“So it was not a great victory? You were outnumbered. And you said the enemy fights fiercest when they are defending their homes.”
“The Antirhonian army was militia,” Leonidas said. “They drill twice a year, between their time in the fields. Their commander was a fool to charge—they aren’t used to running that far with armor. But he had no real choice once he opened the gates. We would have out-waited them, let the fear grow in their bellies until they would have broken without a fight.”
“Even though he knew he would lose, he ordered the charge anyway?”
“Yes.”
“That’s insane.”
“It’s war.”
“Men.” The way Cyra said the one word indicated a wealth of feelings, none of them good.
“Did you see the women lining the walls of the city?” Leonidas asked. “Waiting to see the blood? It is not just men.”
“True,” Cyra acknowledged. “Your women lined the road and sang a hymn as you led the army off to battle. Perhaps the problem is that men have something that women need and women have something men need.”
Leonidas turned in the saddle. “What do you mean?”
Cyra tapped her chest. “I don’t think we’re complete. We’re all lacking something.”
“And that is?”
“I don’t know. But I do think that if we don’t change, there is no future for mankind.”
***************
Jamsheed had just finished relating to Xerxes what Leonidas’s response to the Persian offer had been. The Persian King had expected that answer, although he had hoped to gain more time.
“And their army?” Xerxes asked.
“Half has moved to the west. Half remains in Sparta.”
“The west?” Xerxes was puzzled. He was seated in his throne at the head of his dining table in the Imperial Tent. His generals were gathered around the table and Pandora was to his right rear. The army was stopped for night, with thousands of campfires around the tent, like a field of stars, indicating the expanse of the army. They had encountered no resistance and had already crossed a third of Greece.
“They secure the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth, my King” Jamsheed said.
“And none move north?”
“Three hundred, my Lord.”
“Three hundred?” Xerxes laughed. He had more than three times that number of Immortals gathered around his Imperial Tent. “What of this Spartan King?” he asked. “What kind of man is he?”
“He killed one of his own men in front of me, Lord.”
Xerxes leaned forward slightly. “Why?”
“The man deigned to speak for Sparta. Leonidas killed him without any warning.”
“So he is a man prone to rash action?” Xerxes asked.
Jamsheed frowned as he considered that. “No, my Lord, I do not think so. I believe he is a man prone to bold and decisive action if it is required.”
Xerxes laughed. “That may well be, but he marches west instead of north.”
“There is something else, my Lord,” Jamsheed said nervously.
“Yes?”
“There was someone with Leonidas, Lord. A priestess. From Delphi?”
“And?”
“Delphi is the home of an Oracle—a seer—a very famous one in whose words the Greeks place great weight. Leonidas was coming from Delphi when I met him, which was strange to start with as the Spartans as the least likely of all the Greek states to listen to Oracles.”
Xerxes was picking at the food on his golden plate. “The point?”
“This Delphic priestess knew of Pandora,” Jamsheed said.
Xerxes arched an eyebrow and half-turned in his throne. “She did? And what did she know of Pandora?”
“She said you should not trust her, Lord.”
Xerxes raised a hand as Pandora was about to speak, silencing her. “Did this priestess say why?” He turned back to Jamsheed.
“She said that the entire future of the world, east versus west, was in the balance.”
“That much is true,” Xerxes said, “but what does that have to do with Pandora?”
“The priestess also said that you should weigh the words of Pandora very carefully, my Lord. And that Pandora does not speak for Persia or for Greece and that you should find where her true allegiance lies.”
Xerxes nodded. “Wise words.” He twitched a finger, indicating for Pandora to come in front of him. “What do you say in response to the words of this Greek priestess?”
Pandora’s answer was quick. “She seeks to sow discord in your camp, my Lord.”
“And you?” Xerxes asked. “What do you seek?”
“Your victory over the Greeks, Lord.”
“But you also plan other things,” Xerxes noted. “Taking the child out of that town was one. What else do you have planned that I do not know about?”
“Nothing, my Lord. The Greek priestess lies.”
He turned back to his ambassador. “The three hundred Spartans. Where do they march?”
“I do not know, Lord. I received a report from a spy while I was on my way here. The spy only said they left Sparta and were moving to the north and east.”
“So they could be going to Athens? Perhaps a delegation?”
“No, my Lord. This morning I received another report positioning the three hundred north of Athens and marching hard. That report is several days old.”
Xerxes looked down the table to his senior general. “How long until we get to the pass?”
“We will be there tomorrow, lord.” The general cleared his throat. “Three hundred Spartans cannot hold a mile wide pass,” he added.
Xerxes shifted his gaze to Pandora. “True, they couldn’t.”
***************
Polynices’s fingers were torn and bleeding, yet he still joked as he lifted stones and put them in place. Blood oozed through his sandals but he showed no sign of discomfort as he moved about. The wall was now chest high and spanned the entire width of the narrowest part of the Gates of Fire. Torches were spaced ever ten meters and sputtered in the growing darkness.
The old warrior paused in the work as a well-mounted skiritai came galloping up the pass from the north. Polynices sat down on top of the wall, his feet dangling as he waited for the scout to ride up.
“Report,” Polynices ordered as the man dismounted.
“The Persians are less than a day’s march from here. If they march in the morn, they will be here before nightfall.”
“Have they sent out patrols?”
“No.”
Polynices found that strange. He could only assume that the Persians were so confident in their numbers that they felt no need to scout their path. The skiritai was looking about, first at the wall, then up at the sky.
“What is wrong?” Polynices asked, noting the strange look that had come over the man’s face.
“The sky was clear when I entered the pass,” the ranger said, “but now it is overcast and it appears as if it will storm.”
Polynices looked up. He could see no stars and the moon had not yet risen. There was a flicker of lightning inside a cloud above them. Polynices could have sworn the sky was clear just a moment ago when the skiritai arrived. A gust of wind blew off the mountain causing the ache in his old bones to match the pain from his feet and hands. He slid off the wall, wincing despite his best efforts as his feet hit the hard ground.
“Back to work!”
As if to emphasize the command, a long peel of thunder echoed off the mountainside above the three hundred.
***************
Leonidas pulled his cloak tight around his body, but the thin material did little to stop the freezing wind that found every niche in his armor and swirled underneath.
“Come on!” Cyra was ten feet ahead of him, gesturing. “Hurry!”
Leonidas dug the hard edge of his ox-hide sandals into the side of the horse. The animal was loath to move forward, fighting him as it had been for the past mile. They were on a n
arrow track in the mountains. To the left a rock face reared up almost vertically disappearing into the black clouds. To the right, the slope was almost as steep into a narrow valley.
Leonidas sensed that something wasn’t quite right about the land and as he tried to keep the horse moving he opened up his five senses to coalesce into the sixth sense he had been taught—the sense that was the unconscious mind picking up something from the senses that the conscious mind hadn’t yet acknowledged. After a few moments he realized what was wrong. There was no sound of water. Leonidas had been on many, many mountain paths that paralleled a ravine or valley and there was always the sound of water making its way downhill inside the low ground. He cocked his head to the right, thinking perhaps the sound of the wind was too much, but he realized there was no water in the low ground to his right.
The horse finally stopped dead and no amount of kicking or coaxing could make it go further. Leonidas leapt off, noting that Cyra’s horse had also refused to move.
“Do they know something we don’t?” Leonidas asked as he moved up next to the priestess. Both animals bolted back down the trail and were immediately out of sight.
“We’re near the Gate,” Cyra said.
“Gate to where?”
“Gate to the tunnel that will take us to the Gates of Fire,” Cyra began walking forward into the stiff wind, still moving up the path.
Leonidas felt the same sense of dread he had experienced at Delphi and on the Gulf when they met the Theran Oracle. He drew his xiphos and followed the priestess closely. The path was narrowing. From the worn stone beneath his feet he could tell it was an old path, but the untrammeled vegetation that grew among the cracks indicated it was rarely if ever used in the present.
The path appeared to end abruptly in a cliff face. Leonidas almost bumped into Cyra when she halted. The priestess turned to the right, and the King now saw that a narrow set of stairs were carved into the side of the mountain leading down. He stayed right behind Cyra as she descended. He counted as they went down and they reached the bottom after a hundred and twenty steps. They were in a streambed, but as Leonidas had noted, there was no water. Cyra turned to the left.
“This way,” she pointed.
“Where’s the water?” Leonidas asked.
Cyra shrugged. She began climbing through the stones and boulders, moving in what would have been upstream. The feeling of dread was growing stronger and Leonidas peered ahead into the darkness, searching.
Cyra abruptly halted. “There.”
At first Leonidas couldn’t discern what she was pointing at. Then he realized that there was a blacker circle in the darkness ahead. A blackness that seemed to absorb even the night air about twenty feet ahead of them.
“The Gate?” he asked, hoping that she would answer in the negative, but knowing better.
“Yes.”
Leonidas started to move toward it, but Cyra put a hand out and stopped him. “Not yet.”
Leonidas then realized something—he could hear water now. Splashing against rock, making its way downslope close by. But the trough underneath his feet was still dry. While he was still puzzling over this, the landscape was lit by a bolt of lightning. Leonidas could see that the black circle was about eight feet in diameter and at the lowest part of the streambed. He blinked because he could have sworn that behind the circle and to the left, where the notch in the side of mountain curved slightly, he had seen a waterfall of water coming down. A second bolt of lightning confirmed that, which confused Leonidas because the water had to be going somewhere.
“Soon,” Cyra had her hand on his shoulder and they edged closer to the circle.
“Where does this go?”
Her eyes were glazed over and her mind seemed elsewhere. “To the Gates eventually.”
“Eventually?”
A third bolt cut the sky.
Cyra nudged him and stepped forward. “Now.”
Leonidas had advanced toward enemy lines bristling with steel several dozen times in his life, but he was surprised to find his legs reluctant to move, as if they had picked up some degree of common sense from the horses. Still he forced his way forward behind Cyra. She reached out a hand and it disappeared into the black. She glanced once over her shoulder at him, nodded, and then stepped into the circle and was gone.
Leonidas took a deep breath and then followed. The blackness hit his skin with icy coldness, far chillier than the cold wind, which was suddenly gone. All was black and he felt pressure all around his body, then the next thing he knew, he was almost waist deep in water.
He blinked, looking about. There was light coming from above, but he couldn’t see the source. He was standing in the middle of a stream that also came out of the black circle just behind him. On either side was black land. The stream ran straight ahead toward a body of water so large that he could not see the other side.
“Come.” Cyra was to his right, standing on the black soil. Leonidas stepped through the water and then looked back. Seen from the side, the black circle had almost no thickness, less than a finger’s width. The water just came out of the one side, with nothing going on. Leonidas realized he was seeing the water that had been coming down the mountain on the other side of the gate, yet they had both come out facing the same way. He was confused, but had no time to ponder this bizarre situation.
“Hurry,” Cyra was tugging at his arm and speaking in a low voice. “This is a dangerous place.”
“Where are we?” Leonidas realized he was whispering also, a strong sense of dread tightening his guts.
“The Oracle called this place the space-between,” Cyra was heading along the shore of the dark sea.
“Where is this?”
“I don’t know,” Cyra said. “I think we are between our world and the world of the Shadow.”
“Where are the Gates of Fire?” Leonidas asked.
“We must pass through another gate like the one we just traversed to get there,” Cyra said.
Leonidas paused as he noted a pillar of black ahead and to the left. “What is that?”
“Another kind of gate,” Cyra said.
“The one we seek?”
“No.”
Leonidas grabbed Cyra and pushed her down into the black sand. “Valkyries,” he warned, as two figures in white floated across the black sand about a quarter mile in front of them, heading for the water.
CHAPTER 17 THE SPACE BETWEEN
Dane was finding moving inside the Valkyrie suit most annoying. He moved his legs as if walking but instead of actual leg movement, the suit simply moved forward. To change direction, he had to twist at the waist, the upper body pointing in the correct direction, the lower following. It didn’t take much effort to move the suit and he realized that was necessary given the atrophied condition of the bodies they’d taken out of them. He had the Naga Staff while Earhart carried a backpack with Sin Fen’s skull tucked inside.
“This isn’t much of a plan,” Earhart’s voice was a low buzz, coming out of a speaker inside the headpiece. They’d discovered they could communicate with each other simply by talking. Dane had to assume that the transmitters and receivers were built into the skin of the suit, again indicating a high level of technical proficiency.
“It’s as much of a plan as you had before I got here,” Dane noted. He could see the inner sea now and a portal column ahead and to the right. He headed straight down to the water. He immediately saw an advantage to the suits as he floated out over the black surface. He stopped moving his legs and came to a halt, Earhart floating next to him.
Dane concentrated, mentally projecting an image of himself. He was rewarded by the sight of a gray dorsal fin cutting the smooth black surface a quarter mile ahead and racing toward them. When Rachel was close by she leaped into the air, clearing the water completely and flipping over onto her back with a tremendous splash. She then rose up out of the water about two feet, regarded the two floating white figures for several seconds, bobbed her head as if nodding a
nd then began swimming off further into the inner sea.
“Let’s go,” Dane said as he set off after the dolphin. Just for a moment he sensed a presence nearby and paused and turned. But then a blast of urgency from Rachel overwhelmed that sense and he turned back and followed her.
***************
Cyra was watching the two Valkyries move. Leonidas raised his sword slightly as one of them paused and turned in their direction, but then the creature turned back and followed the dolphin away. In a couple of minutes the two white figures disappeared around the black column.
“That was strange,” Cyra said as she got to her feet.
“’That was strange’?” Leonidas was dusting black sand from his cloak and armor. “What isn’t strange in all of this?”
“The dolphin being with the Valkyries is strange,” Cyra clarified. “I was taught that the dolphins are our brethren in the sea. Why would they be with our enemy?”
Leonidas had no answer. “Let’s find this gate and get out of here,” he suggested.
“Come.” Cyra strode off.
***************
“Did you feel that?” Dane asked as they skirted around the black cylinder of power.
“What?” Earhart asked.
“Someone was back there. On the shore. Someone with the vision.”
“I didn’t feel anything,” Earhart said.
Dane could see a half dozen portals ahead, the black columns varying in width from a few feet to one over three quarters of a mile wide. He wondered which one was the Nazca power portal and if placing Sin Fen’s skull into it would disrupt it. Earhart was right—he didn’t have much of a plan. Despite those misgivings though, he felt as if he were on the right path.
Rachel swam between two portals with Dane and Earhart following. Dane noted that some of the portals were different—in several he could see swirls of colors, mainly red, gold and blue. These colors came and went so quickly it was hard to get a read on them.
Looking ahead, Dane saw that the inner sea stretched as far as he could see with numerous portals visible. The dolphin paused and rose half out of the water, head turning to and fro. Then she dove forward. Dane noted that her course was taking her directly toward a portal a quarter mile ahead. This portal was about a hundred meters wide. Rachel came to a halt right in front of it and once more rose out of the water. She jerked her head toward the portal a couple of times, then slid back into the water, disappearing from sight.
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