The Emperor Awakes by Alexis Konnaris

somewhere I heard a male voice calling the woman’s name and a blurred figure started to appear into this picture of blissful oblivion to the horrors of the world.
    I was fully absorbed by the scene and smiling with them. But then I was forcibly dragged out of that dream when the landscape suddenly grew dark, and a ferocious wind ripped through the castle, the harbour, the child and the mother, turning everything into rubble, piles of ash, the entire scene stained with purple splashes falling from the sky, indistinguishable fragments of stone, soil, plant, flesh and bone, all swiftly turning to dust and scattered far away by a terrible twister, as if they had never existed.
    Even though I was inside this vision I remembered myself feeling crashed by the scene of utter devastation; the air was blown out of my lungs. I collapsed to the ground and cried.
    Soon after I was transported to a different scene. I saw figures, alternating between dressed in dark sinister hooded cloaks and then into dancing figures, magnificently dressed in vibrant attire and decked in glittering jewels, accompanied by a gloriously hypnotising hymn- singing, interspersed with images of what appeared like barbarian battle-dancing around a roaring fire, and an idol which I could not quite make out. I felt drawn in by this tune that was ringing in my mind, long after the vision ceased.
    And then again I was abruptly and brutally taken into the middle of a furious battle with arrows and swords going right through me, as if I was not really there, but it, nevertheless, felt very real and the noises and battle cries were deafening and terrifying and I automatically brought my palms to my ears.
    I tried to run to the sidelines of the chaos around me, but my feet were dragging ever so slowly, as if fighting through snow or sand or a bog, and then I caught someone’s eye and that person seemed to have momentarily ceased fighting, as if paralysed on the spot.
    He stared right through me or at me, I wasn’t sure, but he seemed to have recognised me. And it started to trigger a memory in me, but I could not quite place it, a name …, just give me a name, that face … I tried again and again, but when I thought I had got it, it slipped away from me, and, at that moment, I saw that person being speared right through like a goat about to be roasted, and I let out a terrible cry which nobody could hear, as nobody present turned to me, a cry that changed nothing around me.
    As suddenly as it appeared the vision disappeared and I was suddenly brought back to reality with a thud. I found myself drenched in sweat back in Constantinople. I felt confused by the riot of images that assaulted me.
    I thought about that person I saw who seemed to be the only one to recognise me, but could not understand what happened, what it all meant. I tried to remember the woman’s name in the first scene, but it eluded me. After a while I gave up.
    I strained my ears to hear the sounds of battle, but, strangely, could hear nothing. Had the Ottomans got bored of the looting and destroying and raping or was there simply nothing left to rape, loot or destroy? Whatever the case might be, I had to get out of there.
    We had to find the child, which was as much ours and the Order’s as the Emperor’s and the mother’s that bore it, but whose identity and fate was unknown.
    * * *
     
    A piece of paper fell from the book that Elli was reading. She bent down and picked it up. It was three pages folded together. She unfolded them. It was a handwritten note with the date of 21 st December 1922 A.D. written on the top right-hand corner. She had seen the handwriting before, but could not remember where. Her curiosity piqued, she began to read.

CHAPTER 10
     
    Smyrna, Asia Minor
July 1921 A.D.
     
    Smyrna was one of the wealthiest cities in the Mediterranean. Its port was a constant hive of activity with cargo travelling between East and West. Trading was the blood that ran through the city’s