The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1) (20 page)

"Then what's a bit more?" Ayessa wiped
a tear-filled eye. "Ask me. Ask me to go there with you."
She stared at the horizon, wet cheeks agleam in the orange glow.

Thamoth's eyes likewise welled with fresh tears
as he asked his love if she would sail away with him west into the
setting sun, over the horizon, in search of the lush lands which were
said to lie there. His bride said yes that day, and repeated it every
day thereafter when Thamoth asked her if she was sure.

And so the plans were set. 
Wellspring 
was
completed by the prince's own hand, with help from the royal
shipwright and his crew. Its hold was stocked with two months'
supplies, which took up less space than might be imagined, since the
sea could be trusted to provide the bulk of their sustenance, all but
water, of course, the thing of which it was composed.

Because thirty days had dulled their grief, and
the city's future seemed less uncertain, the people of Atlantis were
more festive at their young prince's farewell than they had been at
his homecoming. While some of them perhaps truly believed that
Thamoth had abdicated because he did not want his free and romantic
spirit chained by the burdens of kingship, a fair number must have
known, or at least sensed, that Ozymondros, whose coronation was
slated for the very next day, had given him little choice.

Lining the harbor's edge, the people cheered and
waved goodbye. They made the harbor bright with the blossoms they
threw, and 
Wellspring
's prow cleaved through them as if
sailing over a sunlit meadow of wildflowers. The prince held his
bride close, his cloak soaking up her tears, as they lost sight of
land. For a day or two afterward, the mood on board was somber. What
they had left behind, all they knew, was lost, forever.

Eventually they smiled again and began to enjoy
each other's company, as they had just a short while ago on their
honeymoon voyage along the coast. In spite of a harsh word or two,
always smoothed over by nightfall, the good mood held, barely, until
their sighting of a bird soaring overhead, hinting at the presence of
some nearby landmass. Half a day later, Ayessa was first to spot the
bluish shape on the horizon. Doubting her own eyes, she called it to
Thamoth's attention, and he confirmed that it could be nothing else
but land. They celebrated, squeezing each other tight.

Not long after, they leaped from 
Wellspring
's
deck and fell side-by-side on their backs in hot sand. But  they
both knew, quite quickly, that this was no lush land of legend. It
was a small, rocky island with sparse vegetation, no sign of human
habitation, and no life apart from broad-winged, soaring seabirds.
Its perimeter could be walked in the space of a day, which is how
they spent their second one there. During the course of the walk,
they spotted another, larger island to the north and made the choice
to sail for it.

This new island was better suited to life than
the first, although there was scant presence of animals and no
indication any folk had lived here in past or present. Thamoth took
his bow from the ship's hold and fired a few arrows at the seabirds
in the hope of tasting something other than fish for the first time
in too long. But he always missed, and soon gave up, so that their
diet on land did not much change from their time at sea. Fortunately,
there was a small lake from which fresh water flowed in a stream down
to the sea, and it was beside this body that Thamoth built a small
shelter. They did not speak right away of how long they would remain;
they simply shared an unspoken understanding that after so much time
confined to 
Wellspring
, they should be in no rush to
leave. They had, after all, their whole lives to spend.

The forty days which followed were rather
pleasant, though neither could quite put out of mind a yearning for
something more. Ayessa in particular became subject to bouts of
melancholy. She fought  them, in part, by practicing with
Thamoth's bow. Before the forty days were up she had become his equal
in marksmanship, and finally she surpassed him, at least insofar as
achieving what he had not, putting a sea bird over their cooking
fire. The prince celebrated his wife's accomplishment as readily as
if it were his own, or more.

It was only a few days later that Ayessa caught
him gazing into the setting sun and understood what was on his mind.

"You wish to leave," she declared. Her
certainty was well-justified.

The prince sighed and forwent denial: "I
cannot ask that of you. You are happy here."

She let a silence settle before saying, quietly,
"I'm not."

Thamoth felt a pang of sadness on her behalf.
But he had not time to come up with words of comfort before she spoke
again, deepening his sorrow.

"I've no wish to pass my life here on this
island," she said. "No more than I wish to pass it at sea
in search of a land we may never find, or which may prove no better
than this. I want to go home."

Thamoth sat a short while in silence, throat
constricted, jaw set, eyes locked on horizon. At last, unsure what to
say, he rose and stalked off.

For a day, Thamoth brooded. For him, there were
but two options available, he knew: sail on to the west or remain
here. Atlantis was lost to him, forever. But not to her. She had
chosen exile, and would be welcomed back. Out of pity, Thamoth
contemplated sailing her back to the coast, then leaving again on his
own.

Pity's cousin, contempt, made him dismiss it.
Was Ayessa so weak of heart, so capricious of spirit, that  she
could not face the unforeseen consequences of her own choices? And
why had she not foreseen them? If Atlantis was so dear to her, if she
could not live apart from it, why had she sat there through his
building of 
Wellspring
? Why had she set foot upon it in
the harbor? Why had she answered him, day after day after day, when
he asked her if she would leave with him, 
Yes,yes, yes
?

And did she love him so little?

No, it was not his responsibility return her. It
was hers to live with the choice she had made.

Thamoth sat alone thinking these thoughts. Then,
returning to their camp, he saw Ayessa's face and his heart softened.
The harsh lecture he had planned flew from his mind, and he said
instead, "I will take you back, if that is your wish."

Ayessa kissed his eyes and his mouth, and they
stood for a long time in a warm embrace. She whispered in his ear, a
quaver in her voice, "No. West. We will go west."

In his heart, Thamoth knew. He knew she did not
mean it. But he could not bring himself to protest, and so once more,
days later, with their stock of fresh water replenished, they sailed
into the unknown. The island fell out of sight behind them, and for
twenty days at open sea, they smiled and were good to one another.

Happiness did not last. Words again grew scarcer
between them. By the fortieth day, they rarely spoke, and by the
sixtieth, any words they did share were either cold or heated, never
warm. Ayessa, who had long swallowed her regrets, began to voice them
loudly. And Thamoth, who had swallowed his words of contempt for his
bride, let them freely fly.

On their seventieth day since leaving the
island, with their fresh water two thirds gone, the prince made a
simple, brutal observation. "It would have lasted longer had I
left you behind on the island."

"You could always push me overboard,"
Ayessa suggested bleakly, blankly. Once it had been her custom to
meet insult with insult, threat with threat, but of late she had
grown increasingly detached.

"True," Thamoth cruelly mused. "I
wonder if you would drown first or be eaten by sharks?"

Ayessa replied quietly, eyes unseeing: "Either
is preferable to the pain you cause me." The prince, finding no
answer to this, offered his wife water, which she refused. She asked
of her prince, or of the vast ocean, "Can we not find love
again?"

That night they went to bed, as had become their
custom, on opposite sides of the small cabin. But sometime during his
sleep Thamoth was awakened by her presence at his side. At first he
assumed her up to no good, trying to kill him or such, but she only
put her arms around him and lay at his side. At first, he permitted
it. Then he welcomed it, planting a kiss on her forehead at the
hairline before drifting back to sleep, rocked by the hand of the
waves outside 
Wellspring
's hull.

Alone and cold, Thamoth awakened. It took him a
moment to note an absence in the bed by his side, another moment to
conclude that the warm presence had been no dream: Ayessa really had
come to him in the night.

He looked around and found no sign of her in the
hold. For the first time in many long days, Thamoth found himself
eager for her presence instead of longing to be freed from it.

Energized by hope, he climbed to the deck, into
the bright early sun. But he did not find her there. Hope died, heart
sank. There was no place on the tiny craft to hide, but he hunted
again anyway above and below. He screamed her name aloud and in
desperation scoured with his eyes every inch of every deep blue wave
from horizon to horizon.

Ayessa was gone.

There was no question where. She had given
herself to the sea.

No... he had cast her there himself, by leaving
her no other choice, no other avenue of escape from this prison
crafted with his own hands.

That day, 
Wellspring 
became his
own prison, and like a prisoner he paced its deck for hours, making
and unmaking the decision to throw himself into the sea after his
bride. In the end, though grief tore at his breast, he did not. He
forced himself to drink water and eat and stay alive, a shadow of
himself, a shadow of a man.

One day, in a rasping, madman's voice he cried
out over the boundless sea, "Ayessa! Death shall be as  no
barrier to us! I shall come for you!"

While Thamoth lived, he was still a prince. In
one of the many dark, endless days before the last drop of his fresh
water was depleted, his fevered mind decided what his course must be.
If he survived, he would return to Atlantis—her city, their
city—and reclaim the throne which should have been his and the
palace in which Ayessa should have dwelt in comfort as mother to
princes. He would do this in her  name.

But he could not turn back, for the islands they
had left were by now far out of range. He could only press on west
and hope that land met him. And so he sailed, but did not hope hard,
for each day that passed made life and death look more or less equal
in his salt-filled, half-open eyes.

Eventually, after days without water, his
strength failed, and he slipped into darkness.

Some time later, he returned to consciousness,
drawn by a familiar sound that made him think for a moment that his
exile had been but a nightmare.

It was a gull's cry. Thamoth cracked his eyes
and saw the bird pass over, wings outstretched against a blue,
cloud-filled sky. Dragging his carcass to the rails, he spied distant
trees and nearer still, a sandy beach, and he found it in his limbs
to guide the ship ashore before blacking out face down in the sand.

When next he awoke, he ventured inland,
sometimes crawling, in search of water. He found it, drinking with
cupped hands from a babbling stream. In the days which followed he
took little notice of this new land in which he found himself, the
one which presumably was the one he had dreamed of  discovering.
Now he had it in his mind only to return home and seize back his
stolen throne, else die trying and thus rejoin his bride. It scant
mattered which.

He was anxious to set sail but knew that he
first needed his health, so he ate and drank and rested for days,
checked every inch of 
Wellspring 
to ensure she was
seaworthy, refilled the pots in her hold with fresh water, and
finally abandoned the undiscovered shore with scarcely a backward
glance. Purpose written firmly in his heart, he cleaved the same sea
he had so ruinously crossed once already, the one which had swallowed
Ayessa. Each day, he renewed his vow to her, to recapture the city of
her birth in  her honor, and thereafter to follow her soul
through the very abyss of death.

On reaching the uninhabited islands, he stopped
only for a night and then sailed on, the taste of brine  in his
mouth taking on the metallic tang of blood, that of the usurper
Ozymondros who had driven him to this fate. In truth, it was 
he 
who
had murdered Ayessa, just as he  had murdered Thamoth's father
and mother and brother.

There was no evidence, but he needed none. It
was simply so.

He reached the coast north of Atlantis,
burned 
Wellspring 
as though it were the forever lost
body of his love, and entered the city on foot, where he found that
none recognized him on account of his unshaven, sun-baked face and
wild, haunted eyes. Using such disguise to his advantage, he gathered
information. Ozymondros, it happened, was not as well-loved by his
people as king as he had been as chancellor. The sea's bounty,
already in decline by the time of Thamoth's father's murder, had
fallen lower still. Some days, the dockside markets were all but
empty, and families starved for lack of fish. Rain came too rarely,
turning green fields brown and grazing lands into deserts.

When the time was right, Thamoth carefully
revealed himself to several of those who had been closer to his
father than to Ozymondros. They, in turn, spread word to others whose
loyalty and secrecy was assured.

Then, one morning, the earth shook. A crack
appeared in the Dome of Kings. The hundred secret backers of Thamoth
took this as an omen, and chose it as their moment to act. Within the
hour, Thamoth, well groomed and shaven and looking like the rightful
heir that he was, appeared before the palace at the head of his
hundred fighters, plus three times that number of supporters freshly
let in on the secret. He called upon Ozymondros to peacefully yield
the throne.