The Timeless Ones

by Pel Torro, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Tharnos, assistant to the High Priest of the Holy Mysteries at Karnak was disturbed when strange alternation appeared in the ritual. Was it Kakos the silent High Priest who was introducing these dark ceremonies....? If not was there a presence from Beyond lurking in the shadows of the great temple?
A dying slave warned Tharnos of the plot that was being launched against him . . . Too late! There were other victims waiting in the secret cells below the temple; a retired Roman Centurion; a giant Nubian; a Greek mariner with the cunning of Odysseus.
Only the sacred Temple Virgin could help them to escape. If she would help them, there was a slim chance that the Dark Powers could be held in check.... If not... the world was threatened with an Aeon of darkness such as it had never witnessed before.

Release date: December 19, 2013

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

THARNOS watched while the ancient High Priest, Kakos, moved on feet of velvet towards the high altar of the Great Temple of Karnak. Tharnos looked down at his robe and the insignia which demarcated him as assistant to the High Priest of the Holy Mysteries. He sighed inaudibly as he stood in the shadows. There was an almost imperceptible signal from Kakos as he stood at the altar. Slowly, with measured tread, with the dignity befitting his office, Tharnos strode forward. Kakos moved over to the left of the altar, held a vessel of oil aloft, and began to pour it with great ritual upon the oblatory dish.

There was no sound within the majesty of the temple, no sound at all, save the sound of the steady dripping of the sacred oil. Tharnos watched as the sacramental drops left the container. Then his brows creased into a frown. The High Priest moved from behind the altar, and with a strangely purposeful sweep of the hand, pushed the vessel containing the sacred oil to the floor.

The jarring crash as it landed shattered the silence with horrible abruptness. Kakos set his feet deliberately upon the pieces of broken earthenware, grinding them into still smaller fragments.

Tharnos said nothing but his frown deepened. Kakos pulled a scroll from beneath his robe, ran his finger along a line of the hieroglyphics; his lips moved but no sound issued forth. Tharnos read the priest’s lips. This was even more peculiar, he decided. This was by no means the normal ritual; what had gone wrong? What was happening? What was Kakos doing? The worshippers were away from them at the far end of the temple—silent, overawed, afraid.

What was Kakos doing?

There seemed to be neither rhyme nor reason in this strange deviation from the normal.

Kakos put away the scroll in a special pocket in his robe, took out another from the sacrificial leather pouch, which he wore at his waist, and began ‘reading’ from that. Kakos came as near as he could ever get to ‘reading’. Kakos had no tongue. It was concomitant upon the acceptance of the office of High Priest of the Holy Mysteries of Karnak. The High Priest had to be silent. The holiest mystery of all was imparted from one High Priest to another at the moment of initiation, imparted by sign language and by reading of the sacred scroll. None but the High Priest could handle the scroll, but Tharnos was a man of outstanding intelligence. Tharnos read the lips of the High Priest. Tharnos knew the principal points of the incantation already, but he was a wise enough man not to disclose his information; he had been assistant High Priest for several years, but he had not the slightest intention of following Kakos into the highest office.

Deep within himself Tharnos felt tired of the priesthood. It didn’t appeal. There was nothing about it that attracted him any longer. He had been quite a young man when he had joined the religious staff of the temple. He was not by any means an old man now. In the course of thirty-five summers and winters, Tharnos had lived and moved and had his being upon the warm, red sands of Egypt.

The ritual was now proceeding normally and the strange, disturbed thoughts left the mind of the assistant High Priest. He listened with half an ear as the worshippers left. It was the only sound that disturbed the temple, for the mysteries were singularly silent. The silence was a live silence, a very potent silence, the kind of silence that could have been cut with one of the copper-bladed, sacrificial knives that were used on high days and special feasts.

Tharnos followed the High Priest through the inner sanctum. The High Priest and his assistant removed their robes of office. Tharnos looked at the shaven head of Kakos, a sign of High Priesthood. He asked himself what it amounted to? What was the difference between Kakos and an ordinary mortal? He was a man who had shaved his head, put on strange robes, and whose tongue had been cut from his mouth at the moment of his initiation—but apart from this Kakos was a man, an ordinary man, in the same way that Tharnos was an ordinary man, and yet, reflected the assistant High Priest, he was not regarded as ordinary by those who worshipped in the temple. Kakos was regarded with the awe and reverence of a demigod.

There came the sound of sandaled feet. Fatima, the Temple Virgin, walked demurely with lowered eyes into the inner sanctum. Tharnos watched the fire in the priest’s eyes as they followed the girl’s movements. She was very young, fifteen or sixteen at the most, decided Tharnos, but there was a look in her eyes that was as old as time. She seemed to represent the eternal mystery of woman. He thought about Fatima again, and the worshippers. To them she was not as other mortals; she was dedicated, set apart, as essential to their ritual as the priests and the great statue of the god before which the altar stood.

What did it all amount to? wondered Tharnos. Deep inside his mind he wondered what it was all for? None of them were different, none of them were ‘set apart’. It was all rubbish. It was all wild fancy in the minds of the superstitious natives, his own people. Yet, when he saw them enthralled by the superstition—a superstition of which he was a part, of which Kakos was a part, of which Fatima was a part, he felt angry. Angry with himself and scornful towards them. It was all a great charade, a great pantomime, a game … Just a game; just an act. It was all pretence; the essence, the core of the thing was false. They really thought that great stone figure had power. But it was stone. It was made by the hands of men; it had been carved from a gigantic block of Italian marble, carved recently, too. He remembered the dedication of the new idol. The temple itself was old, very old, but the idol had been re-carved after the Roman occupation. Romans, he thought—strange men, he didn’t understand them. There was something so vigorous, so forthright, so straightforward and matter-of-fact about the Romans. They saw life in blacks and whites, and most of them enjoyed it to the full. They had many qualities which Tharnos admired. They had many other qualities which he deplored.

He sighed again as Fatima gathered up the sacred robes which the two priests had discarded, and carried them through to her own quarters, where they would be attended to, and made ready for the next ceremony.

Tharnos looked on to the eyes of the silent High Priest. They followed the girl’s exciting walk, the sway of her beautifully rounded hips; there was a light in those eyes which, to Tharnos’ way of thinking, ought never to have shone from the face of the High Priest, particularly when his gaze was directed to the Temple Virgin …

But then, as Tharnos had been thinking, they were ordinary men; she was an ordinary girl. There was nothing dedicated or set apart about them. They were only what they made of themselves, they were only what the worshippers made of them. It was all in the mind, every single part of it was in the mind.

Time passed. The High Priest finally completed the ritual unwinding, then he and his assistant made their way from the inner sanctum. The High Priest went into his own private quarters, the door of which was almost continually locked, and into which no man save the High Priest had ever been. Kakos was particularly concerned to retain the privacy of his own quarters.

Tharnos left the temple and went to the river. He had a small house by the river, there was great peace and beauty there. He removed his robe, folded it by the river bank, and waded out to the papyrus reeds. They grew tall and soft, like curtains of green and brown. He fingered the reeds, as he passed. There was a certain pleasant friendliness in the tactile sensation, he thought. They hid him. They hid life from him and they hid him from life, from the pretence of the temple. The temple didn’t matter, the temple was only a game, and yet a game which he had to play. He thought back to the time when he had believed in the ritual of the Holy Mysteries. Now he didn’t believe any more. He swam quietly through the gentle water at the edge of the river, the water that lapped at the edge of the reeds. He swam out into deeper water, still thinking, thinking hard. The sun, a great golden eye in the blue dome above, shone down, scintillating on the water, throwing back clear light greens and browns from the papyrus reeds.

Tharnos turned over on to his back and swam with slow, leisurely strokes; he had made a decision at last—he had had enough of the temple. In fact, he had had more than enough. He thought back once more to the days when he had believed; the process had been slow; it had taken him a long time to make up his mind … Now that he had made up his mind, now that he had accepted the decision which his mind had reached months before, he knew that he must get out. He wanted to live life as he believed it to be. He wanted to be perfectly genuine; he was tired of the sham and the humbug and the hypocrisy. He didn’t want a life that was false; he didn’t want a life that was artificial. He wanted Reality and there was no more Reality in the temple. He took his mind back to the temple ritual. He lay looking up at the blue vault above him as he paddled in a leisurely manner now with his feet; his arms were just striking hard enough to keep his head above the surface. Why had Kakos altered the ritual? It didn’t make sense. There was no reason for Kakos to have altered the ritual, and in such a strange and peculiar way. Tharnos felt a little agitated and annoyed about the alteration—he had. . .