The Oracle

by D. J. Niko

  The number most sacred to Pythagoras, Daniel recalled, was ten: the triangular number and metaphysical symbol signifying the order of the universe. Then he thought of the arrangement of the numbers adding to ten. It’s worth a shot, he thought.

  He turned the obelisk clockwise four times, then turned it in the opposite direction three times, then two, then one.

  Daniel heard a low rumble and felt the ground move beneath his feet. He jumped back as he realized the earth was yawning open. He tried to escape to solid ground but was sucked into the chasm.

  He landed on his side so hard it knocked the wind from his lungs. As he lay there, struggling for breath, his mind’s eye filled with the familiar blinking red light. It was just a fall, he told himself in an attempt to stay calm. Nothing to worry about.

  As his lungs refilled with air, he realized his flashlight had shattered. Crawling on all fours, he felt for his night-vision binoculars, but they were nowhere. Like his backpack, they likely lay on the ground above the cave floor.

  Thoughts of doom infiltrated Daniel’s mind. He sat on his knees and grasped his hair with both hands, trying to shake the sensation. He had two choices: to explore the innermost reaches of Trophonius’ cave and see what was hidden there, or to find his way out of the cylindrical cavity.

  He glanced up at the round mouth that marked the entrance to the cave and surveyed the structure’s derelict masonry walls. Getting out without rope would be difficult but not impossible. For a moment, he considered abandoning his assignment and getting the hell out. But he had never aborted a mission and wasn’t about to start.

  He took a deep breath to steady his nerves and groped in the dark for the opening Pausanias had described. In the seam joining the cave floor and walls, there reportedly was a tight opening that led to the inner sanctum, where oracle seekers received their visions. The journey was said to be terrifying, for it involved a strong sense of self and of faith. Those who faltered in either regard emerged from the oracle of Trophonius shaken, bewildered, traumatized, and, on occasion, dead.

  Daniel ran his hands across the cave walls, feeling for any clue. The stones used to build the cave had crumbled or had been covered by overgrown vegetation, making the task difficult. Eventually, his fingers ran across a small groove at the bottom of the structure, obscured by a tangle of roots.

  This is it.

  He ripped the roots apart until more of the opening was revealed. He felt a horizontal crack, like a torn seam, stretching between the earthen floor and the crumbled limestone wall. He kicked the crack, tentatively at first, then more decisively. It gave way.

  The opening, he figured, was about two feet wide and six inches high—barely big enough for a man’s lower limbs to fit into.

  Pausanias’ narrative was explicit. On the descent between top and bottom is an opening two spans broad and one high. He who descends lies flat at the bottom of the cavity and, having in his hands cakes kneaded with honey, introduces into the opening first his feet and then his knees; and then all his body is sucked in, like a rapid and large river swallows up anyone who is sucked into its vortex.

  Though he heard a voice in his head telling him to stay away, Daniel decided to go for it. He lay on the floor on his back and pressed his feet into the hole, then pushed his legs in up to the knee, following Pausanias’ prescribed technique.

  This was the point when the chute supposedly swept a man into its belly, but nothing happened. In fact, Daniel was stuck, unable to move in or out of the opening. His feet dangled in a void he could not see. Whatever was behind the wall was hollow, like a shaft. He tried to shimmy deeper in, to no avail.

  He sensed a faint vibration against his back and put a hand on the wall. It felt as if the structure was settling. The vibration turned into a tremor. Instinctively, he tried to wiggle out of the opening, but the aperture had too tight a clamp on his legs. He was trapped.

  With a low rumble, a portion of the floor fell away, pulling him inside a shaft. It was a near-vertical drop in the pitch black that felt as if he were plummeting into an abyss. As he fell with mounting velocity, his heart pounded so hard he thought his arteries would burst. Hardly able to breathe, he gasped for air, but there was no oxygen to take in. He felt like a man about to die. He had known that sensation only once before, a time he had tried so desperately to erase from his memory.

  He had no awareness of his body. The utter blackness was replaced by a blinking red light that, with every heartbeat, grew in circumference until it flooded his mind’s eye.

  A searing heat overtook his throat and traveled up to his head and down both arms. He felt something press down on his chest like a vise. He clutched at it with all his strength, tried to pull it apart. But the sensation was still there. It became tighter, suffocating him.

  He landed with a thud that resonated in his ears and forced a primal scream from his throat. A second cry came, then another, until his lungs had no more air to give. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, and then there was nothing.

  Twelve

  In the remains of night, Sarah retraced Pausanias’ steps through the olive grove on the hills above Livadeia. But this wasn’t an archaeologist’s journey. It was a voyage driven by a need for clarity—and resolution.

  Adrenaline surged through her as she imagined the confrontation with Daniel. It was the last thing she wanted, yet there was no longer a choice. By taking the obelisk without informing anyone—not even the partner he supposedly trusted implicitly—he had stepped so far over the boundaries that there was no return. No motivation in the world could justify such an action.

  She willed the noxious thoughts out of her mind for the time being. It was difficult enough to locate an ancient cave without any emotional agitation; she needed her wits about her to guide her through the darkened landscape.

  The Aleppo pines rustled in the evening breeze, releasing their green, bittersweet scent into the air. With a constant, telegraphic trill, a flock of nightjars serenaded the night. At the top of the grove, Sarah stopped and looked around. Midway up the massif rising above the hill country was a lone, whitewashed monastery wedged into the rock. She had no doubt it was still occupied. The Greeks had a history of building monastic habitations on difficult places, where the men of God could study without worldly distractions.

  Panning a penlight across the desiccated grasses, she scanned the clearing for any sign of the cave. If Daniel had indeed been there before her, he likely had gained access using the brass stake. Sarah cringed at the notion of following him rather than walking beside him. As far as she was concerned, it was the beginning of the end.

  At the tip of her light beam, she noticed something peculiar and did a double take. The ground was covered with pine branches in a tight arrangement that could not have occurred naturally. She walked closer to investigate.

  It seemed as if someone had dragged the branches there, perhaps to cover something. Holding onto a low branch from the nearest tree, she stepped onto the area. Her foot sank into the branch structure, confirming her suspicion that there was no solid ground beneath.

  She stepped harder onto the branches and watched them sink into the earth. She repeated the process until a hole was exposed. She squatted to get a closer look. Judging by the newly torn roots on the edges of the crater, it had recently been opened—likely that night.

  There was no sign of entry—no obelisk, no tools, no rope. She shone a light inside. The chasm was as Pausanias had described it: cylindrical and manmade, rather akin to a bread oven. Her pulse quickened. One of antiquity’s great mysteries had been revealed.

  Sarah slipped her pack off her shoulders and searched quickly for a stretch of rope and a headlamp. She figured the distance to the bottom of the chasm was at least a dozen feet—too high to jump. Besides, she’d need a way out. She secured the rope to a nearby pine tree, tying the bitter end into a timber hitch. She threw the other end of the rope into the hole and quickly slid on it down to the bottom.

  She h
eld still for a moment, letting the space speak to her. The walls were a rudimentary masonry, rough-cut blocks of limestone that had been covered over by the roots of trees and bushes aboveground. She turned three hundred sixty degrees, scanning the structure from top to bottom.

  Then she saw it: a fissure between the wall and the dirt floor. It looked as if the ground had crumbled away, perhaps under the weight of something. She looked closely. An object was wedged into the dirt. She parted the soil and recoiled when she saw a shattered torch she swore belonged to Daniel.

  Could he be in there? The doubts and anger that had been rising inside her were instantly replaced by a deep concern. No matter what he had done and how distant they had grown, she could not bear the idea of him being hurt.

  “Danny?” she called, softly at first and louder when she got no answer.

  Sarah clawed at the dirt to create a larger opening. It was soft and moist, almost like quicksand. She considered Pausanias’ explicit account—and then all his body is sucked in, like a rapid and large river swallows up anyone who is sucked into its vortex—and wondered if there was a spring nearby that caused that pull.

  There was nothing to do but descend into Trophonius’ hole. She braced herself in case the eyewitness account of Pausanias was true. He’d insisted oracle seekers were seized by a presence and dealt prophecies and insight in the most terrifying way. Presumably owing to drinking the waters of Lethe, the supplicants did not even remember what had happened in the dark recesses of that forest womb. A few did not survive the experience.

  Then again, those early seekers did not have the benefit of climbing rope. Sarah glanced at the coils of rope stacked on the cave floor and figured there was an extra ten feet there; she hoped it would be enough. She tossed the end into the opening and, holding on to the rope, wedged herself in feetfirst.

  Once she was past the narrow mouth, the rope tensed as she dropped into a cavernous space. She did not have enough rope to reach the bottom. Holding on tightly, she dangled in the void. The heavy scent of moist earth laced with the must of fungus hung in the air. A chill radiated from the damp soil. Water definitely ran nearby.

  She tapped on the headlamp and scanned the space. Though it was impossible to illuminate all the dark reaches, she could at least surmise the floor was another ten feet down.

  “Danny? Are you here?” Her voice echoed inside

  the cavern.

  As expected, there was no answer. She weighed her options. She could jump to the bottom and explore more closely, or she could come to the conclusion she was chasing ghosts and forgo the risk of entering a volatile space with no easy way out.

  Her biceps burned as she held on to the taut rope. Her strength would not allow her to hang there much longer. She had to make a decision: jump down or begin the climb back up.

  Sarah never had been one to dodge risk. She had always calculated it, knowing fully what she was entering into. In this case, there was not enough rope to reach the bottom, which meant she didn’t have a good exit option. On top of that, there was only a minuscule possibility that something—or someone—was down there. The risk was great; the reward, dubious. And yet the pull of the unknown was too strong to ignore.

  She pointed the light at the cavern wall. It was soft, black soil held together by elaborate root systems that could help her climb down. She swung back and forth on the rope until she gained enough momentum to reach the wall.

  She grasped for a handhold to slow her forward motion, but it took several times before she could grab hold of something solid. She held on to a particularly large root and tied her rope to it for easy reach later.

  She took a moment to survey the way down. The moist earth was too slippery to negotiate, but there were enough roots and rocks to support her descent. Looking over her shoulder to illuminate the route, she moved slowly down the earthen wall, feeling the cool, wet soil beneath her fingernails.

  Sarah had only ten, maybe fifteen vertical feet to scale. It was nothing she hadn’t done a hundred times during her career. Still, something about this terrain felt odd, almost sinister. She tried to shake the feeling, telling herself she’d been influenced by the texts of writers often given to hyperbole.

  As the hole deepened, there were no more roots to hold on to. She dug her nails into the dirt and kicked for a toehold. Her foot hit something hard—a rock?—and she placed her weight on it. As she stepped to make her final bid for the cave floor, the mass moved. It was far lighter than she’d expected. Under her weight, it came out of the soil and tumbled down.

  Losing her purchase, she fell and landed squarely on the object. She sat up and pointed her headlamp toward it. She lifted a hand to her mouth.

  A skull.

  She pointed the light toward the dirt in which the skull had been wedged and saw more half-buried bones: a broken tibia, a clavicle, portions of a rib cage.

  It seemed as though the person had been injured on impact and rendered unable to escape. She panned the light around the cave. Aside from the remains, the space was empty. She scanned the ground for footprints or any sign of recent entry.

  Her gaze stopped on two fresh tracks in the dirt. It looked like someone had been dragged. A shiver traveled down her spine, and the hairs on her neck stood on end.

  She knew she should not linger. Before exiting, she took a final look around, concentrating on the spot where the skeletal remains lay. She held the light on the bones for a long moment and surmised from the pelvic structure the deceased was female. Odd, she thought. According to the recorded history, the seekers of Trophonius were all male. Could this woman have stumbled into the cave, and perished there, long after oracles had been silenced?

  Sarah noticed something on one of the rocks wedged nearby. She twisted to release it from the soil. It was an ordinary potsherd, about three inches wide and two inches high. She pulled it out and brushed the dirt away with her hand.

  Something had been haphazardly carved on the clay: perhaps the ill-fated woman’s final, desperate attempt to communicate. She brushed more of the dirt away to expose the full engraving. The writing was late Hellenistic, the form of ancient Greek spoken and written in the early part of the Common Era, up to the passage into Byzantine Greek in the sixth century. Based on that, she surmised the deceased was likely not an oracle seeker, for the cave of Trophonius had been sealed around Roman times.

  On top of the shard was a carved symbol, like an upside-down U. It seemed as if the person had tried to convey a design within that symbol, but the pottery had chipped in too many spots to distinguish a true pattern.

  She studied the text. Though the surface had chipped and some of the letters were unclear, she recognized the words house and new god.

  She turned the shard over. On the other side was a line carving of a mountain whose midline was riddled with holes. Were they caves? The windows of a building? Beneath the drawing were four faded letters—MELÁ—and an illegible word that started with the Greek letters ΣΩΦ.

  She sat back and gathered her knees to her chest. The chill radiating from the damp soil made her shiver. Simplistic scribbles on a random piece of clay: there was no art in it, only a message meant to be found.

  Sarah knew what she was about to do was unorthodox. Removing an object found in situ without the proper procedure went against all the rules of archaeology. But she also knew the message carved on that shard was a map pointing to the whereabouts of a long-buried object—and that object was what the looters were seeking.

  With a plan formulating in her mind, she stood and tucked the object into a cargo pocket. She jumped up to reach a root about three feet above her head. She grabbed hold and used it for leverage, hoisting her body up a little at a time until she got to the rope. With one hand she held on to her nylon savior, and with the other she untied it from the root.

  She gripped the rope tightly as the weight of her body caused her to swing into the void. Engaging every muscle in her upper body, she pulled herself up the length of rope to
ward the entrance shaft, perhaps a bit too hurriedly. She heard the rapid rise and fall of her breath and realized how exhausted and anxious she was. She forced herself to slow her pace so she could conserve energy for the task ahead.

  A faint light from the main chamber of the cave finally came into view. Sarah made a final push for the top, low-crawling through the entrance shaft and propelling herself forward with her forearms. As her head brushed the top of the shaft, loose dirt fell into her eyes, stinging them.

  When she emerged onto the top chamber, her muscles twitched in protest and her hands were scraped raw by the friction of the rope. She lay on her back, catching her breath before the next portion of the ascent. Some twelve feet above her, the round mouth leading into Trophonius’ underground world was no longer dark. A column of white light entered the cave, heralding a new day.

  A breeze blew down the hole, and she felt its cool sting on her sweat-dampened skin. Though she was exhausted, there was no time to linger. She grasped the rope and, grunting, climbed toward the light.

  On the surface, the snow that had dusted the grasses the night before was beginning to melt. The sun had barely risen above the peaks of Mount Parnassus, suffusing the scene with golden light. It was cold, but Sarah barely noticed. Adrenaline still surged through her as she gathered the rope in a figure eight between her hand and elbow.

  She reached into her trousers and pulled out the stone. It looked even more remarkable in the daylight. She ran a finger across the carving of the mountain peak and the letters beneath it: Melá. The word meant black in the Pontic Greek dialect. It also was the name of a mountain in the Pontus region, along the Black Sea in modern Turkey.

  It was coming together. The words house and new god could well be a reference to the mystical monasteries built high on the cliffs of Melá as early as the fourth century, when Christianity took hold of the region. The idea of something being buried within their confines was both tantalizing and daunting. The monasteries had been rebuilt many times over the centuries, and an object from antiquity might not have survived the evolution. Still, there was a possibility—and for Sarah, that was enough.