“What’s a peak sanctuary?”
“It’s the counterpart of the cave shrines, only on mountaintops. A place where offerings could be made to the goddess. There are many across the island, but Karfi is one of the oldest.”
They climbed in silence for about half an hour. The trail switched back on itself before straightening out and running upward in a northeasterly direction. The plateau emerged below them, and Cassie caught a glimpse of the sea off in the distance.
The higher they climbed, the more barren the landscape became. Nothing but rocks jutting upward through sparse patches of grass and a few struggling olive trees. Eventually, they reached a stone alcove built around a spring. A sign posted there announced that they were nearing the archaeological site.
“Stop, stop,” Cassie commanded. “I need to sit down for a minute. Jeez, I wish I’d brought a bottle of water with me.”
“You’re sitting right next to a mountain spring,” Erik observed coldly.
Cassie looked over her shoulder at the water trickling out of the rock. “I’m not drinking that!”
The security coordinator removed his pack. She could hear him mutter a curse under his breath as he rummaged around in the depths of the bag. Pulling out a canteen, he handed it to her. “I’ll give you five minutes. After that, we have to keep moving. Unless you want to try climbing down the mountain in the dark.”
Cassie smiled sweetly through gritted teeth. “You see. Being nice didn’t kill you.” She took a deep draught from the canteen. The water was lukewarm, but she didn’t care. At least she knew it came from a tap. She handed the container back to Erik. Making an effort to sound civil, she thanked him. “I just need a couple of minutes to catch my breath is all.”
The late afternoon sunshine was burning the top of her head. Cassie shaded her eyes and wished for a cap or a visor. She didn’t think Erik had one in his magic backpack, so she didn’t ask. A blister was starting for form on her left heel. Ignoring it, she stood up and dusted off her jeans. “OK, I’m good.”
Erik slung his pack over his shoulders and resumed the march upward.
About ten minutes later, Cassie heard Griffin announce, “There it is.”
The trio paused to take in the sight.
The pythia looked off in the distance at a green space between two mountain peaks. Stones were jutting out of the ground, but they weren’t arranged randomly. They formed a series of squares connecting to one another – the foundations of buildings partially buried underground.
“Take a look at the configuration of the mountains. Do you notice anything familiar about the shape?” Griffin regarded her quizzically.
She squinted in the sunlight and studied the landscape for a moment. The two vertical peaks were close to one another. One of them seemed to curve inward slightly. “It looks like horns of consecration!” she exclaimed.
“Well spotted,” Griffin said approvingly. “And probably why the Minoans chose this location as a peak sanctuary in the first place.”
“But I don’t see much of a town,” she observed in a disappointed tone as they approached the ruins.
“That’s because the excavation was never completed. It’s estimated that the actual settlement is six times the size of what was unearthed in the 1930s. There were paved streets and squares, a temple and several other large public buildings.” Griffin looked disconsolately around at the rubble. “The excavation might have been handled in a more systematic manner. The structures were never reinforced afterward, leaving them at the mercy of wind and weather. As you can see, most of them have collapsed. Anything of note was carted off to museums in Heraklion and England decades ago. Now the site is a goat pasture.”
“But you said yesterday that you wanted to look at some tombs, right?” Cassie prompted.
“Yes, quite so. Your vision of the chrysalis suggests that the burial crypts, the tholoi, might be our best starting point. Karfi really is the most logical spot to find our elusive symbols.” Griffin’s eyes travelled across the ruin.
“What makes you say that?”
“In the field operative’s journal, I was struck by the specific choice of words: ‘The high place of the goddess.’ A peak sanctuary certainly qualifies as a high place. But it isn’t merely that. It’s that the legend speaks of a time when people had forgotten the old ways. That didn’t occur during the Mycenean invasion but much later when the Dorians arrived. Not until the last of the Minoans were forced to hide in these mountains and watch as their island home was overrun by alien warriors and their alien gods. Surely if they believed the goddess had abandoned the land, it was at the time when Karfi became their final refuge.” Griffin paused and then added more to himself than to Cassie, “The Bones of the Mother have to be here. They can’t be anywhere else!”
Erik broke into the conversation abruptly. “There’s a cemetery over this way.” Without waiting to see if his teammates followed him, he struck out on his own to the south of where they stood.
Cassie and Griffin trailed after him. Although the hour was growing late, they decided not to split up. Unlike the cave which was self-contained, they might lose track of one another easily up here. To Cassie’s disappointment, the cemetery was in much the same decayed state as the settlement itself. Square formations of stone, much smaller than the perimeter of a house, were all that remained. “I thought you said this was a cemetery,” she observed.
“It is,” Griffin replied.
“But I don’t see any headstones or any pits dug in the ground. It looks to me like these buildings were all above ground,” she noted.
“They were,” the scrivener concurred.
Erik decided to contribute to the discussion. He managed to sound almost conversational as he explained, “The
