“Safe, I think. There is one other ship,” explained Belyn. His shoulders sagged in a gesture of futility. “Kian has it- they are all in Kian’s hands now.”

The three ships were nearly full with rescued survivors. Charis made certain that Avallach, Lile, Morgian, and An-nubi were safely aboard and that the cargo she had worked so hard to preserve was secured before collapsing exhausted into a corner.

Belyn called orders to his captain, which were relayed to the other ships, one of which was in Maildun’s care. The sails rustled up the masts once more, flapped, and puffed full in the breeze, and the ships strained forward, moving out to sea.

They had not sailed far, however, when they heard a howl, distant and menacing, carrying over the water. Those at the rails lifted their heads and saw thick clouds lowering over Atlantis. Spider-threads of shining crimson lava flowed over the unsteady landmass, gushing up and out of numerous gaping rents in the earth.

Smoke snaked over the water in wispy tendrils so that Atlantis appeared to float on night-dark storm clouds. The hot air smelled of sulfur and burning stone. Sooty ash drifted down in a filthy snow, blacking everything it touched. Although it was well past midday, an inky twilight prevailed. The survivors huddled on the decks in the darkness, their drawn faces illumined by lurid flares and lightning.

The howl became a vast, soaring hiss that spread out from the broken shell of the island to fill the world. Charis closed her eyes and heard in the ugly sound the rush of departed spirits hastening on their deathless flight. Someone jostled her shoulder and she looked up. Annubi stood over her, his eyes red in the fireglow. “Come and see,” he told her.

She rose and followed him to the stern where they pushed their way to places at the rail. Atlantis had shrunk utterly, its once-vast terrain now merely a cluster of broken mountains, wrecked Atlas a shapeless black hump in the flame-shot darkness.

The sibilant hiss intensified, overlaid by another sound, like that of an enormous cloth being ripped from end to end, a great tearing-the fabric of the world torn in two from one end to the other. The sound grew and filled the world, overwhelming the ships and their frightened passengers.

Then, while they all watched, the dark hump of Mount Atlas sank inward upon itself, heaved, and burst in a final shattering cataclysm of fiery destruction. The awful force vomited up gas and dust, and debris rose in a magnificent churning pillar whose top was lost high in the streaming clouds above. A moment later they saw the shock wave racing at them over the water, flattening the wave crests.

It hit like an invisible hand, knocking the observers off their feet, rattling the ships to their planking. The shock wave was accompanied by a screaming wild wind that caught the flagging sails so sharply that the masts bent and cracked. The triremes were driven helplessly over the water, their decks slanting almost vertical. Charis, gripping the rough decking with her fingers, lay flat and held on, her eyes squeezed shut to keep out the stinging salt water.

The wind flew past them across the sea. Smoldering chunks of rock debris whistled from the swollen sky, hot and trailing white smoke, sizzling as they struck the sea and sank in a welter of steam. Glowing missiles struck the ships, sputtering and fizzling as they skittered crazily, burning into the planking, setting the decks afire. Down rained the deadly hail. Charis heard a shriek and saw a woman race past her, scurrying for safety, a child clasped tightly in her arms, the hem of her tunic fluttering with a bright border of flame. She ran to the woman, knocked her to the deck, and beat out the flames with her hands, then pulled a bit of sailcloth over them hoping to weather the firestorm.

They crouched together under the canvas and Charis realized that her companions were Lile and little Morgian, their faces white beneath smeared soot, hair gray with ash. Lile peered at her blankly, without recognition. I must look as unnatural to her, Charis thought; she does not know who I am.

“Lile,” she said, reaching out her hand. “It is Charis, Lile. We are alive and we are going to survive. Do you hear? We will live.” Morgian whimpered softly, but Lile did not respond; she turned her face to stare out at the ghastly hail.

The mountainous wave that followed the last explosion lifted the light ships precariously high before sending them plunging down into the deep-riven trough. The wave passed beneath them, hurtling on its way across wide Oceanus, building power and speed as it went. The thought of what that wave would do to the first landmass it encountered made Charis shudder.

When the firestorm had passed, Charis and Lile threw off the sailcloth and looked out across the water into an immense impenetrable curtain of smoke and dust all around, so thick they could no longer see the ships nearest them.

Through the interminable night, the triremes drifted in a dead calm sea. Survivors collapsed, slept where they fell, awakening to a murky sunrise. The sails hung limp and useless from the masts. Ash still drifted like snow, coating the water with a foul, thick sludge. The dense air stank of sulfur.

For three days the ships drifted idly in the still water. On the fourth day the sun rose as a pale, gray disk, burning through the brown sackcloth sky. By midday a fitful breeze out of the south scattered the last tattered remnants of smoke, and the people looked out across Oceanus. Where Atlantis had been there was nothing now but a dull expanse of filthy water. Not a rock, not a grain of sand, was left. Atlantis was gone and only the faintest wisp of steam rising from a vast seam of bubbles marked the place where it lay.

Atlantis was no more.

What shall I write of the hard years, the terrible years, years of despair, disease, death… What is there to say-that we struggled, starved, ached, bled, and suffered in every one of a thousand different ways?

We did this.

We did more. We survived and forced a cold and hostile land to yield a home.

After nearly four grim, wretched, restless months aboard our crippled ships we landed on the rock-bound western coast of a land called Ynys Prydein, a cloudbound island of mist-covered mountains and soft green hills far to the east and north.

There were few inhabitants of the narrow spit of land where we made our landfall, but those few received us with respect despite all their suspicious, backward ways. Slight and short of stature, hair and eyes dark like the forest creatures they resembled, these people, who called themselves Cerniui, lived crudely in small holdings of wood and mud. We could not speak to them; speech was hopeless. Their language was a meaningless tangle of soft gutturals and willowy sibilance, not speech at all. Yet, somehow we made our desires known to them and they were eager to provide for our needs, looking upon us as very gods and goddesses.

We stayed with them two seasons, waiting for the fourth ship which, sadly, never came. Kian, Elaine, and all the rest were lost, and we mourned them. Then we moved deeper into the land, beyond a range of low mountains, sacred to the Cerniui, to a region of rich woodlands, lakes, and fair glades which Belyn had surveyed and Believed could be made to furnish us with the means of survival. Thinly populated to begin with, there were none to oppose us; the savages we did encounter fled at the mere sight of us, abandoning home and livestock without lifting a hand, so strong was their terror.

We named our new land Sarras, after the home we had left behind. But to our diminuitive neighbors it soon became known as Llyn Llyonis-their approximation of Atlantis. And here, in Llyn Llyonis, we began to make a life in this rough and unsparing land.