“I know,” Danae joined in, her thirst momentarily slated. “It’s like the world of The Sight and our world are getting closer together.” Because she was rarely completely serious, when she was it had quite an impact. The girls and Dad all exchanged glances.
“I’m not sure that that is a good thing,” he said quietly. “We might need to see Apollo soon and talk to him about it.”
“Ok but not yet,” responded Ilia who – probably due to her gift of wisdom – was always reluctant to agree to using the brick to meet Apollo. “It won’t help us right now. And if we find the Wings, then we will need to speak to Apollo anyway.” This was followed by a contemplative silence.
“Fair enough,” Dad finally conceded. “Just be careful you lot. Try to keep aware and keep it under control. Especially you Cheeks.” Leda nodded.
“Anyway,” Danae ended the tangential conversation, “that was unbelievable. I mean really. Even the best special effects in the biggest films are… nothing. And that was real. The world really was ending. I had no idea that nature could be so…extreme.”
“Or people so …insignificant,” added Ilia. “What was happening was just so massive that I felt like a speck of dust or something.”
“Yeah, glad I wasn’t really there. But I must say,” and here Danae looked slightly confused, “I feel like I burned my throat. As if I really have breathed in that…”
Ilia turned sharply on her sister and stared directly into her pupils. Danae understood.
“You too?”
Ilia nodded. Dad looked from one to another; if he was concerned, he did not let on.
“Well, it’s probably just the heat girls.” He looked around and fanned himself with the brutalised map. “I mean, it must be nearly 40 degrees already.” He added some extra special Aussie twang to the last phrase and the girls smiled in response. In Europe, Australian accents held an inherent comic value. “Anyway, let’s get on with it shall we?” The girls nodded.
“So where do we start?” Danae seemed genuinely at a loss as she looked around.
“Who knows?” responded Dad. “It probably doesn’t matter. I mean, people have been visiting this for over a hundred years and no one has found a “secret entrance”. But if it is reserved for us, we just need to work through the ruins until we find it I guess. It could be anywhere. A dark opening or crevasse in the rock, a secret door…”
“Or a trapdoor in the corridor like in Warhammer!” Leda added excitedly.
“Could be Cheeks. Let’s make sure we don’t fall in it, ok?”
“Agreed.”
“Well,” and here Dad exhaled audibly, but whether it was a gesture of hopelessness or reluctance, the girls were not sure, “now we have our bearings, let’s start in the West Wing that we just came through.”
They headed back the way they had come, into the maze of tumbled walls of varying heights that delineated rooms and corridors and halls of this once majestic palace. There were two structures that retained rooves and they could not see what was inside but, as both of these had large numbers of tourists queuing outside to enter, they decided to leave these in the hope of having a quieter opportunity later. So they wandered, vaguely following Dad, but splaying off a bit on their own as well, searching from room to room, looking for anything that might suggest an opening. They had imagined turning over boulders that might be natural trapdoors to an underground maze, or finding loose stones in the walls that when pushed triggered the opening of a secret passageway, but the nature of most of the ruins allowed little opportunity for this sort of speculation. Most of the enclosures were simply the unexciting remains or waist-high walls around either a stone or dirt floor. At first the girls tried admirably to invent prospective openings to secret entrances, but in truth it was a lost cause. These spaces were so bland that even the most vivid imagination could not create any sort of convincing possibility. Quite quickly they became bored with these areas and gave up pressing blocks and tapping rocks and imagining suspicious patterns in the stones of an otherwise featureless wall.
There were a couple of areas that they were naturally drawn to and it was on these that their hopes rested. Dad insisted they patiently work from mundane space to space, otherwise they would have skipped everything and gone directly there; instead they struggled to concentrate as their attention was continually drawn to the full height remains of something at the south end of the wing. They slowly drew closer, when finally Danae stated “Sod this!” and broke ranks, walking straight towards it. The others followed. It was a high wall with two intact and massive pillars supporting a part of a roof but, most excitingly, it retained a very bright fresco in ochres and rustic reds and chalky blues; four figures, two above and two below, each carrying vases or jars of some sort. The girls ascended a few stairs to stand directly between the columns, but were prevented from touching the wall by a roped off barrier.
They stood there contemplating the wall until Dad joined them. He took some time, but no one asked him what he had been doing.
“I’ve looked around the base of this,” he said in a slightly distracted tone as he perused the wall in front of them: “couldn’t see anything.”
The girls did not respond. They simply looked from the wall, to each other, and back to the wall. They were scanning it for anything irregular, but they could see nothing. Mortar, stones, plaster, the paintings.
“You know that’s a reproduction, don’t you?” Dad asked casually.
“Yep,” replied Ilia and Danae absently. Leda just nodded.
“We need to get closer.” Danae’s statement was abrupt.
“Can’t cross the barrier, Danae.” Dad was equally blunt.
“Why not.”
“Because it’s there to keep people out.”
“What for?”
“So they don’t damage the wall.”
“Why don’t they protect all the other walls then?”
“Because this one has a fresco on it.”
“But you said it was a reproduction?”
“Well…” Dad turned to his middle daughter, looking lost between amusement and annoyance. There was a tense moment as they stared at each other. Then Dad sighed and smiled and the tension was gone.
“You’re right. It’s just a reproduction. So if you have to, touch away. Just don’t get caught.”
Danae was through in an instant and Leda, jostling, was only just behind her. Ilia was looking around awkwardly to see if anyone was looking then, apparently content, she stepped over the rope barrier and joined her sisters in front of the frescoes.
There were a frantic few moments as the girls’ hands shot out, touching every feature imaginable – eyeballs, mouths, nipples, the triangle of light between elbow and body, the designs on the jars and waters jugs, toe nails, the hems of the loincloths – everything.
Nothing. All just painted plaster.
The upper fresco was out of reach. They asked Dad to join in and directed him as to what to touch, but he could not reach much above the knees of the painted figures and it looked exactly the same as the lower fresco. The girls moved to the stone wall, shifting along it, pressing and pushing every stone. Then they turned to the paved floor, stomping and jumping up and down. A few bemused tourists did stop to regard them and what they were doing, but did not seem to feel any necessity to intervene. When almost every stone and area of mortar had been pressed, and every paver stomped and jumped on in a whirlwind of activity, the girls conceded defeat.
“It’s not here.” Leda sounded extremely dejected.
“Oi!” a voice called out from some distance behind them, but loud enough for them to know that they had been spotted by someone who cared. Abruptly distracted from their trance-like disappointment, Dad ushered them out from behind the rope barrier and led them around behind the wall and out of sight.
“Ok we need to be careful!” he warned. “We don’t want to get kicked out of here! Let’s keep out of sight for a bit.” They all agreed and quickly moved on. Dad le
d them around in a bit of a loop so that they reappeared in the West Court from another direction, and then into the open space of the large courtyard. There were no further exclamations, so they figured that they were not being pursued or closely watched and they resumed their searching.
…Patience…
There were not many other features of interest in the West Wing. In the actual courtyard were some unusual holes in the ground, very large and stone lined, but they were so deep that to enter would have required descending a flight of stairs and the inner walls were devoid of any means of descent. As none of them were interested in slipping and skidding to the bottom of any of these pits, without any guarantee of being able to clamber out again, exploring them was not an option. To sate their curiosity Dad looked them up in his online guide.
“They are something called Koulares, girls. No one knows what they were used for, but it is suggested they might have been for storage or rubbish – can’t imagine that would have been nice though, a beautiful big palace like this with internal rubbish dumps. Another suggestion is that they were filled with soil and they grew large plants and trees here as part of the internal garden. That sounds a lot nicer!” he concluded.
There was one enclosed structure in the West Wing that they obviously needed to investigate. There had been a queue at the entrance for most of the morning, so they had delayed entering. But as they had spent a couple of hours searching around already, and the heat of the day was rapidly escalating to the “oppressive” level, the crowds were already starting to thin out. There was no one outside the entrance now, so Dad suggested they take the opportunity to explore.
As they approached Dad stopped them at the information sign out the front to learn a bit more; their excitement suddenly soared. It was the Throne Room! Dad tried to temper their expectations a little by explaining that no one was really sure what the purpose of the room was, and that it was partly the imagination of Sir Arthur Evans, the English archaeologist credited with the first large scale excavation of the palace, who wanted to attribute something special to every part of the palace that they had unearthed. But the girls were not in the mood to have their parade washed out by realism and they stoically preserved their optimistic anticipation. They led the way and Dad followed close behind.
Two floors of the structure survived. At ground level there were 4 doors and visitor throughput was designed in a circuitous manner such that the leftmost door was used to enter, and the second from the right to exit. No one had entered during the couple of minutes that they had lingered outside and a few people had exited, so they were hoping it would be empty.
Ilia went first. She felt blinded as she stepped from the scorching sunlight into the darkness, and her eyes were slow to adjust. Her eyesight was not great at the best of times and today she had forgotten her glasses. She paused. Danae bumped into her from behind and complained. Ilia snapped back that she should wait. Following the left wall with her hand Ilia felt her way forwards in the semi-darkness. The plaster was pleasantly cool on her fingertips.
She came to another dark doorway and paused again. She can hear voices, two men speaking. They must be non-English tourists as their language is unusual. Or is it just the accent? Being multi-lingual Ilia has a natural ear for them; she listens intently. Yes, it must be the accent as she can understand them. One of them sounds furious and his speech very threatening; his voice quivers with wrath. Indeed, he sounds so angry that Ilia is slightly afraid and reluctant to enter. Danae must hear it as well because she is not pushing from behind, nor has she said anything. In fact, the speech is more than angry – it is rather disturbing. Why on earth do people argue in public places, she wonders?
“I’ll kill her!” the voice exclaims ferociously. Great! Death threats! Seriously? she thinks. The speaker seems to be trying to control his volume, as if he does not want to be heard, but is so furious that he is unable to do so. Whoever he is, he probably does not mean it of course, but it is not the sort of thing Ilia is going to barge in on. She continues to wait.
“I will have her torn apart!”
Even though Ilia knows he cannot mean this, he certainly sounds like he does. There is another voice, a man who sounds cautious and afraid and is trying to calm his companion. It is a relief to hear that at least someone in there knows this is not the place to talk about such things. Ilia shrinks down a little, into the shadow of the doorway, but at the same time advances just enough so she can peer into the room.
She releases an involuntary gasp of breath and jerks backwards, her hand darting to cover her mouth. As she had sidled her gaze around the stone lintel of the open door, expecting to gain vantage into the room, a hulking silhouette in the dim light had abruptly emerged almost right in front of her. He is so close that she could reach out and touch him.
He is clearly a guard as he is encased in a colossal suit of armour, but so strangely shaped that it gives him the appearance of something robotic. He seems wrapped in great overlapping plates of metal. He wears huge, rounded breast and back plates and mounted on these are curved shoulder guards or pauldrons, almost like metal bowls, that give him an unnaturally massive upper body, suggesting superhuman strength. His head is sunk down into an oversized cylinder of armour that must reach just below his hidden eyes, and the helmet that encloses is also sunk deep such that only the top can be seen, like a lid, giving his head the appearance of the turret of a tank. The rest of him is enclosed almost completely in metal, but of a soft and golden-brown hue – probably bronze. Clearly, she does not know, but this is a very ancient Minoan type of armour called Dendric, dating from the middle of the second millennium BC, and in appearance is quite intimidating. Ilia really had not expected this to emerge immediately in front of her and for a moment she is too shocked to think. When her brain recovers her first thoughts are that he must be part of some re-enactment that they have walked in on.
She can hear his soft breathing echoing within his armoured shell, a bit like someone on a respirator, but he does not move and if he has heard her approach or gasp he gives no indication of this.
Ilia pauses there for a few moments, holding her breath then, as she starts to recover, she recommences breathing, gently and silently. It is quite an achievement. Still the hulking shape is motionless. His mechanical respiration continues. She feels her heartbeat slow within her chest. She looks behind her to Danae, but gets a second surprise; Danae is not there. No one is. Where have they gone?
She is both scared and curious. The frightened part of her wants to back out of the chamber and return to the open and find Dad; but the other half is fascinated and wants to enter and observe. Besides, there must be a logical explanation for this; they are in a popular tourist attraction and have seen hundreds of tourists enter and leave this building. It must be a theatrical re-enactment for their benefit. And right now, she has it all to herself!
Ilia cautiously advances, trying to step silently – which is not an easy thing in flip flops! But for the experienced flip flop wearer there is a way of controlling both the flip and the flop phase of the gait – a secret that I will not reveal here, suffice to say that it involves downward pressure from the great toes combined with just the right amount of pronation. Ilia had mastered this skill so, with relative silence, she is able to edge her way into the room beyond the guard so that the entirety is revealed to her.
But she is not prepared for the sight that awaits.
It is not a large chamber, maybe ten metres across. There is no natural light; instead it is lit by the orange glow of standing braziers and tall, thick candles on ornate stands, creating long soft shadows and deep, dark corners. Ilia can smell the scented smoke they produce and see it hovering and curling languidly near the beamed ceiling. It has a stone floor of broad paving stones and 4 columns run down the right side of the chamber – they seem a bit large for the scale of the room. The walls are painted in soft, warm, red and brown frescoes that are hard to make out so dimly illuminated, and they are matt and ch
alky such that they absorb rather than reflect the gentle light. The overall effect is not the type of grand domination that you might expect of a throne room, but instead an opulent but almost cosy ambience. It is certainly beautiful but, apart from the fact that it looks almost like a Hollywood re-creation, there is nothing overtly surprising in the room itself.
It is the people. Two of them.
In the middle of the left wall – and seemingly built into it – is a high-backed chair of stone. On it sits a man and even in the dim light the sumptuous opulence of his clothing is remarkable. The light seems to reflect and glint from millions of threads of precious metal, and the rich folds are encrusted and inter-sewn with gems that glow with deep and succulent colours. As he moves he shimmers. His beard of black curling hair is plaited with gold and gems, matching his oiled, curling locks, and on his head he wears a golden crown of spikes that rise like the many rays of the sun. As a self-proclaimed expert with make-up, Ilia can see that his face is carefully painted to accentuate and strengthen every feature.
But right now, that face is contorted in anger. His brows are furrowed so deep that his eyes are no more than a fiery glint in the deep shadows, and his facial muscles are in spasm as he spits his words, contorting his features into a fearsome visage of ripping dark-lined wrath. His shaking fists are bloodless and as they repeatedly punch the helpless air they mimic the fury of his countenance.
Ilia is transfixed. She is too stunned to realise it now, but no theatre could re-create such an impression of regal wealth. Clearly, however, his anger is not staged.
Before him stands another man, almost unnoticeable in front of the King. His robes would be rich if not so comprehensively overshadowed. His body language is completely other, as he continually bows and his supplicant hands try to massage the air as if it would curb his monarch’s rage.
“My King! That you cannot do! She is your Queen!”
“MY Queen! Yes! MY Queen Daedalus!”
The Progeny of Daedalus Page 7