“Besides, we’re not looking for the winter solstice,” Erik corrected, kicking a small rock out of his way. He strode over to where the other two stood in the middle of the ring. “We’re trying to figure out where the sun is when the soul of the lady rises.”
“Yes, a much more obscure reference to be sure,” the scrivener agreed.
“Look, guys. Maybe Griffin’s original idea wasn’t so far-fetched,” Cassie suggested. “It’s got to be one of these rocks, so why don’t I just go around the circle and touch them and see if I can get any impressions.”
The two men exchanged a skeptical glance. Fred came to stand behind Erik, listening to the conversation but offering no comment.
After a long pause, Erik asked Griffin, “You got any better ideas?”
“Sadly, not at the moment.”
The security coordinator turned to Cassie. “Go for it, toots.”
“OK, but one of you guys better follow me around in case I get a hit, and it knocks me off my feet. Remember what happened in Crete.”
Erik nodded. “I’ve got your back.” He obligingly trailed Cassie as she chose her first target.
“Let’s start with this one.” She selected a pillar that directly faced the mountain peaks in the distance. “Griffin, why don’t you keep track of where I started.”
Cassie braced herself, closed her eyes and laid her palms flat against the first megalith. Nothing happened. For the next half hour, she repeated the process with every standing stone in the circle and with the same disappointing result.
“No dice.” She finally sat down wearily on a patch of dry grass. Her three companions joined her, looking equally depressed.
“What now?” Fred asked bleakly.
“I suppose we should go back to the hotel and regroup,” Griffin suggested.
“The funny thing is that I know the Minoans were here.” Cassie sighed. “I can feel it when I touch the surface of any one of those megaliths. It’s almost like I’m wearing a blindfold and they’re playing blind man’s bluff with me. I just can’t get a fix on their position.”
“The fact that you were able to sense that much is comforting,” observed Griffin. “At least we know we’re looking in the right place.”
“Yeah, but looking for what?” Erik lay down on the ground and locked his hands behind his head. “Thousands of years ago, some people came here to look up at the sky. There are a bazillion things they might have thought were important out there.”
“Oh, come on. I’ll bet it was two bazillion,” Cassie joked weakly.
“Look, it’s not over yet,” Fred offered. “You guys traveled thousands of miles to end up in exactly the right spot. If you got this far, you’re bound to figure it out.”
“Yes, but not today,” Griffin murmured wistfully.
“Nope, not today,” Erik agreed.
Chapter 19 – Through a Glass Darkly
It was early. Still dark, in fact, and the compound was quiet. Abraham could hear no footsteps echoing down the corridors. No wailing babies. No whispering women. It was at least an hour before they would stir. Only the guards were awake. The old man’s insomnia had caused him to join the vigil of those who kept a watchful eye on the sleeping flock. The wolves that inhabited the Fallen Lands were always prowling. Always hungry for souls. But the wolves were not the reason Abraham had tossed and turned for the past three nights. Nor why he had risen hollow-eyed and lethargic for the past three mornings.
He sighed and faced the bathroom mirror, intent on finishing his ablutions. Tilting his head, he shaved the side of his neck, but the final stroke nicked his skin. A few drops of blood spattered the sink. Abraham winced and jerked his hand involuntarily, causing the razor to clatter to the floor. Groaning at his own clumsiness, the old man stooped to retrieve it. As he bent down, his knees made a cracking sound in protest. He willed himself to stoop further despite an additional twinge of pain in his knee-cap. He was not about to give in to imaginary weaknesses. Especially not now. He would need all his strength for what lay ahead.
Abraham straightened back up, staunched the cut on his neck and appraised his haggard reflection in the glass. The cause of his sleeplessness was his last worrisome conversation with Hannah. She had opened his eyes to Satan’s insidious plan to destroy the Blessed Nephilim from within. The sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach told him that Daniel’s wives were only the beginning. Error always had a way of compounding itself so that what started with four might end with the corruption of all. If each of the women repeated the same story, rumors would spread that the scion was somehow deficient. This would inevitably lead to questions about the diviner’s own lack of judgment. A crisis of faith might erupt that could shake the foundation of the brotherhood to its core. Although Abraham was more than prepared to fight Satan on the battlefield of the Fallen Lands, he never expected to battle that same unseen foe within his own sanctuary.
The diviner had no idea what course of action to take. He peered earnestly into the depths of the mirror. “Help me, Lord. Tell me what to do.” He didn’t know why, but he repeated the words over and over until they became a mindless chant. Five times, ten times, twenty times. He lost count but kept on chanting anyway. “Help me, Lord. Tell me what to do.” The effect was hypnotic. On and on he went, growing hoarse from the effort until he heard a whisper bubble up from within his own consciousness. “You must save her soul.”
Abraham stopped chanting. He stared dazedly at himself.
“You must save her soul.”
He considered the instruction for a moment. The message must refer to Hannah. Daniel’s other wives were older and too far steeped in their own corruption to be saved. But Hannah was young, hardly more than a girl. Malleable clay that could be molded to suit any purpose. There was still hope that she might be redeemed if she could be separated from the influence of her sister-wives.
Abraham straightened up and took stock of his appearance. Not so very old as all that, he thought. A few lines around the eyes but that was to be expected from a man of wisdom and experience. In his youth, he had been considered handsome. He turned sideways to regard himself in profile. Surely any woman of the congregation would count herself fortunate to be chosen by him. Any grown woman perhaps but would a girl think so too? The question made him drop his eyes briefly. He scowled and censored the thought. A patriarch of the Bible would have had no such qualms before taking a new wife.
He walked into the bedroom to dress. Carrying his tie back into the bathroom, he knotted it before the mirror. As he ran a comb through his thick silver mane, he noted with satisfaction that many men of his age worried about baldness. That condition would never trouble him.
“You must save her soul.”
What better way to save her and set her feet on the right path than to marry her himself? It was true that she was currently wed to his son, but his son was often away from home doing God’s work. Without Daniel to guide her behavior, she had already become an easy target for the devil. There was no telling what other trouble she might cause if left to her own devices. A beauty like hers could be dangerous—a sure occasion of sin. Better that such a temptation should be safely locked away in his keeping. He wasn’t so very old as all that. His youngest wife was in her thirties. Not much more than Hannah’s age.
Abraham warmed to the idea. The girl’s future was bright indeed. To be elevated to the rank of diviner’s wife at the age of fourteen. Rachel, his principal wife, had produced ten children. Given Hannah’s youth, she could easily supplant Rachel by producing more and ascend to her title. The girl would surely be overwhelmed with gratitude once she understood the earthly benefits Abraham was about to bestow upon her.
The diviner switched off the bathroom light and crossed into the bedroom. He picked up his suit coat and dusted it meticulously with a lint brush. Inspecting the black fabric, he nodded with satisfaction and donned the jacket. It was settled. He would inform the girl this morning and ma
ke the announcement to the congregation in the afternoon.
Turning to leave the bedroom, he caught a final glimpse of himself in the cheval mirror and allowed himself to smile for the first time in days. This was the ideal solution. Abraham knew it was divinely inspired. Through his righteous influence, Hannah would become worthy in the eyes of the Lord. Satan would no longer attempt to cloud her thinking once she was the wife of the diviner and any further rumors about Daniel would be decisively quashed. Let her find fault with the outcome of her next wedding night if she dared.
He closed his eyes and whispered a final prayer. “Lord, I am ever yours to command. I shall wed this girl as you have directed that I might shape her into a consecrated bride worthy to enter your kingdom.”
Abraham waited in silence for the reply which he knew would come from within.
“Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
Chapter 20 - Nomad’s Land
The dispirited quartet of relic hunters climbed out of their Jeep and dragged themselves wearily into the hotel lobby. The search of the calendar stones had proven fruitless. They needed time to regroup and formulate a new strategy, but before they could cross to the elevator, they were intercepted. A compact middle-aged man launched himself out of an arm chair near the entrance and hurtled toward them.
He was dressed in a camp shirt, khaki pants, and hiking boots. Looking eagerly from one face to the next, the newcomer exclaimed, “I am so very glad you have arrived! I did not know how to reach you.” He spoke with a heavy Slavic accent. Doffing his straw hat, he revealed a thinning patch of blond hair.
“Stefan?” Griffin asked in a puzzled tone.
“What are you doing here?” Erik mirrored his team mate’s surprise.
Hurriedly dropping his duffle bag to the floor, the visitor energetically shook hands with the two men. “I have been trying to catch up with you for many days now. It has been very difficult. First, you are one place, then you are another. I am always, how you say, one step behind.” He stopped abruptly and whirled to face Cassie. Clicking his heels, he gave a stiff bow from the waist. “You are Cassie Forsythe, no?” He peered intently into her face.
“No. I mean y… y... yes,” the pythia stammered, bowled over by his energy.
“Allow me to introduce you,” Griffin intervened. “This is Stefan Kasprzyk.”
To Cassie’s ears, the last name sounded as if it rhymed with wasp chick.
“He’s the Kurgan trove keeper.”
“Oh, how do you do,” she held out her hand.
Stefan took it, bowed over it and clicked his heels again. “I am so very, very glad to meet you.”
“And this is Fred,” Erik added. “He works with Aydin Ozgur.”
“Yes, of course, the Anatolian trove keeper,” Stefan remarked, pumping Fred’s hand. “I have met Pan Ozgur many times.”
“Pan?” Cassie asked.
“I believe that’s Polish for Mister,” Griffin confided.
The introductions having been concluded, the five stood uncertainly in the middle of the lobby, eyeing one another.
“Perhaps we should go somewhere to talk,” Griffin suggested.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Stefan agreed readily. “I have much to discuss with you.”
“How about over there.” Erik gestured toward a deserted parlor adjoining the lobby.
The group followed him to the farthest corner where a couch, several chairs, and a coffee table were arranged before a large picture window. The seating afforded a panoramic view of the upper slopes of Ida.
Once they had settled themselves, Erik began. “Last I heard, you were in Kazakhstan.”
“Yes, that is so,” Stefan bobbed his head in agreement. “My team is still there. We are excavating a large burial mound. Here, I have brought some photos to show you.” He opened his duffle bag and pulled out a thick album. Leafing through it, he selected a page in the middle and spread the book flat on the table in front of them. The first picture showed a grinning Stefan surrounded by a dozen other individuals standing in front of a sand hill in the middle of a treeless landscape.
“Kazakhstan, that’s a plum assignment,” Erik commented sarcastically. “Who did you tick off to get sent there?”
“I go where the kurgans are.” Stefan shrugged philosophically. “Who knows? Maybe someday I find a burial mound on the Riviera.”
“My friend, you are quite the optimist.” Griffin chuckled wryly.
“Kurgans,” Cassie piped up. “I remember Faye telling me about them. Overlord types, right? Liked to bury their leaders in big funeral mounds called kurgans?”
The scrivener looked at her in amazement. “Twice in one day, Cassie? First the Trojan War and now this. I may die of shock.”
Erik tried to keep a straight face.
“That’s right. Hell has officially frozen over,” the pythia countered defensively. “I actually do remember what you people tell me.”
Stefan looked from one to the next with a perplexed expression.
“Don’t mind them,” Fred explained. “They like to tease each other.”
The trove keeper nodded politely and directed his next comment to Cassie. “The word kurgan is Russian. It means in English something like ‘mound.’ The name is used for all the tribes who buried their leaders in this way. The people who came before, the old Europeans, their funerals were different. They would burn the bodies or expose them for birds to pick the bones.”
“Excarnation,” Griffin added helpfully.
“Da, tochno.” Noticing Cassie’s confusion, the trove keeper corrected himself. “I am sorry. I spend too many months in Kazakhstan where everybody is speaking Russian. Sometimes I forget. In Russian, I say da, tochno. In English, I say yes, precisely. Excarnation. That is the word.”
“I think Stefan may hold the record among us for foreign language skills,” Griffin commented. “How many do you speak?”
Stefan paused to tally up the number in his head. “I believe it is fifteen, but I am learning Hindi now.”
“Why so many?” Cassie asked.
“Wherever I find a mound, it is better if I can talk to the people who live there in their own language. These Kurgan tribes.” Stefan shook his head. “They move around too much. I find graves everywhere.”
His listeners laughed.
The trove keeper flipped to another page in the album. “Look here. This is a better photo. It shows what is inside the kurgan.”
Cassie leaned over the table to study the picture. A skeleton of a man with weapons arranged around his body. There were several other snapshots of grave goods. A gold lion brooch. A stone scepter carved into the shape of a horse’s head. “Who were these people exactly?” she asked.
“They were tribes who inhabited the Eurasian steppes,” Griffin said. “Pastoral nomads originally.”
“That’s a fancy way of saying they raised cattle, sheep, and goats,” Fred interjected. “They also domesticated the horse.”
“We don’t know much about their original lifestyle,” the scrivener added. “They remain something of a mystery until around 4500 BCE.”
“What’s so important about that date?”
“That’s when they started moving out of their homeland,” Erik said. “They came from an area north of the Caucasus Mountains in the Russian steppes. Eventually, they spread out in every direction. West into Europe, east into Asia, south into India.”
“Wherever they move, we start finding kurgan burial mounds,” Stefan explained. “And also things we wish not to find in a burial. Like this.” He flipped a page to show more photos. A decapitated horse’s skull. A female body buried in a crouched position at the feet of the male skeleton. The trove keeper pointed to the lower half of the skeleton. “Her legs have been broken before she was killed and put in the tomb.”
Cassie laughed bitterly. “I thought Faye was joking. She told me the Kurgans sent their leaders into the afterlife with th
eir wives and favorite horses to keep them company. Then these must be the original overlord bad guys, right?”
Erik paused to consider the question. “I guess you could call them that. When they came galloping out of the steppes, they either killed or exploited everything in their path. Yeah, I suppose that’s fair.”
“What do you mean exploited?” the pythia asked. “I thought they just liked to slaughter things.”
“Not really,” Erik demurred. “They actually liked to set themselves up as the ruling elite in an area. That’s one of the reasons we call them overlords. They would build a hill fort where they could lord it over the locals. They forced the people to work for them, pay tribute, grow crops. Your average protection racket.”
“Of course, it didn’t happen overnight.” Griffin picked up the thread. “It took two thousand years. What began around 4500 BCE was only the first wave of invasions. The third wave wasn’t complete until around 2800 BCE.”
“And when it was over, the kinder, gentler side of homo sapiens went with it,” Fred added gloomily. “The matristic cultures were erased from history.”
Cassie remained still, puzzling over the photo of the broken female skeleton. She briefly flashed on her telemetric experience at Catal Huyuk when she was immersed in the burial of the child. She remembered the attitude of the mourners. The death of a toddler held as much significance to them as the death of a warlord did to the Kurgans. There were no weapons in the child’s grave. No strangled birds to keep it company in heaven. Only a prayer that the mother of all creation would give new life to the little one who had been lost. From what Faye had told her earlier, cultures all over the world would have treated their dead the same way. Why were these Kurgans different? She wondered what sorts of prayers they would have said over the body of their slain leader. Did they ask their sky gods to give the warlord new worlds to conquer? New people to slaughter and enslave?
Breaking out of her reverie, she asked, “How did they get to be so violent? I mean if everybody around the world up till that time was matristic, it’s not like these guys rode out of the steppes with a completely new social agenda of mayhem and destruction. It didn’t come out of thin air. There had to be some kind of trigger that changed them.”
The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set Page 38