“So-Murian-”
Ray quivered. He could not have understood those words, yet he did. Or was it only with his mind that he “heard”?
“So, Murian, like all your kind, you would stand against the Dark One? Puny follower of a dying flame, think you that we cannot link your will to ours in the end? Remember, the Bull One can trample out flame. Who can withstand his will?”
Ray shook his head, not in denial of the other’s words but in an effort to clear away the giddiness that the realization he did understand carried with it. Who was the Dark One? Murian-what was Murian?
A faint shadow of some emotion crossed the Red Robe’s mummy face. “Seek not to evade with such feeble tricks. You understand well what is said to you. Get you down with your fellow and learn humility.”
Thought reading? Well, it could be a part of the rest of this wild dream. Ray did not resist when three of the warriors standing near on him and bore him further along the waist. At the far end they spread-eagled him against the wall and made him fast by bands of iron set in the planking.
When they had left, he turned his head and saw that he had a companion in restraint. Fettered as was he, so close by that the fingers of their hands almost touched, was another captive. He drooped limply in the irons, his head fallen forward on his breast, so his long hair veiled his face. But by the rest of his appearance, he was of a different breed from the ship’s company.
His skin was no darker than Ray’s, and he was as tall. The long locks of hair were the color of polished bronze, snarled and matted and, in one place, bloodstained. A tunic of yellow, mid-thigh in length, hung in tatters from one shoulder. Its rags were confined at the stranger’s waist by a broad gem-studded belt. But there was only an empty sheath to show he had once been armed with a sword. Like the hunters, he wore
high boots, but infinitely superior in workmanship. Ray wondered if the other captive was unconscious. At least they were in the same trouble and perhaps could make common cause. He hissed softly, hoping for an answer. A groan as faint as a sigh answered him. Ray hissed again, and the other stirred, turning his head with painful slowness.
The perfection of the stranger’s features, marred now by cuts and greenish bruises, was remotely like that of some Greek statue, Ray thought. But no son of Argos had ever possessed such high, wide cheekbones, nor the heavy, drooping lids that. half concealed blue eyes. He stared at Ray, amazed, and then his battered lips worked. In the soft speech the hunters had once used, the stranger asked a question. When Ray shook his head, the other was visibly startled.
“Who are you who have not the tongue of the motherland
Mind-touch again! Ray tried not to flinch. At least this time such contact had not brought with it the suggestion of foul invasion.
“Ray-Ray Osborne-a prisoner-” he answered slowly, in English the other seemed to understand.
“From whence come you? Remember-think slowly that I may read from your memory, see with your eyes-”
Obediently Ray retraced his bewildering journey, from his visit to the mound to the unexplained forest, the plain, the meeting with the hunters. And panic must be battled anew. What had happened? Where was he? On what sea? In what world?
“So that is the way of it—a slip-through. But I do not recognize your time.”
“My time?” Ray repeated.
“Yes, you are from the far future—or the past. It is known to the Naacals that perhaps man can travel so. Though those who have tried, by our records, never return. But for you it came by chance, which is indeed a strange thing, since only adepts ,of the first rank think upon such things—then only after much training and study.”
Ray swallowed. Without surprise, this stranger apparently accepted such insanity as possible, knew that it had been done before. A slip-through-through what–into where? Where-if he only knew that, perhaps he could fasten on something that did make sense. He asked the first question he could sort out of a bewildering whirl of thought.
“Who are these men-in this ship?”
And the reply was ready enough. “We are prisoners of the Atlanteans-the children of the Dark One. Look you to their sign-”
With his chin the other indicated the red banner on the deck above.
But that was impossible! Atlantis had never really existed-it was only a legend of a continent supposed to have vanished in catastrophic disaster before the first stone of the Great Pyramid had been laid. It was the fable that had given a name to one of the great oceans of his own world, but it was only fantasy.
“Why do you think captivity has twisted my wits?” the other asked calmly. “I speak the truth. We are prisoners of the sons of Ba-Al, the Dark One of the Great Shadow. And five days hence this ship will sight the cliffs of the Red Land itself-”
“But that can’t be true!” Ray protested. “Atlantis is a myth, a Greek myth-”
“Of Greek, I know nothing. But I say to you, Atlantis is real, too real, as you shall see when we dock at the Five Walled City. It is as real as these hoops forged in the fires of its smithies, which now hold us in bondage, as the hate of that son of Ba-Al who commands the obedience of the captain of this vessel, as the stripes they have laid upon our bodies. The Red Ones now rule the wind and wave of the western sea. Shame be to us of the Flame that it is so. Atlantis waxes. So strong does she think herself that she moves now to stand alone against the world.”
Ravings, of course
.
“Why do you strive to close your mind to the truth? You are awake, you are alive. Do you not feel, taste, breathe, see, even as I? Accept the evidences of your sense-that you have passed from your time and world into ours. It must be, as the adepts say, that men without preparation cannot face such journeys, for it seems that you cannot now allow yourself to believe the truth.”
“I dare not,” Ray whispered. His mouth was dry, parched, and he shivered with a chill not born of the wind against his half-bare body.
“Are you then a nothing one who has no control upon his thoughts, no reins upon his fears?” demanded the other sharply and with some scorn.
“Madness-it is madness-” Yet Ray reacted to that scorn with a small spring of anger that gave him strength.
“No. It has happened to others. I tell you, the adepts have done it-”
“And none returned-” Ray pointed out.
“True. Yet perhaps they did not meet with disaster either. Tell me is it not true that you still live? And while a man lives, all else is possible. Could you reach the city of the Sun, there would be those there to show you the true paths of time. Are the men of your age so ignorant that they do not know time is the great serpent, that it turns and coils upon itself so that one time may almost touche upon another? One can then, perchance, slip through. While those who have gone on such quests have not returned, our seekers have seen through into other times and places. They have looked upon the fields of Hyperborea, which has gone from us a thousand, thousand years and is only a legend now. Do not fear what is past; look to the future, for these black hounds of the Great Shadow are about us, to be grappled with in the here and now. And that is a peril worse than any you have yet faced!” His words were now cold and hard in Ray’s brain. “I will swear Flame oath to you on that!”
If he had passed into another time, then he was utterly, nakedly alone, incredibly lost. Again the American fought panic.
“They have named you Murian; better that you be Murian. If they guess you are otherwise, then the priests will have you. And those of the Great Shadow-”
“What is Murian?” Ray interrupted.
“A son of the great motherland, as am I. For I am Cho of the house of the Sun in the motherland. Those of my courtyard are swordsmen to the Re Mu himself.”
“The motherland?” Learn, learn what he could. Hold to the fact that if this was the truth, all the knowledge he could gain would be weapons, tools, or defense.
“The land in the far west, where life began again from a few seeds, legend tells us, after Hyperborea was swept away. Mu mothered the earth, and from her shores came forth men to people Mayax, Uighur, and Atlantis. Re Mu rules the world, or did until the fish ones of Atlantis dabbled in forbidden learning and fell under the Shadow-or marched under it by their own wills!