by Gabriel Hunt
Looking to the side where Christos and Tigranes were, he saw the strangest thing then: Tigranes, who had continued feeling among the edges and protrusions of the cliff’s face, apparently found what he’d been hunting for and, reaching with one arm and one leg, he pulled himself over to it—and vanished. The root he’d been hanging on swung back toward Christos, empty.
Above him, Gabriel heard another Greek voice back on the clifftop shouting breathlessly, “Don’t do it! Don’t let him go! The Hungarian wanted them alive!”
“Not this one,” said the man holding onto Gabriel’s boots—but he kept holding on, for now. “He wanted the old man. This one he was happy to see dead.”
“Still,” the other Greek said, uncertainty creeping into his voice.
Beside him, Gabriel saw Christos nervously reach out for the root that Tigranes had vacated. Carefully, oh so carefully, he shifted his weight over to it and slid down its length to where Tigranes had been feeling around the rocks.
Meanwhile, the argument continued overhead.
“You want him? You hold him,” the man with his hands on Gabriel’s ankles said.
“I don’t want him,” the other man said.
“You don’t want him? I don’t want him. Andras didn’t want him. No one wants him. You hear that?” the man shouted down at Gabriel. “No one wants you. Goodbye, American.” And he gave Gabriel’s ankles a heave toward the sea, letting go when they were out over the edge.
As he fell, Gabriel reached out desperately for the root Christos had been hanging from. He grabbed hold of it at the very bottom, turning end over end till he was hanging upright. His momentum carried him bruisingly into the rock, but he held on tight, his fingers clenching for all they were worth.
But the momentum had been transmitted along the length of the root and had not gone unnoticed overhead.
“Son of a bitch,” came the Greek’s voice, and Gabriel heard him walking over to where he’d left the knife. A moment later, Gabriel felt the root he was hanging from shift downward as the man started hacking at it.
Below him, he saw Christos feeling among the rocks where Tigranes had disappeared. A gnarled, clawlike hand popped out from behind one of the protrusions on the cliff’s surface, took hold of Christos’ forearm, and pulled him toward itself.
This root was thicker and wouldn’t part quite as easily as the last one—Gabriel heard the sounds of hacking overhead replaced with sawing, the knife’s serrated blade biting into the thick tendril. With each stroke, he felt the root’s purchase on the cliff’s surface become weaker.
Christos was stretching out a leg now, as Tigranes had.
Gabriel braced his feet against the cliff wall. He’d only have one shot at this—
Christos vanished behind the same outjutting stretch of rock Tigranes had, and the root he’d been hanging from swung back, liberated from his weight. At that instant the root from which Gabriel was hanging was liberated, too, from the trunk of the tree it had supported for a century or more. Gabriel kicked off with both feet and, reaching out, seized hold of the swinging root as it came toward him.
His palms were slick with sweat and raw with abrasions. He slid down the root, trying to cling, straining to hold on, finally getting a good grip only inches from the end. He was breathing heavily, rapidly, his heart hammering in his chest. Beneath his boots, he saw the hundreds of feet of empty air he’d be falling through if he slipped any further. Far, far below, he saw the root he’d been hanging from a moment earlier still plunging toward the rocks.
“Goddamn it,” came the Greek’s voice from overhead—and Gabriel knew his move to the new root had not gone unnoticed. “You’re a stubborn bastard, aren’t you?” And the man began sawing at this final root, the thickest of the three.
Gabriel looked to the side, where Christos and Tigranes had gone, and used his feet to pull himself over toward the spot. There was a prominent outcropping of rock there, blocking his view. Concealed behind it, what would he find? A space large enough for two, apparently; hopefully enough for three. A crevice or fissure in the cliff wall, perhaps, maybe even a small cave—trust an old mountain rat like Tigranes to know the location of every cranny and tunnel in the place. Of course how they’d get down from there was one hell of a question, but right now that was far from Gabriel’s biggest worry.
He could feel the root beginning to come apart. It slipped an inch, two inches—it had to be hanging by its last tough fibers now, and Gabriel knew his weight would swiftly part those even if the knife blade didn’t.
Next to him, he saw a hand appear from around the rock—a young man’s hand. He let go of the root with one of his own and swung his arm over, grabbing hold of Christos’ hand, palm to palm.
Then the root snapped.
He fell with a sharp jerk but held onto Christos’ hand, squeezing tight, clawing with his other hand against the rock and trying to get purchase on the surface with the soles of his boots. He caught hold of the outcropping itself and, using it for leverage, heaved himself around it.
On the other side, there was a ledge. Christos was kneeling on it, one arm braced against the outcropping, the other extended out into space. This was the one Gabriel was holding onto with a bone-crushing grip. Tigranes stood behind Christos, his wiry arms encircling the younger man’s chest, leaning back with all his might. Behind him, a dark, crooked opening led into the mountain itself.
Gabriel found the ledge with one foot, then the other, and Christos helped him up onto it, dragging him the last few inches. Then all three of them fell back into the cool darkness, the blessed solidity of stone beneath their bodies.
From up above, sounding far away, they heard the voice of the man with the knife: “Can you see them? Can you see where they fell?”
“No,” came another voice.
“Then,” said the man with the knife, “where in the holy hell are they?”
Chapter 16
In the light spilling in from the opening, Tigranes held up the broken frame of his phorminx. Its strings hung loose, the wood around them splintered.
He laid it down on the ground sadly, folding the strap over it like the corner of a shroud.
“I’m sorry,” Gabriel whispered and Tigranes nodded. None of them wanted to speak too loudly or too much, not while the men above were still hunting for them.
Tigranes gestured for them to follow and, with one hand on the wall to steady himself, led them deeper into the cave. It went on for quite a while, enough so that the light from outside dwindled to a white patch in the darkness—but there was a flickering orange light growing larger from the other direction.
They reached the end of the narrow cleft and made a ninety-degree turn. The sight that greeted them stopped Gabriel and Christos in their tracks.
It was more cavern than cave, a chamber at least fifty feet around and thirty high, seemingly naturally formed, with a pool of water at the center of it; and rising from this pool was a short pedestal of stone carved into the broad, ridged shape of an Ionic column. The capitals of this abbreviated column curled to either side like the horns of a ram. There was a marble seat on top of the capital, a squarish throne, and a larger-than-life-size statue of a muscular man reposed upon it, bare-chested, a stone lyre gripped in one arm. His face was long, his nose and brows prominent. Carved locks of hair tumbled about his ears and down his neck, while a chiseled beard roiled beneath his jaw.
Flame spouted from a pair of shallow stone bowls carved into the wall beside the room’s entrance—natural gas, Gabriel judged from the smell, an eternal flame ignited untold lifetimes ago that had cast its flickering light on this hidden temple ever since.
“What is this place?” Gabriel said.
“It is our Homereion,” Tigranes answered, stepping into the pool, which was only ankle-deep. He walked to the base of the statue, touched his fingers to his lips and pressed them to the carved throne. “A tribute to Chios’ glorious son. There was one like it at Alexandria, greater even than this, bu
ilt by Ptolemy—the fourth Ptolemy. There was one in Smyrna, one in Ephesus…but this was the very first, built just fifty years after the master’s death. My father brought me here when I was a child of three or four. He carried me in his arms and laid me down right here.” He reached up to pat the statue’s lap, where the stone folds of a toga cast undulant shadows across the figure’s carved knees.
“Why didn’t the residents of Anavatos come down here?” Gabriel said. “In 1822, when the Turks came—rather than leaping to their deaths?”
“Some did—a few,” Tigranes said. “Those who knew of its existence. We kept it secret. Only the Homeridae were permitted to know. The children of Homer.”
“Allowing hundreds of people to die, just to keep a secret—”
“I may be old,” Tigranes said, walking back out of the pool, “but I am not quite that old. Please don’t blame me for something that happened a century before I was born.”
Gabriel nodded. “Of course,” he said.
“Anyway, what do you think would have happened if its existence had been widely known? The Turks would have found out, just as they found out about Anavatos in the first place—by bribing some foolish woman who gave the secret away in return for a few drachmae. They would have come here and slaughtered everyone, and destroyed the Homereion, too. This way at least the handful of people who did know about it were able to survive. And the Homereion as well.”
He found his way to a dry spot at the margin of the room, sat down, and took off his sandals, wiped them on the hem of his chiton. Christos sat beside him. Gabriel remained standing.
“The men who were chasing us,” he said, “the ones working for Andras and DeGroet—they’re going to come back. They may not have the equipment they’d need here—ropes, rappelling gear—but they can get it at Avgonyma, and then they’ll be back. We might have a couple of hours, but not more.”
“Why would they come back?” Christos said. “Why not leave us in peace?”
“You know the answer to that,” Gabriel said. “Because DeGroet will punish them brutally if they let us escape, and pay handsomely if they deliver us to him.” And, Gabriel thought, just imagine what he’d pay to see this place.
“Is there any way out of here,” Gabriel asked, “any back entrance, any way out other than the way we came in?”
Tigranes shook his head. “There is only one other chamber—and the only way in or out is through here.”
It was as bad as he’d feared. Still—
“Might as well see it,” Gabriel said, offering Tigranes a hand to help him to his feet. Tigranes pointedly ignored it and got up on his own. Gabriel found himself hoping he’d be in the shape this old fellow was in when he turned eighty. Then he chastised himself for foolish optimism. What made him think he’d live to forty, never mind eighty?
Tigranes led them around the edge of the room till they were behind the statue. He stopped when he came to an opening in the wall, a low archway he had to duck to pass through. Gabriel bent and followed close behind.
The room beyond the archway was small and dark, lit only by reflected light from outside.
There was no pool in this room, no column, no oblate bowls with dancing flames.
But there was a stone figure.
And behind it, painted on the wall, there was a map.
Gabriel approached the statue slowly, walking in a careful circle around it, looking at it closely from all angles, or as closely as the limited light would permit. The carving, the artistry—it was the same, unmistakably so. And while the Greeks of Homer’s day had surely been more sophisticated sculptors than the Egyptians of Khafre’s, the style here was still incongruous. This was more the vital realism of a Michelangelo, a Bernini. And the figure—
It was the figure of a lioness, lying prone upon the ground, her paws outstretched; except that two-thirds of the way up, her torso became that of a woman, sleek fur replaced by hairless skin, small high breasts bare; and from her human shoulders sprouted a pair of stone wings, which lay neatly folded along her spine. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, as though she were calling out for someone. On her brow the sculptor had given her a diadem, a band to hold back her intricately carved ridges of hair. The statue of Homer outside had been idealized—he looked practically like a god, like Poseidon on his throne looking down upon the waters at his feet. This figure, this sphinx, was more modest—smaller, for one thing, and somehow, though it seemed perverse to think in these terms, less fantastical. Her eyelids, Gabriel noted, had wrinkles at their edges—he ran a finger over them and felt the tiny grooves in the stone. Her breasts—the nipples drooped slightly, as with age. The row upon row of feathers on each wing—each had been carved with meticulous care and craftsmanship.
On her flank, an inscription had been chiseled in angular Greek letters:
Accursed daughter of Echidna, rest eternal be yours
Your people shall forget you not, though generations pass
Your precious one shall hold your image close where you hold his
And your holy treasure speeds on Hermes’ wings to Taprobane,
Returning to the Cradle of Fear
Gabriel reached into the statue’s open mouth.
“What are you doing?” Tigranes said. And Christos said, “You shouldn’t—”
Gabriel pulled his hand away and came toward them. He held between his fingers a silver coin. On one side was an image of an eagle; on the other, a male face, in profile. He extended it toward Tigranes, who shook his head, and then to Christos, who peered closely at its surface. “The writing on it…is this coin Greek?”
“Egyptian,” Gabriel said.
He turned his attention to the wall. It had been painted with a single enormous teardrop shape; above this, in the uppermost corner of the wall, was the hint of a coastline to the north. It was the reverse of the map he’d found in Egypt: this one showed the island in full and the landmass of India only in part. It also had details painted in—not many, but enough to indicate a path from a spot on the coast to a location inland, very near the center of the island. If this was supposed to be Sri Lanka—Taprobane, as it was known in the days of Alexander—the destination marked would be just northeast of Dambulla. He’d been there once, in pursuit of a priceless wooden Bodhisattva figure stolen from the famous Golden Temple. He hadn’t paid much attention to anything else while he was there—but he had seen the occasional sphinx mixed in among the other figures on wall murals and carvings.
As he recalled, the legends of Sri Lanka spoke of it as a “man-lion”—narasimha—and it played the role of guardian, much as it had here in Greece. Across the sea in southern India, they gave it a Sanskrit name, purush-amriga—the human-beast. Under one name or another sphinxes popped up throughout the lands of Asia. But just what the connections were between the island of Sri Lanka, the Egyptian sphinx, and the sphinx depicted here—presumably the one from the Oedipodea—was a mystery to Gabriel. And if there was one thing he couldn’t abide, it was a mystery. Especially one people were willing to kill each other over.
“I think the time has come for us to find out a bit more about this sphinx,” he said to Tigranes. “If you know anything—”
“I do,” Tigranes said, nodding slowly. “The tale of Oedipus is but half the matter of the Oedipodea. The poet also told the story of the sphinx: her birth, her fierce defense of Thebes, her departure thence for Chios’ shores—”
“We don’t have four nights, I’m afraid,” Gabriel said.
“That’s quite all right,” Tigranes said. “I’ll begin where you wish.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t do that,” Gabriel said, “that you could only recite the entire poem from the start.”
“Do you believe everything someone tells you?” Tigranes said with a sly hint of a smile. “Here, let us go out into the main chamber again. I will feel my instrument’s absence less in the shadow of my master.”
They returned to the room with t
he statue of Homer in it, sat down at the edge of the pool. Tigranes began to speak, to sing, his voice echoing gently from wall to wall. Gabriel looked up at the statue. With the firelight playing over its carved features, you could almost imagine that it, and not Tigranes, was reciting the ancient words.
And the story of the sphinx unfolded. Gabriel didn’t interrupt, just listened, and as he did, pieces of the puzzle finally began to fall into place.
Chapter 17
“Are you saying she really existed, all those centuries ago?” Christos said when Tigranes fell silent. He’d been listening even more intently than Gabriel, if that was possible. “She really lived?”
“What, the sphinx? She was as real,” Tigranes said, “as Oedipus—as real as the Minotaur and the Lernean Hydra—as real as Zeus and Apollo and all the rest of them. How real that is, each man must decide for himself. I, for one, am prepared to believe she was as real as you or I. This world has many strange things in it, and one must never fall into the trap of saying, ‘I have never seen it, so it follows that no man has; and as no man has ever seen it, thus it cannot be.’”
This was a lesson Gabriel had learned many times himself over the years, when his voyages to some of the world’s more obscure corners had brought him face to face with things other people might say were impossible. Why, earlier this very year he’d fought side by side in the Guatemalan jungle with a man no less than 150 years old, kept youthful by the waters of, well, if it wasn’t literally the Fountain of Youth it might as well have been. Cierra Alamanzar had been with him; they had both witnessed it. But could they tell anyone what they’d seen without being called liars or worse? They could not. That didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
Still, a sphinx—an actual, living beast, half lion and half human? If ever something deserved to be called impossible…