The Flames of Time (Flames of Time Series Book 1) (20 page)

CHAPTER 14 – INTO THE SUNSET

As quickly and unexpectedly as the snow had come, it went, and Spring seemed to rush into its place.

Most of us were eager to be underway, though Luke, for perhaps very understandable reasons seemed happy to dally a little longer. ‘For the weather to improve,’ being the rather transparent reason he actually gave. But the time had come for us to leave, and as we weren’t sure how long our journey might be, that meant it was also time to say goodbye to Jerusalem, with all the treasures and distractions it held.

Androus made a case for us to leave the tablets and the scroll behind in safekeeping at this library, being such valuable and irreplaceable artefacts. But as we couldn’t predict how or whether we might need them again we decided to take them along with us. Though only after having them even more thoroughly catalogued and photographed, and obtaining an almost indestructible, waterproof and fire proof, vacuum-sealed lock box for them to travel in.

Then suddenly, the city walls were receding behind us and we were retracing the route by which we’d arrived all those months previously. There was still a pronounced chill in the air as we drove back toward the port of Jaffa, where we boarded a small passenger ship to Rhodes. In other circumstances I would’ve been quite happy to tarry awhile on that earthly island paradise, for even in the early spring its beauty was unmistakable. But for us it was merely a starting point, and our attention as a consequence was focused squarely upon how we would move on from Rhodes to retrace the route of another of those ancient seekers. As chance would have it, we were able to charter a small yacht, which had also come from Jaffa, to sail us along the route described in the scroll to Crete and the home of our next explorer, Faron.

From the scroll we knew he was a sea captain and trader, as well as a husband and father. As a trader he travelled extensively, often spending weeks if not months away from home, crossing the Mediterranean, and occasionally even travelling beyond in his search for new commodities or luxuries to be bought or sold. It was on one such voyage that he first hears the rumours of a man who has lived for many lifetimes, but remained untouched by age or frailty.

After hearing these rumours Faron begins voyaging even further afield in the hope of finding out more. But in doing so he also damages his business, and undermines the trust of his crew. Until finally, after endangering their lives by trying to sail through a storm, they take his ship and abandon him.

Still he tries to continue his search, until one night, half starved and exhausted, he is visited by a dream, in the form of a man, who speaks none of the many languages known to Faron, but somehow guides him to the temple through the wilderness.

Like the other seekers, Faron stays within the Temple for some time, before making his way back to his own people with the tablets. But upon his return, he finds his wife is now married to another man, his son is grown to adulthood, and like Arathes he can no longer bear to live amongst his own people. At which point he also leaves behind the comforts of civilisation, to live beside a waterfall high up in a nearby gorge, emerging only rarely to exchange the rare herbs and other plants he is able to collect for some meagre necessities.

I had no idea just how many islands there were in the Mediterranean until we started that journey from Rhodes to Crete. But as we sailed across the now dark and wintry water, it seemed as though we were never out of sight of one island or another. Some just tiny outcroppings, barely big enough to sustain a few scrubby plants, others larger and obviously inhabited, or at least possessed of enough land to graze a few goats or sheep.

We’d decided to try and enlist the help of our captain in understanding some of the details mentioned by Faron, in the hope that features thought worthy of mention by one experienced seaman would somehow make sense to another. It was obviously a more difficult concept to convey than we might have thought, either that or Androus and Harry’s command of modern day Greek was not as good as either of them thought.

Still, we got there in the end, even after inexpertly deflecting the odd question as to the identity of our historic captain, and why he would not have called the islands by the same name that everyone else did.

But our modern day captain, Stephanos, rapidly got the gist of what we wanted and before long he was pointing out details in the descriptions that made sense to him. Either because it would avoid this sandbank, or that shoal of rocks, or just because it made the most of the prevailing winds or currents. Each detail offered additional confirmation that we’d interpreted the directions correctly.

It took us the best part of a day to reach the north-eastern tip of Crete, navigating past the incredibly picturesque Dodecanese islands of Karpathos and Kasos with their prominent whitewashed houses and Byzantine churches. The very sight of which seemed to draw forth a little more of the stereotypical Mediterranean sun.

The day had begun to warm up a little by late afternoon, and now as we drew closer to the mainland the afternoon sunlight made one last valiant effort to call forth the shimmering blue from the sea around us before sinking exhausted into the distant horizon.

The yacht wasn’t big enough to accommodate us overnight, but upon a recommendation from Stephanos, we found a quiet cove just south of the island’s eastern point, here we found a small, out of season hotel, whose owner was only too happy to put us up for the night.

Even in the comfortable surroundings of the hotel, which we had entirely to ourselves, it was still a restless night for all of us. To be on the island and possibly so close to our goal was just a torture of anticipation. The directions had been good so far though, and a gorge must surely be an easier thing to search than an entire mountain. But there was just no knowing, until we could follow the directions further the next day.

The following morning we left the hotel bright and early, heading back to the boat to continue our journey. None of us were particularly familiar with this part of the island, though both Harry and Androus had of course ventured here to visit the legendary excavations of Knossos in the north. Our hope therefore was that the directions in the scroll would continue to hold enough detail once we left the sea and moved back on to the land.

Out of habit we politely interrogated the hotel owner before leaving, on the off chance he might have heard of some local legend or myth which might guide us. Fortunately archaeological exploration was in no way unusual on Crete, so we could be almost entirely honest about our motivations and reasons for questioning him. I couldn’t help but think it was a long shot personally, as we were right at the opposite end of the island. But our host turned out to be an absolute font of information. Not only about our destination, which he thought likely to be in one of the many gorges, possibly including the well-known Samaria gorge located in the Chania area in the south-west of the island. In terms of our directions, he also recognised and knew several features well, if by slightly different names.

Slightly surprised by the discovery of this new found knowledge, we got back to the boat, and in no time seemed to be picking out the features mentioned in the scroll and identified by the hotel owner. This line of islands, that cave, reef, promontory, all framed in the background by the ever-present Cretan lowlands, and the more distant spine of mountains that ran along the entire length of the island.

Faron it seemed had been a master mariner, and it took no time at all for us to get to the wide open bay, that was the last stage of our journey by sea. From here we would see if his directions away from the sea were as good.

Stephanos agreed to wait for us for a week, before taking his leave and heading back to Jaffa, which we hoped would be more than enough time to confirm the whereabouts of Faron’s sanctuary and the tablets it contained.

We’d had to bring a bit more equipment with us this time, on account of the colder and wetter weather, and we’d been hoping to find some horses to help carry the additional burden. But it seemed the village where we’d landed, which was towered over by a set of sheer cliffs that encroached almost to the sea, had loaned out several of their animals to another party just a few weeks earlier. A party that had then for reasons known only to themselves, left those animals at a village on the other side of island, where they had yet to be reclaimed.

This left us humping the rest of the weight on our own backs, and trusting much of our heavier and more valuable items, including the scroll and tablets, to the barely secure strong room in the village’s post office. A situation that needless to say, none of us was very happy with.

We’d squandered our early start negotiating for animals and then a storage room, and it was well-past lunchtime before we finally set off through the crack-like opening in those sheer cliffs and into the mountains. This took us up a steep sided gorge, that Harry had identified as the most likely match to that mentioned in the scroll.

It was a tiring climb to begin with, with lots of loose rock and shale underfoot, that sent us sliding back a step for every two we took forward. Added to that there was very little in the way of an established path, which meant we ended up having to cross and re-cross the broad stream that ran down through the gorge as we tried to find our way. But gradually the ground levelled off and the going got a little easier. There wasn’t very much detail on this bit of the route in the scroll, but we knew we were looking for one of the side gorges that fed into the main gorge and that Faron had placed the tablets near to a waterfall in that side-gorge.

All of these sounded like clear details we could look out for, until Peter pointed out that the entire network of gorges in this part of the island had probably been formed by the steady erosion of rivers and streams. So it was very likely there would be any number of waterfalls and hanging gorges for us to search. On the plus side we were never more than a couple of minutes’ walk from an abundant supply of fresh water, which would have been a very unwelcome additional weight.

Once over the initial hump at the start the gorge it seemed hardly any time before the light started to wane and we were forced to think about a camp for the night. The nights were still drawing in quickly, and bringing the cold in with them, but we’d no sooner decided to focus our efforts on finding a good site than we came across the first side gorge, high up on the right hand side of the path we were on. There was a small trickle of a stream, coming down from it, but hardly enough to suggest a waterfall above like the one we sought. Having said that, there was no way of knowing how much it’s flow might have changed over time, or even how much it might swell once the winters melt waters reached this far, as such it was clear we’d have to go up and investigate.

After a quick conference amongst ourselves, we decided rather than back-track the following day, or risk not finding a decent camp for the evening, we’d split our forces. Harry, Peter and Jean would go up to investigate the gorge now, while the rest of us scouted around where we were to find and set up a camp for the night. This meant they could also drop their packs, to save carrying them all the way up to the side gorge, and just reclaim them on the way back.

There were plenty of sheltered enough looking camp sites in the main gorge for us to pick from, but the valley sides were still quite steep in this area, which meant most of the likely looking sites were littered with rocks that had obviously fallen from above. But a few hundred meters further on, the gorge widened out a little and the valley sides flattened out enough to accommodate a good growth of trees. There was also a natural hollow in the ground with a shepherd’s dry-stone hut at one end and a low wall that looked like it might offer a bit of shelter, from both the wind, should it pick up, and any falling rocks.

The hut itself was far too small to accommodate all of us, but the hollow was big enough for the tents, and had a basic cooking area, which would more than suffice.

We’d collected the wood from the nearby trees, built a good fire and just finished putting the tents up when Harry, Peter and Jean caught us up. Apparently the side valley had held little of interest, but had afforded a good view further up the main gorge, revealing several other side valleys for us to explore the following day.

I’d definitely become accustomed to the comforts of hotel living during our time in Jerusalem, which made going back to the bare ground a bit of shock to the system when I went off to my bed for the evening. But I somehow managed to still get a good night’s sleep, albeit with a few aches to remind me of how much I’d softened up.

The following morning saw us up and ready to go in no time. There was little else in the directions from the scroll to guide us, so we just had to make our way methodically up the main gorge, splitting off in twos or threes to check out the side valleys as we came across them.

It was laborious work, with a lot of climbing and then time consuming searching, made none the easier by the occasional rain shower and the fact that some of the little hanging valleys extended a long way from main gorge. By midday we’d checked out another two valleys and were waiting for Luke and Marlow to catch us up from their search of a third. The floor of the main gorge was beginning to get a little steeper now, but at the same time, its sides were becoming shallower, making the side valleys increasingly accessible.

The afternoon’s searching was much the same as the morning; steady progress, but nothing to indicate we were getting any closer. We’d come across another good campsite in the late afternoon, and after we each returned from our last searches for the day, we made our way back down the gorge a little to the site we’d chosen, and started to make our camp. There was still a good hour of light left by the time we’d finished setting up the camp, and started to prepare the evenings meal, but it had been a long day and we were all in need of rest.

While still cool and little damp, the wind had dropped and the sun had emerged, so while Peter and Luke laboured over the food, the rest of us were all able to enjoy the last warming rays of ruddy sunlight before it sank behind the valley wall.