Kryptos Chapter 1 (first part)

[ellyssian]

Kryptos

i. Dormus Codis

It is said that the Gates of Ivory and Horn are guarded by Sleeping Watchers, ever dreaming, ever vigilant. Like pillars they stand against the backdrop of dreams, singing in tones arranged in infinite arrays; harmonies peaceful and painful dissonances, too beautiful to remember upon waking. So easily do they lose their cyclopean stature amidst the images cascading from recesses of the dreamer's mind that few will see them, and less will recall, and fewer still will admit the sight.

For some they are but a nightmare on the verge of pleasantries -- or making pale their fondest horror -- for they move to mathematics unknown to man and they are amongst the few to fathom the heart of the dreamer. It is said that they bear no bribe and that those who thwart them dream no more. It is also said that Oneiros himself, who commands all that sleeps, both those that do not awake and those that drift but briefly, is wary of the Sleeping Watchers. For if they awake worlds upon worlds will unravel, shredded like tapestries sold at market and beaten too severely, and all things that are and all things that might be will no longer be thus.

On high Olympus, Zeus himself looks away from the Sleeping Watchers, turning his gaze instead to survey with pride the Macedonian Empire stretching across land and seas. That silent, brooding statues of such power can exist outside of his domain, tenants of a shared realm where others gather, reminds him that perhaps in some distant splinter of a world there may be another Alexandros and another Daedalus, mayhaps another Zeus, and in that world things may not have gone as they have here.

Perchance Daedalus failed to escape King Minos. What then of his later work perfecting the flying machine? What of his clever clockworks and mechanisms? Could the Macedonian Empire have thrived thusly for more than two thousand years without the mechwarriors later generations developed using clever geometries he had invented? What of Daedalus of Athens most important creation -- his son, Icarus?

His child might have met a mishap on that fabled, four hour first-flight over the Icarian Sea, and then where would they be without the forging of iron and blending of steel? A bronze-aged Empire would crumble, leaving a vacuum of ideas and learning from which a world may never recover. Not content with such a critical development -- for which the sea he had escaped over was renamed in his honour -- the gifted young man explored properties of those metals, and others, and soon introduced the world to the power of magnetic and electric fields. What dark ages might have intervened had Icarus, in some backwater fragment of a world, not brought light to the world?

~ ~ ~

A wind rose up from the West, sweeping across the forests, climbing up the terraced Hanging Gardens, lifting and swirling the long, dark locks of Kallias of Babylonia, eldest son of the Lord-Mayor of the province. The sunset was more vibrant and more spectacular as the rays filtered through the distant Heavens hovering over far Mount Olympus. The symbolic portal to the land of the gods was long lost to the curve of the Earth, but the home of the gods itself knew no such bounds. It was on such days as this, rare enough indeed, that the Elders would speak of Zeus, deep in thought, and the wiser priests would smile, chiding the novitiates who moved to correct the errant beliefs held by old ones. In his younger days, Kallias noted every colour in the splendid sunset, even those vistas that paled in comparison to the scene presenting itself for his pleasure. Today, however, he looked, but he did not see.

A soft click sounded behind him and he heard the indrawn breath. Kallias turned, embracing the young woman in his arms, breathing in the scent of her -- perhaps no one else would notice it over the heady perfumes rising from the purple flowers clinging to the tower terrace, but each note came to his attention, just as each variation of colour in her emerald eyes, her olive flesh, and her raven-hued feathery locks seemed to him a harmonious symphony of shades. She had been working with artemisia, he thought, a smile coming to his lips. She had ground it with a pestle and heated it first alone, then in solution. He smelled the smoke in her hair, the lighter scent on her flesh where she had daubed it before beginning a chant. His lips pressed to hers, and nothing else intruded upon his thoughts.

It is quite possible that their kiss lasted longer than the sunset itself, for they were of an age, and such things happen and the hearts of youth yearn for different things than they had as children. Their love had grown and flourished throughout their adolescence, and now fully bloomed as they approached the eighteenth year of their lives. If ever there was such a mythical beast as love at first sight, it was a creature that dwelt with Kallias of Babylonia and Artemisia of Thessaly, for they knew their future would be bound together ever since she had arrived as a child, apprenticed to Cytheris of Babylonia, a prominent alchemist in his fathers court.

~ ~ ~

As the two young lovers sweetly savoured one another and as Zeus pondered what if, a mother screamed and a father fell to his knees -- actions for which an Empire would shake, if not crumble.

Confusion reigned in the central courtyard of the Macedonian Imperial Palace in Alexandria. In the reflecting pool, mirroring the glassen architecture of the towering structures surrounding it, waves returned to stillness. Garish red -- not a product of the sunset -- stained the polished images. The red grew; spread; covering the reflection of the residential tower, as if it were trying to blot out the home of the Imperial family. Alexandros, Emperor of Macedonia and the direct descendant of Alexandros the Great, The First Emperor, knelt in the water, yet even the shaking of this mighty man did not raise a ripple, his tears did not dilute the blood. Empress Demetria had swooned at the edge of the pool, tended by no one, for there are things that even the strongest senses can not accept, and her maidens wailed piteously, abandoning their lady and the horror in the courtyard.

Three waiting-women and twelve guards lay dead and bleeding around the edges of the pool, each slain by their own hand. This alone would have been cause for sympathy and compassion, but would not have stirred even the weakest-willed of the maidens to flee. Such was the horror that the deaths of fifteen devoted servants was rendered like to nothing at all.

The heir apparent of the Macedonian Empire lay in the center of the pool, crushed beneath a monument of granite slab, copper plate, and petrified wood. Splinters of a makeshift boat, so recently commandeered by Alexandros II, a wise, if truant, captain of nearly four years of age, floated motionless on the shallow water. The monument did not move, topple, or shift. No agency above or beyond the walls of the palace aimed, calculated, dropped, or catapulted it. One minute it did not exist and in the next a child was dead.