?"

  There wasn't a flat surface in the room, including the floor, that wasn't stacked with in-boxes clamped, screwed, and occasionally tied in place, all filled with files, papers, and maps. Some of the boxes were more precariously balanced than others—more than one was bungee-corded onto a chair that had been bolted or tied to the floor—and the only way to find a seat was to judge which box was least likely to capsize if moved, and how to anchor it once it was set aside. Fluorescent light glared down on the papers, reflecting brilliantly off the grey walls. Without the masses of paperwork, the room would be extraordinarily dull; with them, Lorhen had to squint briefly while his eyes adjusted to the peculiar light level.

  "Usually frantically running down the hallways. Mealtime seems to signal either a disaster or a discovery, around here." Ghean rifled through a stack of plastic boxes to find what she wanted. "This," she said, and laid out a fat pamphlet on the table, "and this and this." She planted two
more texts, of increasing thickness, on top of the first. "Geologic history of the Mediterranean," she said, tapping the top one, then bumping it aside half an inch to prod the second. "A history of the project," and she pushed it away to get to the third. "And a location record and theories on use of the artifacts we've found. Some of them are painfully wrong. Worse than watching the floodlights ghosting over houses I once visited is hearing the wildly inaccurate hypotheses the other archaeologists are coming up with. Don't you want to shake them and yell until they listen, sometimes?"

  "I tend to bury that desire in my own best self-interest," Lorhen said, "but there are moments, yes. These days, I go rant at Devane when a particularly disastrous interpretation makes the news." He frowned at the stack Ghean had set aside for him. "Actually, that's how I ended up here. I was going to poke fun at the poor fool who thought he'd found Atlantis." He looked up at Ghean, expression wry. "Goodness, wasn't I surprised."

  Ghean laughed, and moved an eighteen-inch pile of papers off a chair, depositing them neatly on the floor instead. "Sit," she said, "and read. I'll make a concerted effort to not surprise you again for at least fifteen minutes. You're much more pleasant when you think you're in control." She walked past him, then stopped with her hand on the doorknob, looking at him curiously. After a moment she shook her had and stepped out, letting the door latch behind her.

  Lorhen frowned after her. "Everybody's more pleasant when they think they're in control. It's a very nice illusion," he muttered, and sat, turning the frown on the pile Ghean had left him. Then the lure of research seized him, and he pulled the first report toward himself, beginning to read.

  Ghean tapped a forefinger against her thigh as she walked back down the hall from the ship's mess. It's obvious, now that we've hit on it, the patient one murmured. Lorhen's security blanket is control.

  She mumbled, "Mmm," aloud. "He was in control all the time in Atlantis, wasn't he?"

  He had the time to anticipate his options, the patient one agreed. The circumstances may have changed from moment to moment, but never too drastically. There was always time to think and choose.

  Never enough time, the frightened one muttered. Can't choose that fast.

  For once the patient one listened to the frightened one, considering. Perhaps it's more likely he played out potential confrontations and events well ahead of time, it suggested. Factoring in what he knew of human behavior to determine the most likely course of events and how to deal with them.

  "Gods, that would be exhausting," Ghean protested.

  We do not know him at all, the patient one said severely. We had no appreciation of how little we could understand him, in Atlantis. Our childhood experiences with him were less than a single facet of the man.

  "He tried," Ghean said. "He tried to show us more when he told us about being Timeless."

  We lacked in sophistication. The patient one brushed aside Ghean's argument. That lack thwarted his ability to expose himself to us, as much as his own habits of privacy did. In time, with maturity, we would have understood him better.

  But we had no time, the frightened one hissed. We only had darkness and the sea, forever and ever. When will we go home?

  Time should have been ours, the patient one said soothingly. We'll regain it when we we take his Blending. It won't be quite the same, but it will be deeply satisfying. The centuries we missed will be ours, and we will rebuild Atlantis. Patience. All we need is patience.

  Ghean rubbed her fingertip against the gold of her ring, feeling the smooth surface bump slightly over the scars. "He was in control until the earthquake," she suggested. "That's when he panicked, that's when he ran. Even some Atlanteans kept their fear of earthquakes all their lives." A smile flitted across her face. "I might be able to forgive him for panicking."

  'You're asking me to be sorry for putting my survival first, and I won't do that,' the patient one reminded her with a snap. His words. It wasn't panic. He chose to run. He knew we would be resurrected from the blow that felled us, and still he ran. He was so certain that choice was right that he would offer neither apology for it nor lie to spare us. He was in control. We shouldn't doubt that. We shouldn't forgive him for that choice.

  Ghean made her way up to deck, leaning on the railing. Wind pushed hair back from her face, and she bared her teeth into it. You're right, she acknowledged the patient one silently.

  There won't be any more surprises, then, the patient one said. We'll allow him apparent control over our relationship with him, tenuous as it is. It will make betraying him in the end that much more satisfying, watching him grasp at threads he thought he'd woven as they come unraveled around him.

  Betrayal, the frightened one whispered hungrily.

  Down in the galley, Lorhen leaned back, rubbing his eyes with one hand. It was no wonder new archaeological treasures kept being discovered on the Mediterranean floor, despite it being well-explored. A history of the seabed activity detailed earthquakes of a 4.0 magnitude or higher occurring at least yearly for most of the last century, and sometimes there were many in a year. While not enough to do much more than rumble on land, and knock a few jars off their shelves, every quake did resettle the sea floor a little. Eventually it made a difference, exposing new land and what it carried for explorers to find. It seemed almost inevitable that Atlantis would have been found. Ghean's knowledge of where her ancient home had been merely made it easier.

  The report actually traced the seabed's history back several thousand years, citing quakes that had rocked the Mediterranean area more than three thousand years ago. One or two had been significant enough that Lorhen actually remembered them; his own journals cited the volcanic eruptions and earthquakes when Pompeii was buried and preserved forever in a fall of ash. Much earlier, while Lorhen rode with the Unending, had been the destruction of Minoan Crete. Both disasters had made Lorhen curious as to whether or not they'd been triggered by Timeless fighting on holy ground. It had only been a year or two since Emma Hickman had confirmed that the eruption at Pompeii, at least, had been. So I was right, Lorhen thought, deliberately shaping the words as a remembrance to Minyah. That is always satisfying.

  He picked up the earthquake report again, flipping through it to the early twentieth century. Ghean had broken free from her prison in the early months of World War I, she'd said. From the report, Lorhen guessed an earthquake in October of 1914 was the one that had finally twisted the temple stone enough to give way a little. Its epicenter had been considerably north of Atlantis' location, but it had measured a 7.7, enough to do damage over a widespread area.

  Lorhen looked through the other reports perfunctorily. Had he not known the truth, the history of the development of the Atlantis Project would have been fascinating. As it was, Lorhen had a difficult time reading it as anything other than a cover story. It was a good one: young Mary Kostani's remarkable education and passion for finding the lost civilization could and had inspired research and funding on a cause most scholars would prefer to leave alone for fear of ridicule. The report was liberally scattered with instances of 'genius' and 'prodigy' by Ghean's colleagues. Lorhen grinned every time he came across them. 'Astonishing leaps of intuition leading to daring precepts about the day to day lives of ancient citizens'. Ghean must love the accolades, he thought; he certainly would. He was surprised she didn't have to go through a door sideways to accommodate the ego the report must have given her. Of course, he thought with a smirk, she was short.

  The final report dealt with what they'd found and what they thought of it. Halfway through a minutely detailed description of a mug inscribed with a bull, Lorhen let the papers fall to his lap and frowned at the far wall. Someone was going to find the Hunter House's symbol, sooner or later. Michelle Powers, at the very least, was going to recognize it as matching Ghean's necklace. Lorhen looked at the description again, glancing over the accounting of the circle and the points within it that circled the bull's head. Save for the object inside the circle, Ghean's necklace was identic
al. Somebody should have noticed that already. Maybe Ghean had confessed her immortality to Powers.

  Lorhen rejected the thought out of hand. Powers wouldn't have made a joke about Ghean's apparent failure to age if he'd known she was Timeless. Perhaps Ghean simply had a prepared explanation already, because she certainly couldn't be that clumsy. Or perhaps she could be. For a woman who had survived well over four millennia, Ghean was still very young.

  A warning rush of nausea swept through him. Lorhen stood, reaching for his sword, and then let his hand fall away, on the chance that Ghean was not alone. He did, however, step around the table, so it was between him and the door when it opened a moment later. Ghean leaned on the doorknob, brown eyes dancing. After a quick look over her shoulder to be certain no one had followed her, she smiled at Lorhen. "We're almost there. The ship will be anchoring in a few minutes, and we'll drop down for a preliminary dive this afternoon to decide what area we want to begin in. Well, Lorhen. Are you ready to go back to Atlantis?"

  28

  The little submarine held six, seven if everyone was on good terms and one was as tiny as Ghean. Lorhen had no idea how the University had been able to afford it. His best guess was that Ghean had, via a sponsor, fronted the money. Even in as little as a century, it was easy to build up a mass of cash, if you knew you would outlive any fluctuations in the stock market. There'd also been the account he'd opened in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. She'd found the rest of the notes he'd left her; she certainly should have found and used that account. It must have accumulated a pretty bit of cash, in the decades it lay untouched, and he couldn't imagine that she wouldn't use it for her Atlantis project.

  Because unlike the Retribution, the sub's equipment was state of the art. It didn't look more than fifteen feet from end to end, and a significant portion of the walls were filled with computer screens. The pilot's seat and array covered most of the front end, tiny windows of information beeping quietly as they displayed and redisplayed data, updating it every few seconds. Immediately behind and to the left of the cockpit, an alarming-looking armed waldo was set up in front of the largest screen, which flickered grey. Opposite it was a camera, set up at an angle to look out a porthole, and next to that, a seat. The back of another terminal setup made a back for the seat at exactly the wrong height to provide comfort. The rest of the submarine's interior essentially reflected the layout of the camera and seat, with an extraneous porthole at the tail end. In front of both, sturdy black metal boxes, one with 'electrical equipment' stenciled on the outside, had been stacked up to make haphazard chairs.