The only clue he could possibly have is the stiffness thats building up in his right arm and hand. The shape of the letters we use is very different from the Athilantan curlicues and spirals hes accustomed to, and his musclesare straining and cramping as he writes. When he wakes up, though, hell never be able to guess why his arm is a little sore.
Were near the seacoast, getting ready to break camp and take ship for Athilan itself. The Athilantans have a fairly big outpost here, perhaps three or four hundred people. The name of the place seems to be Thibarak. There are little primitive mainlander encampments scattered widely through the countryside all around. The mainlanders, who come to Thibarak to trade with the Athilantans, regard the powerful island people virtually as gods. I imagine thats true all over Europe, for as far as the Athilantan empire reaches.
The landscape here is pretty grim and forbidding, though I suppose nothing like the way it is where you are in Naz Glesim. No glaciers here, no ice-fieldsthe ice has all retreated to the north and east by nowbut the ground has a raw, scraped look to it, bare and damp, rough and rocky. The weather is very, very cold. I doubt that its been above freezing at all since Ive been here, though the days are bright and sunny. Still, its evidently a lot warmer than it was a few hundred years ago, or than it is right now out where you are, which must be still pretty much in the grip of the ice. We have some birch and willow trees here, and a few pines. Ive seen occasional mammoths and bison, but not many: the big Ice Age animals dont like these new forests, and have wandered away to colder country where the grazing is better.
The Princes name is Ramifon Sigiliterimor Septagimot Stolifax Blayl, which means, approximately, Beloved of the Gods and Light of the Universe. But nobody calls him that, because it would be sacrilegious. I learned it by rummaging around in the basement of his memory. His parents call him Ram, which is short for all the rest. His brothers and sisters call him Premianor Tisilan, which means First of the Family.Everybody else calls him Stoy Thilayl, which means Your Highness.
He is eighteen years old, dark-haired and olive-skinned, and very strong, with enormous shoulders and forearms. Hes shorter than hed like to be, thoughin fact, not very tall at all, even by Athilantan standardsand hes not too happy about that, though he knows it cant be helped. Generally he seems good-natured and very capable. Some day, if all goes well for him, hell become Grand Darionis of the Island of Athilan. Or, in other words, King of Atlantis.
I wonder what hed think if he knew that his magnificent island of Athilan, which has built such a glorious empire and rules the entire Ice Age world, is doomed to be destroyed in another few hundred years. So thoroughly destroyed, indeed, that the people of future ages will come to think of its very existence as nothing more than a pretty myth.
For that matter, I wonder how hed react if he were to learn that the people of future ages are sending observers back across a gulf of nearly twenty-one thousand years to find out something about this Athilantan Empire, and that one of them is currently sitting right inside his own mind.
Well, Im not likely to discover what he would make of that. The last thing Im going to do is tap the Prince on the shoulder and say, Hi, Prince, guess whos here!
I hope that everything is fine for you out in the frozen hinterlands. I think of you all the time and miss you more than is really good for me. Write to me, if you can. Tell me everything thats happening to you. Everything!
More later.
Much love
Roy
2.
Four days have gone by since my last.
I mean four of our 24-hour days, not the half-day days that the Athilantans use. Were still here on this barren, frosty coast. The Athilantan ships are waiting in Thibarak harbor to take us to the island, but there are all sorts of rites and rituals that have to be performed first. Mainlander people in startling numbersthere must be thousands of themhave turned up to bid farewell to the Prince as he makes ready to set out for home. I suppose it isnt a common thing to have a prince of the royal blood visiting here. And so every day we have bonfires blazing, bulls being sacrificed, chanting going on and on. Prince Ram presides over it with terrific aplomb. Its plain that hes been raised from childhood to rule the empire, and he knows exactly what needs to be done.
But though I havent been able to budge yet from my starting point, this place, provincial as it is, has plenty of fascination of its own. Maybe it isnt glittering wonderful Atlantis, but its the past, Lora, the remote and weird prehistoric past!
Its astonishing just being here. Every minute brings something new. I want to turn to you and say, Look at that, Lora! Isnt that incredible? But of course you arent here. Youre way over there in eastern Europe. If only we could have made this trip together! (I know, I know, we are together, sort of. But Im here and youre there, instead of our both being in the same place. And dont bother telling me that it would be unnecessary duplication of resources to send two observers to the same place as well as the same time. I know all that. I still wish you were here, close enough for me to talk to every day.)
But since you arent, Ill tell you what Im learning. And one of these days maybe Ill be lucky enough to hear what youve been up to, too.
The difference between the Athilantans and the mainlanders is enormous. I dont just mean the cultural difference, which is even wider than the gap, say, between the Romans of Caesars day and the savages who lived in the forests of Germany and France. That was Iron Age versus Bronze Age; this is Iron Age versus Stone Age. But I mean the physical difference. You must be seeing it, too. Theyre two different types of people altogether.
Correct me if Im wrong, but my impression is that the mainlanders here at Thibarak are the people that archaeologists call the Solutreans, who lived in this part of Europe a couple of thousand years after Cro-Magnon times. These Solutreans are tall, slender, fair-haired people with a sort of Viking look about them. They wear leather clothes very finely stitched together, and they use stone tools that look pretty elegant to me, long and thin and tapering, with a lot of fine little chip-strokes around the edges. Mostly they make their homes in shallow caves or beneath shelters of overhanging rock, though I see from Prince Rams mind that in the warmer seasons they also build little flimsy wickerwork huts for themselves.
The Athilantans are nothing remotely like them in any way.
The island folk tend to be much shorter and stockier than the mainlanders, with dark hair and somewhat swarthy skins. Their eyes are brown or black, never blue. Its basically a Mediterranean look, Greek or Spanish, and yet theres something not quite convincingly Greek or Spanish about them that I cant put my finger on. Their cheekbones have an oddly slanted look, their mouths are a little too wide, the shape of their heads is a little strange. Maybe youve noticed it too, even though there are only five or six Athilantans out there in Naz Glesim, and I have hundreds to observe here.
My theory, for what its worth, is that the Athilantans actually are the ancestors of the Mediterranean folk of our Home Era, but modern Mediterranean people look a little different from Athilantans because of the changes that have taken place during all the thousands of years of evolution and interbreeding since the destruction of Athilan. I realize, though, that thats only a guess and may be very wide of the mark.
What amazes me most is how advanced the Athilantans are, technologically speaking, over the mainlanders. Atlantis really was a magical kingdom! Its almost unbelievable, when you stop to think about ita wealthy and far-flung maritime empire that understands the use of iron and bronze, a civilization at least as advanced as those of Greece and Rome, way back here in the Upper Paleolithic Era!
How strange that archaeologists have never found any of their artifacts. No bronze swords or daggers mixed in with Cro-Magnon stone tools, none of their sculpture, no fragments of the buildings they erected on the mainland of Europe at outposts such as the ones you and I are currently at. Part of the answer, I guess, is that even though modernworld archaeologists have been digging up ancient ruins in a serious way for the past few hundred years theyve still only scratched the surface of the buried remains of the ancient cultures and simply havent had the good luck to come across any Athilantan artifacts so far. And maybe bronze daggers will rust beyond discovery in twenty thousand years, whereas stone tools last forever. But that cant be the whole explanation.
Well, I have a theory about that, too, Lora.
What ifafter the fall of Athilanthe oppressed people of mainland Europe arose and systematically rounded up every last trace of their Athilantan masters, every weapon and tool and bit of sculpture they could find, and carried the whole business out to sea and dumped it all? Every scrap. Out of some tremendous vindictive urge they blotted the Athilantans from the face of the Earth. And twenty thousand years of ocean silt did the rest.
What do you think?
Sooner or later, time research will give us the answer. We can be pretty certain of that. Well pinpoint the exact date of the destruction of Athilan and send observers into Europe to see what happened after that. But for the moment, I think my ideas as good as anything thats been suggested.
I have a lot of time to sit here thinking up these theories, right now. And I have to confess, despite what I said a little earlier, that I really am getting tired of this place. I want to get moving. I want to see Atlantis.
How tremendously frustrating it is to know that the royal ships are waiting in the harbor, ready to carry us off to that warm and beautiful and fabulous land out in the ocean, and instead Im stuck in this chilly miserable place somewhere on the coast of France while the endless rituals and sacrifices are performed and rivers of bulls blood run along the rocky ground. Prince Ram stands on top of a wickerwork tower, smiling and waving and scattering handfuls of grain to the groveling mainlanders. Imagine it, grain, in Paleolithic Europe, where farming isnt supposed to have been invented for another ten or fifteen thousand years! As the prince tosses the grain, long lines of the local folks keep coming on and on to snatch it up, more people than I ever would have guessed there were in the whole world at this time.
I really dont want to be here in this two-bit provincial trading post any longer. Yes, its fascinating in its way, I suppose. But its also cold and raw and primitive, and it isnt Atlantis. I want to see Atlantis. Lord, do I want to see Atlantis! Itll be just my luck if the whole place sinks into the sea before I get there. We arent sure, after all, precisely when the final cataclysm is due to happen. It could even be next week, though I like to think theres more time than that. Nevertheless here I sit. Here I wait.
Miss you so very much.
Until next time
Roy
3.
Written at sea. Im embarrassed to report that Ive already lost count of the days, but Im sure that we are just past the turning of the yeargoing by the Home Era calendar, that is. By the Athilantan calendar too, for that matter, because Ive learned that the Athilantans begin their year on the day of the winter solstice, our December 21. That makes sense: the day the sun begins its return, the day when the days begin to grow longer.
(If youve done a better job of keeping track of time than I have, Lora, can you help me out? When and if you answer this, give me a clue, in terms of the phases of the moon or something, to the exact date in Home Era time. Not knowing the exact calendar time right now doesnt matter all that much, but I can see that it could cause big problems for me as the time draws near to return to our own time. I shouldnt have messed up like this. Dumb of me, dumb, dumb, dumb!)
Anyway, Ill assume that by our own calendar today is January 3, 18, 861 B.C. I cant be more than a day or two off.So: Happy New Year, Lora! (Give or take a day or two. . . . ) Happy New Year! But its really difficult to keep converting Athilantan days into our days, and really dumb to use a calendar that has no relevance whatever back here. I suspect that youre using the Athilantan calendar now, although youve most likely been keeping track of the Home Era time as well. Since I cant really be sure of the right Home Era date any more, I might as well switch over to the local system. Andwellby Athilantan reckoning, I see by Prince Rams mind, this is Day 13 of the Month of New Light in the year of the Great River. So be it.
Starting over, then
Day 13, New Light, Great River. Aboard the imperial Athilantan vessel Lord of Day, bound from Brittany toward the isle of Athilan!
You ought to see these ships, Lora! You wouldnt believe them for a moment.
What I expected, considering the general cultural level of these Athilantans as Ive come to know it in the short while Ive been here, was something along the lines of the Greek or Roman galley, with two or three banks of oars and maybe a sail. Or, maybe, a vessel more like a merchantmanyou know, a pure sailing ship, square-rigged or possibly with a lateen sail.
Lora, this is some kind of steamship. Im not kidding. A steamship. In the Paleolithic!
Unbelievable. Incomprehensible.
I said last time that the Athilantans were an Iron Age people living in Stone Age times. That was an understatement, by plenty. I hadnt had a chance yet to study my surroundings carefully enough. These people arent simply on a cultural par with the Greeks or the Romans, as I used to thinkno, theyve got at least a nineteenth-century technology, and maybe something even more advanced than that. I wasnt able to see that on the mainland, and you probably cant see it out where you are. But this ship is an eye-opener.