Shadows on the Aegean

by Suzanne Frank

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Time traveller Chloe Kingsley thinks she's returning from the splendour of ancient Egypt to her artist's life in Dallas. But she wakes up in ancient Crete as the seer of a sensual empire whose fall she foresees in visions of blood and fire.

Release date: October 31, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 496

Sample

THE WORLD EXPLODED IN LIGHT and I felt myself freed—the constraints of skin, blood, and bone slipped away and I knew that the
core of my person, my ka, had left its ancient Egyptian shell.


No longer was I wearing the flesh, the mind, the persona, of the priestess RaEmhetepet. For the first time in more than a
year I was purely Chloe—a twentieth-century diplomatic brat; an artist; a retired air force lieutenant; a Levi’s-wearing and
coffee-drinking English-American. I was no longer ancient or Egyptian. None of RaEm’s thoughts or perceptions clouded my mind.


I had no curiosity about RaEm’s missing Egyptian lover, Phaemon. Instead I wondered about my Egyptologist sister, Camille.
I thought in English, then Egyptian. The order had been reversed. I had vivid recollections of traveling at fifty-five miles
per hour, of transatlantic flights, of chocolate, coffee, and cigarettes. Of diet Coke.


I was once more only myself.

Before this concept settled, a scream of unbearable agony followed me through a channel of fire. It ripped at me, shredding
a heart that beat only in a metaphysical sense.


The fire burned me, consumed me, but did not destroy. My senses were jumbled so that I heard it and tasted it, instead of
seeing it and smelling it. Through it all a cry, a plea torn from deepest soul, encircled, echoed around me.


“Chloe!”

I recognized the voice. My husband, Cheftu—my lover—taken from me by fate, or circumstance, or the divine. I felt his grief
through the void. His pain was so intense, a cleaving ran down to my marrow. I wanted to join my voice to his, to reassure
him … but what reassurance was there? Was this dying? Was this the end now, my battle service done and death really nothing
more than not being?


Yet I was!

Suddenly, in the midst of the dreadful, pressing loneliness, I was comforted. A tangible sense of love, acceptance, and rightness
flowed around me, billowed me up, carried me. It gave me ease. For a time—for time was meaningless—I rested.


The physical pain that time travel brought surrounded me in an instant. I was taken from cool refreshment to the fire. I understood
in a flash how gold felt. Heated, cooled, beaten, and molded … perfected.


Tension coiled all around me, radiating from me and through me. I was being reduced, expanded, in an agony of displacement.
My spirit self hunkered down, bracing, preparing to roll.


A face appeared before me suddenly, a woman with blank blue eyes, curling black hair, a woman of striking beauty. A body to
let, I realized. No one was home. Before I’d made a decision, I was flowing through her wide, empty stare. I screamed, and
as her flesh became mine, my fear was given voice. Her skin shaped over me, stretching to my height, adapting to my blood,
my DNA. Like a wetsuit, this new body tugged over my spirit, clothing it. A hundred million pins pressed into me as the carnal
casing grew tighter, closing over me, my atoms readjusting, my cells merging into the empty carcass.


The sensations were wrenching, too much to endure. As I gave myself into the drift of black peacefulness, I felt the rage,
the hating frenzy, of another spirit, outside me.


It shrieked, furious, lethal … and hopeless. “That body is mine!! ”






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 fields where 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.



THE AZTLAN EMPIRE

ILEANA LINED HER LIPS CAREFULLY with the sharp edge of the ocher, then moved the color stick to her nipples, adding a drop of water and painting them, too.
A few good pinches brought them erect. She smiled, pleased.


Her many summers had been good to her. She still had the figure of a nymph, and the legends of her beauty brought sailors
and gifts from around the empire and beyond. Zelos was hers, for a little while longer. Ileana swallowed, a tremor of fear
playing with her brow. At midsummer festival her husband’s son would become the ruler and she would become a widow. Phoebus
had hated her as a boy. Now, at age nineteen, he hated her even more. Ileana had not lived so long and so well that she didn’t
recognize danger. Phoebus would as soon kill her as see her, but Ileana had no intention of stepping down as Queen of Heaven.


There was no doubt she would win the footrace. However, Phoebus would have his satisfaction if she were unable to become pregnant
in the time allotted. She refused to think of the penalty for losing: the Labyrinth.


A piercing shriek came from the corridor, and Ileana patiently finished her makeup. A peacock strode in, screaming, his tail
closed. Ileana turned on her stool, snapping her fingers for a serf to hand her seeds. “Come along, my beauty,” she said,
throwing its food on the painted floor. “Show me how lovely you are.” The peacock ate the seeds and screamed for more. “Not
until you show your colors,” Ileana admonished her pet.


Obligingly the male strutted forward and preened, opening the multicolored wonder of his tail. “Those two and that one,” Ileana
said to the serf. The peacock screamed again, closing the fan of his tail, but the serf was fast and already held three long,
eyed feathers in his hand. Three, a number to honor the Great Goddess. Laughing triumphantly, Ileana turned back to her water
mirror. Deftly the boy tucked the feathers into her crown of corn gold hair.


“The feathers make your eyes as fathomless as Theros Sea,” the boy said.

Admiring her reflection, Ileana leaned back against him, her head against his chest. She feasted on his expression of admiration
reflected in the mirror, then waved him away.


Immediately he bowed, stepping back. She snapped her fingers and two handsome men, long limbed and narrow waisted, opened
her chamber’s doors. With a final tug of her seven-tiered skirt, befitting her role as mother-goddess, Ileana stepped to her
carrying chair. Before she asked, a rhyton was handed to her. It was a slender pointed cup fashioned from mother-of-pearl
and gold, pointed at the end to stay fixed upright in a graceful metal stand or the ground. She snapped her fingers and the
men proceeded slowly so they would not step on the wandering peacocks.


The walls of the palace, with their life-size paintings of priestesses and princes in worship and parade, sailed by in a haze
of gold, scarlet, black, and white. Sounds of the festivities—music, the clatter of earthenware and alabaster, and the low
trill of laughter—caressed Ileana’s ears as she was carried down the wide staircase to the queen’s Megaron.


The guards set her chair down gently and assisted her out. Shooing the peacocks into the spacious chamber, Ileana smiled as
silence fell. One solitary flute played as she sauntered in. The guests, her subjects, stood with bowed heads and arms raised
in supplication.


“Kela-Ileana, Queen of Heaven, Mother-Goddess of the Harvest, Mistress of Aztlan,” a high voice sang.

She took her seat at the elevated edge of the company: with a snap of her fingers the feast returned to life. Her rhyton was
refilled, and before she could sink it in the ground a male voice spoke. “Fairest Heaven, may I?”


Slowly she raised her gaze. By the strength of Apis, this man was a beauty! His smile indicated he knew this well. Irritated
by his arrogance, Ileana plunged the rhyton’s end into the ground. His shock was visible. Was she the first to refuse him?


Looking beyond him, she called out to her stepson, “Arus! Tell me, who is this man to think he can approach Heaven on the
strength of his smile?” From the corner of her eye she saw the youth’s cheeks redden.


Arus, his hair unfashionably short, but bearing a most impressive nose, leaned forward. “He’s the youngest Troizen prince. Not enough man for an Aztlantu woman.” He smiled and
turned his attention back to his companion.


Ileana snapped for food and waited in silence, watching the courtiers of Aztlan. It was a gay group since Hreesos’ grayheads had gone to an annual symbolic sea skirmish.


Her gaze flickered quickly over the women present. Summer approached, when she would have to defend herself and her goddess-given
throne against the nymphs who chose to challenge her. The Coil Dancers were priestesses, but not Olimpi. She dismissed them.
Long ago she’d learned their sexual tricks and had gone on to perfect them.


She saw the occasional fresh-faced nymph; however, they were not priestesses and therefore no threat to the Queen of Heaven.
A clanswoman or two roamed the room, their years proclaimed by the backs of their hands. Age alone would prevent them from
catching her in the footrace.


Three women were her true rivals: Vena, Selena, and Sibylla. Ileana smiled at a courtier attempting to woo her through gifts.
Even if one of her clanswomen managed to win the race, she would still have to wait a moon to see if Ileana had become pregnant.
Then Ileana had several moons when she could pretend pregnancy before she was discovered. Those moons would be fatal for any
potential successor, giving Ileana time to get with child.


Ileana knew she was fertile, she was the goddess on earth. However, she might have to work to find the right partner. It was
the timing of the thing. Racing always disrupted her moon-cycles, and to become pregnant immediately afterward … she needed
Kela’s help. The courtier blushed as Ileana directed her most charming smile of gratitude at him. The gift was worthless,
but he was blond—he could be useful.


The young Troizen prince had not spoken, not even glanced her way. Intriguing, Ileana mused. He refuses to cower before my
beauty or to flee my legendary wrath.


Deliberately she turned to him. He stared straight ahead. Ileana narrowed her eyes. He was not as tall as an Aztlantu man,
but he was broader shouldered and more sinewy. His body was sleek skinned and oiled, firm young flesh that rippled as he moved.


He was a blond.

Per Aztlantu custom he wore a belled, patterned skirt, but strangely he had no waist cincher. A flat link necklace was his
only adornment. No makeup tinted his lips or ringed his eyes. He turned to her, challenge and carefully banked lust in his
deep green eyes. “Are you pleased with what you see … my mistress?”


His arrogance was tinged with charm. He wasn’t afraid of her, and Ileana found the difference thrilling. Playing with him
could be entertaining. “Thus far,” she said, husky voiced. She rolled a date on her lips before eating it, licking the sticky
residue away slowly. “However, I cannot make a decision based only on what I behold.”


His eyebrows were not plucked or painted but grew densely, leaving only a narrow gap over the bridge of his nose. Ileana felt
a catch in her throat. His nose was exquisite, large and bold; his mouth was wide.


“Even your beauty cannot win you that honor,” he said, rising to his feet. Ileana smiled coolly at his retreating form; he
was a prince of Troi, eee? The man was a peacock; she admired his spirit. She had insulted him, so he had responded in kind. A worthy lover, to give
as good as he got.


Ileana was not finished with him yet.

She saw him embrace a Coil Dancer; holding the girl’s bare breasts in his hands, he kissed her mouth with