The Oracle

by D. J. Niko

  Praise for the Sarah Weston Chronicles

  “The characters are lively, and the story is fast-paced and exciting, especially for inveterate fans of the genre.”

  —David Pitt, Booklist

  “Like The Da Vinci Code, The Tenth Saint takes you to a place you have never been, creating an adventure you will not soon forget.”

  —Laurence Leamer, New York Times best-selling author of

  The Kennedy Women, The Kennedy Men, and Sons of Camelot

  “Like a sandstorm roaring out of the Judean Desert, The Riddle of Solomon rips readers out of the familiar world, dropping them breathless in a place where ancient kings still keep their secrets. D.J. Niko’s storytelling carries the grit of desert dust and the seductive scent of incense on every page as Sarah Weston races with a madman to save the treasures that King Solomon left behind.”

  —Mary Anna Evans, award-winning author of

  Artifacts and Wounded Earth

  “Take a dash of Dan Brown, a sprinkle of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and a whole lot of originality, and you’ve got the recipe for D.J. Niko’s latest novel, the second in the spellbinding Sarah Weston saga. For readers who like their adventures steeped in research, authenticity, and nonstop intrigue, The Riddle of Solomon is highly recommended!”

  —Ronald Malfi, award-winning author of

  Floating Staircase, Cradle Lake, and December Park

  “Action, adventure, romance and historical mystery—who could ask for more? The Oracle is a great read.”

  —James O. Born, award-winning author of Scent of Murder

  Published 2015 by Medallion Press, Inc.

  4222 Meridian Parkway, Suite 110, Aurora, IL 60504

  The MEDALLION PRESS LOGO

  is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.

  If you purchase this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 2015 by D. J. Niko

  Cover design by Arturo Delgado

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

  First Edition

  For Yianni, my father

  In memoriam

  Tell the king the fair-built hall has fallen.

  Apollo now has no house or oracular laurel or prophetic spring.

  The water is silent.

  —Message from the Delphians to

  Julian the Apostate,

  fourth century CE

  One

  Livadeia, central Greece,

  393 CE

  Like a beast being hunted, the priestess sprinted through the woods. The men who sought her were the worst kind of predators: they would skin her alive while chanting the hymns of the righteous.

  The fallen leaves of the mother oaks lay in strata upon the forest floor, crumbling beneath her swift feet and revealing her position as she ran toward salvation. She felt the angry thump of her heartbeat in the pit of her stomach. The shadows that followed her gained ground.

  She implored Apollo for a silver thread of moonlight. As she gasped for air to fill her constricted lungs, the pewter clouds parted and a beam flashed through the tree branches, illuminating patches of ground. There, along the hillside, beyond the barren oaks, was the stand of evergreens lining the path to the river Herkyna. Though she could not hear it over her own frantic breath, she imagined the murmur of the river’s sacred waters, and it gave her strength.

  Just a few more steps to the cave.

  Would her brothers be waiting there? Or had they given up on her? It had been so long since she was abducted, dragged into the den of the savages who waved the banner of a new god. Had her tribe remained loyal to her, to their shared principles? Or had they suffered a similar fate and scattered to the four winds?

  She would soon know the answer. She ignored her body’s protests and commanded her legs to run faster.

  Just a few more steps . . .

  “Aristea of Delphi.” The whisper of a male voice mocked her. Was he friend or foe? Without slowing her pace, she looked over her shoulder. No one was there.

  He repeated her name, this time with a hiss that made the fine hairs on her arms stand on end. She felt a searing presence and saw in her mind’s eye the red-hot iron they had used to brand her, as if she were the property of their despicable temple. The thought unnerved her.

  Sucking at the cool air with great gasps, Aristea kept running toward the pines. Her hood caught on a low-hanging branch and was ripped off her head, exposing her shorn hair. The monk’s habit she wore as a disguise was soaked through with perspiration, and the linen gauze of the tunic beneath clung to her skin.

  None of that mattered. She sought only to escape from the madmen who hunted her, the ones who justified their atrocities by crouching behind a higher power. She knew they were capable of anything. She had been the recipient of their abomination.

  “Aristea.” Voices now taunted her from multiple directions, as if they had surrounded her. “You cannot hide.”

  Again she glanced over her shoulder, and again she saw nothing. She faced forward in time to see the peeling bark of the evergreens coming fast toward her. The impact made her fall backward and land on her tailbone on top of a jagged piece of limestone. The pain shot up her spine like Zeus’ thunderbolt.

  A terrible laugh came from the shadows. Panting, Aristea stumbled to her feet. Her knees so trembled with fatigue she feared they would fail to support her. She gritted her teeth and told herself she was indomitable, the daughter of gods.

  She was the oracle of Delphi.

  The thought was a tonic to her spirit. She pushed forward, limping toward the entrance of the cave. She could see the brass spikes of the enclosure glinting in the moonlight.

  Just a few . . . more . . . steps . . .

  The voices quieted. Had she imagined them? No, this was no ordinary silence. It was the baring of the teeth before the attack. The gust of wind before the torrential rain.

  Ignoring the pain, Aristea bounded over a tangle of fallen branches and landed on all fours in front of the brass obelisk that opened the gate. She knew what to do: she twisted the stake two turns to the right, then one to the left, and half back again.

  The earth yawned open.

  With shaking hands, she groped for the rope ladder. Her heart leapt when her hand came across the gnarled jute. She unfurled the ladder and let it dangle in the lightless void. Before climbing down into the womb of Trophonius, she removed the obelisk so her pursuers would have no way of entering.

  With the stake under her arm, she stepped onto the first rung and tried to find her balance on the unstable contraption. Her racing heart did not help. She took a deep breath and held it for several moments, a practice she had employed during captivity to manage her fear and focus on the possible.

  Her breathing more even now, she stepped onto the second rung, then the third. Before stepping onto the fourth and final rung, she wiped the sweat from her brow and surveyed the ground below. It was too dark to judge depth. She threw the obelisk down and waited. Within seconds a series of clangs came as the stake hit the ground.

  It was a leap of faith, but it was all she had. She
treaded onto the last braid of jute and let go, dropping into the dark chasm.

  Aristea landed hard on her side. She hurt, but she was safe. She looked up at the circular opening some ten cubits above. According to the tenders of the cave of Trophonius, the door was rigged to close when there was no pressure on the ladder and reopen when someone inside tugged at the rope.

  That night, it did not.

  Was she too light to trip the mechanism made for men? Had she been misinformed? Whatever the truth, she was at the bottom of an earthen womb, exposed and vulnerable.

  Then she heard them.

  “So it exists,” one whispered. “The cave of demons.”

  A second man guffawed. “Two notches on the board. We will be paid well for this one.”

  Bounty hunters. Someone had hired them to capture her—and no doubt kill her. It was not enough that they had tortured and humiliated her over the course of so many moons she’d stopped counting; they wanted her blood.

  She would take her own life before letting them win.

  “A ladder. Let us see where it leads.”

  “You first. I will look out for beasts.”

  Aristea crawled to the side of the cave and crouched against a wall dressed with stones, like an oven. Somewhere there was a cavern that led to the inner sanctum. Trophonius himself, the great architect who’d built the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, had fashioned the passage in the most ingenious way, and only the faithful knew how to enter it.

  Propelling herself on hands and knees around the perimeter, she groped for the opening whose breadth was said to be two spans—so small the uninitiated would miss it.

  “The ladder does not reach all the way down.”

  “Jump, you fool.”

  There. Aristea’s hand sank into the indentation. She lay on her back and pushed her bare feet into the groove: the prescribed method for entry. She regretted she had no cakes kneaded with honey to offer to the spirit of Trophonius, nor had she performed the ritual ablutions at the river. She prayed the gods would forgive her that once, recognizing in her plight the epic ruin that had befallen Greece.

  The fugitive priestess was testament to the fact the Greeks were no longer free to worship as they wished. Their gods were mere whispers in the wind, spoken softly into one ear and another like secrets from the grave, abolished from the fecund earth and dispatched to a desolate hell.

  With some effort, she pushed her legs farther into the tight opening. She heard a thud. Her assassin had landed.

  Suppressing a grunt, she forced her knees into the hole. Take me, Trophonius. Take me into your rapturous darkness.

  An unseen energy tugged at her legs. It was working. The force, akin to the vortices that swallowed ships in the Aegean, snatched her in earnest and sucked her in. The sleeve of the habit caught on something and, with a rip that resonated in Aristea’s ears, was torn away.

  The force propelled her down with a violent thrust. Cool, moist earth brushed against her bare arm as she slid on a chute toward the unknown. She should have been frightened, yet she felt safe. She trusted that whatever was down there, in the grave Trophonius had dug to facilitate the terrifying journey into one’s true nature, was better than the fate that awaited her aboveground.

  The chute expelled her into a void, and she fell into complete darkness, flailing her arms and legs in a futile attempt to gain purchase on something, anything. She closed her eyes and embraced the falling sensation.

  Trust. Apollo will not abandon his chosen.

  Aristea landed on her legs and tumbled thrice before the mass of her body slammed against the cave wall. Liquid trickled into her mouth. Her tongue registered a metallic tang: the taste of her own blood. She struggled to sit up. Her left leg was twisted beneath her and would not cooperate. As she willed her body to an upright position, a stabbing pain tore through her knee and up her torso until every cell in her body pulsed with the sensation.

  She bit her lip to contain a scream and reached down to examine the immobile leg. Through broken skin, she felt the sharp edges of splintered bone. She gasped.

  “Look at this.” The men’s voices were muffled, barely audible. She listened closely.

  “Her robe. She must have escaped through another hole.”

  “We must look for the way out.”

  Silence.

  Her heart hammered as she imagined them searching for the secret entrance to the cave’s inner sanctum. She begged her patron god for redemption from the nightmare, not for the sake of her own trivial life but for the preservation of the secret.

  “I don’t see a passage.”

  “She is probably trapped underground, like a rat.” He chuckled. “And there she will stay. Now let us make haste. We must seal this opening so the devil’s work cannot be done.”

  “What about this?” There was a pause. “It’s heavy.”

  The obelisk. Aristea’s eyes widened.

  “Take it. We will throw it into the river so that no one will enter this den of evil again.”

  The voices were reduced to a murmur, then ceased altogether. Aristea was alone, drenched with sweat and shivering in the blackness. Her own rapid, strained breath punctured the silence. Her mind amplified the sound, driving her mad.

  She tried again to move her leg. It was no use. The injury was too grave to launch into a heroic escape. She leaned onto the earthen wall. The cold mud against her bare neck sent a quiver down her back.

  She thought of her brothers, the priests who tended the sanctuary at her beloved Delphi and who had raised a woman to lead them in the adoration of the one who replaced darkness with light. For the first time, she allowed the possibility those good men had been exterminated, like so many others.

  For the first time, hope had left her.

  Hot tears streamed down her cheeks. She let herself collapse into soft sobs and succumbed to the icy embrace of despair.

  Two

  Thebes, Greece,

  present day

  The mobile phone vibrated against the glass top of the bedside table. Sarah Weston blinked awake, and the world slowly came into focus. The window of her one-room dormitory was embroidered with raindrops shimmering in the moon’s pewter light.

  She fumbled for the phone and tapped it on. “Weston here.”

  “Did I wake you?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded like it belonged to a chain smoker who hadn’t slept all night.

  She sat up. “Evan? What’s happened?”

  “I cannot go into detail. Meet me at the museum as soon as you can.” He hung up.

  In the two months she had worked with Evangelos “Evan” Rigas, she had come to appreciate his laconic style. The director of the ephorate of prehistoric and classical antiquities in Thebes was a man of few words. In Greece, he was known as the “lone wolf”—a hardened scientist with a certain disdain for the collaborative spirit and a particular suspicion of his colleagues from the West. It was obvious from his passive-aggressive stance that he resented the presence of Sarah and her partner, anthropologist Daniel Madigan, who were assigned as consultants to the archaeological digs overseen by the ephorate. But in a dismal monetary climate, Evan needed the funding granted by the British A.E. Thurlow Foundation, so he had no choice but to stomach the foundation’s hired guns.

  She dismissed her doubts and threw on dusty khakis and a well-worn chambray shirt. She pulled a messy tangle of blonde curls into a ponytail and reached for her Barbour coat as she bolted out the door.

  At four o’clock on an early-February morning, daylight was still a couple of hours away. Sarah exhaled and watched her breath form a cloud of warmth that was quickly claimed by the winter frost. It reminded her of the long winters at her family manor in the English countryside and of happier times. She zipped up her coat and raised her hood before launching into the drizzle.

  Normally, she would drive up to the top of the Cadmeia, the acropolis of ancient Thebes, but both the expedition jeeps were gone. She was irritated that neither Evan n
or Daniel had waited for her. She didn’t mind walking, even in the rain, but the half-mile slog uphill through muddy terrain would take longer than necessary.

  At least she knew the path well. She made that trek daily but normally veered to the southeast, to a hillock where the little-studied sanctuary to Ismenian Apollo stood, its ruined marbled columns arranged like prehistoric henge among the overgrown grasses.

  At first, Sarah had had reservations about taking an assignment in so obscure a location. But Daniel, enthused about Ismenion’s reputation as one of ancient Greece’s important, if long forgotten, oracular sites, had convinced her to give it a chance. She had agreed to support him but didn’t share his conviction. She felt as if their particular talents could be put to better use elsewhere.

  Looking on the bright side, she admitted the place was quiet, predictable, and devoid of controversy. After her last two assignments, where things had gotten a bit prickly, she looked forward to flying under the radar for a change.

  As she rounded the corner to the peak on which the museum was perched, she considered she might have been dead wrong.

  In the flickering light of a wall-mounted lantern half off its hinge, she noticed the red-and-white tape of Greek police surrounding the museum courtyard. Two cops stood outside beneath an overhang, chatting and smoking cigarettes. Sarah called out to them. “I’m Sarah Weston. I work with Professor Rigas. He’s asked me here.”

  One of the men eyed her up and down. Without bothering to ask her to produce ID, he waved her in.

  She ducked under the police tape and crossed the courtyard to the main entrance. The front door was open, and all the house lights were on. She looked past the cracked crystal of her Timex: 4:49.

  She heard voices down a hallway and walked toward them. Evan was there, giving a statement to an investigator. Loath to intrude, she backed up and scanned the corridors. All was quiet. Where was Daniel? Had he not gotten the same call?

  Something crunched beneath her well-worn leather hiking boots. It was the unmistakable dull crackle of broken glass.