Atlantis: Gate Read online

  Something bounded through the fog, an animal. But like none the King had ever seen. It had the head of a serpent, body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion. Leonidas barely had time to register that image before he was on the defensive, slashing at the darting head, and ducking to avoid the simultaneous jab by the barbed tail.

  The snakehead struck again, getting past the sword and slamming into Leonidas’s chest, the strike blunted by the armor, venom spurting onto the metal. Before the head could pull back, Leonidas parted it from the body with one mighty downward stroke.

  Breathing hard, he stood over the strange body, looking at the fog, waiting for the next opponent. But the mist was dissipating, pulling back, revealing the stars and quarter moon above.

  “It is over,” the Oracle said.

  Leonidas was aware that he was gasping and abruptly slowed his lungs to not appear tired or afraid in front of the old woman. There was a strange hissing noise and he glanced down to note that the creature’s venom was eating through the metal on his chest. Cursing, he quickly ripped off his breastplate and threw it down to the ground.

  “What was this?” With the tip of his sword he prodded the body of the creature he had just killed.

  “A demon creature from the other side,” the Oracle said.

  “Other side of what?”

  “Come into my cave and warm yourself by my fire,” the Oracle turned and disappeared into the cave, the torch reflecting off stone walls.

  Leonidas checked his armor first. There was a four-inch long by half-inch wide hole in the breastplate, where the venom had eaten through. He touched the edge of the hole with the tip of his sword but nothing happened. Carefully he put the armor back on, and then he followed the woman inside. The Oracle sat in a stone throne opposite a glowing blue stone set in the floor. Leonidas frowned, and as he watched, the glow disappeared. Another strange thing in an evening of the bizarre, he thought.

  The Oracle thrust the torch into a pile of kindling and started a small fire. “Sit,” she instructed, pointing to a flat black stone opposite her.

  Leonidas hesitated, not wanting to be lower than her. Reluctantly he settled down on the rock. “You sent for me,” he said.

  “You are a King.” The old woman’s voice held an edge that Leonidas didn’t like.

  “I am,” he replied. He was uncomfortable sitting stiffly in front of the old woman. The journey to Delphi had been hard, not because of physical difficulties, but because of the constant reports brought to him by scouts about the invading Persian forces.

  King Xerxes of Persia was leading his massive army forward out of Asia. He was near the Hellesponte—the waterway dividing Asia and Europe-- and would be on Greek soil soon. The fools in Athens were too concerned with the Carneia, an annual festival and the preparations for the Olympic games, which were to be held soon. Or so they claimed, Leonidas thought. Cowardice took on many faces and many excuses. Athens and Sparta had been at each other’s throats for generations and he knew there was much debate among the leaders of Athens about which posed the greater threat: the Persians invading or allying with Sparta. It was one of the many failings he saw with democracy; the inability to take decisive action when time was short.

  “You are a Spartan.”

  Leonidas knew that the rest of Greece viewed his home city as something of an enigma. The difference came not because Sparta still had a king, but because of the focus in Spartan society on the military. In essence, the entire city-state was designed to support its army. Because of that, Sparta was the most powerful city-state in Pelonnese, the southwestern part of Greece, connected to the rest of Greece by only a narrow isthmus. The city was located on the northern end of the central Laconian Plain on the Eurotas River and commanded the only land routes in Laconia.

  Even the Spartan heritage was somewhat different than the rest of Greece. They were descended from the Dorians who had invaded that locale around 1,000 BC. That was the reality; the legend the Spartans preferred was that their city was founded by Lacedaemon, a son of Zeus.

  The society had three classes—the Spartiates, who were the only ones allowed to vote; the Perioikoi, or free men, who did not have the vote but were graciously allowed to fight and die for the state; and then the helots, who while technically not slaves, were only slightly better off than if they had been.

  The old woman continued. “You are a warrior. There are times when warriors are needed and this is one of them.”

  “You summoned me, old woman.”

  “You had a vision,” she corrected.

  “You summoned me,” he repeated, unwilling to discuss the vivid dream he’d had a week ago, directing him to Delphi and to travel alone. Even though he was not a strong believer in dreams and visions, the dream had been so strong, he’d known he had to follow the path it indicated. He had never been here before, but he had seen the woman before him in the dream so he knew now it was a true vision. Of course, he had not seen the Valkyrie or strange creature in the dream, which might have been helpful. Such was the ways of the gods—to show one hand, while keeping the other hidden.

  The Delphic Oracle sighed. “Who are you loyal to?”

  There was no hesitation in the answer. “Sparta.”

  “And Greece?”

  Leonidas shrugged. “If the threat to Greece is a threat to Sparta, yes.”

  “You have called up your troops in response to the Persian threat,” the Oracle noted. “Yet Athens hasn’t and they would fall to King Xerxes’ forces before Sparta.”

  “Why am I here?” Leonidas pressed.

  “I too have seen a vision I could not ignore.”

  The Spartan waited.

  “You will fight the Persians,” the Oracle said. “And you will gain much honor and fame. And you will die.”

  Leonidas’s scarred and tanned face was smooth, no reaction apparent.

  “But there is something you must do before you die,” the Oracle added.

  “Besides kill Persians?”

  “There is something you must take from the Gates of Fire.”

  “Thermopylae?” Leonidas frowned.

  “Yes. It is where you will fight the Persians. You must get there first. And you must recover something and send it back to me safely.”

  “What is this thing?” Leonidas was already picturing the tight pass in his mind, realizing it was an excellent location to set up the defense against Xerxes’ overwhelming numbers. However, defending there would leave northern Greece—the city-states of Thessalia-- open to the ravages of the Persians, which had strong implications for various alliances. Still, if-

  “Listen to me,” the Oracle snapped, as if knowing his mind was already drawn to the battle and tactics. He blinked, not used to be talked to in such a brusque manner.

  “What you must save is a circle,” she made a vague gesture with her hands in front of her. “A sphere,” she amplified.

  “Of?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re the Oracle of Delphi. How can you not know? And if you don’t know, why should I do this?”

  “It is important. Not just Greece, but the entire world lies in the balance.”

  “What is this important sphere?”

  “It is a kind of map.”

  “Of?” he asked once more.

  “I don’t know. But someone else will.”

  “Who?”

  The Oracle’s eyes lost their focus as she looked inward. “Someone who is not yet alive, but is alive. One who is of this world, but not of this world. Another warrior, like you, but not like you.”

  “Riddles.” Leonidas pulled off his helmet, revealing chiseled features and a lined face. White hair spilled out, tied in a ponytail that touched the back of his neck.

  “No, the commands of the gods. Will you do it?”

  “You promise me glory and honor and death in battle.” He smiled, highlighting a scar on his left cheek. “What Spartan could refuse such an offer? I will do it.”

  CHA
PTER 1 THE PRESENT

  A little old lady was walking across a flat stony plain in Peru, an umbrella held in one hand to protect her from the sun, the other carrying a folding canvas seat. She had a faded leather backpack looped over one shoulder. Her skin was tanned and leathery, etched with lines from many years in the harsh sun.

  Cresting a small hill in the middle of the plain, Dr. Leni Reizer opened the stool and sat down, giving a sigh of relief as she did so. She’d lived in the valley of the Nazca for over fifty years and the combination of heat, sun, dryness and age was beginning to wear on her.

  She was in the exact center of a high plain between the Inca and Nazca valleys. The plain was almost fifty miles long and several miles in width. To the east, the high peaks of the Andes were visible, white capped and wreathed with clouds. The ground was hard packed, littered with small stones.

  She had walked every foot of that plain and knew every stone, and more importantly, every line cut into the surface of the plain where there were no stones. She was seated in the midst of what some called the world’s largest work of art. For its size, covering almost five hundred square miles, it was also the least visible work of art as the complex patterns cut into the surface of the plain could only be truly appreciated with an aerial view, an enigma given that the lines had been cut well before the birth of Christ.

  Reizer knew all the designs by heart. She came to this spot, a small knoll where she had first realized the magnitude of the complex so many years earlier, for solitude. Several lines originated on the knoll, radiating outward at various lengths. Also, what she called the master line, terminated here. The master began with a huge wedge cut into the plain five miles due south of her position. The wedge was almost a mile long, and at the small end a line extended which stretched five miles to this location.

  The few tourists who came to the site, when they found out vehicles were forbidden to enter the plain, went to the nearest large town, Ica, and took the small plane tour, looking down on the site. The tour plane only flew once a week as this site was very remote and difficult to get to. She’d camped for days in the middle of the complex and not seen another human being.

  The Nazca lines had first been noted in the 1930s when planes surveying for water had spotted them. A person walking on the ground might note a line when they crossed it, the ever-present small stones removed, a gouge cut in the hard earth, but the magnitude of the lines and the designs many of them formed would escape the person on the ground. The lines and geoglyphs were well preserved given the dryness of the climate, the lack of rainfall—less than twenty minutes a year-- and the remoteness of the site.

  There were over three hundred designs cut into the plain, and almost as many theories about why they were built and by whom. In 1969 Erich Von Daniken had proposed that they were ancient runways for extraterrestrials, but Reizer had never heard of a monkey shaped runway. There were indeed quite a few large wedge-shaped patterns besides the master, some more than twenty-five hundred feet long with lines extending from them for over five miles, but the lines dwindled to less than a foot in width, hardly space for any decent sized craft to land upon. And even the straight lines went over knolls such as this one, or into small gulleys, which precluded a level landing field if they were just markers.

  Others had postulated that the lines were astronomical designs, keyed to various stars. But a close examination of the designs, even regressing star-fields to the time they were supposed to have been built, found that less than twenty percent had any connection to stars, certainly not a significant number, well within the range of statistical chance. Reizer had even projected out all the lines to see if they lined up with specific peaks in the mountains that surrounded the plain, but had had little success. In her younger days she had traveled to the few peaks that she had come up with but found nothing of significance on them.

  Some said the lines were the work of an ancient cult, but where had the people who made up the cult come from? Reizer had questioned. Pottery from the Nazcas and other people who had lived in the area held designs, but nothing similar to the Nazca lines. Wouldn’t it have made sense that there would be similarities? She had argued.

  Another thing she took issue with was the dating of the lines. The best guesses had come from radiocarbon dating of ceramic and wood remains in the area. But that simply proved the people who used those artifacts lived or passed across the plain at that time, not that those people made the lines. She felt that would be like dropping her backpack on the plain and a thousand years from now someone radiocarbon dating it and announcing that the lines were made in the twentieth century.

  Reizer felt the lines were much older than anyone realized. And she had always believed that their existence was the result of something no one had ever considered. Given the events of the last several months, with the proof of the reality of Atlantis and the existence of an ancient enemy, the Shadow, that attacked the world through gates, she had come to believe that the lines were somehow connected to these recent revelations. How, though, she wasn’t quite sure. She had come here today to ponder possibilities.

  She spent most of the day in quiet contemplation, occasionally pulling out a sketchbook and jotting down thoughts as they occurred to her. She shifted the umbrella to keep in the shade as the sun arced overhead. Having emigrated from post-World War II Germany, she still savored the quiet and solitude of the plain.

  As dusk approached, she saw a dust cloud to the west, near the edge of the plain. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a small set of binoculars and brought them to her eyes. Twisting the focus, she zoomed in on the solitary figure walking across the plain toward her, the truck that had brought him already heading back to the village.

  He wore new khakis, she could still make out the store creases, and of all things a pith helmet. She had a good idea who he was—she’d had correspondence from an Englishman named Davon several times in the past year. She had always thought from what he wrote that he was, as the English would say, a bit daft. After recent events, though, she was viewing his theories in a different light. His last fax, yesterday, had indicated he was en route to Peru.

  “Hello!” he called out when he came within fifty feet, his voice carried by the slight breeze.

  Reizer simply waited. Years walking these plains had given her immeasurable patience. The young man was perspiring when he finally arrived even though the sun was almost down and it was at least ten degrees cooler in the past hour.

  “Doctor Reizer, I presume?”

  Reizer shifted her umbrella, keeping her face in the shadow. “You expected someone else?”

  “I’ve sent you several queries, but you never responded. I’m Davon. From the Dragon Project.” He was looking about. He could see the nearby lines, several of which extended to the horizon and beyond. “Amazing. To actually see them.”

  “To see what exactly?”

  “The lines. They’re all over the world, you know. But here, you can see them on the surface.”

  Reizer had entertained many so-called experts over the years. “And you think they are?”

  “Lung mei. That’s Chinese for dragon paths. Lines of power.” He raised his arms and turned slowly while Reizer watched with an amused smile. “Can’t you feel it?”

  Reizer did grant him that—the first time she had come here so many years ago she’d felt something, a power in the atmosphere, like the way the air felt before an approaching thunderstorm, but the power came not from above, but from below, from the belly of the Earth itself, she felt.

  “Is it a good power, though?” she asked.

  Davon shrugged. “It’s power. That’s neither good nor bad. It’s who uses it, and how they use it that determines good or bad.”

  “Tell me more about lung mei,” she said.

  “I think the gates that are opening now are nodes for the dragon paths,” Davon said. “Where major lines intersect.” He frowned. “This though—” he pointed at the nearest line, a two foot wide etc
h in the surface of the planet, the main channel—“is different in some way.” He turned to her. “Is there a gate of the Shadow near here?”

  “I’ve never seen one nor heard any reported anywhere close by.”

  “Strange. There’s nothing like this anywhere else in the world. We have the cliff drawings in England, but that’s not at all similar. I’ve been there. No sense of it like here. I’ve felt something like this at nodes near standing stones and megaliths. But lines, no, I’ve never seen lines even though I knew they were there.” The words were coming out of him like water rushing down a mountain stream.

  “There’s Avebury, the Rollright Stones, Carnac, and of course Stonehenge. Massive stones aligned in circles or lines. Along the leys of power. The ancients knew something, didn’t they? Or did they even make them? Maybe the stones are something else?”

  Reizer remained quiet, letting the words pour out of him.

  “I was visited by a woman a couple of days ago. In England. She was American. Ariana Michelet. She wanted to know about the dragon paths. The nodes. The stones. She said they were connected to the gates, but I already knew that. I took her to the Rollright Stones. I camped in the center of the stones one night. A year ago. And I heard the screams of the damned. And saw the creatures come out of a dark circle in the center of the mist. White, hard skin. Red, glowing eyes. Others who have been in the circles have seen people from other times, did you know that?”

  Reizer listened to his manic litany and didn’t interrupt or answer. Everyone had their cross to bear in life and she realized his was his own mind, skittering between lucidity and mania, not completely under his control. His body mimicked his mind, moving about, unable to stay still.

  “Tell me about this place.”

  Reizer was almost startled by the change in his voice and demeanor. He was still, his tone level and rational, his body still.

  She quickly related the various theories and why she didn’t believe them.

  “What do you believe?” Davon asked.

  “There’s something very important that most people don’t take into account about the Nazca lines,” Reizer said. She paused, finding it strange to be talking here on the plain where she had spent so many years in solitude.