blamed the shamans, ordering them to go to the cave to appease the spirits. But once inside, the shamans had been blocked in, Noah among them, sealed inside a flickering world of shadows and red embers from the fire that was always kept alive in the inner recess. The old shamans had tossed the sacred leaves on the fire and taken the milk of the poppy to ease them on their journey to the spirit world, but fear had tainted their visions. Those who had once floated in water in the dream voyages of the mind were now terrified of drowning. Their visions took them on a journey of horror, to darkness and fire coming from within the mountain. An old man seized with terror had carved an image on a pillar, a swirling face that seemed to be caught in a scream. Noah himself had been half crazed, seeing men and women tearing at their hair and tossing their heads around and around. And then they had asked him to bring out the knife, to do what only he could do. The basins had filled with blood once again.
He remembered what an old woman had said as she lay back over the basin, her eyes milky-white with blindness, her hand holding his and pressing the knife against her heart. You now have the bloodlust, Noah , she had whispered. You will never lose it, and you will doom all around you by your greed for it. In the times of our ancestors, when we were driven to seek the spirits on a river of human blood, he who spilled it was forced to kill himself to save the people from his bloodlust. You must kill yourself too, or be cast out forever from the world of men. Your brother Enlil knows this too, as I taught him the old ways. When she pulled the knife in, Noah had tasted the blood that spattered from her mouth, and he had felt the exultation course through him. She had been right. He had wanted more. They had come willingly, the men and the women and their children, the boy with the flute. The knife had plunged in over and over again, and the stone basins had filled with human blood, overflowing and smearing the skulls of the ancestors still embedded in the floor around them.
And then Enlil had broken through the wall and come for him, unable to leave his brother behind in that chamber of death. He had forced the others who remained alive to a dark recess in the cave and had rolled the boulder in front of them, even as they screamed for Noah to kill them too. Noah had gripped a basin and stared into the blood-filled pool. In his desperation to break the spell, Enlil had taken out the palladion from a pouch and dropped it into the basin, drenching Noah with blood. Noah had seen only the reflection of the pillar with the skull on top, advancing towards him in repeated visions, swirling round and round. He had fallen backwards, wide-eyed and panting, just as the first water from the sea had surged into the chamber. Enlil had pulled the palladion out of the basin and put it in his pouch, then held Noah upright and hissed in his ear: Atlantis is finished. We new priests will go to the four corners of the earth and found new cities. You, my brother, the last of the old, I will take beyond the Middle Sea to the place where earth and sky meld, to where you and your spirit ways will be beyond the world of men. Enlil had dragged him outside to the boats, but for days afterwards as they paddled away, Noah could hear the screams of the shamans in his mind, and see the blood he had been unable to wash from the cracks on his hands and under his fingernails.
Now the storm clouds swirled around the boat. Noah tried to stay his hand as he held the knife. He was trembling not with fear, but with anticipation. He had crossed the boundary in that cave, and now there was only one river of blood he could ride.
Now the spirits would be appeased.
He plunged the knife into Lamesh, deep and hard, drawing it savagely round, feeling the warmth of the blood as it gushed out. He reached inside, grasped the still-beating heart and pulled it out. He took the knife and sliced into Lamesh’s neck, sawing hard at the bone, and then held the matted hair with one hand while he severed the head from the body. He dropped the knife and raised the head high, feeling the rivulets of blood pour down his arms and face. The storm was closing in now, twisting and swirling, the lightning flashing and the thunder cracking deafeningly. He dropped the head and scooped up blood from the wound, drinking it in great slurps, slaking his desperate thirst. He saw where the blood had poured into the small stone basin below the thwart, filling it to the brim. He stared into it, searching, seeing only the rippling concentric circles where the blood dripped off his face and fell on the surface of the pool. And then there was a flash in the sky and he saw it in the blood: twin peaks spouting fire, the fabled mountain Du-Re, appearing over and over again as the blood rippled with the motion of the boat. He looked up, letting the rain pour over his face. The spirit of the beast had answered him. The river of blood had flowed to the realm of the ancestors.
Suddenly giant waves were upon him. The roar of the wind drowned out the thunder, and the sea heaved the boat upwards as if it were being forced up the ridge of a mountain, driving it far away from the circling fin of the shark. Noah clutched the thwarts, swaying, feeling the sweeping sheets of rain that blew in from the east. He suddenly realized what that meant. The wind had turned. The boat was being blown west again. They were on the crest of a towering wave, hanging still. There was another flash, and sunlight appeared through a hole in the darkness ahead. He blinked the rain and blood from his eyes, then followed the rays of the sun to where they lit up a narrow strip of sea to the west. A bird came into view, blown towards them on some eastward eddy of the storm wind, a bird with long trailing feathers like nothing he had seen before, coloured like a dark rainbow. A thunderbird, but a bird of the land, not of the sea.
Then he saw it on the horizon. A raging line of surf, and beyond that, the twin peaks jutting against the blackness of the sky.
The prophecy had been fulfilled.
Atlantis would be reborn.
PART 1
1
South-eastern Black Sea, present day
‘Jack, you’re not going to believe what I’ve just found. It’s gold. Solid gold.’
Jack Howard twisted round and stared at the orange glow of the headlamp from the other diver below him, the form almost completely obscured by the swirling black cloud of sediment that filled the tunnel. He dumped air from his buoyancy compensator and dropped down, flexing his knees to prevent his fins from scraping the jagged lava wall, then angled sideways to avoid becoming entangled in the cable that snaked up to the submersible on the sea floor above them. He injected a blast of air into his suit to reacquire neutral buoyancy, catching a glimpse of Costas’ face through his visor as he finned sideways to let Jack take his place. Costas was staring intently at the tunnel wall in front of him, aiming his headlamp at one spot. Jack followed his gaze, edging forward, keeping his breathing shallow to maintain his depth in the water, staring into the swirl of sediment. Slowly the particles settled, and he began to make out the wall beyond. He could see the twisted black lava from the eruption five years ago, its friable surface broken and exposed by the boring drill that had dug through the solidified flow the day before to create the tunnel. But then he saw something different, embedded in the lava, a smooth rock surface cracked and mottled by the searing heat of the eruption. He peered at the polished surface, his heart suddenly pounding with excitement. There was no doubt about it. He was looking at a pillar, on some kind of plinth. A pillar carved by human hands.
‘Yes.’ He punched his fist in the water, then turned to Costas, speaking into his intercom. ‘I’d begun to wonder whether this place really existed at all, or if it was just a figment of our imagination.’ He turned back to the pillar, seeing where the plinth had been carved out of the natural tufa. He had a flashback to the moment he and Costas had first seen archaeological remains at this site five years ago from the Aquapod submersibles, watching in awe as the veils of silt dropped and the walls and roofs of the ancient city appeared, the most exhilarating moment to that date in his career as an underwater archaeologist. Revisiting scenes of past triumph was sometimes a strange experience, recalling emotions and high drama long gone, but this time it was different, like entering a completely new world. The volcanic eruption that had engulfed the site and forced them to leave five years ago had created a totally unfamiliar environment, a seascape as barren and devoid of life as the surface of the moon. He turned to Costas. ‘This is the first proof we’ve had it was all real. You’re right. It’s archaeological gold.’
Costas tapped his shoulder, and aimed his headlamp midway up the wall above the plinth. ‘Jack, I meant real gold. Have another look.’
Jack followed Costas’ beam and took a deep breath, holding it for a moment to rise half a metre in the water. The beam lit up a final swirl of volcanic particles that obscured the pillar, and Jack put out his hand and wafted them away. He let his hand drop, and then gasped in amazement. ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he whispered.
