The Seventh Pleiade

  Synopsis

  Atlantis is besieged by violent storms, tremors, and a barbarian army. For sixteen-year-old Aerander, it’s a calamitous backdrop to his Panegyris, where boys are feted for their passage to manhood.

  Amid a secret web of romances among the celebrants, Aerander's cousin Dam goes missing with two boys. With the kingdom in crisis, no one suspects the High Priest Zazamoukh, though Aerander uncovers a conspiracy to barter boys for dark spiritual power. Aerander's proof— an underground vault that disappears in the morning—brings shame on his family and charges of lunacy. The only way for Aerander to regain his honor is to prove what really happened to the missing boys.

  Tracking Dam leads Aerander on a terrifying and fantastical journey. He spots a star that hasn’t been seen for centuries. He uncovers a legend about an ancient race of men who hid below the earth. And traveling to an underground world, he learns about matters even more urgent than the missing boys. The world aboveground is changing, and he will have to clear a path for the kingdom’s survival.

  The Seventh Pleiade

  Brought to you by

  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  The Seventh Pleiade

  © 2013 By Andrew J. Peters. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-002-7

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: November 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Greg Herren and Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri (GraphicArtist2020@hotmail.com)

  Acknowledgments

  There are many people for me to thank for making this début novel possible. A good son starts with his mom, and Sandra Peters, who says that everything I write is golden, sent me out into the world with the confidence to share my imagination with others. Diane McPherson and Kerri Dolan, my creative writing instructors at Cornell, gave me the belief that a psych major could write decent prose. My former critique group, the self-styled “33rd St. Writers Collective,” heavily pondered, debated, and encouraged my early drafts: Marta Ficke, Jonathan LaPearl, Kelly Thompson, and Sarah Ulicny. My fabulous critique partners Georgina Storey and C.A. Clemmings stayed with me through the long haul. The penultimate draft was vetted during a life-changing week as a Lambda Literary Foundation Fellow. The wisdom and generosity of my fellow Fellows and the Lambda staff were a huge gift. I must especially thank Katherine V. Forrest, Jenn Reese, Robin Talley, Tony Valenzuela, and Johnathan Wilbur.

  My heartfelt thanks to Len Barot and Greg Herren at Bold Strokes Books for bringing The Seventh Pleiade to life.

  The source material for Atlantis is vast, and my research barely excavated a rich store of scholarship and imagination. I was first drawn to the subject by Lewis Spence’s peculiar History of Atlantis, which fueled all sorts of ideas about an antediluvian world from which stories about real men became the mythology of the ancient world. I tried to stay loyal to Plato’s account of Atlantis in his Dialogues of Timaeus and Critias. Classic Atlantis enthusiasts will notice I kept the family names from the original myth, and the placement of the legendary continent, beyond the Pillars of Heracles, in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean, follows Plato’s telling.

  The Pleiades are a daunting subject, and I want to thank astronomer Curt Renz for his technical assistance in rendering that storyline with a minimum of artistic liberties. My discovery of the Lost Pleiade myth was a major inspiration for this project. The disappearing star, sometimes referenced as Electra, Merope, or Celaeno, created folklore around the globe, and can be explained by the fact that a seventh star in the cluster was not consistently visible to the naked eye in antiquity, depending on the season.

  I am indebted to Thomas Hubbard from the University of Texas for his consultation on ancient Greek etymology and male sexuality.

  Most of all, I want to thank my partner, Genaro Cruz. American journalist Burton Rascoe said, “What no wife of any writer can understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out a window.” Rascoe may not have imagined that writers could have husbands (or could be women), but his statement says a lot about the lonely life of a writer’s spouse. I never would have fulfilled my dream of getting my work published without the encouragement, patience, and belief of my extraordinary husband. I love you.

  For Genaro.

  PART ONE

  The Boys’ Panegyris

  Chapter One

  It all started when Dam went missing. Not the tempests, or the mutiny, or the ragtag militia sniping at the borders of the kingdom from the frozen mammoth steppe. These things happened, but to Aerander, who was sixteen years old, the world had become a spectacle of horrifying and exhilarating events, lacking reason or connection, for the most part. He tried to mind what was immediately apparent, and before Dam disappeared that was he was entering the Boys’ Panegyris, however bleakly it coincided with the troubles of the day. Every Atlantide principality, across the Fortunate Isles and the continents east and west abroad, had sent young men to the island capital for the quadrennial festival. The families of the Ten Royal Houses were quartered at his father’s palace for eight days of temple services, athletic contests, and feasts. Aerander had a duty to show well for his family, and—as his father said—through example, help restore the kingdom to a normal routine.

  Then Thessala came by his room on the morning of the opening day of the festival while he was doing his exercises on his balcony.

  Her hair hung loose below her shoulders, she was wearing a simple housedress, and she had something important on her mind. Thessala was Aerander’s stepmother, but there was only twelve years between them. His mother had died when he was two. His father had married Thessala one year later.

  “There’s news,” she said. “Two boys went missing from the palace last night. Kosmos and Leonitos. From the House Eudemon. I heard it from Myron just moments ago.”

  Myron, the house porter, had been the bearer of gossip each day since the palace guests had arrived. This seemed like a particularly toothsome bit for Thessala to gnaw on, given the rivalries between the houses to show off their most earnest celebrants in the festival competitions. Still, Aerander minded his curiosity. It probably wasn’t much to-do. Few had done it, but boys talked about breaking curfew to run off into town every day. The pre-festival weeks were their last chance for fun and freedom. Afterward, there were bartered marriages and politicking for their fathers.

  “There’s a third boy missing,” Thessala said. “Damianos.”

  Aerander stepped out of his stretch against the balcony ledge.

  “There’s word the three of them were together last night. Do you know anything about it?”

  “Why would I know anything?”

  “Dam was your best friend.”

  His gaze wandered to the city. Four flights above the mounted Citadel, his balcony was the second-highest perch in the palace, giving view in the weak morning light to a gray labyrinth of canals, boulevards and alleys, and parapet fortifications—stripped of their gleaming bronze plates for military scrap—that encircled the city in gr
eat stone-masoned flanks. In the center of town, the weathered dome of the Temple of Poseidon rose above the terracotta roofs like a giant, blackened scalp.

  “Was,” Aerander said. “Dam and I haven’t talked in ages.” He had grown up with Dam in the palace. They were more than friends, actually; they were kin, though the relation was difficult to understand. Dam’s father was a third or fourth cousin of Aerander’s or their two fathers were related through the marriage of a great-aunt. Thessala had explained it once; Aerander forgot. Dam’s parents had died before he could remember, so it was all kind of confusing and didn’t really matter anyway. Dam left the palace at thirteen to become a priest.

  Thessala drew up beside him by the balcony ledge. Though just out of bed, she still smelled of fennel oil, which she used to wash her hair each evening. “It was stupid, but I had the most horrible idea when Myron told me,” she said. “I felt certain for a moment you’d gone with them.”

  “That was stupid.”

  Thessala’s eyes followed his. “The city is a dangerous place.” Her hand closed lightly on his arm. “You must promise me and your father you would never do anything like that.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me about Dam?”

  “He was out of the house before sunrise, gathering his courtiers. He wanted to deliver, personally, a salver of fish to House Eudemon. If there was to be any question of the security of the Citadel, you know Governor Eulian would be the first to raise it. Now two of his nephews are missing. The sentinels are searching the palace grounds, and they’re embarking on a street-by-street search of the city.”

  On the balcony ledge, there was a bronze monocular that Aerander liked to use for stargazing. An impulse hit him: pick it up and scan the city for Dam. But he quashed the idea as idiotic. There had to be an easy explanation, late-night hijinks gone mildly wrong. But it looked bad, Dam being associated with his family, and it would look even worse if certain other things came out. He had to catch up with Calyiches.

  “Sorry to get Opening Day off to a sour start.”

  Aerander headed to his bedchamber. “I ought to get dressed.”

  Thessala followed him. “You—rushing to your dressing? Has the festival changed you already? What is it they say—boys go in, they come out men?”

  “There’s nothing particularly manly about sitting for a bath and getting fitted with a cape and shoulder clasp.” He looked to his attendant, Punamun, newly appointed for his Panegyris, a Lemurian slave. He was hunched drowsily at his gypsum bench. Aerander’s eyebrows shot up, and he clapped his hands. The young man’s bowl-shaped head of hair jostled. He stood and ambled about the room collecting the strigil and the drying cloths for the bath.

  Thessala hung back by the archway to the balcony with a smirk. “Still, you used to like to dawdle.”

  “I want to get an early start.”

  “Is it Calyiches?”

  “Haven’t I a right to privacy? You’re always pulling at me like a knot of yarn.”

  Thessala ventured farther into the room. “It’s hardly private that he gave you his house ring.” Her gaze was narrowed on the House of Mneseus signet band on Aerander’s finger.

  “So, what of it?” He watched Punamun tottering about the place with nothing to show for it. A strange fellow. Had he forgotten already where he kept his bathing cloak?

  Thessala went on. “Boyhood lovers—I think it’s quite romantic. He’s very handsome. And popular. But you’d be wise to keep it from your father. Your family still has its prejudices.”

  Thessala liked to say your family when there was something she didn’t agree with, though her ancestry was a mix of House Atlas and House Mneseus by intermarriage. Aerander knew what prejudices she meant, and his stomach twinged. Boys who romanced other boys didn’t produce sons. House Atlas had a hard enough time raising heirs due to a blight of stillbirths that went back many generations. They called it the family curse. Aerander had been well aware of his responsibility to marry and continue the family legacy. Then Calyiches had come along.

  Thessala stepped near with a look of being instructive. “House Mneseus is fond of their boyhood traditions,” she said. “Being a favorite of their governor’s son could be an excellent way to win your father allies on the Council.”

  Aerander wondered what was she talking about. His relationship with Calyiches had nothing to do with politics. He would have corrected her, but there wasn’t time. He had to find Calyiches before he spoke to anybody else. He pointed Punamun to the hutch where he kept his bathing clothes, and he pointed Thessala to the door.

  “Good cheer,” she called over her shoulder. “And don’t forget to let them cut your hair for temple.”

  *

  Descending from his father’s megaron, four flights of stairwells, colonnades, and terraces, Aerander felt bridled to an ox. A cacophony of voices rose up from the yard of the palace quadrangle. All the boys were gathered there for the procession to the temple, and they were likely swapping stories about the missing boys. But his escort Punamun was not pulled in by the excitement. Punamun loped along with a palm frond umbrella raised over Aerander’s head, as it had started raining, like the previous mornings. Lemurians were known for their even tempers—some would say stubbornness. Though their kingdom had been conquered centuries ago, they held a degree of esteem in Atlantean society since they were an ancient race.

  Aerander didn’t know much about the slave. Punamun only spoke a few words of Atlantean. But Aerander noticed that every one of Punamun’s movements seemed to exert a tremendous drain of energy. There was nothing to be done about it. If Aerander ran ahead, it could get back to his father. As the son of Pylartes, Governor of the House of Atlas, Magistrate of the Ten Royal Houses, Convener of the Panegyris, he wasn’t to be rushing about the palace unattended.

  Still, Aerander bargained. If there was an urgent thing to be done, for the betterment of his family, he ought to have some leeway. He directed Punamun off the main-floor arcade, which was strung from column to column with garlands of purple swordflowers. That was where the families of the celebrants were gathered, and there would be dozens of far-flung relatives to slow him down with well-wishes for the day. They cut through the alleys around the palace bureaus—a quicker pass. With a bit of luck, he would spot Calyiches before he met up with his friends.

  It was bound to come up in conversation eventually: they were boyhood lovers. Though Aerander wished Thessala would mind her own business. Other boys had paired up and exchanged family rings since they had gathered at the Citadel for athletic practices and lessons that summer. Though Aerander’s own family had buried the Panegyris custom, for the houses with proud martial traditions like Mneseus and Eudemon, it was a regular thing for boys to do.

  Calyiches seemed to have fallen out of the sky. His family’s colony was across the ocean, where their teak and locust forests supplied the kingdom’s prize lumber. Stories buzzed about him as soon as he showed up for the pre-festival weeks: a wrestling champion, certain to garner the most victory fillets at the games, the former eromenos to military general Philacastes, who was off controlling the barbarian threat in the frontier lands of Azilia. Calyiches had, on sight, lifted Aerander’s heart right out of his chest, and when he found himself walking shoulder to shoulder with him as the celebrants filed out of the Citadel amphitheater after the day’s lessons—slackening their pace to let the others run off ahead, passing sidelong grins, kicking up pebbles from the trail along the lawn to see who could send one the farthest—the world had opened up as startlingly vivid and bright. Thereafter, they met up at off times, after practices or on the terrace of the pavilion when nightly feasts were breaking up, in what Aerander gradually recognized as a romance, though he wondered at times if it was possible for him to have such luck or if he was misinterpreting things. It was so hard to tell with boys. He accepted Calyiches’ ring in a soft and private moment, nuzzling behind a garden trellis. It came as naturally as laying his head on Calyiches’ shoulder. They were bonded.


  Two boys in love.

  Now the situation jostled in his head. Was Thessala suggesting he was using Calyiches to coddle allies for his father? Did Calyiches sense that? Thessala might think it was cute and clever, but if other people saw it that way—waggling around Calyiches like a girl—it would be incredibly embarrassing. He was the Governor Magistrate’s only son. It was risky in any case for him pair up with a boy, given his father’s attitude toward it, but it was disastrous if their affair called his manhood into question. He and Calyiches ought to be equals, not one playing the boy and the other the girl. It wasn’t common, certainly not within Aerander’s own house, but male couples were known to carry on lifelong bonds, parastatheis, side-by-side companions, during their political careers.

  Though Calyiches was two years older, a “senior” celebrant. He was more experienced in romancing boys, and more experienced carnally. Calyiches was already fashioning himself as a young military officer with his scanty blond-and-gold-flecked beard while Aerander was shaven with the wavy fawn-colored locks of a boy. People might see Calyiches as the erastes, the dominant one, and Aerander as the eromenos, the submissive lover. These matters fogged when Aerander was with Calyiches, and above all he didn’t want to lose him, though he had his reputation and his family’s reputation to consider. To his father, a man who gave his heart and body to another man was considered a paidaika. That was a blemish that could stay with him his entire life.

  Aerander needed to talk to Calyiches about these matters. He had to settle things, reconfirming that they stood together honorably as a pair. Until that time, it was best for them to keep things quiet like Thessala had said. Then Aerander could explain to his father there was nothing unmanly about their relationship. He had found someone to share his life. That didn’t mean he was abdicating his responsibility to a wife and family.