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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780446520904 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grand Central Publishing |
| Publication date: | 08/01/1998 |
| Pages: | 496 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.25(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
"Sibylla?"
They were gathered around her, nymphs and matrons, their heads clustered so that Sibylla could barely see the stalactites that hung like drops from the top of the cave-or the red lintel that cast a faint shadow on her face. Feeling uncommonly chilled, she allowed two of the Kela-Tenata healing priestesses to help her to her feet. They solicitously walked her out of the cave and into the fresh air.
The beautiful land of Caphtor! It was the Season of the Snake, when the earth renewed itself as a serpent sheds its skin. Rains had fallen, misting the whole valley. In the distance, sunlight glinted off the distant dark waters of the Aegean. Faint winter shadows were cast in the dormant olive and grape groves surrounding this sacred mountain, the dwelling place of the oracle.
Residence of the Sibylla.
It's my winter home, she thought. Breathing deeply to purify her body after the ecstasies of prophecy, she felt something cut into her ribs and looked down. Attire that seemed both ordinary and foreign clothed her. She wore a brightly patterned belled skirt and a tightly fitted, short-sleeved, waist-length jacket with very little front. An embroidered waist cincher pressed her full breasts up and out, blatantly visible through the sheer blouse she wore in winter.
A curl of dark hair lay like a comma on her tawny breast . . . yet it looked odd. What was a comma? Sibylla shook her head, dispelling the strange impressions. She didn't feel completely herself. Was a vital element of her psyche still traveling for the goddess Kela?
Sibylla looked out then and shuddered. Instead of seeing the fieldswhere olive and fruit still slept until spring, she saw destruction. A veil slipped over reality for a moment, and once again she became the oracle.
The tiny village at the foot of the mountain was nothing more than a smoldering pile of ruins. White and gray particles fell from the sky, covering the ground, suffocating the vegetation, standing as deep as a child was tall. She looked at the faces of the women around her and saw them disfigured; blistered, bleeding, with charcoal tongues protruding from lipless mouths. She looked at a nymph, a bride-to-be, and shrieked in fright. Swollen with child, the girl fell into the flames, her screams rising momentarily above the roar of fire.
"Mistress?" One of the charred bodies moved. Sibylla was rooted like a vine. "Mistress, the Kela is upon you?"
"Flee!" she cried in a voice stronger, deeper, than her own. "Your days of peace and joy are limited in this valley! Beware the Season of the Lion! In his days, all will die, the earth itself will feel his wrath!" She looked over to the sea and saw a wall of water crash onto the land, stripping away henti of earth as if they were grains of sand. "Days of darkness, nights of fire! The earth will vomit you up, the sea will swallow you! Protect yourselves and your loved ones. You must flee, you must flee!"
Shuddering and weeping, Sibylla collapsed to the ground. They clustered around her, no longer corpses but deeply frightened women. Respectfully they carried her inside to rest on her makeshift couch. Sibylla felt a malevolence stirring in the shadows. A skia dwelt here, an angry spirit with no body. She wept, her eyes closed. Sibylla wanted to beg them to stay, to not leave her alone with the skia, but exhaustion had sealed her mouth.
"The Kela is still upon her," she heard a woman whisper. "Her eyes are still green."
Green? Sibylla knew that she should be frightened by the news that her eyes were the wrong color, but she was heartened. Her eyes were green. My eyes are blue, she protested. Not anymore, said another voice inside her.
Fleet steps pounded away from the mountain toward Knossos. She knew that other Kela-Tenata would arrive and take her away into the quiet of the Daedaledion. Nay! She must say more, tell about the mountains coughing blood and mortar, of skies where no stars were visible, of sunrises filled with gore, but she was too tired, too weary. Your days are few, Sibylla wanted to say to the villagers. Please, please, you must go. The Lion comes, he will ravage. You can return, but you must go. Flee before the Lion.
Flee!
* * * *
She awoke in darkness, her heart pounding as though she had run to Knossos. Sibylla stumbled to the mouth of the cave. Exhausted as usual after a period of prophesying, she accepted wine and preserved fruit from some of the village women. They worshiped her as an aspect of the Great Goddess. She spent the Season of the Snake, when she had fewer clan chieftain responsibilities, dwelling in this lonely cave fed by the local women. Here she administered wisdom and acted as the voice of the Kela.
The Great Goddess was the giver and taker of all life. With one hand she created, with the other she destroyed. She was a pentad deity, represented as maiden, bride, matron, midwife, and hag. She was the progenitor of the bull god Apis, she was his seducer, his bride, his wife, and, eventually, his slayer. She was the moon, he was the sun; she was the odd numbers, he the even; she was serpent, swallow, and ax, he was lion, bull, and boot. The lives of the gods paralleled the life of the land; soon the land would reawaken and Sibylla would join the other priestesses in welcoming Kela.
Sibylla would return soon to Kallistae and the palace. The seasons of growing and reaping would be upon the Aztlan empire and she would step once again into her position and authority. The chaos of Aztlan Island would all but erase the memory of these cool, quiet fields, the snow-capped mountains in the distance. This was the nineteenth summer, the summer of great change in the empire.
Aztlan Empire? the voice inside her said. Where am I? Is this a Mexican resort? Please don't tell me I'm an Aztec.
Sibylla shuddered at the voice and forced her thoughts to this summer. Her cousin Phoebus would become Hreesos, the Golden Bull, while his father, Zelos, would be made athanati, immortal. Phoebus was nineteen; this summer the sun and moon would stand as one. This summer the new heir to the throne would be conceived. This summer would mark the end of the reign of Zelos and the beginning of Phoebus' nineteen summers on the throne. The annual midsummer festival would be fourteen, not the usual seven days.
What are you talking about? Where am I? Where did you get those names? the voice pleaded, its fear tangible.
Sibylla ignored it. Kela-Ileana had ruled as Zelos' wife and personification of the Great Goddess for the same nineteen summers. This summer the nymphs of Aztlan would challenge her position as Queen of Heaven. Through a series of footraces and mazes, the queen and the chosen racers would match strength and resilience. If Kela-Ileana won the competitions, she would marry Phoebus. Becoming pregnant in thirty days would confirm her position as the Great Goddess and Phoebus' wife, ensuring another nineteen summers' reign. If she proved to be infertile with Phoebus, then her position would be yielded to the runner-up.
Yielded to the runner-up? Does that mean she gets a lovely parting gift? The voice alternated between fear and scoffing. What is a runner-up wife? God! Where am I?
Silence yourself! Sibylla hissed. As a member of Clan Olimpi, she would compete for the role of Great Goddess and Phoebus' wife. While tradition decreed Hreesos must be golden haired, his wife need only be Clan Olimpi, religiously trained, and fertile. The prosperity of the land related directly to the Great Goddess's fecundity. The queen must conceive within thirty nights of the sacred marriage. Sibylla sighed; it was too early in the seasons to concern herself. The race was moons away.
Race? Moons? I have a bad feeling about this.
Arching her back, feeling unused muscles stretch and pull, Sibylla tried to enjoy the restfulness of Caphtor, to ignore the strange voice that spoke to her in a language she didn't fully comprehend. On Kallistae, the wind would be whipping around the palace, the sun not even touching Ileana's chamber, the Megaron, until well after its zenith. Cold, rainy, and noisy, the island shrieked with the winter wind.
Sibylla pitied the Mariners, Aztlan's navy. Winter, the Season of the Snake, was forbidding on land. How much more terrifying on a ship? The Mariners sailed from port to port, checking on the various outposts of the empire, trading food for stones-seeking for certain stones. Sibylla shrugged. Her pity was wasted: each clan had its responsibilities.
Instinctively she touched the clan seal around her neck.
Nice necklace, the voice said.
The gold seal showed a snake swallowing its tail, signifying her name day, and was inscribed with horns for her clan. It had hung around her neck since she'd come into adulthood. Each chieftain wore a similar golden seal. The only time they were removed was during the Council meeting, when the chieftains were stripped and unadorned, representing every man and woman. The meeting convened every nine years and in the nineteenth year, during the Season of the Bull.
The Season of the Bull? Is that summer? Please, someone tell me where I am. . . . The voice trailed off despairingly.
"Help me, Kela," Sibylla prayed under her breath. Surely she was hearing skia talking to each other.
As Kela was the goddess of women, the Apis bull Earthshaker was worshiped only by men. The priests had pyramids on Aztlan Island and the other four "Nostrils of the Bull" throughout the empire. The peaked Nostrils cast Apis' hot, sometimes putrid breath into the air. The priesthood worshiped diligently, for if the Bull's ire was raised, he was a destroyer. He breathed fire, melted gold, boiled the springs and rivers, and made the mountains bleed molten rock.
The freshness of the rain-soaked fields recalled Sibylla, and she smiled in anticipation of the year: the nineteenth, the Megolashana'a. Her earlier visions of horror had faded. Sibylla could not believe Kela and Apis would seek to destroy their own people! Surely the Great Goddess was not truly bidding them to leave their homes? Was there another meaning, perhaps? Symbolized by these dreams?
Her mind felt clearer now, her skin once again familiar. When she was an oracle, the spirit of Kela inhabited her body, speaking truths, answering questions. Only a small part of her intellect would stay behind, as an anchor for her wandering psyche. Extensive training had taught her never to let the silver noose, which linked her traveling spirit and her Kela-inhabited body together, to stray too far. She could be lost forever then, doomed to wandering as a skia.
Sibylla acknowledged, however, that some part of her was missing. The silver noose had come undone, and she feared that part of her psyche was wandering. Something else had come back in place of herself. Someone else.
Me! the voice said.
"My mistress?" someone called, and Sibylla looked up gratefully. The young bride-to-be approached. Sibylla accepted the offering of corn from the nymph's outstretched hands.
"You spoke of destruction yesterday," the girl said.
Sibylla looked away.
"Will my husband be safe?"
The humility of the young woman's question brought tears to Sibylla's eyes. The nymph asked not for herself, but for the boy she loved. Your vision looks like footage from a National Geographic special, a voice inside her said. Sibylla stiffened, chilled by the voice. The interloper was speaking. Nay, it must be Kela.
"I did not see him in the vision," Sibylla answered. The girl's night-dark gaze searched hers, then dropped away. Sibylla knew her words were false, but what hope to tell a bride she would not live to see her firstborn?
So tell her to go to the other side of the island, the voice said. Surely she has relatives there. It won't hurt them to get away for a while. It might even save their lives.
Please let this be the Kela speaking to her in a way never before experienced, Sibylla prayed.
Not hardly, the voice scoffed. C'mon, this kid deserves a break.
If I instruct her, demand she move, Sibylla countered, would that not be changing what is decreed to happen? If she loses her home and fields, what matter is it for her to live?
Within her Sibylla felt a heavy, lost sigh. We can only try. Those things that cannot be changed are not. . . . Sibylla felt the voice retreat, wounded and hurting.
"You have family in Phaistos, nymph?"
"Aye, my mistress."
"After you are wed, go there."
The nymph's eyes grew round. "Phaistos?"
"It is the wish of the Kela."
Sibylla rested her head on the rock, listening to the sounds of the nymph scampering down the stony path, returning to the village. The creature inside her smiled.
Way to go, Sibylla.
* * * *
No one saw.
They began in the dark depths of the ocean, peaks built by the fury of the earth. An arc of islands swept through the wine-dark sea, heights of death intermixed with cradles of savage and gentle beauty: Milos, Hydroussa, Tinos, Siros, Myknossos, Delos, Naxos, Paros, Nios, Folegandros, and the connected islands of Kallistae and Aztlan. Some had spewed their fury before humanity inhabited their slopes; others would remain silent for centuries more.
As the African and Eurasian tectonic plates slowly nudged each other, ripples and ridges shuddered through the earth, compressing rock, fueling fire, building tension, creating this volcanic sweep of islands on the plot of earth to someday be called the Aegean microplate. Massive earthquakes on the ocean floor were felt only as bare tremors in the clear air, thousands of meters above.
Stealthily the molten core had risen. What had once lain a day's sail beneath the crust of the earth had crept into four channels that ran like veins inside the beautiful mountains of the Aztlan empire: Mount Apollo, Mount Krion, Mount Gaia, and Mount Calliope.
The weakest channel was on Delos, an island of artists. Mount Calliope loomed above them, an inspiration for paintings, for poetry, for the soul. The artists did not feel the increasing heat beneath their sandals. No animals had yet become victims of gas poisoning. Thousands lived in Calliope's shadow, celebrating feasts in its groves, making love in its crevices, giving strangers directions by its location. They did not know liquid death lurked inside the mountain. Hot, boiling with rage and rock, creeping through the narrow passageway that led to the throat of the cone.
Thousands of years had passed since the last eruption. A mass of land now resided on the bottom of the purple ocean, testimony to the earlier wrath of the earth. The mountain had spewed rocks the size of ships for days, raining scalding ash on the round island. Fire had reached the heavens, and the tales of destruction became part of myth and legend.
Then the mountain had slept. Minutely the cone had risen from the depths of the ocean. Green grass had covered it and birds had flocked to it, and each year it was bigger and higher, its soil more fertile. A tribe had reclaimed it, growing purple grapes and flavorful herbs and fig trees, raising their crops and rearing their children, unaware.
No one settled on the peak, for the high places were forbidden by the deity the tribe worshiped. Iavan, the ancient patriarch of the tribe, told of how the deity had saved his family because of the goodness of his grandfather, Noach. This family, and the animals they had gathered up, had been spared from the waters that had drowned the earth. Because of this nameless deity's rescue, the tribe that sprang from Noach's loins was ever faithful.
As the cone grew and time passed, the god passed from practice, then memory. Rising from the same stock were others who worshiped the earth, the sky, and the sea. They identified the island cones as Nostrils of the Bull, whose roars sometimes shook the earth. In great piety and vanity they tipped the cones with pyramids, their sides emblazoned with precious stones, their interiors vast caverns where their priesthood lived.
Beneath the floors tiled in gold circles, black stripes, red swirls and squares, the volcano grew. Like the bull god who controlled it, the mountain's rage was consuming and unfocused. It waited, the heat that could vaporize a man, building, growing more intense than any metal worker's forge, its capacity pulled from below the ocean, where cataclysms were born, in the molten womb of the earth.
It waited.