Giorgos shook his head. ‘Yes, but without a clue… without further information…’ Giorgos looked again at the passage. ‘But look. There is more. This here completes the passage: “… the power unleashed, beware that that is unleashed…it can only be controlled by the one”.’
‘The one…’ all three of them repeated almost in unison, phrasing it as a question. And then they continued together as if in awe and deep contemplation, ‘… the power…’
‘That must have something to do with the revival of the last Emperor. That is what the Ruinands want. They must think it would give them the weapon to defeat us at last. We must not let them. We must beat them in this race.’
But they had forgotten that there was a traitor in their midst, an operative in the pay of the Ruinands.
CHAPTER 29
Pergamon, Asia Minor
(Modern-day Turkey)
Present day
One moment they were walking between ruins, and the next the whole landscape had been transformed and Aristo was standing with Katerina admiring the gleaming roofs and buildings of the acropolis of Pergamon.
Its greatest treasure was the vast, painstakingly accumulated and jealously guarded collection of manuscripts written on parchment or pergamene, the sturdy material the city invented and gave its name, a material borne out of necessity, when the Ptolemies of Alexandria in Egypt banned the export of papyrus. The ban led to a severe shortage of writing material, rare and expensive as it was already, a problem compounded by the fact that Egypt was the only source of the stuff.
Aristo and Katerina passed through the entrance to the acropolis without incident. At the entrance to the Library, they noticed a plaque attached to the wall. They asked the old man standing by the entrance what that plaque was for and what it said, but he looked at them with a blank expression, raising his eyebrows, and shaking his head he walked away, no doubt feeling sorry for these mad people.
Aristo nudged Katerina.
‘We should move on.’
Katerina, though, did not budge. She was staring at the back of the old man who was briskly moving away. As if he knew her eyes were on him, the old man turned and he was close enough for Katerina to see an expression of recognition beginning to cloud his face. She had the feeling the old man knew something. She thought she imagined it, but he winked at her and, without a backwards glance, hurried in the opposite direction.
Aristo was impatient. ‘Katerina, come on. Let’s go inside.’
Katerina hesitated. ‘No, Aristo. We can do that later. I think we are meant to follow that old man. Come on, he’s about to get away, although I believe he means for us to follow him.’
Aristo relented. He knew that stubborn side of Katerina, but he also trusted her gut instinct, which was right more often than not. She wouldn’t change her mind. He grabbed her by the hand and they almost broke into a run after the old man who disappeared around a corner.
‘Come on, we are going to lose him.’
As they were running, Katerina remembered something and turned to Aristo. ‘Aristo, about that plaque… I think I know what it says. It will sound weird and you probably will not believe me. Do you remember the language Giorgos and I made up as children? The writing on that plaque looks to have been written in that language. What are the odds of that? It can’t be a coincidence. Or then again perhaps we did not invent that coded language after all. Maybe we saw it somewhere and it subconsciously registered in a part of our brain until we dredged it up to encode our inner-most thoughts and feelings from prying eyes.’
‘Yes, but we are not going back now.’
‘No, of course not.’ Katerina said impatiently, annoyed, Aristo had no doubt, that he might have thought her capable of such stupid impetuousness and short attention span.
They saw the old man disappearing behind a lowhung wall sprayed with a wild bougainvillea. They rushed to it and cut through a group of people who ignored them as if they could not see them at all, but not before they saw a member of the group turning and briefly looking at them with intense interest.
Aristo smiled and shook his head, as if to chase the thought away. Katerina’s paranoia was rubbing off, Aristo told himself as a private joke. He wouldn’t dare voice it out loud.
They went round the wall in time to see the old man suddenly stopping, sitting down, lighting a fire and beckoning them over, not to roast chestnuts or meats as there were none around to be seen, but, they gathered, to talk. But he then, suddenly, got up and more swiftly than they expected, moved away.
Aristo and Katerina didn’t see it, but the member of the group they had just passed, discreetly distanced himself from the rest of his apparent companions, and, with raw purpose, headed down the street.
Aristo and Katerina reached a strikingly beautiful courtyard and the noise of the street died behind their footsteps. They then saw the slightest glimpse of a cloak dart through a door at the far end of the courtyard and they chased after it. The room they entered blinded them.
In the hushed silence, they saw in the centre of the room a sphere, suspended in mid-air, vibrating violently and shining brightly, and emitting a deathly purplish colour, smattered with gold and a ghostly white, that drew their stare inside its depths and then threw it on the walls and the space beyond, into the far doorway ahead and the next room opening up beyond it.
The whole spectacle presented an unashamedly irresistible invitation. It unfolded before them intending to impress and to seduce. Subtlety was not a language it spoke. It was drawing them in with a trick and a tickle of the senses, the smell of glorious food and an earthy smell with a smattering of a glorious floral perfume announcing what was to come, and then snatching it away before they could get closer and properly drink in its delight.
And where there was nothing before, the smells began to grow flesh and bones, and take the shape of trees and plants and flowers, an enchanting forest and an otherworldly sunken garden filled with birdsong.
The scene was changing and the contents of the next room were approaching fast, still vague shapes and forms, but were running away the moment Aristo and Katerina thought they could make them out, as if they were playing hide and seek with them, challenging them to try and tease their secrets out of them.
Aristo and Katerina wanted to see what came after that room, and then the room after that, but they steeled themselves. They had the feeling that it was a trick to hypnotise them, to make them drunk and vulnerable and that was dangerous. They closed their eyes and fought their curiosity.
When they started to breathe normally again and opened their eyes, they saw that they had managed to snap out of the spell that had engulfed them in its guiles and a universal dreamworld without the harshness of reality. They had to get back to the task at hand. The old man was nowhere to be seen.
Katerina pulled at Aristo’s sleeve indicating the sphere, which had stopped vibrating and had begun to turn slower, its surface covered with images, like a film.
They saw Elli, Aristo’s mother, stirring a large pot with both hands, then stopping and dipping her hands into the mixture and taking them out almost instantly. She then held her hands with the palms upturned, and out of each hand appeared a different representation of the Earth and she exclaimed in slight pain as if she was going into labour. The two Earths were coming closer and closer. Aristo and Katerina saw flashing dots, all in the Eastern Mediterranean. Then the dots became bubbles that began to expand outside the spheres in three-dimensional guise. They could almost touch and smell Cappadocia, Athens, Alexandria, Constantinople, Smyrna, Pergamon.