Free Labyrinth Gate by Kate Elliott Page B

earl. “Professor Farr. I have read a number of your monographs. I am here today because of my interest in your work on the Pariam, or as you call it, the Pariamne civilization.”
    “Indeed!” The professor flushed slightly. “Indeed, my lord, I must inform you that amongst my colleagues my work on Pariamne is dismissed as erroneous, ridiculous, and completely unfounded in fact.”
    “And by some as fraud,” said the earl. He lifted a hand to forestall Maretha’s comment. “But I must assure you that I am not one of your detractors. Quite the contrary. I have conducted researches in my own branch of—ah—expertise, and it is quite clear to me that Pariamne not only existed but flourished on this island some millennia ago.”
    Maretha recognized instantly her father’s change of expression. Whatever confusion he might have felt concerning the earl before vanished now. He had found a partisan. She managed to stop herself from frowning.
    “Of course,” cried the professor. “The evidence is overwhelming. The two settlements, which I can by no means yet classify as cities, that I have had opportunity to study in the Midlands were obviously not of Latanic origin, although that of course is one of the main points disputed by my colleagues. But there are a number of structural and architectural differences, and beyond them the indisputable evidence of the fragments of writing and the frescos.”
    “But isn’t that exactly the evidence that is most disputed?” said the earl.
    “Only because they do not understand its importance! The frescos are the key. They are the depiction of the great rituals that fueled the civilization. You have read of course my monograph regarding the fragments from the throne room of the site near Eppot-Staw, which I have tentatively restored and interpreted.”
    “Indeed,” said the earl, a cold flatness in his voice that caught Maretha’s attention, “that particular paper has been of great assistance in my own investigations.”
    “Then you know that I propose that at the heart of the primary ritual event of the Pariamne year was a sacrifice—”
    “Of course,” said the earl evenly. The chill in his voice made Maretha shiver, as if the window were not sealed against drafts. “At the center of every ritual is a sacrifice.”
    “But the frescos at Eppot-Staw and at Mantion are too fragmentary to prove my theories. I have been working to decipher the writing, but as you know if you have read my monograph on the use of symbols, that although one sees a certain correlation between the Gates and various of the writing and symbolic gestures at the sites, I do not have the key to link them definitively. I must have more writing.”
    “Where will you find it?”
    “This past year I have studied exclusively the problem of the site of Pariamne itself—a word incidentally which I believe derives from the root Topo Rhuam—a root I interpret as holding several symbolic meanings: including a reference to the Consort of the Queen of Pariamne, but primarily which I translate as ‘the labyrinth of the Queen’s sacrifice.’”
    “Yes,” said the earl. “I have read your latest monograph. You even claim in it to have deduced through your research the location of Topo Rhuam itself. And if you could find and catalog Topo Rhuam, all your theories would be proven.”
    “Yes!” exclaimed the professor. “All those legends of the ancient treasure of the labyrinth have been dismissed as nonsense by those who only read the fables of the princess Sais and the fall of the city. Even the church simply equates the Queen of the Underworld with the Daughter of the Queen of Heaven, with the Mistress of Sin. But they do not recognize the historical perspective, the actual existence of the Queen of the Underworld as a pre-catholic deity in her own right, existing as the primary deity, with her consort, the Hunter, of the Pariamne civilization, which by all our moral lights today would seem a very