Banished Sons Of Poseidon

by Andrew J. Peters

  Aerander stared at a large stone at the top of the spear’s middle tong. Pylartes.

  “Father loved you like a son,” he said.

  It hadn’t felt that way to Dam. Pylartes had been a good patriarch of his House, and generous with him to an extent. But Pylartes had never adopted him, which had left Dam to earn his own way while Aerander had been spoiled and feted as a prince.

  “What’s that look for?” Aerander asked. “If you hadn’t left the palace so young, you would have come to know Father better,” he said. “He might have found you a place as a bureaucrat in his court.”

  Dam kept his mouth shut, though it was getting harder for him to do.

  “Do you think he’s proud of me?”

  Dam said nothing.

  “He used to visit me in my dreams. He was angry, telling me I should have made it back from the underworld in time to save my sisters.” Aerander face turned stricken. “I haven’t dreamt about him lately. It’s like they’ve all gone farther away. So far they can’t visit me anymore. Do you think they know we’re still here?”

  It was a better question for Hephad, who had been much more serious about their novice training and still asked the gods for knowledge of the spirit world. Hephad had made a household altar with stones and shells for fetishes. He used an oil lamp for its eternal flame, and he made daily sacrifices of spilt blood for his prayers of obedience to Poseidon, asking Him to pull back the sea so they could return home. Dam wasn’t sure that he believed such things made a difference. It hadn’t helped to pray to Poseidon before the sea had turned against Atlantis. As best as Dam could figure, the gods kept their own counsel on when and how they would intervene in the fate of mortals. Having cursed Dam as an orphan, they certainly hadn’t shown him any partiality.

  If Aerander’s father wasn’t visiting Aerander in his sleep, Dam counted that as a good thing. Maybe it was disrespectful to Pylartes, but Dam didn’t want to see his cousin haunted by death as he had been when they had first come below.

  Aerander perked up. “I almost forgot to show you. Look there.” He pointed to a middle section of his trident monument where two stones were tucked together. Gaios and Eunike. Dam’s father and mother.

  Dam used to visit the family cemetery on high holidays to wash his parents’ steles beneath which their physical remains had been buried. The stones that Aerander had picked out for them shone before his eyes like diamonds.

  He nudged Dam with his elbow. “See, everyone belongs here,” Aerander said. “When we return aboveground, we’ll build a grander memorial. And there’ll be feasts of the bull, and wine, and horses to race under the full sun of the countryside. At night, we’ll look up at the sky and see the faces of our family in the stars.”

  Dam smiled, imagining that. Then he glanced at the bone amulet around his cousin’s neck. That ancient heirloom bothered Dam. He couldn’t explain it rationally. The amulet was a link to the goddess who had helped people escape from the flood, but the gruesome necklace looked like a cursed relic of the dead. He asked Aerander, “Have you heard anything from that?”

  “Calaeno says it’s still too early. We could swim up from the portals, but there isn’t any place to go. The highlands would leave us scalded in the sun, not to mention, there’s no food or water there nor any place to build and farm. We have to be patient and wait.”

  “What about the passage to Mauritania?”

  “Calaeno’s heard of it. She knows every part of Agartha. She said that it would take at least two fortnights to get there, and the way is very dangerous. We can’t have the old men trying to make that kind of trek.”

  “When the old men come aboveground, they won’t have the Oomphalos to protect them,” Dam said. “They’ll be coming home to die.”

  “I’ve spoken to them. They’ll do it so they can feel the sun and breathe the air of their country once again. Besides, they want to be buried in the place of their births.”

  “What if Calyiches doesn’t abide by the vote? He and his friends could go off on their own.”

  “They’ll be traitors to their country.”

  “I don’t think they care much about that.”

  Aerander said nothing.

  “They could rouse a mutiny before the vote even takes place. You ought to have Calyiches locked up so he can’t try anything.”

  “I can’t do that. It would prove his point that my leadership has been forced on everyone. We need the vote.”

  “What if he rallies his friends to overpower you? He’s got seven dozen allies from the other Houses.” Dam thought about the weapon Lys had held to his throat. “They could be making short blades from metal scrap. They could take you prisoner when the vote takes place. Have you at least asked for Ysalane’s help?”

  “She’s offered. I refused. We can’t have the voting place filled with her warriors. They’ll claim it’s put on to intimidate people.”

  Dam sighed. He didn’t agree, but pushing things with his cousin only made Aerander push back harder.

  “You realize what you’re giving up by letting everyone have a vote?” he said.

  Aerander looked at him quizzically. Dam gestured to the stone-laid memorial. “All of this. There’ll be no more line of kings. You’ll have nothing to give your heirs.”

  “I thought you’d approve of that. Aren’t we all ‘stuck-up, coddled ingrates’? Isn’t that what you used to say?”

  Dam smirked. “I do approve of it. But it is a lot for you to give up. And Lys and Dardy.”

  “I’m not giving up the family tradition. I’ll be a politician for as long as the people need me,” Aerander said. “Times have changed. You can’t lead a country when you don’t have a country to lead. Most of the Poseidonidae understand that. Our duty is to rebuild Atlantis, however we can.”

  “You really mean everyone will have land?”

  “Why shouldn’t they? When the sea pulls back, there’ll be more than enough to go around.”

  “Good. Let’s make sure you win the vote tomorrow, then. What can I do to help?”

  Aerander grinned and brushed his shoulder against him. “You’ve spoken to Hephad and Attalos?”

  “We were up all night. They’re all behind you. Everyone in the middle-houses. The women said it wouldn’t be proper for them to vote, but Attalos and some of the other boys are going to work on them.”

  “Then there’s not much to be done. Just keeping people calm. Keeping to a routine. Making sure that everyone shows up tomorrow night.”

  “I don’t think that will be a problem.” Dam remembered something. He brought it out all at once. “I’m going to see Hanhau tonight.”

  Dam studied his cousin’s face in the silence. He could tell when Aerander disapproved of something. He got flushed and shifty like a little boy. Like he was at that moment.

  “What’s the point, Dam?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it’s like with Leo. You get yourself attached to someone, and there’s no future in it.”

  A furnace of heat rose up in Dam. “You’ll never forget that, will you? Makes you happy to bring it up, does it?”

  “Why would it make me happy? You’re so sensitive.”

  Dam tried to swallow his anger. They had just spent a private moment together without fighting, and the important thing was keeping Aerander safe through tomorrow’s vote. But Dam couldn’t stop his anger from breaking through.

  “You don’t know anything about me and Hanhau.”

  Aerander rolled his eyes. “We’re really going to talk about this?”

  “Why shouldn’t we?”

  “What do you think is going to happen, Dam? We’re going home. You’ll never see Hanhau again. Then I’ll have to deal with you being moody and forlorn all the time.”

  Dam pinched his shoulders up tight. “Suppose you didn’t have to deal with me. Suppose I stayed down here.”

  “Here we go—”

  “I’m not your charge to look after. You ought to mind
your own personal life instead of interfering in mine.”

  He was referring to Lys, and he knew his cousin would catch that. Aerander glared at him, grim and forceful. He looked away and poked idly at the rocks on the edge of the mound. When he spoke, his voice had mellowed. “Why are we always doing this? I didn’t mean to put you down. Can we call a truce?”

  Dam stood. The conversation was hardly finished, but it was no time to be at each other’s throats. He reached his hand to pull Aerander up. “Truce.”

  They walked back to the Honeycomb together, barely looking at one another and not talking.

  Chapter Nine

  Dam felt like the rest of the day hurtled toward meeting with Hanhau for their feast-after-the-feast. Dam washed and dressed. He went down to the dining hall with Hephad and Attalos for their midday meal. They joined up with the other boys from the middle-houses: Callios, Heron, Tibor, and Deodorus. Dam sat at the far end of the table while they all drank their fish soup. He tried to pay attention to their conversation instead of the jumping beans in his stomach.

  Attalos talked about his meeting with the women. They were still undecided about voting, and a visit from Calyiches and his gang earlier that day had made them even more timid. Attalos’ speculation was that Calyiches had given them a lecture about tradition. Women belonged at the family hearth. Matters of country were the province of men. Whether or not that advice was compelling, coming from a foreign prince who was half the age of most of the women, it had likely been delivered with enough heat to recommend staying out of the contentious business of selecting a leader for their people.

  Boys had spotted Calyiches campaigning in the below-houses as well. No one thought that the old men would be impressed. What could Calyiches promise them that would win their vote?

  Still, it was news to be minded by the group. Attalos and Callios had been merchants’ sons, and they knew how the city’s politics used to operate. The Citadel gave bribes to the guild masters to keep their people loyal. Shop owners who didn’t march in lockstep had their storefronts demolished overnight. If that didn’t keep them in line, they got harassed by thugs. Some had their houses burned down. It wasn’t the Governors’ sentinels doing any of that dirty work. It was mercenaries hired by the guild masters themselves.

  Hephad, Dam, and the other two novice priests, Tibor and Deodorus, knew about the dealings between the priesthood and the Poseidonidae. The High Priest Zazamoukh had curried fat patronage from Aerander’s father for preaching to common folk about the divine sovereignty of House Atlas.

  The boys were skeptical about Aerander as well. He was Poseidonidae. He had been raised with the belief that he stood above all others and had inherited a divine right to lead. Would he really keep his promise to recognize everyone as equals when they returned home? That pulled Dam into the conversation.

  “Aerander wouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it.”

  His companions glanced at one another around the table. No one said anything. Dam never had to defend his cousin to the boys from the middle-houses. He realized what a trap it was. In their eyes, Dam’s association with House Atlas made his opinions suspect even though Dam lived among them.

  Attalos piped up. “No offense, Dam. We all know we’re better off casting our lot with Aerander than Calyiches.”

  The others quickly raised their voices to agree.

  “You stick with what you know, don’t you?” Callios said.

  “Won’t be following a king from House Mneseus,” Heron said. “All those foreign clans are contemptuous and arrogant.”

  Dam drifted to the background of the discussion again. He wondered what things were said when he wasn’t around. In the new country Aerander envisioned, Dam wondered where he would fit in.

  *

  Later, when the light of the Oomphalos eclipsed, Dam left with a torch to meet Hanhau at the quay outside the tunnel. It was time for their excursion to the Fire Canyon.

  Hanhau was waiting for him. He was back in his chain mail skirting, and he had a pack of provisions strapped to his back with a metal harness. They trekked out of the city and crossed the dead lava fields heading in the opposite direction of the Glowing Cataracts.

  They had lots to talk about and plenty of time to do it as they hiked across the darkened landscape. But all the while, Dam couldn’t bring himself to speak quite yet.

  They took slug-sledges for the last leg of the trip. It was a descent to a shelf of rock below the zone of the dead lava fields. Heat rose up, and traces of burning sulfur filled the air. Dam noticed a shadowy swarm of niterbats above them, and he listened keenly as the creatures fluttered away.

  After a long lope downward, they came to a ledge where the Fire Canyon spread out in front of them with an infernal spit and cackle. Dam dismounted his sledge to look out at it from the lip of their perch. Glowing rivers of lava crisscrossed the earth like latticework. The parcels of lands in between steamed like baked coals. Here and there, a jettison of water shot up from them, hissing and crackling as it rained down on the red, molten flow. The canyon was like a war zone, entirely impassable, and so broad its extent was beyond Dam’s sight.

  Dam sat down with Hanhau who was unpacking his cargo of smoked eels, dried morels, and a canteen of water for the two of them to share.

  “It’s not the feast from yesterday,” Hanhau said.

  Dam grinned. “It’s better.”

  Each of them tucked into the food. Hanhau was unusually quiet, which worried Dam.

  “Calyiches and his friends are idiots,” Dam said.

  Hanhau said nothing.

  “What they did, in the middle of a nice occasion…it wasn’t right.” Dam was having trouble putting words together. Apologizing for the behavior of his countrymen was strange. Dam didn’t know how much needed to be said, and he didn’t want to say it in a way that would insult Hanhau. “Calyiches only speaks for his group of snobs. You know that I…the rest of us don’t feel that way.”

  Hanhau smiled. “I know.”

  Dam relaxed. “He’s not going to win. When the vote happens tomorrow night, he’ll have to shut up. Either that or go off on his own.”

  “It must be hard, being so far away from your home.”

  Dam glanced at Hanhau’s face. Was he was getting at something?

  “I don’t mind. Things weren’t so great for me up there.”

  “Still, it is your home. Like Aerander said, you will restore your country to its former glory. Aerander is a good leader. You will all have better lives when you return.”

  Things weren’t turning out the way Dam had imagined. The feast-after-the-feast felt all at once like a farewell party.

  “No one knows when that will be.”

  “That’s true. But eventually, your world with retake its natural course.” Hanhau gestured to the canyon. “This all started as one big eruption in the shelf. Pressurized heat is still pushing up the rock and the water, and then the lava that rises up eats it away. It’s happening very slowly, but over time, the canyon is sinking. Centuries ago, it was the height of this ledge. One day, it will cave into itself and open up into a giant dead pit.”

  Dam gazed below. It had to be fifty yards or more to the bottom. As he stared, he could imagine the crisscrossed lava channels carving deep into the floor and everything collapsing like corroded iron webbing.

  “You’re saying it could take ages for the sea to pull back.”

  Hanhau took up a tiny rock from the ground and flicked it over the edge into the canyon. “To pull back completely, at least. But there are already parts on the surface fit for resettling. That’s what our men who study these things say.”

  Their elders interpreted the climates of the backcountry and the minerals of the earth to judge conditions in the surface world. Dam hardly understood how that worked, but he didn’t doubt that their kind had accumulated learnings well beyond the knowledge of his own people.

  “Then Calyiches is right. They ought to be looking for other portals.�
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  “Once your countrymen come together behind Aerander, Ysalane will commission a search party to scout for those portals. When we’ve figured out a route to a good passageway, she’ll lend Aerander the Oomphalos so that the old men can make the journey home.”

  Dam wasn’t sure what to think or feel.

  Hanhau grinned at him. “I thought this would make you happy.”

  “Ysalane wants us to leave?”

  “That’s what everyone wants, isn’t it? For your people to have your own country.”

  Dam’s head was muddled. Why was Hanhau telling him all of this on a night that was supposed to be special for the two of them?

  He drew his knees into his chest and veered away from his companion and the laid out meal. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble. You could have told me when we were back in town.”

  “Told you what?”

  “That there’s no future for us. That you’ve been sorting out reasons to get rid of me.”

  “I think you misunderstand. I don’t want you to go, Dam. But that’s not my decision to make. You have a family and a country. That will always come before our friendship. I ought to have thought about that before. I realized it last night when I saw how much your cousin needs you.” His voice mellowed. “I guess I didn’t want to think about it.”

  Sadness pressed in on Dam from his temples. He wanted to be with Hanhau more than anything. Now everything had fallen apart in the passing of one night because of the feast and people talking about going home and creating a new country. A country where once again Dam wouldn’t fit in anywhere.

  “It’s my decision to make. What if I didn’t leave? What if I stayed down here?”

  Hanhau didn’t answer for a while. “How long would you be happy, Dam? Being so far away from your family and your friends?”

  “I don’t know. I never knew much about being happy anyway.”

  Hanhau slid up close. He encircled Dam with his sturdy arms and drew him into his body so that they sat together snugly chest to back. “Does this make you happy?”