The Atlantis Scrolls

Prologue

From the Mediterranean Sea an ominous gust arose to defile the silence that permeated over the peaceful city of Alexandria. Only oil lamps and firelight could be seen through the streets in the mid of night as five figures, disguised as monks, moved swiftly through the city. From a high stone window a boy of barely teenage watched them as they walked, mute, as monks were known to be. He pulled his mother to his side and pointed down at them.

She smiled and assured him that they were on their way to a midnight mass in one of the city’s temples. Fascinated, the young boy’s big brown eyes followed the tiny specks below him, tracing their shadows with his eyes as the black-stretching forms lengthened every time they passed a fire. One man in particular he could observe clearly, hiding something under his robe, something substantial the shape of which he could not discern.

It was a mild, late-summer’s night and a lot of people were outside and the warm lights echoed with merriment. Above them the stars flickered in the clear sky while below massive merchant ships heaved like breathing giants on the rise and fall of the rippling sea. Now and then a cackle of laughter or the breaking of a wine jug would disturb the apprehensive air, but the boy was used to that. The breeze played in his dark hair as he leaned over the windowsill to get a better view of the mysterious group of holy men he was so taken by.

When they reached the next crossing he watched them suddenly scatter, although at the same pace, in different directions. The boy frowned, wondering if they were each attending a different ceremony in a different area of the city. His mother was talking to her guests and had told him to go to sleep. Enraptured by the curious movement of the holy men, the boy slipped on his own robe and stole past his family and their guests in the main room. On bare feet he stalked down the stone masonry of the broad steps on the wall face to descend to the street below.

He was determined to follow one of these men and see what the odd formation was all about. Monks were known to move in groups and attend masses together. With his heart filled with ambiguous curiosity and an unwise sense of adventure the boy tailed one of the monks. The robed figure walked past the church where the boy and his family often worshipped as Christians. To his astonishment the boy noticed that the route the monk took led to a pagan temple, the Temple of Serapis. Fear lodged itself like a spear in his heart at the thought of even setting foot on the same soil as a pagan place of worship, but his inquisitiveness only grew stronger. He had to know why.

Across the width of the quiet lane the majestic temple came into full view. Still on the heels of the stealing monk, the boy pursued his shadow diligently, hoping to stay close to a man of God in a time like this. His heart pounded in terrified awe of the temple where he had heard his parents tell of Christian martyrs who were kept there by pagans to impress on pope and king alike their contest. The boy lived in a time of great turmoil where the transition of pagan to Christian was evident all over the continent. In Alexandria the conversion had become bloody and he feared being even this near such a powerful symbol, the very home of the pagan god, Serapis.

He could see two of the other monks in side streets, but they merely kept a vigil. Into the flat, square façade of the mighty structure he followed the robed figure, almost losing sight of him. The boy was not as fast as the monk, but in the dark he could follow his footfalls. There was a great courtyard ahead of him, and across it stood an elevated structure on stately columns that represented the full splendor of the temple. When the boy ceased his marveling he realized that he was alone and had lost track of the holy man who led him here.

But still, urged by the fantastical prohibition he suffered, that exhilaration only the forbidden could yield, he stayed. Voices came from nearby where two pagan men, one a priest of Serapis, strolled toward the building of great pillars. The boy snuck closer and listened to them.

“I shall not submit to this fallacy, Salodius! I shall not have this new religion conquer the glory of our forefathers, our gods!” the priest-like man whispered harshly. In his hands he carried a collection of scrolls, while his companion carried a golden statue of a half-man, half-calf under his arm. In his hand he clutched a stack of papyrus as they made their way to an entrance near the right corner of the courtyard. From what he heard it was the chambers of the man, Salodius.

“You know I will do everything in my power to protect our secrets, your grace. You know that I will give my life,” Salodius said.

“I am afraid that vow will be tested by the Christian horde soon, my friend. They will try to destroy every single remnant of our existence in their heretic cleansing, masked as piety,” the priest sneered bitterly. “The very reason I will never convert to their faith. What hypocrisy is higher than the treason of making yourself god over men when you claim to serve the god of men?”

All this talk of Christians claiming power for themselves under the banner of the almighty greatly unsettled the boy, but he had to hold his tongue for fear of being discovered by such vile men who dared blaspheme on the soil of his great city. Outside the quarters of Salodius stood two sycamore trees where the boy chose to crouch while the men went inside. A sallow lamp illuminated the doorway from within, but with the door drawn he could not see what they were doing.

Impelled by his mounting interest in their doings he decided to get inside and see for himself why the two men had gone quiet as if they had only been residual phantoms of a previous happening. But from behind where he hid, the boy heard a momentary scuffling and he froze in his position not to be discovered. To his amazement he saw the monk and two other robed men pass him with rapid movements and they entered the quarters in quick succession. A few minutes later the amazed boy watched them emerge, blood splattered on the brown cloth they wore to disguise their uniforms.

They’re not monks! It is the papal guard of the Coptic Pope Theophilus! he exclaimed in his thoughts, which compelled his heart to quicken in terror and awe. Too scared to move, he waited until they had left to seek out more pagans. To the still room he ran with his legs bent, a moving crouch to secure his undetected presence in this terrible place, hallowed by pagans. Inconspicuously he slipped into the room and closed the door behind him, so that he would hear if anyone came.

The boy yelped inadvertently when he saw the two dead men, the very voices he took wisdom from a few minutes before, silenced.

So it is true. The Christian guards are as bloodthirsty as the heretics their faith condemns, the boy thought. His heart was broken to this sobering revelation. The priest was right. Pope Theophilus and his servants of God are only doing this for power over men, not in exaltation of the father. Does that not make them as evil as the pagans?

At his age the boy was unable to process the barbarism that came from the hands of men who claimed to serve a doctrine of love. He winced at the horror of their cleaved throats and choked on the smell that reminded him of the sheep his father slaughtered, the warm coppery stench that his mind forced him to admit, was human.

God of love and forgiveness? Is this how the pope and his church love their fellow men and forgive those who trespass? he wrestled inside his head, but the more he thought on it, the more compassion he felt for the slain men on the floor. Then he remembered the papyrus they had carried and started rummaging through everything as quietly as he could.

Outside in the courtyard the boy could hear more and more noise, as if the stalkers had now abandoned their secrecy. Now and then he would hear someone cry in agony, often following the sound of steel on steel. Something was happening to his city this night. He knew it. He had felt it on the whisper of the sea breeze that hushed the creaking of the merchant ships, that portentous premonition that this night was unlike any other.

Madly ripping open chest lids and cabinet doors he could not find the documents he had seen Salodius carry into his dwelling. Finally, in the gaining ruckus of furious religious warfare in the temple, the boy fell to his knees, exhausted. Next to the dead pagans he wept bitterly for the shock of the truth and the betrayal of his faith.

“I would be Christian no more!” he shouted, unafraid of being found now. “I will be pagan and protect the old ways! I renounce my faith and put it in the ways of the first nations of this world!” he wailed. “Make me your protector, Serapis!”

The clash of weapons and shrieks of the slaughtered was so loud that his cries would be construed as just another sound of the carnage. Frantic screaming alerted him that something much more devastating had happened and he ran to the window to see that the columns of the great temple section above were being demolished one by one. But the true threat was coming from the very structure he was occupying. Searing heat caressed his face as he peeked from the window. Flames as high as the towering trees licked at the buildings while the statues fell with mighty thumps that sounded like the treads of giants.

Petrified and sobbing, the frightened boy looked for a back way out, but as he leapt over the lifeless cadaver of Salodius, his foot caught on the man’s hand and he came down hard on the floor. Shaking off the impact the boy saw a panel under the cabinet he had searched. It was a wooden panel hidden in the concrete floor. With great toil he pushed aside the wooden locker and lifted the lid. Inside he discovered the heap of ancient scrolls and maps he had been seeking.

He looked at the dead man who he believed pointed him in the right direction, literally and spiritually. “My thanks to you, Salodius. Your death will not be for naught,” he smiled, hugging the scrolls to his chest. With his small frame as his asset, he made his way through one of the water ducts that ran under the temple as a storm-water canal and escaped unseen.