by Steve Farley
A production assistant showed Alec to his lodgings, a small corner room located in one of the larger outbuildings that surrounded the courtyard. There was a bed, a chair and a table on which sat a large empty bowl and a pitcher of water. The bathroom was down at the end of the hall.
Alec washed up and changed his shirt. There was no mirror in the bathroom, or in his room for that matter, and he wondered if maybe the monks didn’t believe in them.
When it was time for dinner, Alec set off across the courtyard and past the outbuildings that were being used as housing for the production staff, actors and crew. The buildings appeared so similar that Alec wondered how he was ever going to find his way back to his own room again.
Soon he saw a group of people filing through the high, arched doorway of the building that was apparently serving as the crew’s dining room. It didn’t take long for him to realize that the building had been a large stable at one time, probably more than a century ago. Alec got a kick out of the thought that the crew had brought portable stables for the horses and other animals, and they were now going to be eating in the original stable.
The room was spacious enough for the fifty or sixty men and women gathered there. Tables and chairs were set up in rows to accommodate everyone. The food was tasty—meat, vegetables and soup, simple but plentiful—all supplied courtesy of the film producers and excellently prepared by the location catering staff.
Neither Karst nor Xeena were in the dining area, and Alec figured they must have eaten earlier. He found a place at a table with a pair of young women who turned out to be set carpenters from California. They talked about the ride up through the woods and the quality of the food, and they wondered about the mysterious inhabitants of the monastery. Alec looked around the room once again and could see no sign of the monks who lived in this place.
After dinner, he grabbed his flashlight and walked out to the stable area to check on the Black. He had already given the stallion his supper an hour earlier, a light meal of barley, hay and oats. Alec had brought feed with him all the way from Hopeful Farm, just to be safe.
Alec broke out a pair of soft brushes from the tack trunk and gave the Black a quick grooming for the fun of it. The stallion leaned into the brush strokes with pleasure, then grew impatient and stepped away.
“Had enough, eh?” Alec said. The Black tossed his head affirmatively. Alec smiled. “I know, I know. You want to get outside and do a little exploring. Well, you just have to wait until morning for that.”
Alec shuffled his feet through the straw spread out on the floor of the Black’s stall. “Look,” he said. “It’s not so bad here. All the nice bedding we brought in for you. Why, you’re living like a king’s horse. Like old Mister Bucephalus himself.”
The Black turned to look out the tent entrance at the forest beyond. He pricked his ears and raised his head as if scenting something in the draft of wind leaking through the tent flaps, perhaps something not so far away. But soon the draft died and the stallion lost interest, switching his attention to the hay net hanging in the corner of his stall.
A few minutes later, Alec pocketed his flashlight and walked out to drink in the night and enjoy the great, sweet silence of the mountains. A light wind came from the direction of the monastery. It carried an odd scent with it, a smell he quickly realized must be incense burning in the monastery temple.
Above him, the stars sprinkled in the sky mixed easily with the few isolated specks of light coming from houses on a distant mountain. Against the cold, dark backdrop of trees, it was almost impossible to tell the difference between the house lights and the lower stars. His gaze shifted along the deep vista, back to Acracia and the mist-shrouded peaks of Mt. Atnos, where he could see no lights at all.
Diomedes
Alec didn’t feel tired, so he decided to take a stroll and enjoy the night. Outside the tent, a few oil lamps hung from tree branches and cast a soft glow over the courtyard grounds. He followed a walkway through the yard to a grass path veering off into the woods. Wondering where it led, he flicked on his flashlight and angled the beam up the path. Suddenly the light blinked off. Alec gave the flashlight a shake, and it came back on again. He made a mental note to put in new batteries when he got back to his room. Without a dependable flashlight, it was hardly wise to go trailblazing. On the other hand, he was still feeling restless after the long ride here and figured the walk might do him some good. He followed the path a little farther as it wound through the woods.
After a minute, he noticed someone with a lantern standing in a clearing up ahead. He drew closer and saw it was Xeena. She seemed to be gazing wistfully up at the mountains and the site of her lost ancestral home, now sealed off from the rest of the world inside the confines of the exclusive Acracian resort.
Alec didn’t want to startle her out here in the dark, so to make some noise, he began whistling. He also switched his flashlight on and off.
Xeena turned and waved. “Hey there,” she called.
“Lovely night,” Alec said. “Not too cold.”
Soon they were both gazing up at the stars, trying to identify the different constellations.
“Do you believe in astrology, Alec?” Xeena said after a minute.
Alec shrugged. “There might be something to it, but personally, no, not really. I don’t know much about it. Do you?”
“My grandfather used to say our destiny is written in the stars. Popi believed some people could read omens and see prophecy in the night sky. He told me that there is a long history of fortune-telling in these mountains—at least there used to be.”
Alec was about to say something but Xeena cut him off. “And he wasn’t some superstitious old fool either, just because he believed in astrology,” Xeena said defensively.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” Alec said.
“Popi was smart. He had a gift with languages—learned to speak English on his own. He was the one who taught me. He was also a successful businessman, even though his family was poor when they came to the city. He worked hard, bought a restaurant, then another, then a house and an apartment building. When he disappeared, he was quite wealthy.”
“He disappeared?”
Xeena nodded. “One day he just sold everything, emptied his bank account and vanished. The police don’t know what happened to him. My father thinks some criminals may have tricked him out of his money and killed him.”
“That’s awful,” Alec said.
“I like to think he just wanted to run off and live by himself, maybe on an island somewhere. He was that type of person. In some ways he never really liked the city, and after my grandmother died …” Her voice trailed off.
Alec gestured to the dark side of the mountain. “So nobody lives up there now, aside from the people in the resort?”
Xeena nodded. “It’s always been sort of a touchy subject for our families,” she said. “No one even talks about the village we came from anymore. What I’ve learned, I had to find out for myself. Popi used to tell stories about his village that he’d heard as a little boy, stories about a secret horse cult that lived in the forest since ancient times, a cult that worshiped the Thracian god king Diomedes at a secret temple hidden in the woods. Popi said they even claimed to guard the bloodline of a fabled breed of horse that counted Alexander’s stallion Bucephalus among its own.”
“I thought Diomedes was a hero in the Iliad,” Alec said. “Or was it the Odyssey?”
Xeena shook her head. “That was another Diomedes,” she said. “This Diomedes was anything but a hero.”
Alec nodded. “I’ve heard about some of those horse cults living in other parts of Europe in olden times, horrible stories about horses being killed in ritual sacrifices to warriors and kings.”
“It was the other way around here,” Xeena said. “Here people weren’t sacrificing horses to people. Here it was the people who were sacrificed to the horses.”
“People being sacrificed to horses?” Alec said. “That’s a
new one on me.”
“These weren’t ordinary horses,” she said. “You should brush up on your history, Alec. Haven’t you ever heard of the labors of Hercules?”
“Sure,” Alec said, “at least the one about Hercules cleaning out some king’s stables.”
Xeena laughed. “I guess that makes sense,” she said. “Well, one of his other tasks was to rid the Thracian Bistones of four man-killing mares owned by the king there, horses so fierce they had to be tethered with chains because they could eat right through leather and rope.”
“Sounds like a horse I knew once,” Alec said.
“The king Diomedes who ruled the Bistones was a cruel demigod, a tyrant descended from Ares—the Greek god of war—and a mortal woman. Hercules captured the king’s mares but not before they killed Hercules’s friend Abderus, and Diomedes too. According to the myth, Hercules drove the four mares all the way back to Eurystheus, where they were reformed of their bad habits.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Alec said lightly.
“But there is another version of the story,” Xeena said, “in which the mares escaped and fled up Mt. Atnos where they were adopted by a tribe of Acracians who lived there.”
“Amazing story,” Alec said. “And a bit creepy too.”
“This is Thrace,” Xeena said. “The Greek gods who ruled here weren’t all pious and perfect like in some other places. Ours were more like a big, squabbling family, with all the good and bad. They could be noble and kind, but also vain and jealous. They were always fighting among each other and always falling in love with mortals or tormenting them.”
A thread of silver light streaked through the sky and vanished a second later. “Look,” Alec said, “there’s a falling star. Make a wish.”
Xeena stiffened. “I am almost fourteen, Alec,” she said. “Wishes are for children.”
Alec shook his head. “No, they’re not,” he said. “It’s okay to dream.”
“Not if it’s an impossible dream.” Her gaze returned to the dark side of the mountain.
“Sometimes we don’t know what is possible and what isn’t,” Alec said. “Look at me and the Black. He’s desert born, from Arabia. I’m from New York City. Who would have ever guessed that we would have found each other or that we would have lived the lives we have lived together? Things happen. Last month I never would have believed that tonight I would be on some far-off mountain staring up into a Thracian sky.”
“To tell you the truth,” Xeena said, “neither did I. I am just a kid from Xanthi who happens to know how to ride a little. And that is only because my dad had a job at the mayor’s horse farm, and I had an opportunity the other kids didn’t. The only people I’ve known in my life up to now are my family, some of the neighbors and the people I met in school. Now I am hanging out with famous guys like you, and getting paid to do it.”
“You have skills, Xeena,” Alec said. “You can ride well, and that’s why you are here.”
The girl’s gaze returned to the dark side of the mountain. “That’s kind of you to say,” she said, and sighed. “It just feels funny to be this close to a place I’ve wondered about all my life and not be able to go there.”
“Maybe you’ll get there someday.”
Xeena tried to laugh. “Sure. Maybe I’ll win the lottery too.”
Alec didn’t understand Xeena’s pessimism, especially at her age. “You never know,” he said. “Somebody has to win. Anyhow, you can always dream.”
Xeena shrugged. “My dad says you should always hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Maybe that’s the difference between Thracians and Americans. Maybe we know a little more about how hard life can be than you Americans do.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Alec said with a smile. “Life can be hard anywhere.”
They stood there a minute more and then walked back toward the monastery in a comfortable silence. “So you ready for tomorrow?” Alec asked.
“Sure. I am going to be in one of the riding scenes, dressed as a warrior.”
“Sounds good,” Alec said.
“Jeff told me that they will need every person here who can sit a horse,” Xeena said. They talked a little more about the plan for tomorrow and then said their good-nights.
Alec turned down the walkway leading to the Black’s tent. He checked on his horse one last time and then, with a yawn, started toward his room and a well-deserved rest. The beam from his flashlight swept up and down the path as he walked along, trying to keep from stumbling over the uneven brick paving.
Finding his way to his quarters, Alec stepped inside the arched doorway and down a short hallway. The door to his corner room wasn’t locked, and he stepped inside the dark, shadowy interior.
At that exact moment, his flashlight blinked off again. Alec slapped it against his thigh a couple times to get it working again. As he did, he noticed an odd, musty odor in the air, a smell that hadn’t been there when he left the room before.
The light snapped on again, and Alec quickly realized that this wasn’t his room at all. He must have gotten turned around somehow and come to the wrong place. This looked like some sort of exhibit room. There were framed black-and-white photographs on the walls and broken pieces of statuary standing in the corners. Curiosity made him direct the beam of light to a pair of long, low glass and wooden display cases lining the walls on one side of the room.
Inside the cabinets were what looked at first like vases and broken pots. As he looked closer through the glass front of one of the cases, he realized that the shelves were laden not with relics but with human skulls and bones.
At first the sight of the old bones startled him, but then curiosity once again got the best of him, and he pointed the flashlight at the framed photographs on the wall. One showed a pair of monks holding shovels and standing in a garden. In a hole in the ground beside them were uncovered pieces of an ancient Greek statue.
Alec stepped over to a wooden bookcase, its top shelf lined with old hardcover volumes, all written in Bulgarian, Greek and German. On a lower shelf was a stack of dusty pamphlets. The paper was brown and brittle with age, probably dating to the mid-twentieth century. Like the books, most of the pamphlets were written in languages Alec couldn’t read. Only one was in English. Glancing through it, he realized that at one time there must have been regular visitors to this monastery and that this room must have been some sort of historical archive for the place. Apparently the bones and other artifacts were relics the monks had discovered while gardening or digging foundations for new buildings.
The flashlight started flickering on and off again, and he quickly left the room. He took the pamphlet with him, hoping no one would mind and figuring he could return it in the morning after he’d had a chance to read it.
Retracing his steps through the courtyard, Alec reached the place where the path divided and he had made a wrong turn, arriving at last at his own room. He lit the lamp and checked all around the room just to make sure that he was in the right place this time and that there weren’t any skulls rolling around on the floor. The sight of those old bones in the glass cases still lingered in his mind, and he couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy about it now. He doused his face with water from the pitcher on the table. Taking a chair, he picked up the pamphlet he’d borrowed from the visitors’ room and began to read.
As he thumbed through the pages, much of them detailing the long history of the monastery and the austere life the monks led there, he found one section that caught his eye. It was a chapter on Diomedes, the Greek demigod Xeena had told him about earlier, and the significance he had to this region. According to one legend, the pamphlet said, the demigod had chosen the forests of Mt. Atnos as a sanctuary to rebuild his kingdom after his defeat at the hands of Hercules. Alec leaned back in his chair and read more about the mysterious Diomedes:
The true history of the tyrant Diomedes is lost in time, but there are many fanciful tales to be told of the horse master of Thrace that are little known
to the world outside of Acracia. The accepted view of Diomedes is that this demigod was the caretaker of four flesh-eating mares bequeathed to him by his father, Ares, the Greek god of war. The mares lived a privileged life, sequestered in green pastures forbidden to all save the sacred mares themselves. Diomedes’s neighbors avoided his kingdom entirely. If by chance a foolish wanderer trespassed onto his fields, drank the water from his wells, or ate the fruit of his orchards, the unfortunate traveler was quickly reduced to fodder for the tyrant’s man-killing mares.
In those days, word of the infamous horrors to be found in the kingdom of Diomedes had spread far and wide, but so had tales of the tyrant’s superior horsemanship. According to one Acracian legend dating back several millennia, a spy managed to steal training secrets from Diomedes and return with them to his home in the distant land of Sybaris, in what is now southern Italy. Diomedes soon learned of the spy’s treachery, and the score was settled when he dispatched a messenger to the Crotons, neighbors and mortal enemies of the Sybaris, and told them how their foes could be defeated. The next time the two armies met in battle, the Croton soldiers prepared by plugging their horses’ ears with wax. Then they sounded their charge by playing a tune Diomedes bade his messenger teach them, a melody that the king had stolen from Orpheus, god of music and poetry. Upon hearing the enchanted melody, the horses of the enemy cavalry threw off their riders and began to dance to a music they could not resist. The battle ended in slaughter and the downfall of Sybaris.
Diomedes’s reign of terror finally came to an end at the hands of Hercules, the renowned hero of ancient Greek myth. Hercules fought and overpowered the demigod, casting him to the floor of an arena where he was taken down and devoured by his own mares. Some scholars count this legend, the eighth labor of Hercules, as one of the earliest examples of an adage that lives on to this day: The evil you create will one day come back to destroy you.