The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set

by N. S. Wikarski

  Cassie took another deep breath of mountain air. A good night’s sleep had certainly done wonders. She felt rested and ready to find the fabled calendar stones. She wondered what they would look like. Just then, her reverie was punctured by the blast of a car horn. Looking down into the hotel courtyard, she saw Fred waving at her. He was standing up in the driver seat of an open Jeep.

  “Hello there, sleepyhead. Are you and your team just about ready?”

  “Two minutes,” she called. Sliding the patio door shut, she hastily left her room and sped down to the lobby.

  Eric and Griffin were already waiting for her. Griffin appeared restless, alert. Cassie knew him well enough by now to recognize his inner relic hound. He was on the scent of something. It reminded her of a beagle just before a fox hunt. At least he wasn’t barking.

  “Down boy.” She patted him on the arm.

  “What?” he looked at her quizzically.

  Eric gave a subdued chuckle. Apparently, he had noted the resemblance too. “Time to get this show on the road.”

  The trio emerged into the brightening day and climbed into the four-wheeler Fred had rented for their trek.

  “A few roads crisscross the top of the mountain,” their guide explained, “but the place I’m taking you is pretty far from any of them. Hang on. Some of these trails can get awfully bumpy.”

  Cassie gripped the roll bar above her head as the Jeep jolted to life. Once again, Eric was seated up forward with Fred while Griffin was doing the best he could to keep all his gangly limbs inside the back seat.

  “Now this is more like it,” Cassie said to the scrivener appreciatively, savoring the feeling of adventure.

  “More like what?” he asked testily. “Trundling over boulders in a sardine tin?”

  “You’re really not a morning person, are you?” she teased.

  He relented a bit and smiled back. “It is exciting, isn’t it? By the end of today, we may be holding the first relic in our hands.”

  The pythia nodded in agreement. “That would be something.”

  The Jeep lurched and bounced over rocky trails, cut across fast-moving streams and wove its way through dense thickets of pine. The terrain was too uncertain to allow them to travel at high speed. Cassie settled in for a long ride.

  “You know this mountain is one of the most famous landmarks in the classical world,” Griffin began. “It’s mentioned no less than forty times in the Iliad.”

  Anticipating a history lesson, Cassie cut him off. “Yeah, I know. The Trojan War and all that.”

  Griffin gaped at her in amazement. “You actually know something about Troy?”

  Cassie glanced at his puzzled face and grimaced. “Close your mouth. You don’t have to act so surprised. I occasionally know facts too. The Iliad was the last thing we covered in my ancient lit class before I left school. Let’s see if I remember the story.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “I just know you’ll correct me if I’m wrong.”

  “Have at it,” he prompted. “I’m listening.”

  “Well, it all started when the goddess of discord lobbed a golden apple into the middle of a wedding feast on Mount Olympus. It had an inscription that read, ‘To the fairest.’”

  She paused as a thought struck her. “The Greeks really had a thing about golden apples, didn’t they? They have all these myths with golden apples in them. Didn’t they ever hear of the fruit of the month? I mean, why not a nice kiwi once in a while for variety?”

  Griffin sighed. “I know you’re being deliberately outrageous just to annoy me.”

  “And I’m succeeding.” Cassie grinned. “Back to the wedding feast. Once the apple started rolling around the floor, three of the goddesses pounced on it like cats on a ball of string. They all started arguing about who was the prettiest. Since nobody could decide, they asked Zeus’s opinion. For somebody who claimed to be the king of the gods, Zeus was something of a weenie. He didn’t want to get into the middle of that discussion any more than your boyfriend wants to answer the question, ‘Does this dress make me look fat?’”

  “I’m not gay!” Griffin protested indignantly.

  “Relax. I didn’t mean your boyfriend.” She emphasized the word “your.” “I was just being generic.”

  “Perhaps you could confine yourself to gender-specific generalities,” the scrivener sniffed.

  “Fine.” The pythia shrugged. “Anyway, Zeus didn’t want to answer the question, so he sent the goddesses off to some hapless redneck tending sheep on this very mountainside who was appointed to judge the beauty contest.” Cassie frowned in concentration. “I should remember the shepherd’s name because it was a city. Was it London?” She paused, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Maybe it was Detroit.”

  “Detroit?” Griffin echoed in disbelief. “It was Paris! The hapless redneck, as you describe him, was a youth named Paris. And the three female deities in question are the very famous Aphrodite—goddess of love, Hera—Zeus’s wife and patron of women, and Athena—goddess of wisdom.”

  “Right. As I was saying, the three goddesses try bribing Paris to win the Miss Aegean beauty pageant, but he likes Aphrodite’s offer best. She says if he gives her the title, she’ll make the most beautiful woman in the world fall in love with him.” Cassie turned to the scrivener for confirmation. “How am I doing so far?”

  “Quite well if one overlooks the appalling cheekiness of your narrative style. Do continue.”

  She nodded. “After that, Aphrodite gets the apple and Paris sails off to Greece to collect his bride bribe.” She chuckled at her own witticism. “Bride bribe. Get it?”

  Her companion rolled his eyes.

  “Anyhow, the prize is a queen named Helen. Of course, Aphrodite forgot to mention that Helen is already married to the King of Sparta. This little detail doesn’t seem to bother anybody very much except for Helen’s husband. When he finds out his wife has run off to Troy with a guy who likes spending quality time with sheep, he rallies all his cronies. They jump on their ships and sail off in hot pursuit. After a ten-year slug fest, lots of manly battles, much chest-thumping, and many big speeches, Greece wins. Troy gets burnt to the ground, and Helen gets bundled back home.” Cassie grinned impishly. “What do you think? Did I get it right?”

  “I’m speechless.”

  Erik twisted around in his seat and called over the loud growl of the engine, “What are you two gabbing about back there?”

  “The Trojan War,” Griffin answered. “Cassie has just managed to reduce the epic to the length of a sardonic soundbyte. If only Homer had been alive to hear her, it would certainly have killed the old sod.”

  “How upset can you get about my irreverent take on a long-winded overlord poem anyway?” Cassie objected. “I wasn’t wrong about any of the facts, was I?”

  “In essence, no,” the scrivener conceded. “The facts are as you’ve stated them.”

  Cassie tilted her head, considering. “But maybe fact isn’t the right word. Are they facts? I mean, did any of it really happen?” She peered around at her companions, waiting for an answer.

  Fred remained silent, concentrating fiercely on navigating the Jeep up a steep slope.

  Erik had hooked his arm around the headrest and was following the exchange in the back seat. “Some of it really happened,” he said.

  Cassie stared at him. “You mean gods sitting on top of Mount Ida waving pennants and rooting for their favorite team? Go Trojans!”

  The security coordinator laughed. “No, not that part. But there really was a Troy. It’s near the coast just a little northwest of here.”

  “And the archaeological evidence suggests the city was burned around 1200 BCE,” added Griffin. “That timeframe is consistent with Homer’s epic.”

  “It’s odd though that the Greeks would pick a fight in this place,” Cassie remarked. “Turkey used to be goddess-worship central.”

  “That’s why the Iliad is so important a piece of o
verlord propaganda,” offered Griffin. “The Trojan War wasn’t about recapturing a stray woman. It was about capturing all women in legally sanctioned matrimonial alliances. The overlord Greeks fighting the matristic Trojans.”

  “Too bad it ended the way it did,” Cassie commented gloomily.

  “Cheer up.” Griffin tried to comfort her. “Despite the Greek victory, this section of the Aegean remained a goddess stronghold for millennia afterward. In fact, there’s an amusing story in the Iliad wherein Hera seduces her husband Zeus to distract him from the battle long enough to tip the scales in favor of Hera’s team. Mount Ida was the home of the goddess, so Hera’s power here was very strong. Even the all-powerful father of the gods couldn’t win in this place.”

  “Still, she was rooting for the Greeks and their patriarchal new world order,” Cassie objected. “What kind of crazy sense does that make?”

  “Not sense,” Erik replied. “Propaganda. It’s always more effective when you can make it look like your former enemy has been convinced of the error of her ways and defects to your side. Hera used to be an all-powerful Mother Goddess. Another version of Cybele until she got demoted by the Hellenic tribes and had to marry the new guy in town. And she sure didn’t want to marry him.”

  “So how did Zeus get her to agree?” Cassie asked.

  “According to the overlord myth,” Erik explained, “when he wasn’t getting anywhere courting her, he disguised himself as a rain-soaked cuckoo. After she picked up the poor little birdie to take care of it, Zeus changed back into his old self and took care of business. Once he’d raped her, Hera was shamed into marrying him.”

  “What a prince,” Cassie commented acidly.

  “Zeus had quite a reputation as a seducer and/or rapist,” Griffin said. “The conventional explanation is that as classical mythology evolved, the new deity was symbolically appropriating the original goddesses of the conquered peoples and incorporating them into the overlord pantheon.” He paused. “But the more I think about it, the more inclined I am to believe that Zeus’s antics mirrored what was actually taking place during the Kurgan invasions. Since the intruders tended to be roving bands of armed males on horseback, the quickest way to secure a local bride was through abduction and rape. In fact, the practice of bride abduction still occurs in the steppe nations today. Of course, nowadays the preferred getaway vehicle is an automobile rather than a horse.”

  “Please tell me you’re joking about that.” Cassie was incredulous.

  Griffin’s voice was grim. “I wish I were. Quaint local custom, don’t you think? Not coincidentally, many of the countries that still practice this atrocity are located in the region where the horse was first domesticated and where Kurgan culture originated. The Eurasian steppes. There does appear to be a correlation between bride abduction and a fast horse.”

  Cassie was about to badger him with several more questions when the Jeep came to an abrupt halt.

  “We made it,” Fred announced. “And in one piece which, all things considered, is a bonus.”

  His passengers climbed out of the vehicle and dusted themselves off. Cassie shook her hair to dislodge particles of grit. The sun had risen high enough to make her notice the mid-day heat.

  “Does it ever rain here?” she asked their guide.

  Fred shook his head. “Not much at this time of year. Hot and dry is the weather forecast for the next couple of months.” He pointed off in the direction of a narrow dirt trail that cut through the forest. “We have to walk the rest of the way to the calendar stones.”

  The group followed him wordlessly as the path twisted ever upward through the dim pines. After about a ten-minute hike they passed the tree line. The pines gave way to windswept earth covered with a thin layer of scrubby grass and the occasional boulder. They continued to walk to the top of a rise where they finally paused to catch their breath.

  Cassie looked off into the distance at the panorama spread out before her. She could see a series of mountain peaks running off in a straight line to the east. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “What a view.”

  “It’s pretty impressive,” Fred agreed.

  “Oh, I say!” Griffin exclaimed. His attention was focused on a section of hillside below the rise where they were standing. The ground leveled out into a small plateau. On this table of land, a series of stones had been arranged into a ring. The boulders were all approximately eight feet high and had been shaped into rectangles of a uniform thickness. Massive crosspieces rested across the tops of several of them. Some of the stones contained relief carvings of animals or birds and one held the figure of a human female. They had once been spaced evenly though time had marred the original symmetry. Some of the crosspieces had cracked and fallen to the ground. A few of the base stones leaned at odd angles, and several had toppled or been pushed over. Still, the ring shape was unmistakable.

  “This is extraordinary!” The scrivener scurried down the hill until he stood in the middle of the henge which was strewn with boulders, broken rock, and weeds. To all appearances, the place had been abandoned for millennia.

  The other three caught up with him and began to examine the formations, some of which ran almost to the edge of the plateau.

  “Careful there,” Fred cautioned as Cassie moved dangerously close to the edge.

  She had been so intent on examining a megalith that she’d paid no attention to her precarious position. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder. “Yikes!” she exclaimed as a loose rock under her heel rolled down the decline and tumbled over the side.

  Fred steadied her arm. “It’s a sheer drop of about a hundred feet off the edge.”

  The other two men came to examine the cliff.

  Cassie peered over the rim which dropped off a mere five feet from the base of one of the megaliths. “There’s a little ledge down there,” she noted.

  The others looked to where she was pointing.

  “Must be a great view for anybody who could get down there to sit on it,” Erik observed.

  “Actually, there is a way down there,” Fred offered. “This cliff is honey-combed with hermit cells. You just can’t see them from up here.”

  “Somebody held hermits prisoner here?” Cassie asked in disbelief.

  “Not that kind of cell,” Griffin objected. “Early in the history of the Christian church, certain reclusive souls abandoned the world for a life of spiritual contemplation. Many of them took to the mountains and hollowed out caves where they could live and pray in peace.”

  “But how could they get down there?” Cassie persisted. “Rope ladders?”

  “There are tunnels through the mountainside,” Fred explained. “Most of them were natural cave formations that were excavated and extended over time. You have to know where to look, but I’ve explored a few. There are trails below the tree line that will lead you directly through the mountain and out to the hermit cells in this cliff. You just can’t get to them from up here.”

  “Fascinating,” Griffin said. He took one more look over the edge of the cliff before retreating to observe a megalith several feet away.

  The others followed him back.

  “How long do you suppose these stones have been standing here?” Cassie asked.

  Griffin was scrutinizing one of the bird carvings—a vulture. “It’s difficult to tell, but I would hazard a guess that this site was already ancient by the time Troy was sacked. There are other megalithic formations in Turkey and Armenia that date back to 9000 BCE.”

  Cassie glanced at him in surprise. “But that’s a couple of thousand years before Catal Huyuk, and I thought that was supposed to be ancient.”

  The scrivener gave her a brief smile. “I’m afraid we’re all going to have to revise our definition of the word ‘ancient’ during the course of this relic quest.” He transferred his attention back to the carving. “The depiction of this specific bird is significant. The vulture is a prominent figure in the excarnation rituals depicted on
the walls of Catal Huyuk. In all probability, the ancestors of those people built this ring.”

  “Just exactly what are we looking for here?” asked Erik.

  All three paused in their examination and turned toward Griffin.

  The scrivener’s exhilaration evaporated. He seemed to hesitate. “I’m not sure exactly. Megalithic formations have been found all over the world. They may have measured a variety of astronomical phenomena. It all depended on which planet or which star was important to a particular culture. Certainly, most of them would have taken account of obvious phenomena like the summer and winter solstice. Lunation cycles. Possibly even eclipses.”

  “But how does all of that work?” Cassie felt lost.

  “The principle is quite simple really,” Griffin replied. “Let’s take something like the winter solstice. The ancients watched the skies on a daily basis in a way that most modern people would find incomprehensible. It was, in effect, their favorite television program. Over time, they would have observed the sun rising at a different point along the horizon as the seasons changed. In the case of the winter sun, they would have noticed it rising at a point farther and farther south as the days grew shorter. There would come a day when the sun had reached its southernmost point. The ancients would position a stone to mark that location. Every year thereafter, when they observed the sun rising above that particular stone, they would know that winter was over and the days were about to grow longer again.”

  “Cool. Which stone is it?” Cassie asked eagerly, looking around the circle.

  “I have no idea.” Griffin sounded nonplussed. “I might be able to calculate it based on the sun’s current position on the horizon during sunrise, but there’s no way to tell just by looking around the circle.”