Cybele's Secret (36 page)

My companions were suddenly still.

“Drop your weapons, both of you.” Murat’s tone was cool. “All of them.” He waited while knives and daggers clattered to the ground.

“Very well,” Irene said when it was done. “We go forward. Let us test whether Paula’s faith in the two of you is justified. I see three ways from this cavern. Who will choose for us?”

Stoyan moved, heading for the left-hand opening. We followed, Murat dragging me with him, the others behind us. I thought I could feel the knife breaking the skin, blood trickling down my neck. Wrong, all wrong. This could not be intended to finish so miserably. Why had we been rewarded if we were to fail in the quest?

I was crying. I sniffed back the tears, unable to wipe my eyes with that powerful arm holding me, that cold metal kissing my throat. Where had I gone wrong? What had I failed to learn? What pieces of the puzzle had I forgotten?

“This way,” said Stoyan, making another choice of paths. The ground was rising; we were getting closer to the surface. I fought down terror and made myself focus.
Think, Paula.

What have you learned?

Murat jerked me around a corner. The knife dug in.

Concentrate.
I had learned the difference between knowledge and wisdom. I had experienced a lesson in trust. At least, I’d started to understand these things. A whole lifetime was probably not enough to learn them completely. Especially if that life was cut short before one reached one’s eighteenth birthday.
Think.
And I’d learned other things that I hadn’t mentioned. How to escape from the grip of someone much stronger, who grabbed me from behind…Of course, the lesson had not included dealing with the complication of a knife. But Stoyan had taught me to look for the right moment, the kind of moment Murat had just used to his advantage. And if Stoyan, walking in front of us, also knew the right moment…

All along, I had tried to keep my own image of the tree map clear in my mind. I had not retained it as well as Stoyan had; without him, we would indeed have been lost. Now I made myself concentrate on this section. There could have been several possible ways from the treasure chamber up to the top. Stoyan was taking the most central route, past a place where the tree image had been thick with fruit of many shapes. We moved forward along a winding way—a particularly wayward branch—passing small caverns to either side, each with its own peculiar form. I saw them as they had appeared on the tiles—pear, apple, plum, bunch of cherries.

We came to a fork: two ways, left and right. Stoyan paused, glancing back.

“Move, Bulgar!” Murat said. “Which is it? Make up your mind!”

For a brief moment, Stoyan’s eyes met mine. I tried to convey something to him, intent, purpose, and I thought he gave the smallest of nods. “We go right,” he said.

I knew it should be left. I moved forward, still clasped in Murat’s menacing embrace. Behind, I heard the soft footsteps of the others.

Something creaked above us, jolting my heart. The rocks were shifting. Murat tensed; his knife fell momentarily away from my neck. I sagged in his arms, making my body abruptly limp. Stoyan leaped toward us, eyes blazing, ready to tackle the well-armed eunuch with his bare hands. Murat dropped me, bracing to defend himself. Suddenly he had a knife in each hand. I rolled to the side and came up on one knee as I’d been taught during those practice sessions on the
Esperança.
Stoyan stuck out a hand in my direction; I drew the little knife he had given me out of my sash and tossed it to him. Nobody had thought to ask
me
to throw down my weapons.

The struggle was brief but intense. Duarte could do no more than crouch by me, shielding me, for the combatants moved so fast there was no getting between them. Murat fought like a dancer, with elegant economy of movement and a sequence of practiced swings and turns and kicks. Someone had trained him to perfection. Stoyan’s style was brutal and efficient. They grappled and wrestled and fell, rose and came together once more, muscles bulging, eyes glaring, feet slipping on the rock floor. Above them, the earth trembled and groaned; showers of little stones fell from the tunnel’s roof. Irene stood watching, mute, with Cybele’s Gift clutched to her breast. Huddled by the wall, I felt the rocks shuddering under my hand.

Murat had Stoyan pinned against the opposite wall, his right forearm pressed across his adversary’s chest. It wasn’t looking good. With his left hand, he held Stoyan’s wrist in a painful grip clearly designed to make him drop the little knife that was his only weapon. As soon as the knife fell, the eunuch would use his own head to smash Stoyan’s skull back against the rock wall or employ a dagger to stab my friend in the heart.

Stoyan drew a deep, shuddering breath.

Then, with an odd sort of twist that suggested getting himself pinned against the wall had been a planned combat move, he hooked a leg around Murat’s and toppled him. There was a hideous crunching sound as the eunuch’s head went down on the rocks. Stoyan knelt and, with deliberation, drew the little knife across Murat’s throat.

“Quick, Paula!” Duarte was helping me up, pulling me back along the passageway. The place was alive with the sounds of warning, rock grumbling, creaking, moaning as it shifted. More stones fell, bigger ones this time.
Cybele’s doors will not remain open much longer.

“Stoyan,” I whispered, and he was there beside me, wiping his knife on his tunic and sticking it in his sash.

“Run,” he said.

Irene was blocking our way. She stood stock-still in the middle of the passage, staring at the prone form of her steward. She had set the artifact down on the stone floor.

“The place is coming down,” Duarte said to her. “If you value your life, follow us out.” As we pushed past Irene and ran, he scooped up Cybele’s Gift.

Over the sound of the shifting rocks, I could not hear if Irene was coming or not. When we reached the place where Stoyan had deliberately led us down the wrong branch, I snatched one backward glance. Irene was kneeling on the ground. She had gathered Murat’s body close, his head resting on her knees; her hands, cradling him, were dyed crimson. On her features was a look of such grief and pain it hit me like a blow. She turned her face upward and wailed, a wordless, primal sound of sorrow that rang all through the subterranean passageway, making the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

A moment later, her cry was drowned by a roaring like the voice of a huge wild creature, a monstrous rumbling above, beneath, on either side of us.

“Paula!” shouted Stoyan. “Come on!” Not waiting for me to obey, he picked me up and slung me over his shoulder as he sprinted down the left-hand passageway. A jerking, bobbing vista of rock and earth and shadow passed before my eyes. We ran around corners, dashed through caverns, ducked into openings not much bigger than the portholes on the
Esperança.

“Lights,” panted Duarte. “Ahead, see there….”

Stoyan halted. He put me down, and when I sagged against his chest, too dizzy to hold myself upright, he gripped my arms to steady me. His touch left smears of blood on my shirt. The rhythm of my heart was like the galloping of a warhorse.

“We’re out,” Duarte gasped. “Look, stars, the moon….”

“And lanterns,” I said, gazing along the tunnel to the place where a view of the outside world could be seen.

We walked forward. As we did, the mountain sent a last warning rumble after us, and I thought I could feel the ground shaking. We ran and did not stop until we came out into an open place, a bowllike depression high on the flank of the mountain, where an old, gnarled tree whose shape was familiar to me stood alone amongst rocks. A bonfire blazed in the open space before it. There were lanterns and torches and musicians playing long horns and drums and little cymbals. There was a crowd of people, young and old, clad in embroidered felt and sheepskin and fur and fringed leather: a whole village of folk dressed in their best, ready for a celebration. I saw masks and painted faces. Over on one side, people were beating on drums of many sizes and styles. A great shout greeted our appearance. But behind us, the mountain had fallen quiet. Cybele’s doors were closed. I could not forget the look on the crone’s face as she bade us farewell. I suspected the old woman had known, in that moment, that it would end this way—that Irene, Cybele’s so-called priestess, would never walk out of the mountain to see the goddess come home.

As we approached the assembled folk, beaming smiles broke out all around and the music rose to an exuberant climax. It looked as if they had been expecting us.
It is foretold,
the djinn had said.

Duarte stepped forward, a lean, handsome figure in his tattered clothing. Two old women in bright woolens came up to greet him with formal kisses on both cheeks. These two were not veiled. Indeed, none of these women were—some wore hats or little decorative kerchiefs, but most of them had their hair luxuriantly loose, flying about them in wild banners as they danced. Their dress was loose trousers under shift and caftan. The men’s outfits were similar, though more sober in color. The dancers formed long lines, hands held at shoulder level, bodies snaking and weaving as feet followed an intricate pattern. The drums made a shifting heartbeat in the spark-brightened air.

The old women were slipping a garland of leaves over Duarte’s head; others came forward to decorate Stoyan and me in the same way. Duarte had begun an explanation in Turkish. I picked up
Mustafa,
and
Cybele,
and
bringing it home.
At a certain point, he said,
Paula and Stoyan,
glancing toward us with a slight frown. I was leaning on Stoyan; he had his arm around my shoulders. I felt the uneven rise and fall of his chest, heard the wheezing catch in his breath.

“Stoyan, what did the old woman mean about an arrow? You’re badly hurt, aren’t you?”

Duarte was handing Cybele’s Gift to one of the elders, bowing, stepping back. A high ululation arose from the villagers, and out on the mountain, there was an echo that sounded like the voices of wolves.

“It’s nothing,” Stoyan murmured. “You’re shivering, Paula. Here.” Our packs had been left behind in the caves. Now he loosened his sash and set the priceless diadem on the ground. He took off the garland and slipped his tunic over his head. I saw him wince as he raised his arms. “Put this on,” he said, draping the garment around my shoulders. The touch of his hands filled me with warmth; I wanted him to leave them there. Then I saw a fresh bloodstain on his shirt, near the shoulder.

“You’re bleeding!”

“I told you, it’s nothing.”

“I don’t believe you. Show me—”

“It’s not important, Paula. It looks worse than it is. Sit down, here. You’re exhausted. Look, this woman is bringing you a blanket.”

I sat, and by signs I conveyed to the woman that Stoyan needed attention. With some reluctance, he let himself be persuaded to sit down on the rocks while she removed his shirt and tended to what appeared to be quite a nasty flesh wound. There was no shortage of volunteers to help her. Much to their patient’s embarrassment, as they performed the job, they kept up an animated commentary complete with gestures. It was evident that they thought him a magnificent example of manhood. They kept glancing at me.

“When did that happen?” I asked, trying not to meet Stoyan’s eye.

“It was before we entered the caves. The fight on the mountainside. An arrow at an inconvenient moment.”

“You said that was only a scratch. I believed you. How did you carry me on your shoulders with an injury like that?”

Stoyan stared into the distance as the women dabbed at the injury. “Your weight is light, Paula, and you balance like a bird.”

I said nothing. Despite my exhaustion, I was full of the need to touch Stoyan, to be close to him, to put into words the realization that had become stronger every moment as we made our perilous journey through the mountain. Every step of the way, he had been my rock, my guide, my protector, and my indispensable friend.
Don’t lie to yourself, Paula. Not just a friend.
His waiting arms had given me the courage to swing across that chasm. His had been the hand that was my grip on sanity, my guard against mindless terror, my lifeline. I had known, when he was squeezing himself through that impossibly narrow tunnel, that I could not bear it if I lost him. Stoyan was far more than a friend, and if I’d been brave enough to get through Cybele’s mountain, I could surely find the courage to tell him how I felt. So why was my heart thumping with trepidation?

I looked across the open space and saw Duarte now enveloped in a small, enthusiastic crowd, both men and women. He was listening hard as the elders who had welcomed him offered a lengthy explanation of something. I was too tired to make any sense of what little I could hear.

The women who were tending to Stoyan found him a clean shirt and a dolman of dark red wool. Folk brought us more blankets, cups of a steaming beverage, sheepskin hats. So high on the mountain, it was bitterly cold. And nighttime. The moon was high. Our progress through that underground place had taken many hours.

“What are they saying, Stoyan? Can you hear?”

“They say the statue has returned to the place of its origin,” he said. “That it was foretold. Everything—three travelers, a mariner, a warrior, and a scholar. That the mountain would roar when Cybele came home. That the secret path would be opened and then closed again. And…” He hesitated.

“What?” I asked, hugging the blanket around me and thinking I had never understood how wonderful it was to be warm until now.

“The tree,” Stoyan said. “Something about the tree…”

The moon was shining between the branches now, a perfect disk of silver. The crowd was suddenly hushed; the music died down. Every eye was turned toward the tree. It looked immensely old and so shriveled it must surely no longer hold any life within it. The little statue had been placed amongst the roots; the hollow eyes of Cybele gazed out at us, inscrutable and strange.

“It has borne neither leaves nor buds nor fruit in living memory,” said Stoyan. “But the old women said to Duarte that tonight it will be different. On the night of Cybele’s return, everything will change. The words will be spoken—the last wisdom of the goddess.”