More ordinary inhabitants are a mongrel mix of races. The Szeklers are descendants of the Huns, paid by Vienna to guard the frontier. The valley dwellers are German immigrants and Slav peasants, sturdy and secretive. Their name for their limestone peaks is Lumea pierduta, or “the lost world.” There resides Cezar Dalca: A ghost, guarding a legend, in a ruin, from a fog of time.
Izabela had generously equipped us with horses and supplies. Even Harry rode proudly on his own little pony, clopping obediently behind our bigger steeds. We regretted having to leave the luxuries of Pulawy, but once we set out we traveled impatiently. Astiza, Caleb, Dolgoruki and I may have been forced into expedient alliance, but we knew we were an ill-matched group: A brother I’d once betrayed, who always seemed to know more than he revealed. A proud Russian recruited because his alternative was death or humiliation. My eccentric, rootless family. Dolgoruki sulked, Caleb brooded, and Astiza fretted. Harry was simply confused that we were on the road again.
“I liked that house, Papa.”
“Maybe we’ll find a better one.”
We were also a fellowship of greed, as all treasure hunters must be. Redemption for Dolgoruki, a possible title for me, a home for Astiza and Harry, and reward from France for Caleb. All we needed was to obtain an antique wooden statute that may or may not exist, held by a reclusive madman, fortified amid the wildest peaks of Europe. “We have a plan,” Caleb promised.
I’d debated trying to persuade Astiza to stay at Pulawy. But no one thought this a good idea, least of all my wife. She refused because too much misfortune befalls us when we’re apart. Izabela also insisted that Astiza was uniquely equipped to evaluate Dalca’s powers. “It’s women who have insight,” the princess told her. “You may be the only person who can really understand him.” And Astiza wouldn’t hear of leaving Harry. So we once more rode into adventure as a family, hoping this ‘palladium’ would finally be the end of our rainbow.
We departed in lush spring. The brooks were a torrent, the trees bursting, and birds were mad with breeding frenzy. Showers scrubbed the sky so clean that rocks sparkled as we rode south. Wildflowers erupted, and the green cheered our spirits. Saxon steeples began to supplant the bulbous church towers of the Orthodox faith as we approached the Carpathians. Sheep with new lambs surged across meadows like waves of foam. Pastures sang with the clank of cowbells as cattle were herded to higher pastures. The bucolic setting seemed reassuringly normal.
But as we mounted the foothills the season began to reverse, as if time was running backward. The land became colder and more rugged, the peaks ahead still snowcapped. Trees shrank and went back to bare winter. The ground reverted to mud, stone, and dead grass. Villages became smaller and poorer, and finally disappeared almost entirely. Lonely cabins clutched ridge-tops to overlook precipitous fields. The inhabitants became furtive, watching us from cover like wild animals. The men wore sheepskin jackets, astrakhan hats, and hide moccasins not that different from Dacian barbarians. The women wore leather corsets, heavy woolen skirts, and wide embroidered aprons faded from time and hard use. Some families had the red complexions of northern Europe, others the swarthy cast of Cossack and Mongol.
Empires collide here. Northwest was Austria, east was Russia, and southeast the vast Ottoman realm ruled by Sultan Selim III in far-off Constantinople. We came across the bones of old battlefields. Combs of ribs jutted from dry grass. Skulls had eye sockets plugged with dirt. Rusting metal and tattered cloth decorated some remains.
“Who are the dead people, Papa?”
“Soldiers from long ago.”
“Turks, Szeklers, and Cossacks,” Dolgoruki surmised. “See the scimitars? A border skirmish, boy. Now the Serbs are revolting against the Ottomans, and Russian regiments are threatening Moldavia in support.”
“The Turks once ruled this area, did they not?” asked Astiza.
“Until defeated more than a hundred years ago.”
“But the Ottomans and Russia still quarrel?”
“War never ends.”
Harry was shivering when we stopped at a hut to chew bread and sausage and interrogate a squat, ugly shepherd about Dalca. The man’s initial response was simply to make the sign of the cross. Then Caleb bribed him with a coin and we learned we were almost to a crossroads village called Szejmal where we could seek directions to Dalca’s stronghold. The reclusive duke was reputed to live in a remote fortress high above the town.
The shepherd annoyingly stared while we ate our lunch, so I turned my back on him. Then Caleb asked to speak privately with Astiza and me. “It’s time to say a little more.” Leaving Harry with the Russian prince, we walked to the brow of a ridge that looked across a labyrinth of hill and canyon. Everything had gone gray. The trees were crabbed. Grass was beaten down from the snows of last winter. Eroded gullies cut across a road that was little more than a trail. The land looked cursed.
“I’ve not been entirely honest with you, brother,” Caleb began.
“Something of an understatement, isn’t it?”
“No one confides everything,” allowed Astiza.
Caleb looked at her then with a curious expression of appreciation and guilt to which I should have paid more attention. “And because we don’t confide, all men are fundamentally alone,” he went on. “Isn’t that so, Ethan?”
“It is for some. Family helps.”
“Yes. Now I’ve reunited with yours. It’s curious how fate swings in great circles, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps time is a circle,” Astiza said. “Or perhaps time doesn’t exist at all, and we’re trapped in a life in which everything that ever happened and ever will happen is right now.”
“And death the key which frees that trap,” Caleb amended.
“I’d no idea privateers were so philosophical,” I said drily to my brother. “Or could try so hard to impress my wife.”
“There’s a lot of time to think on a quarterdeck, the ocean hissing tediously by. You remember everything, and thus remember it a hundred different ways. Sometimes the more you remember the less it stings, like massaging a wound. Sometimes you get confused about what really happened. And sometimes remembering makes wounds worse. Brooding isn’t productive, but it swallows time.” He glanced at my wife. “If time exists.”
“So what have you been dishonest about?” I asked impatiently.
“Yes. Well. I didn’t fully explain that Napoleon believes you remain in his debt. The emperor says you were sent in search of a mechanical man that served as an oracle, and that you’re rumored to have found it.”
“That was our project, not his,” I said.
“Bonaparte disagrees. He said he’s saved you many times but that you never repay his charity. So he offered a bargain. If I could deliver to him what you wouldn’t, I’d be saved and you’d be forgiven. He gave me the devil’s mission of finding you and using you.”
“The mechanical man was a fool’s errand. The automaton is wrecked forever.” I actually wasn’t sure if that were true but I’d no interest in ever going near the infernal machine again.
“He said you’d inevitably pursue some new relic. Perhaps he even recommended you to Czartoryski as a man who could retrieve the swords. Did you ever wonder why the foreign minister was so friendly to a vagabond American family?”
“I assumed it was our charm.” I considered my brother. “So Bonaparte has a hand in our manipulation as well. And you’re his tool?”
“I’ve been looking after you longer than you know. Did you ever wonder who saved you from your manservant?”
“You shot Gregor?”
“No, but I warned Czartoryski to be ready for betrayal. The foreign minister took the unusual step of coming to your apartment, did he not? So I suppose it was he or one of his men. We’re in a bear pit of competing Russians, Prussians, French, and Poles. But now we’re at the end of Europe, beyond reach of our masters. We c
an decide our own route and destiny.”
“You’ve shared this revelation with our Russian partner?”
“Of course not. We need Dolgoruki until we don’t.”
“Hard sentiment, brother.”
“Realism, little brother, from a lifetime of survival. I only mention this because I want us to see things clearly. To win your trust I’m confiding that Napoleon feels you’re in his debt. There it is.”
“Which is scarcely news. I wish you’d be as candid about this mysterious Cezar Dalca and this so-called palladium.”
“Prince Dolgoruki can help with that as we ride to Szejmal. He knows more than I do, and we need to reach the village before nightfall.”
“To the horses, then.”
Dolgoruki and Harry were already saddled, my boy wearily still beneath a broad-brimmed hat, his cloak’s hood pulled up against the cold. We swung onto our own steeds and kicked into a trot, the track winding ever higher. Streamers of cloud blew off the highest peaks. Eagles orbited like sentries.
“So, Caleb and Peter,” I prompted, “is our quest finally to be explained? When Izabela mentioned Cezar Dalca your eyes filled with dread.”
“And desire,” said Astiza.
“Some of this comes from tavern tales,” Caleb said. “Whispers. Legend. But it’s consistent enough to convince me Dalca is real, not a myth.” We could see the village of Szejmal high up ahead, its rambling lanes and huts dangling like spider legs from a razorback ridge. “A recluse, in a wreck of a castle, with a smattering of henchmen, so removed from most of civilization that no one bothers with him anymore.”
“Yet he still inspires fear?” Astiza asked.
“Yes. I was told in Paris that even the Turks avoid him. The rumor is that those who visit never return. Some claim he’s some kind of robber baron. Other that he’s mad aristocrat. Some say he’s a malevolent spirit, some contend he’s immortal, and some that he’s a sorcerer.”
“Conjuring what?” I asked.
“Collecting,” contributed Dolgoruki. “The legend in St. Petersburg is that he’s an obsessed antiquarian. Old books. Old manuscripts. Old relics, talismans, icons, potions, and spells. And where does he get his gold to do this collecting? Some claim he makes it by alchemy. That would be a pretty trick to know.”
“We tried that in Bohemia,” I said. “Or rather, Astiza did.”
“I made an explosive, not gold,” she said. “An explosion from gold.”
“I suspect transformation is a fraud,” I added. “It’s difficult to change anything, least of all ourselves. People claim more powers than they have. Dalca too, maybe.”
“Yet others have more power than we can explain,” Astiza added. “Cagliostro. The Comte Saint-Germaine. Alessandro Silano. Wolfgang Richter sought such powers. We’ve had glimpses of the shadow world behind the veil, husband. Mysteries have their magic.”
“I’ll admit the world is an odd place.”
“The tsar would like such magic,” Dolgoruki said. “Useful against Napoleon.”
“So would Napoleon,” said Caleb. “Useful against the tsar.”
“So would Ethan Gage,” I said, “but this relic we’re after seems unlikely to be all that magical, since I’ve never heard of it.”
“Haven’t you?” Dolgoruki replied. “I know Americans ignore the classics, Gage, but surely even you have know the Iliad, Odyssey, and Virgil’s Aeneid.” His tone was condescending toward the ignorant colonial.
“I intend to get around to all three, once I retire.”
“The Trojan War lasted ten years,” my brother informed me.
“Yes,” I said, although in truth I hadn’t kept track. “So?”
“Something prevented a Greek victory year after year,” Dolgoruki said. “Yet in the end Troy fell rather suddenly.”
“The Trojan Horse,” I said, able to show I wasn’t completely at a loss. “The Greeks built a gigantic hollow horse, the Trojans dragged it inside their city, and Odysseus slipped out to open the gates. A rousing tale, up there with Hercules and the golden fleeces in the labyrinth.” There’s nothing like a good story, though my mind did tend to wander at Harvard. It’s possible I mixed one myth up with another.
“The real key, brother, was the Trojan palladium,” Caleb said.
“Which is what, exactly?”
“Just as icon comes from a word meaning likeness, a palladium has come to mean protection,” Dolgoruki explained. “The goddess Athena was called Pallas Athena because she’d defeated the titan Pallas and wore his skin as armor.”
“Wore his skin?”
“It was a primitive time.”
“Long before she was the patron of Athens,” Caleb contributed, “Athena was a protector of far more ancient Troy. That city was rich and powerful because it controlled the mouth of the Dardanelles and thus the straits between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Ilus, who founded the city, prayed to the gods for favor. In response, a wooden statue of Pallas Athena fell from the sky.”
“The gods were much more addressable in those days.”
“Troy kept the statue as a protective icon with supernatural powers. When a temple fire threatened the statue and Ilus saved it, he was blinded for having the temerity to touch the divine.”
“That’s the trouble with old stories. Every time someone begins to get ahead, something goes horribly wrong. Reminds me of me, actually.”
“Admit you don’t know the story of the Trojan War, brother.”
“I’ve forgotten a detail or two.”
Dolgoruki resumed as pompous lecturer. “Because Troy was so rich it was envied, and the abduction of Helen gave the Greeks a convenient excuse to try to sack the place. One of the Greek heroes of the war was Diomedes, King of Argos. He captured and interrogated a Trojan noble who revealed the palladium’s existence and its role in protecting the city. So Odysseus disguised himself as a beggar to gain access to Troy, and lowered a rope to the stronger Diomedes. The two Greeks stole the wooden statue.”
“Why weren’t they blinded?”
“Because this allowed prophecies of Trojan doom to be fulfilled. The Greek gods could be capricious and inconsistent.”
“Or the storytellers didn’t fill all the plot holes. In any event, go on.”
“The stage was set for the Trojan horse, and Troy fell and was burned.”
“But it wasn’t the hollow horse trick, it was this wooden statue that was key to the Greek victory?”
“Correct. The Odyssey and the Aeneid made the horse better known, but the palladium had to be captured first.”
“Isn’t that the truth of it? Ben Franklin liked to say applause waits on success, but the truth of the matter is one needs the right biographer. Pity that this palladium lacked a better poet. That’s my problem too, I suppose.”
“Diomedes supposedly made off with the palladium after the sack of Troy, and there the myth gets muddy,” Caleb said.
“Putting the emphasis on the word ‘myth.’”
“Actually, brother, the most interesting thing is that this palladium is said to have worked its charm again and again Some say it was present at the founding of Athens, making that city great. Then to Sparta, which prevailed over Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Then to Italy and Rome’s Temple of Vesta.”
“Vesta? Izabela based her design on one of that goddess’s temples.”
“She, too, has heard these legends. In any event, Rome prevailed against Hannibal when the palladium was in Roman hands. Another Roman, Marcellus, is said to have been blinded when he again rescued the icon from fire.”
“A devil of a way for Athena to reward her rescuers, but then I’ve had my own problems with women.”
Astiza poked me.
“The statue protected Rome for nearly a thousand years. And then Constantine the Great brought the statue with him when he f
ounded his new city of Constantinople on the Bosporus Strait between Europe and Asia. He secreted the relic under the Column of Constantine. The Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium ruled supreme for another thousand years.”
“Until the Turks came along,” I objected. “They conquered the place a few centuries ago, as you’ll recall, and Europe’s been fighting them ever since. I believe you were on the way to join in, Prince Dolgoruki, when you diverted to attack us at Pulawy.”
“These relics have the potential of being a thousand times more important than another Turkish skirmish,” Dolgoruki said.
“My point is that this wooden statue—which should have decayed away a couple thousand years ago, by the way—didn’t save Constantinople. And that it should be in Turkish hands.”
“Yes, except they’ve never claimed so,” Dolgoruki said. “Some speculate the palladium was displaced by rampaging Crusaders who sacked Constantinople on their way to the Holy Land in 1204. Byzantium dramatically declined after that, and the city fell to the Turks two and a half centuries later. Some believe the statue is still in the Ottoman capital, but forgotten. Some believe new adventurers stole it. What if Izabela, who scoured Europe for relics to buttress Polish pride, learned that Dalca has it? What if it can be found and seized? What if it could make invulnerable whichever nation possessed it?”
“That’s a lot of ifs, my Russian treasure hunter. Why would this Carpathian hermit have it?”
“It’s only a rumor that he does. Or that he knows where it is. Or that he can confirm its existence. Dalca has sent emissaries on secret searches around the world. We captured and tortured one at the Peter and Paul prison. Hard man to break. Descended from the Huns.”
“So you knew of this palladium before coming south? And the tsar knew as well? Did Czartoryski know too?”
“Yes.”
“Now we have our answer, husband,” Astiza said. “We’ve been manipulated not just to deliver the Grunwald swords but to search for this second prize as well. Your friend Adam was sending us not on one mission, but two. It’s all been a trick from the beginning.”
The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) Page 16