After a while, he began to feel settled and less worried. He cleaned the lichen from the tower walls, rethatched the roof and fixed the door. The tower lost the damp smell of wet stone and felt homely, more like the tower it was when Lilya was in residence. The tower was a monument to a deed done long ago, its position more ceremonial than strategic. When he had finished, he inspected every stone, beam and nail. He didn’t want to miss the smallest detail. The memory of Lilya kept him company, and although he was accustomed to being alone for long stretches of time, the tower felt lonely without her. He spoke to her now and then, hoping she would hear him.
With the tower restored, he set about making a new bow. The simple bow he had made before leaving Charis’s care was of wood and twine, and lacked power. He missed his composite bow, lost at the Isthmus of Corinth. It required strong shoulders and arms to draw and its force could drive an arrow through a metal breastplate from a great distance. Lilya had an axe, knives and a sharpening stone. He had time.
He had to keep focused in the moment to gather the materials he needed, to see opportunities as they appeared. A successful day’s fishing could also produce a piece of flint, if he remembered to examine the pebbles and rocks along the shore as he returned with his catch. Many times, he caught himself drifting into a waking dream as he had done during the centuries following the war. It was easy to let the years slip by then, and now, it was a difficult habit to break.
His body matured as it had the first time and steadily became stronger. The regular journey down the mountainside to the sea and back helped him to build muscle and find his balance, except during puberty, when his feet grew faster than the rest of his body. For a year, he couldn’t get through a day without stubbing his toes at least once. The cuts and bruises healed and the seasons continued to pass. He stocked the tower through the warm months, never letting his supplies run low. The cold season was mostly short, and snow didn’t remain on the ground for long, but the fear of a harsh winter wasn’t what bothered him. He often caught himself looking over his shoulder, as he sought the reason for the hairs prickling the back of his neck.
He spent the cold months in quiet meditation, practising the mental disciplines he’d learnt from other Khryseoi who had tried to spirit walk. He conducted the fasting ritual for a week at a time to cleanse his body and bring it to a state of heightened awareness. He allowed himself to feel the vibrations emanating from the world beyond the one he knew. As he lay in readiness, focusing on becoming bodiless, he saw himself lying on the bed with his eyes closed, breathing lightly. He felt a strong desire to leave his sleeping body and to drift outside the room. In the distance, past the walls, was the chance to find Phylasso, to unlock the secrets of the Khryseoi gifts and the danger of the unknown.
Raven now understood the compulsion that had driven Theophilos to tear a rift, releasing Eurynomos and starting the war. Looking at himself asleep, he saw his body in a new light. The long centuries had dulled his view of mortal life. Bodies were frail vessels, to be cherished for as long as they lasted, but finite. He felt the desire to become more than a man made from flesh, and to be more like the Gods; eternal and clothed in light. As he drifted towards the wall, he saw the face of the man who had failed to return from his spirit walk, leaving his body without essence. Raven hesitated. The urge to continue was powerful, but he now realised he wasn’t ready. He would risk leaving his body forever to travel deep into the unknown to find Phylasso. He needed safer surroundings to be at peace. He could conduct the ritual during the summer solstice when spiritual energy was at its strongest. He felt a strong pull towards the south, to the place of his first death. He wanted to go there at once, but he knew it wasn’t the right time. He took a sharp breath and opened his eyes.
* * *
275 BC
One spring day, after treading the now well-worn route up the hillside, and with a cleaned and gutted fish in his basket for supper, Raven came across a herd of goats. They had wandered near the tower to graze. Their ears stood erect as he climbed the crest. They were brown as summer grass and had white bellies and black noses. Raven greeted them by clicking his tongue in his cheek. They looked up still chewing their cud. He took a step forward. They bristled and retreated to safety behind a large buck who presented his fine, stout horns.
Raven clicked another greeting. The buck stamped his hoof. Raven placed his basket on the ground, drew his knife and acknowledged the buck with a nod. “You’re a fine fellow,” he said, stepping forward. The buck was far from the best choice for meat, but in a place where raw materials were scarce, he offered other treasures.
The buck snorted and shook his head from side to side, bunching his shoulders to ready himself for combat. Raven crouched and continued to close the ground between them. He whistled, and the herd backed away, retreating inland from where they had strayed. The buck lowered his horns and charged, finding a gallop in several strides. Raven waited until the buck was nearly upon him. He sprung aside, wrapped one arm around the buck’s neck and sliced his throat. The buck slumped, kicked a few times and lay still in his arms. Raven held the beast to his chest, gave thanks for a clean kill, and sang a song to help guide the buck’s spirit to the afterlife.
“Indeed, you are a very fine fellow!” said Raven, as he took the weight of the buck across his shoulders. He was now a strong young man but by the time he had carried the goat to the tower to be butchered, he was breathing hard.
Raven used every part of the buck. The meat and offal fed him for many weeks and made a palatable change from fish if cooked slowly over embers. He dried the tenderloins for his winter stores. He shaped the bones into arrow heads, dried and plaited the tendons and sinews to make a bowstring, and used the prized horns to cap each end of his new bow.
Standing at the cliff’s edge looking towards the sea, he loosed his first arrow and said a prayer of thanks for the remarkable animal that had allowed him to make such a fine weapon. “I’ll take better care of this one. I promise,” he said as he watched the sea consume the shaft.
* * *
The Isthmus of Corinth (Ancient Greece)
273 BC
When Raven had lived fifteen years in his new body, he tidied the tower and packed his possessions into wooden boxes. He laid out the items he would need to take on his journey: bow, quiver, arrows, a water skin, a bronze knife, a lump of flint, and his pyrites stone. The less he carried, the easier it was to travel quickly with few rest periods. The earth would provide everything else. He fastened his goat leather chiton. It had taken a long time to catch enough squid to dye the garment black. He took a deep breath, tightened his belt, and looked himself up and down in Lilya’s mirror. “Good enough!” he said.
Leaving the tower without a Watcher for the first time in eighteen hundred years, Raven journeyed south-west towards the Isthmus of Corinth. He travelled by night to avoid the heat, but more importantly, people, any of whom might be a dark spirit. The land had been scarred by many battles and entire villages had been razed. Raven ventured close to a few cities as he passed them. None were as he remembered. Most had grown and prospered, but seemingly at one another’s expense. He shook his head and kept moving, remembering what Phylasso had said at the outset of his war:
Men will always war with one another, but ultimately, they will seek to survive. Eurynomos has nothing but hate for life, for the beloved creations of the Gods. He wants a war that will be the last war, ending only when there is nothing left to consume. He will leave the earth a barren waste and return to his black pit to ponder his eternal dissatisfaction, because his appetite for vengeance can never be sated.
Raven marched heavily on the hard ground. The breeze dropped away and the leaves on the trees ceased to rustle. The moon broke through the clouds, lighting the land with luminous dust. As Raven drew closer to the Isthmus he felt a growing reminder of his encounter with Acabar; a cold physical sensation. He had to be here to prepare for his spirit walk. He tried to meditate but his heart beat wouldn’t
slow down and he was unable to sleep. Eventually he abandoned his camp and ran on through the day and night without rest.
Northern Greece disappeared under his feet and he smelled the sea. He had missed the ocean. The roar of waves breaking against rocks had been a constant and comforting companion. He circled the Isthmus of Corinth to approach it from the west, the same route he had taken from Marathon Bay two centuries before. Flashes of memories returned. He had a lump in his throat and a hollow sensation in his chest where he’d been skewered by Acabar’s blade. He made camp on an isolated inlet protected by thick woodland. The beach was smoothed by the returning tide. He fished and slept for three days to allow his aching legs to recover from the forced march.
At dawn on the fourth day he carefully retraced his path through the Isthmus. The sky was lowering grey, and the shape of the land was the same after two hundred years, but barren. There were fewer trees and the ground bore the ruts of passing animals and armies. Raven crouched on one knee and ran his hands through the dirt. He crumbled a clod with his fingertips and breathed in its scent. The memory of the epiphaneia returned as a fleeting pain. The earth remembered every event that had taken place upon Her body. A skilled tracker could see physical changes; a Khryseoi could feel the echoes of life and death. Raven continued walking, following the impressions of the past. Some appeared to him clearly but most were elusive.
At the end of the second day’s search, he found the outcrop where he had waited for Acabar. He felt a fleeting hope he might find some trace of his old bow. There was none. Perhaps it had been found by some lucky wayfarer and deemed a gift from the Gods. Raven smiled at the thought. It was a good bow and deserved to be used, not claimed by decay. To any Khryseoi, decay was a reminder of Eurynomos’s power and the pressing need to keep it in check.
As he closed his eyes to rest he re-envisioned each moment of his encounter with Acabar. Sleep took him and his dreams shifted to a vision of Wolf. Wolf was on his knees, barely conscious, hanging against a stone wall because the ropes securing his wrists wouldn’t allow him to fall. His lips moved, forming words in slow succession. His face was so bruised and bloodied from repeated beatings he couldn’t speak clearly. His eyes were glazed as if he had been drugged. Wolf continued to speak but Raven couldn’t make out a word.
The predawn chill gave Raven goose bumps. He sat shivering until the sun banished the night. He stood in the light and let it fill him with warmth. Then he was running, instinctively, across the Isthmus to the tangled green sea. Birds squawked in the distance. The wind blew its cool breath on his face. He leapt over the sand dunes, drew his knife, and waded into the shallows. As the cold water lapped at his knees, he felt a sharp pain in his nose. Every muscle in his body went rigid and his back tingled. Raven stood panting. When he opened his eyes, he saw the sun had moved across the sky and the seawater had risen to his thighs with the incoming tide. Beyond his physical senses, he could feel the echo of his death and the path he had taken to the Valley of the Shadow. He would follow it when the time was right. A gentle humming filled his head. It wasn’t a sound but a distant vibration, a grindstone drawn across the edge of a blade. He fell on all fours and sank his fingers into the dull silver sand. A hard object cut his finger. He pulled it free. Acabar’s sword was unscathed by time and the sea. He rinsed it clean and returned to the shore.
Raven studied the weapon. It was designed for close combat, for quick swings and thrusts, but he was puzzled by the alternating barbs. They suggested a blade that was hard to remove. Raven took a stone to the edge. He worked it vigorously, but no brown-gold bronze appeared beneath the dull surface. It was as black as coal to the core. Who had crafted this weapon? Raven made a temporary scabbard for the blade from tightly woven reeds. He strapped it to his hip and felt its weight. Despite the memory of it piercing his back, he found the burden of it comforting. Possessing Acabar’s fine weapon, he was better prepared to face Acabar again.
~ Chapter 6 ~
Boeotia (Central Ancient Greece)
273 BC
Raven had spent centuries living on a remote hilltop in Boeotia and while he still felt a bond to the distant land in the north where he’d first been born, he felt settled in Central Greece. The area was isolated and the earth spoke little of people, just the occasional wanderer. The woodlands to the east were thick in places and a good source of food and materials. The hill had a pleasing view across the valley to the south and west, and was sheltered from the cold northerly wind. In winter, the high hilltops sometimes received a dusting of snow but the weather was mostly warm. As Raven reached the top of the rise, he had hoped to find his old hut in reasonable repair, but saw it had been plundered to the foundation and was now little more now than a few broken stones overgrown by grass. The hut had been more than a shelter; it had nurtured him throughout his long life. He looked at the ruin for a time. Every stone had a story: how it had been found, shaped and joined to the next. This land had been a good place to while away the years. He couldn’t think of a better place to attempt the spirit walking ritual.
He closed his eyes and wondered if it were possible to forget about Acabar, to build a new hut and return to the peaceful way of life he’d led before Wolf’s letter had come. Opening them again, he knew there was no going back. He gathered the whole foundation stones and formed a circle of them, setting each one on end. As the sun crossed the sky, he used the shadows cast by them to scratch markings on the earth with a stick and to make some measurements and calculations. The summer solstice was near. He had much to do.
On the flat ground where his hut had stood, Raven constructed a pyramid from straight sapling trees, leaving an opening at the top. He thatched the walls with slender branches and reeds. It was far from weather-tight but he wasn’t concerned about rain. While gathering supplies from the woodlands and valleys, he kept a watchful eye out for mushrooms. The woodland hadn’t changed much in two centuries and mushrooms could still be found in the moist leaf litter beneath large trees. Some were good to eat but he also gathered several toxic varieties. He sliced them into ribbons and laid them on a stone to dry out in the hot sun.
A week before the solstice, Raven began his fast, drinking only water. He reduced his physical activity to a gentle daily walk to the river to wash himself and to fill his amphora. After two days his stomach stopped complaining as he settled into the rhythm of the ritual, loosening his body’s bond to his spirit.
When the solstice arrived he was light-headed and lethargic. Preparing the fire pit was now a taxing chore. His arms ached with the effort of setting a ring of stones onto the bare earth. He placed a clump of beaten and dried reed fibre at the centre and stacked his kindling around it. He summoned the energy to taking his flint and pyrites in each hand. In three strikes he saw a wisp of smoke. He nursed the spark into flames and set a pot of water to boil. Watching the sun climb high into the sky, he selected the best preserved mushrooms from his store and sprinkled the flakes into the boiling water. Gently stirring the pot, he soon had a light brown tea that smelled like rotten leaves, unpleasant yet curiously appetising after a week without food. He set three ceramic cups next to the pot and filled them with the mushroom broth. The sun approached the zenith when they were cool enough to drink. He took the first cup and brought the muddy, bitter and sour tea to his lips. He took small sips.
The onset of the effect of the mushroom infusion wasn’t like wine intoxication. He began to wonder if he had the dosage right. Too little and he wouldn’t achieve the desired effect; too much and he would find himself going through childhood for a third time.
The long strands of brown grass lazed back and forth in the breeze. A butterfly flapped its wings, sounding like loud drum beats in the air. Hidden in the trees, birds chattered in a frenzied debate. The fire popped and crackled as if sprites were demanding more wood to burn. The breeze fell away, leaving Raven at the mercy of the midday heat. Overhead, Apollo’s chariot blazed white hot, dominating the sky. Raven marvelled at its glory th
rough his fingers. His mouth was dry but he resisted the desire to wet it with water. The sunlight sparkled on the surface of the liquid in the second cup. He gulped it down, took the third and retreated to the shade of the pyramid. His head throbbed, so he drank more broth. The sun cast a blinding column of light across the thatched walls and his nostrils were filled with the pungent odour of smouldering green leaves. He finished the third cup of broth. It tasted of herbaceous honey. The sun was directly above him now, engulfing him in a column of light. The searing heat opened every pore in his skin. Sweat trickled down his face, falling in large drops onto his lap. He lay down, closed his eyes and slowed his breath. In a heartbeat, he was no longer aware of the heat.
He opened his eyes and saw himself lying in the circle of sunlight. His body, covered in a sheen of sweat, was perfectly still. Even his chest no longer rose or fell. Raven thought he looked peaceful. He turned away from himself and stepped out of the tent. The world spread out before him in pristine brilliance; continents, seas, and sky merging. He could see them all at once. Mountains rose and fell, and ice covered the land, only to retreat once more. He felt Gaia’s life force. Her energy filled him with contentment. He had no need for food, warmth or shelter. He could stay with Her forever if he desired and forget the struggles of corporeal existence.
He looked back at the tent where his body lay, now a small spike in the distance although he didn’t remember moving away. He focused on keeping the connection to his physical body by remembering the faces of the Khryseoi who had sent their spirits to this place, never to return. He also thought about how Theophilos had torn the fissure between worlds which allowed Eurynomos to escape Tartarus. There was no time to explore this state of being and he feared he could make the same mistake.
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