The Oracle

by D. J. Niko

  Sarah stepped out of the dusty white dolmuş, the shared taxi she’d taken from Maçka. A gale blowing in through the mountain pass pressed against her, as if to push her away. Her hair whipping behind her, she leaned into the frigid wind and marched forward. She had a long road ahead.

  It had taken the better part of two days to get there. Reluctant to fly lest she get detained, she had chosen to travel overland by a seemingly endless combination of trains, buses, and taxis. While waiting for the next conveyance at one stop, in northeastern Greece near the Turkish border, she had picked up a newspaper and scanned the headlines.

  She still tasted bitter bile when recalling the story about the holy men plunging to their death on the hills outside Livadeia. With a sensationalism typical of the Greek press, the writer had painted the incident as ritual suicide, quoting cops who confirmed there was no evidence of violence or forced entry.

  Sarah knew different. The brass obelisk in Evan’s possession confirmed it. It was never in Daniel’s jeep; it was brutally stolen from the monks and delivered to Evan, who clearly was on the take, to frame Daniel with the crime.

  It seemed no one could be trusted, least of all the officials. She had to avoid the authorities at any cost—and stay a step ahead of this heinous enemy.

  What she regretted most was her parting with Daniel. Had she not allowed ego to seep into her consciousness, she might not have exploded in the way she did; and had she reacted differently, he might not have run off.

  Wherever he had gone, one thing was certain: Interpol were after him, and it would be only a matter of time before they’d have their man. And she could not even warn him. The way he left, so abruptly and stealthily, she could not begin to know where to look for him. She was determined to not let the encounter in Thebes be their last. She would find him—but first, she needed the advantage. She was the only one who knew where to look for the object. She intended to track it down and deliver the information to proper custody.

  Sarah was the only soul on the high forest trail leading up to the monastery. Winter kept most of the casual visitors at bay, and the day’s fog, thick as steam-plant emissions, discouraged the rest. Through the mist, pine boughs reached for her like the fingers of Dionysian creatures frozen in an ethereal pose of rapture. She felt strangely protected by them, the sentries of this isolated mountain kingdom.

  As the thicket of trees thinned, the crag on which the monastery was built came into view. A set of stone steps carved into the cliffside led up to an arched opening through which one entered the monastery complex.

  Sarah stood in the courtyard, breathing in the icy air that signaled more snows. She smelled the vague scent of wood smoke as someone, somewhere, endeavored to keep warm.

  No one but a few caretakers lived there. The monks had long since gone, taking their religious treasures with them. The faded frescoes depicting the mother and child, cherubim, and saints, painted onto the rock walls of the monastic compound, were the only reminders of the painstaking effort that had gone into exalting the virgin to whom the monastery was dedicated.

  That it was deserted suited Sarah just fine. The answers she sought would be found in solitude, if at all. The library of Sumela, housed in a small building within the compound, contained archives dating back to the fourth century. The Sumela scribes had kept record of every ecumenical event and dedication, every changing of the guard in the church’s leadership, and the threats and invasions that rocked the establishment.

  She didn’t expect that the object she sought was still within the confines of the monastery. Like all other treasures, including the famous icon of the Panagia Sumela—a depiction of the Virgin Mary supposedly painted by the evangelist Saint Luke—had been spirited away, some to a purpose-built church in northern Greece, others to smaller chapels throughout Anatolia.

  She opened the door to the library and nodded to the attendant. The woman was dressed in a coat dress, stockings rolled down below her knees, and a kerchief wrapped tightly around her head, all in mourning black. Her vacant eyes suggested she was only there to collect a day’s wage. Sarah greeted her in Greek, but the attendant replied in Turkish. A stranger to the language, Sarah understood the universal language of rubbing together a thumb and forefinger. She gave the woman twenty euros and gestured toward the books. The woman tucked the twenty in her bosom and waved her in.

  The small room containing the archives was crammed with rows of metal shelves and lit more as a crypt than a library. Stuffed on the shelves helter-skelter, books were badly in need of restoration. Some tomes were bound by needle and thread, others held together by frayed paper spines, most yellowed and tattered by time.

  Sarah drew a deep breath. Finding any information about the whereabouts of objects stored at the original monastery was going to be a monumental task. She claimed a table near the stacks and went to work.

  The bare lightbulb hanging overhead swung to and fro in the draft coming in from an open window. The cold prickling Sarah’s ears roused her from her meditative focus. She looked up. The small window near the ceiling was not open but broken, the victim of a vandal’s rock. She was surprised to see it was dark outside.

  The caretaker shrieked a few Turkish words. Sarah glanced over her shoulder at her. The woman in black gestured with an open palm toward the door. It was time to go.

  “Just a few more minutes,” Sarah said. “Please.”

  The woman held up two fingers and returned to her knitting.

  Sarah was too close to stop now. She had begun the search with a codex bearing the name of Sophronios, a monk who had cofounded the monastery in the fourth century. In Greek, the name began with ΣΩΦ, the letters inscribed on the potsherd.

  The codex contained a combination of the monk’s theological views and accounts of his daily activities. In the entries dated 393, he recounted his efforts to convert a female prisoner to Christianity, seemingly to no avail.

  She calls herself a holy woman yet speaks of God as if he were an oppressor, not the benevolent, radiant, merciful being He is. It has become the mission of this humble servant to move her soul, for with faith nothing is impossible.

  As the entries progressed, Sarah could read the frustration in his writing, particularly in this passage:

  She refuses spiritual nourishment, engaging only in conversation about the ideas of the sage men. She does not eat. She barely sleeps. For long hours she gazes at the horizon, singing the hymns of the godless. May God forgive me for my inability to pierce the darkness.

  The more Sarah read, the more convinced she was that the woman in Sophronios’ texts was the same as the female who perished in the cave. Holy woman. Perhaps she was a pagan, a priestess who refused to abandon her beliefs and was persecuted for it. The year—393—was a dark period in pagan history, when non-Christians were driven from their temples and often killed.

  It also was when the sanctuary at Delphi was destroyed. There had to be a connection.

  Behind her, Sarah heard the impatient sigh of the caretaker and knew time was running out. She reached into the zippered compartment inside her coat and pulled out all the money she had. She kept just enough to pay for transportation back to Greece and put the rest in her pocket.

  She walked over to the woman and kneeled in front of her. She spoke in Greek, hoping the woman understood. “Lady, I am an archaeologist. There is something in these books that can help me with my research. Please allow me to stay here overnight.”

  The old woman chuckled, revealing a row of badly damaged and missing teeth, and dismissed the request with a wave of her hand. She spoke in broken Greek laced with Turkish words. “No one can stay here overnight.” She nodded toward a back room where a cot had been set up. “Only workers and patrons of the church.”

  Sarah pulled the bundle of cash out of her pocket. “A donation for the church.” She put it into the woman’s palm and placed her own hand on top. “It would please me if you would accept it.”

  The caretaker fanned the cash.
Her expression brightened when she realized it amounted to roughly five hundred euros. “This will help with the restoration.” She crossed herself. “Praise God.”

  Sarah took that as permission. She stood and helped her companion rise from her seat. The woman placed the money in a metal box, presumably for donations, and walked with it to the back room.

  Sarah returned to another promising document she’d located earlier. It was a stack of unbound papers, handwritten on parchment with a rusty brown ink she suspected was made from nut gall. Headings were in red, likely cinnabar. Over the years, the ink had undergone chemical changes and had partially eaten through the paper. The pages had to be handled with utmost care, which slowed down her research process.

  Judging by the materials, the more compact letter formation, and the use of koine Greek—the common Greek dialect prevalent in the Byzantine Empire and in early Christian writing—this document was produced sometime in the sixth or seventh century. Exactly the period she was interested in: it was during that time the original monastery was sacked by the Hagarenes who had invaded from the south, pillaging and setting fire to Christian holy sites.

  Reading ancient Greek was rigorous. Though Sarah was highly skilled in linguistics, the language was so intricate and nuanced—the verbs alone had multiple moods and voices, as well as a complicated conjugation system—that translating long-form text took an inordinate amount of time.

  The rhythmic clinking of metal against glass came from the kitchen. Since childhood, Sarah had associated that sound with Sunday morning. Her thoughts traveled to Wiltshire and the home of her youth, where her father insisted on cooking Sunday breakfast. Sir Richard would shoo away the housekeeper and take over the kitchen. No one was allowed in. The only hints of what was coming were the smell of eggs and bacon frying and the pleasant ring of a spoon against a porcelain mug as he made Sarah’s favorite, hot chocolate.

  She felt a dull ache. So much had happened since then: the bitter divorce, her mother’s shocking death, the strained relationship with her father, her choice to run from the privilege that had cost her so much. In the interest of self-preservation, she’d consciously pushed away memories, even happy ones, but there was no escaping the past.

  The caretaker placed a glass of milk tea and a couple of pistachio biscuits on the table. Sarah accepted them gladly. It was the only food she’d had in twenty-four hours.

  The woman waved and retired for the night. It was just past eight o’clock. Sarah had a few hours to finish translating the eight-page passage she’d identified earlier as a potential lead. What had piqued her interest was this:

  The barbarians with their swords and torches of fire trampled over the land, burning trees and slashing the throats of animals just to see the red of their blood. They had set their sights on the holy virgin’s sanctuary and would not stop until its walls were shattered, stone by stone.

  Somewhere in that dark chapter, she hoped, was a clue as to what happened to the original sanctuary treasures after the monastery’s epic fall in the seventh century.

  The sun shimmered high in the sky. Sarah sat back and rubbed her eyes. It had taken sixteen hours of working without rest, but she had done it.

  She picked up the stack of papers containing her translation, a sloppy document rife with strikethroughs and notes, and began reading.

  In the year of our Lord 644 the unthinkable came to pass. The house our fathers built to exalt the holy icon of the Virgin Mother, drawn by His Holiness Saint Luke who sat at the right hand of Christ, was set alight and brought to ruin. The barbarians from the hinterlands had come, armed with all their anger and wickedness, determined to extinguish our faith.

  Like phantoms they came in the dark of night. With their sickle swords they slaughtered our brothers in their sleep, leaving no one alive. They fouled the altar and the holy of holies and threw great torches of fire onto the sacred vestments.

  Fire engulfed the mountain and burned without submission for six days. On the seventh day, God sent a torrential rain that doused the flames and restored natural order to the land. But the harm had been done. The trees on the high peaks stood lifeless and ashen. The pines no longer perfumed the air. There were no more leaves to rustle in the breeze or to sparkle on a dewy morning. Like the smoke from the mouth of a demon, death’s vulgar breath lingered everywhere.

  Our beloved monastery of the Panagia Sumela was no more. The stones that with such pains had been carried to the high place lay in ruin, stained with the blood of martyrs and smoldering to the heavens. Those who witnessed the carnage from afar speak of a wail heard among the fallen stones: a woman’s lament, fragile as the song of the mourning dove, calling to the sunrise.

  Even in such despair, there was hope. By the grace of God, we had been warned. The shepherds were informed by their brethren to the south of an evil force approaching: men with eyes of fire, like demons hungry for the flesh of innocents. They laid to waste all life in their path and would not stop until every God-fearing man, woman, and child was slaughtered.

  With heavy hearts our brothers prepared for the onslaught. By order of the emperor, they removed every icon and every treasure from the holy of holies and from the tunnels beneath the sanctuary and transported them by barge across the sea. As destiny would have it, the pagan marbles claimed from the heathen temples of Greece were left behind to fall to the barbarians’ torches.

  Out of the devastation came resurrection. The four hundred monks who had fallen in service to God were replaced by holy men numbering in the hundreds and hailing from all parts of the empire. The ruins of Sumela, a terrible reminder of the dark period that had befallen us, were taken away to Mysia and given new life as building stones in the project begun by the great Emperor Justinian. The monastery of the virgin was remade high on Mount Melá, larger and stronger than before.

  Let it be known to all who read this that faith prevailed and, so long as there are disciples, will do so unto the ages of ages.

  Sarah’s pulse quickened. The passage about the pagan objects left to burn and carried off to Mysia with the rest of the ruins was exactly the clue she needed. She had only to identify the project begun by Justinian, whose reign was a full century before the carnage. The prolific emperor had built much of the city of Constantinople and had ordered the construction of bridges across Turkey, including several in the western province of Mysia.

  One of those bridges was the location she sought. And she was determined to find it.

  Twenty-four

  Melá Mountain, Anatolia,

  393 CE

  The rhythmic clop of donkeys’ hooves on rock had haunted Aristea’s ears for the better part of the morning. There were six animals in total, five with native riders—village men, she supposed, who had been hired to escort her to a destination that had not been revealed to her.

  At the command of one of the men, the donkeys turned down a steep path and staggered down the cliffside. Aristea leaned back and held on to the saddle to minimize the jostling. It seemed impossible the beasts could negotiate the near-vertical trail without tumbling down the mountain, yet they were as well adapted as they were resigned to their rugged surroundings.

  The rider leading the caravan reached the bottom of the path quickly and dismounted his donkey. Without waiting for the others, he ducked inside the black mouth of a cave, one of many in the vicinity.

  “That is where he waits,” the man behind her said in broken Greek. “The inquisitor.”

  Aristea was not in the mood for banter. It was the twelfth day of her captivity and the first day she was allowed out of the stony confines of her prison cell. She wanted only to fill her eyes with green and to feel on her cheeks the fresh breeze that smelled of pine and mountain tea.

  Since the visit from Sophronios, no one had come to see her except the mute deliverer of millet. Now, it seemed, the purpose for her internment would be divulged by one “inquisitor.” She contemplated the weight of the moniker as she dismounted and was escorted insi
de the cave.

  Upon entering the dark womb, a chill touched her skin. Aristea and the villagers walked single file along a narrow corridor until they came to a wider passage. Wielding a torch, the caravan leader stepped out of the shadows.

  “Walk this way.” He swung the torch round to illuminate a chamber.

  Aristea blinked to adjust her eyes to the darkness. The room seemed to be filled with objects. As they drew closer, she recognized alabaster statues of gods, marble busts of wise men, pediments with frescoes, implements of gold, magnificent painted vessels of every sort . . . The treasures of her land, stripped from their sacred homes, silent witnesses to this new age of injustice and tyranny.

  In the depths of the chamber, a man was seated. His back was straight and his fingers were interlaced upon a book on his lap. His dress—a long pleated tunic with an oxblood-colored robe fastened at the shoulder and draped across his chest—identified him as a Roman.

  “Approach,” he said. His expression was no warmer than the stone surrounding them.

  One of the villagers prodded Aristea with a stick, indicating she should step forward. She took two steps toward the Roman. In a small act of defiance, she kept a comfortable distance.

  The man looked down his aquiline nose at Aristea. “You may address me as Senator clarissimus Arcadius.”

  “Senator.” She bowed slightly. “I am Aristea of Delphi.”

  “The city whose name you uttered is no more. It has been seized by the great emperor’s army. A basilica is being built on the ruins of your iniquitous house.” In his smirk she read delight. “Thus your identity is of no consequence.”

  Aristea had feared this would come to pass, but hearing it brought reality into sharp focus. A knot rose to her throat. “How can your emperor, who claims to be so righteous, condone such a crime?”

  “You dare speak of a crime? The offense is yours. And you will be judged for it.”

  “I have done nothing to be judged by. My people and I have followed the emperor’s decrees to the letter.”