The Oracle

by D. J. Niko

  She untied the bandana from her wrist and wrapped the stone, then stuffed it and the rope in her backpack. She slung the pack over both shoulders and turned to leave.

  She had not taken two steps before a masked man emerged from behind a tree. From his balaclava to his trainers, he was dressed in all black, holding a knife in a gloved hand. She froze. Her gaze darted to the left, then the right, searching for an escape route.

  A second man, similarly attired, stepped out from behind another tree.

  Then a third.

  She was outnumbered. And she knew what they wanted.

  Thirteen

  Delphi,

  393 CE

  Under the light of the crescent moon, Aristea approached the Castalian spring, dressed in her bathing clothes.

  There was perfect silence in the forest. Not even the cicadas that trilled incessantly that time of year dared defile the sacred moment.

  She removed the leather cord that bound her hair into an upswept twist and released silken black tresses down her back. She slipped off a privacy cloak made of sackcloth and stepped into the marble pool that held the Castalian waters.

  The cold assaulted her skin like thousands of bee stings—just for a moment, and then it passed. As she stood in waist-deep water, the lightweight linen of her bathing gown floated around her, giving her the appearance of a lotus in bloom. She held her breath and dove under.

  The moonbeams shimmered on the ripples of the water like naiads whose light flashed like a beacon, luring souls to their lagoons and marshes. Such beauty should have filled Aristea with joy, but instead it saddened her. She knew in her heart such ritual ablutions would cease thereafter, for that night she would deliver the last oracle.

  The last oracle.

  She repeated the words in her mind so she would believe them. For nearly two decades she’d held the agency of the high priestess at the sanctuary of Apollo and had served as the sun god’s mouthpiece to mankind. Now her voice had been silenced, for none was there to hear it.

  Cleon’s prediction was right: no one came anymore to Delphi. An entire year had passed since Theodosius declared war on paganism. Who dared now to challenge his authority and seek the advice of the oracle? All the supplicants from Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia had scattered like ants in the rain, crouching beneath the emperor’s iron fist.

  Once the richest treasury in all of Greece, Delphi’s coffers had run dry. There was barely enough money to buy oil for the sacred fires. Aristea and the priests were reduced to begging for their food. She didn’t mind. Despite her renown throughout Greece and the demand for her services, she always had chosen the life of an ascetic, based on the recognition she was a bridge between the human and the divine.

  Her head broke through the surface of the water. She smoothed her raven locks back and exited the water. With a linen sheet she dried off and slipped into the white, pleated gown of the prophetess.

  She removed a torch from its iron holster and walked to a small altar, where pearls of white and black barley had been formed into a pyramid-shaped pile. She touched the fire to the grain, and it ignited without hesitation.

  The fire quickly burned down, leaving only white smoke, billowing in the direction of the wind. Aristea let it envelop her, reveled in its nutty scent. According to her religion, barley smoke cleansed souls so they could be pure before the gods. Pure for the rigors of judgment.

  Her spirit one with the universe, she was ready for the ceremony. She picked up the white veil with which she typically covered her head during oracular rituals. She regarded it for a moment and put it aside. Instead, she picked up a wreath of laurel leaves and placed it on her head like a crown.

  That night, Apollo’s chosen was both oracle and petitioner.

  The last prophecy she would deliver would be her own.

  The sanctuary looked very different that night. Normally surrounded by torchlight so its brilliance can be seen from leagues away, now it was plunged in darkness. Only one fire burned: the eternal flame, deep in the heart of the sanctuary building. Set upon a tripod, the copper bowl that held the flame of Apollo had burned continuously since the sanctuary had been built a thousand years prior and would not be extinguished to appease a crusading despot.

  Aristea stood at the altar of sacrifice, encircled by her family: Cleon, the patriarch of the Delphic priests, and the three hosioi, the holy men who performed the rites. Each of them wore a solemn expression, for they knew what they were about to do was forbidden.

  Cleon placed an urn on the sacrifice stone. “Who brings forth the sacrificial beast?”

  One of the hosioi stepped forward with a goat tied to a jute lead. Aristea bowed to the animal, then released it from its bonds and led it to the altar. She stepped back and watched as Cleon raised the urn over the animal’s head and doused it with frigid spring water. The goat shivered, a tremor that began at its hooves and rippled up its body to its head: an auspicious sign.

  Cleon removed a knife from a sheath hanging from his waist sash and held it between his hands as he uttered a prayer to the sun god: “On this seventh day of Bysios, as new growth springs forth from the melted snows, we implore the mighty Apollo to impart wisdom upon those who seek his counsel. O fairest and gentlest of gods, accept this humble sacrifice, and let your will be revealed in the organs of this poor beast that dies now in your name.”

  With a swift motion, the priest drove the knife into the goat’s jugular vein. Even as the animal expired with great convulsions, Cleon sliced open its belly and pried the skin apart until the viscera spilled onto the stone. He studied the arrangement for a long while.

  Finally he proclaimed, “The omens are favorable.”

  Without the usual pomp and with no light to guide their steps, the holy men and the priestess proceeded inside the sanctuary. The hosioi took their place at the shrine of the eternal fire.

  Cleon turned to Aristea. “Do you approach this rite with pure heart and without reservation?”

  “I do.”

  He gave her a lingering glance. She read his apprehension in it. “Then let us proceed.”

  The two descended the thirteen steps to the temple’s inner sanctum. Nowhere did Aristea feel more at peace than inside the stone womb that smelled of lilies from the Macedonian vales. She approached the most hallowed of symbols, the omphalos, the stone that marked Delphi’s position at the center of the Earth. It was declared thus by Zeus himself. In the beginning of time, the god of gods had released two eagles—one from the West, the other from the East—and commanded them to meet at the Earth’s navel. They collided above Delphi and fell into the ravine between the Phaedriades.

  But the stone bore another, even more powerful mystery. Carved of black rock spewed by the great volcanic eruption at Thera, it was carved with twelve pentagons that came together to form the exalted dodecahedron, devised by the great mystic Pythagoras as the divine depiction of the universe. Within its vertices were found the formulae to answer many questions, including the one that had vexed Greeks for centuries: the cause of the Theran catastrophe that had buried alive the enlightened inhabitants of the island, the Minoans.

  For nearly eight hundred years, the secret had been handed down from priestess to priestess, along with the charge to preserve it. When Aristea was a child, her grandmother, Io, had explained it to her thus: “Before the gods were born, a great civilization existed in the islands of Greece. Many say the Minoans came from the celestial dust and had powers mortals could only dream of. But one day the Earth heaved with a great rumble and spewed fire and rock that buried these people alive and sank their island into the sea. And a great wave—taller than ten temples stacked atop each other—rose and crashed onto distant shores, swallowing up the rest of the Minoans and their cities in a terrible, swirling froth.

  “For years, people blamed the wrath of the nascent gods—until Pythagoras of Samos came along. He could explain with mathematical precision what happened deep inside the Earth’s belly—and warned that
it could happen again. Based on that knowledge, Pythagoras spent the rest of his days devising ways to stop great quakes from rising again. Alas, he was unable to achieve this in his lifetime. As an old man, he inscribed his formulae onto the navel stone, that men of future generations might be able to continue the work he began and quell another great calamity.

  “Yet he knew greed dwelled in men’s hearts, so he entrusted this great mystery to women. He told it to his tutor, our ancestress Themistoclea, and together they decided only her descendant priestesses would guard the omphalos and the powerful knowledge etched upon it.”

  Aristea kneeled before the stone and paid silent homage to Pythagoras and to the woman who had taught him ethics and humility and prudence.

  She stood and took her place on the tripod of truth. Cleon handed her a laurel branch and the ceremonial bowl filled with water. Bowing, he backed away.

  Aristea closed her eyes and inhaled the vapors issuing from the chasm on which her tripod sat. The fissure reached deep underground to the place where demons dwelled. It was one of those demons, the snake monster Python that once reigned over Delphi, that Apollo had defeated in his quest to replace darkness with light. Because it was pierced by Apollo’s golden arrow, Python’s rotting carcass emitted a sweet smell, a tribute to the god who had slayed it.

  She felt the familiar lightness of being and surrendered to it. Apollo was in the room and would soon possess her. She regarded this awareness without assigning consequence to it. Her seeing powers depended on her ability to detach.

  Cleon began to chant. In her mind’s eye, she saw a swath of red silk billowing in harmony with his words. She placed a laurel leaf in her mouth and chewed. Her tongue registered a mild and pleasant bitterness followed by the tang of resin. She swirled the leaf until every taste receptor was coated with the flavor.

  When her senses engaged fully, the silk shroud was lifted and she was rewarded with the first vision. She saw fire—great flames swirling toward the heavens, leaving clouds of black smoke in their wake. The smoke reeked of burning flesh. She smelled it as if she were there.

  She felt herself choking and gasped for air.

  The vision became even more vivid, and details came into focus. Behind the curtain of copper flames were fragments of stone. An altar broken in two. Columns crashing to the ground. A heap of ashes and ruins. A fragment of a pediment engraved with words she could not read behind the raging fire.

  Suddenly the flames parted and the words she had come to regard with such reverence, the ones on which her spiritual training was founded, mocked her.

  Γνῶθι σεαυτόν. Know thyself.

  With a jolt she realized the house of Apollo burned. Everything swayed to and fro, like a ship caught in the fury of the sea.

  A man with eyes like the ocean in winter glared at her, then held up the omphalos stone and hoisted it into a dark abyss.

  “No,” she heard herself cry out.

  Everything swayed again, and her body slammed against something hard. She opened her eyes in time to see her laurel wreath sail down the chasm.

  It was so real. So very real.

  She lay on her back on the adyton floor, her sinew and bones protesting. Next to her, the tripod of truth lay on its side, still rolling from the impact.

  Cleon ran to her. He kneeled and took her shaking hand. “Tell me what you saw.”

  “They are coming, Cleon,” she said, choking back tears. “They are coming to destroy us.”

  Fourteen

  Daniel blinked away the fog that had settled onto his eyes. It was dark. From the corner of his eye he perceived a tiny amber light, like a candle flame. He lifted his head and, feeling a heinous pressure behind his eyes, let it fall back down.

  He had no idea where he was. He felt cold and instinctively raised his hands to his chest. His shirt was soaked through, the front of it torn to shreds. What the hell had happened?

  He rubbed his eyes and looked around. He was lying on a cot, and exposed masonry walls closed in around him. The space was small and inhospitable, like a prison. With great effort, he turned his head toward the light. On a wooden table, a kerosene lamp flickered in the draft from an open window.

  Daniel searched his mind for a memory of what had taken place before he lost consciousness. Trophonius’ cave. He recalled sliding on a chute into utter darkness, clawing at the earth around him for a handhold to slow the fast drop, the soil crumbling through his fingers. He replayed a sound track of guttural cries, so excruciating they hardly seemed his own.

  Yet they were. He had lost it down there. It was the first time in his life he’d felt such raw, debilitating panic. Even on the morning of the plane crash, when he was certain he was going to die, he’d received his fate with a cool head.

  He sat up. His head felt heavy, and his vision was blurry. Still, he had to get out of there—wherever there was. At the foot of the bed was a neatly folded, black hand-knit sweater and, on the floor beside it, his backpack. He unzipped the main compartment, where he had kept the brass obelisk. It was missing.

  He heard a click, then a scraping sound as the door grazed the floor. A dark figure stood at the doorway. “You are awake,” a man said in Greek. His voice was shaky, like he was a hundred years old.

  Though he was fluent, at that moment Daniel could not recall a word of Greek. “What’s it to you?”

  The man walked toward him. Daniel still could not see his face. He only heard the sound of rustling fabric and something rattling in his hands.

  The man stepped into the light and placed a cup and saucer on the table. “Some mountain tea,” he said. “If you wish.”

  Daniel stared at the man with the unkempt gray beard and waist-long ponytail of silver hair covered by a skullcap of the same weave as the sweater. He wore the long black tunic and overcoat of a man of the cloth. The room wasn’t a prison; it was a monk’s cell.

  With shaky hands, Daniel took the cup and let the warm liquid touch his lips. He drank the tea in one gulp and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  The monk sat on the bed. “My brothers, who are much younger than I, were in the forest for their evening meditation and heard shouts. They pulled you out of the cave. You would have died there.”

  Daniel sighed loudly and felt his shoulders relax. “I owe you my gratitude. But I must go.” He tried to get up.

  The monk put a hand on his shoulder. “Not yet. I have some questions.”

  Daniel glanced at the old man, taking notice of a cataract marking his right eye. He let him speak.

  “The key that opens the cave entrance had been lost for nearly two millennia. How did you come upon it?”

  “I work at an archaeological dig in Thebes. A shepherd found it at the bottom of the Herkyna and brought it to us. I was doing some research; that’s all.”

  “And did your research yield anything?”

  “If you’re asking me if I saw anything down there, the answer’s no.” He looked down at his torn shirt. “Didn’t exactly have time.”

  “Good. Some things aren’t meant to be found.” The monk steadied himself on the edge of the bed and stood. “You won’t be getting that key back. Otherwise, you’re free to go.”

  Daniel stood on shaky legs. “You can’t do that. That object has been classified for scientific research.”

  “Your science means nothing. In this country, we bow to one supreme authority. Have no illusions: between spiritual and secular matters, the Orthodox church will prevail every time.” The monk surveyed Daniel from the top down. “Do you believe in God, archaeologist?”

  A gust blew through the narrow window, causing the kerosene flame to quiver. “I accept nothing on faith,” he said.

  “Accept this: whatever is down there is the work of the devil. It must never come to light.”

  “You should know someone is determined to dig it up. Someone whose intentions are not honorable.”

  He nodded. “There is a group resurrecting the heathen religions of
the ancients, not far from here. They seek a pagan object they think will give them power.”

  “Who are they?”

  “An American—a soldier of some sort—and his flock of lost souls. They and their rituals are anathema to the church.”

  “The object they seek . . . is it inside the cave?”

  “No. It was once the property of the Orthodox church, but it has not been seen in fifteen hundred years. This American believes there is something in that cave that will lead him to the prize.”

  “And what do you believe?”

  “Unlike you, I believe the past should stay buried.”

  “The inconvenient past, you mean.”

  “Even so.” He took two steps backward and stood at the open doorway. “The cave of Trophonius will be sealed again tomorrow—and this time, it will not be reopened. The brass stake will be destroyed. You can tell that to your archaeologist friends.”

  The monk took his leave.

  “Wait,” Daniel called behind the monk. “What do they call you?”

  “Father Athanasius. I am the abbot here.”

  “I am indebted to you and your brothers. I will repay your kindness.”

  “Do not think of us. Look after yourself. You seem to be in dire need of it.” He made the sign of the cross in the air. “Go in peace, my son.”

  Daniel picked up the sweater at the foot of the bed and put it on. The heavy perfume of incense had permeated the fibers, but he was grateful for its warmth. He slung his pack over one shoulder. He was not in shape to hike out of that forest, nor to drive back to Thebes, but he had to do it before daybreak. He had a lot to think about and more to account for.