Sapphic Tales - Sisters of the Moon

Her nails dug deeper into the flesh of her fleeing prey as it climbed ever higher upon wide-swept wings into the cold night air. In the darkness overhead, the moon glowed faintly behind storm-clouds as she clung desperately to the fell creature. The pale disk appeared to turn in a bluish streak as she swung from side to side beneath the nightmarish beast above the rocky chasm receding far below them. They were climbing to the heights of the lowest clouds, through which jagged bolts of lightning arced across the sky, amidst terrible thunderclaps.

She twisted and clung tenaciously as the creature struggled to shake her loose, climbing ever faster, until the young girl's grip faltered and was at last torn away. She felt herself in free-fall, reaching frantically to make one last grasp at the lash trailing from the demon's coal-black raiment. Against all hope, it whipped into her fingers, but she felt it burning through her hands as she gripped tighter, and even through the searing pain, she felt herself slipping hopelessly to the end. With a final scream, she fell, downwards to the earth, as her quarry hissed and escaped into the darkness above her.

Upon the rain-swept coastline below, a pale but graceful figure raced across the rocks towards the sheer precipice into which the shadowy figure fell from the sky. Catching herself short upon the very brow of the cliff, the young huntress watched breathlessly as the vampire she had chased through Tuscany hurtled downward, twisting and turning to avoid the jagged teeth of the Etruscan coastline. As her falling body disappeared into the chasm ahead, the storm-tossed sea pushed a swell of water into the gap between the headlands, building a wave ever higher within the constraining walls of the inlet, until the deadly void was awash with the roiling sea.

The timely surge of water rose over the rocks only moments before her body would have been torn apart upon their razor edges. She disappeared into the boiling foam as the water receded from the chasm, and from the cliffs above, her pursuer watched in vain for any sign of her body surfacing. So intent was her gaze that her eyes almost missed another figure approaching behind her, closing the distance from the trees along the coastal ridge. Her hunt was now diverted as she hurriedly dropped from sight between the rocks of the cliff.

Bethany approached the edge of the jutting headland where she had seen the lone figure ahead of her only moments before. She climbed down the cliff-face with as much alacrity as she could without losing her footing upon the slippery rock. After a long and treacherous descent, she reached one last outcropping, which overhung the small beach at the mouth of the great coastal gorge, and jumped the last ten feet into soft, wet sand. The figure she thought she had made out, silhouetted above the cliff's edge when she approached, was nowhere to be seen, and she wondered now if it had only been a trick of her eyes, or did someone else know the significance of the creature which had just escaped into the night-sky? She searched across the breaking wavecaps crashing to shore for any sign of the body she had seen hurtling helplessly down from the sky, a fleeting shadow against lightning-lit clouds.

Was that ill-fated girl her friend Isyra? 'Could even an immortal vampyre survive such a fall?' Bethany wondered. She searched the rocks for the torn body of a friend who had walked the world for nearly three millennia since last they had parted - a friend condemned for all eternity to search the world for the she-demon Lilith, and return her to the underworld to face the justice of the Goddess Erishkigal, who had already waited an aeon, and now grew impatient. Bethany knew the creature which had fled into the heights of the storm was that very same demon which Isyra had so long sought, and now Bethany also sought. She felt eyes upon her in the darkness - watchful eyes, full of curiosity and menace. And she knew she was not alone in her hunt for Isyra and her prey.

Her wet clothes clung to her as both the cold rain and the spray of the Tyrrhenian sea crashing upon the coastal rocks had soaked her to her skin. Thunderclaps echoed off the cliff, and nearly deafened her. She was tired by her wearisome quest, having chased every rumor of Isyra's whereabouts around the Levantine crescent of the Mediterranean, until her trail had led her at last down the coast of Etruria. The prospect of catching up to Lilith haunted her too, for it meant facing Lamashtu once again. Her rape by that hideous demon was terrible enough, but her subsequent battle with the hell-creature in the dark underworld nearly three thousand years ago had literally cost her her life! Only the Grace of Innana, through the prayers of Melissa, had restored her life.

Only the Goddess knew the torture she had endured in that battle to save her lover's life, and ultimately, the life of the Goddess herself. She missed Melissa. Their separation was another sacrifice they had willingly made in their eternal service to the Goddess. Her lover and companion through the long ages of antiquity had been dispatched on a separate mission to Alexandria to consult the ancient scrolls of the Royal Library there, and tap their vast store of arcane knowledge in search of any clues concerning Lamashtu, the fell beast Lilith had learned to become at will. Where there was one, they would find the other. And on this night, in this terrible storm, Bethany had at last caught up to Lilith, and perhaps Isyra too, but she feared her friend of old was almost certainly the one she had just seen falling to her doom from her long-pursued quarry, as the vile demon made good its escape once more upon the sea-borne winds of Libeccio.

Bethany searched the short stretch of beach, hearing the roar of breakers crashing upon the outcroppings of rocks in the darkness nearby. The tide was bringing each successive wave closer to her, and soon the wash of foam was rising around her calves, and then swirling back down the steep slope of the beach to return to the angry sea. She was soon hard-pressed to maintain her balance, as the very sand beneath her feet was being sucked out from under her arches with each tiresome footstep. Her skin was covered in goosebumps and her search was looking futile.

In the darkness, she heard the roar of an incoming wave rolling in from the sea, which sounded ominously large, and she knew she had lingered too long upon this narrow strand of beach, which was no longer safe. She turned and struggled with her footing in the yielding sand to reach safety, but it was too late. Her body was upended by a wall of water that carried her towards the base of the cliff from which she had descended a few minutes earlier. Suddenly, she was tumbling under water, trying to discern which way was up, and as her body rolled through the wild surf, her head struck unyielding rock, and she remembered no more.

She awoke to daylight. Her body felt stiff and sore, and her head pounded, but she found to her surprise that she was in a room with stone walls and a warm fire burning in a soot-blackened hearth. She turned her head painfully into blood-matted hair, and through a narrow window cut in the ancient stone, she saw a dark tower looming up above her, silhouetted against a bright, clear sky. She guessed it was morning. How long she had been there she could only conjecture, but someone had obviously come to her rescue before the sea had claimed her, and she was grateful to her unknown benefactor, who must have borne her injured body for a milia passum up a steep ascent at the coast's edge. Wherever she was however, the trail was now cold, and her search was once again nascent.

She realized her wet clothing had been removed, and she was lying naked under a course, wool blanket. She eased herself out of bed and walked unsteadily upon stone flags to look out the window. From somewhere nearby, she heard a young girl singing, but could see no soul around the grounds within her view. From the higher vantage she could see the base of the tower, hugging the cliff-rocks, high above the sea, and far below, gentle waves were lapping a small beach, just visible beyond a jutting headland. She judged she was not far from where her adventure had climaxed in the storm at the edge of the sea, but in the calm of a clear morning, the world seemed very different.

A voice behind her startled her, and she turned suddenly to see a young girl had just entered quietly through the door so as not to disturb her had she still been sleeping. Her face brightened as she saw Bethany standing by the window.

"We feared you might never awaken!" she said, with a smile spreading across her young face. "May I wash your hair then, or is your injury still too painful?" Bethany judged the girl to be past puberty, but too small in stature to have carried her here from the beach. The girl gazed at her naked body with fascination as she approached, but Bethany's composure did not suggest modesty, so the girl continued to stare at her full, upright breasts.

"What is your name?" Bethany inquired.

"Constantina," replied the girl with a blush. Bethany told her she was very pretty, perceiving the girl felt awkward, having been named for an old, dead Emperor.

"Did my clothes survive my accident?" Bethany asked with a smile. The girl blushed again and opened a chest decorated with bronze straps at the foot of the bed.

"We dried them by the fire, and Fausta mended a tear. The leather pouch you carried was also dried, along with its contents."

"And this place..." began Bethany.

"My father's villa," Constantina answered. But Bethany could see by the elaborate furnishings of even this simple cottage that this was part of a latifundium, an estate of great wealth, and that Constantina, by her demeanor, was one of perhaps many daughters of a wealthy Roman nobleman, or perhaps a senator.

"How did you come to be lost in the storm?" the young girl asked. "How were you injured?"

"Where was I found?" Bethany queried.

"My sister found you lying upon our doorstep. You don't remember coming here?" Constantina looked at her in sympathetic puzzlement. Bethany again wondered who had pulled her from the sea and carried her here. She pondered if any of the slaves who worked the estate might have found her and carried her up from the sea, but knew they would surely have reported the discovery to their masters.

"Constantina, have any unusual occurrences transpired in the vicinity of late?" Bethany inquired.
The young girl seemed hesitant to answer, so Bethany knew she would need to gain the girl's confidence, and approach the question from another angle.

"Tina! Go help your sisters!" Bethany looked up at the woman who had just entered the room, and smiled at Constantina as she hurried out the doorway.

"You are a courtesan?" asked the woman tersely.

"My name is Bethany. I am not a courtesan. I am searching this province for my friend, who I fear has come to harm during her travels. Her name is Isyra." Bethany watched the woman's eyes carefully, and discerned a flicker of recognition.

"My name is Fausta. I serve milady and her daughters. I'm sure my mistress knows nothing of your friend. You may stay here until you are strong enough to travel, but I suggest you stay away from the house. If my master's friends from Rome see you, you may find you are a courtesan yet. And if your friend is as comely as you, you may also find her in the bed-chambers of the nobles!"

"Thank-you for the advice, and for mending my garments," Bethany said with courtesy.

"You had better get them on before any of the men see you like that!" Fausta added, nodding to Bethany's nude body, as she withdrew from the cottage.

In an earthenware basin, decorated with images of Etruscan legends from its pre-Roman greatness, Bethany carefully rinsed her hair of her dried blood, so as not to encourage her wound to seep any more, and toweled it dry enough not to soak through her thin blouse. She wrapped her pleated skirt around her, and tied it at the waist with her sash, and stepped out barefoot into the sunshine of the garden. The strong westerly gusts of the night-time storm had given way to gentler Mistral winds from the north. They cooled her damp hair while the bright sun warmed her face.

Constantina and her sisters were at the edge of the vineyards, but Bethany could not make out their task. At the garden gate, Fausta was directing a young slave-girl towards the cottage, and Bethany smiled as the pretty house-servant approached her with a bow.

"I have been sent to serve you, Milady," she said, with her eyes lowered to Bethany's feet. Bethany took her by the hands and straightened her servile stature so that she was looking into her eyes, which were beautiful.

"What shall I call you?" Bethany asked with kindness.

"Valeria, maam," said the girl, deferentially.

"Valeria," Bethany repeated. "Your name means 'strong and healthy'. Was your name chosen by your parents, or your masters, Valeria?"

"I was named for brave, Christian martyrs by that name, Milady," she said, with a hint of pride.

"You are Christian then?" asked Bethany.

"My parents raised me to be of their faith, Milady. They say it has now been declared the official religion of the Empire."

"I see," said Bethany, leading her by the hand through the garden towards a stone wall, which bordered the edge of the escarpment down to the sea.

"Have you a husband? Children?" Bethany asked.

"I am still... still a maiden," she answered bashfully, "but the master of the house has upon occasion given me to his guests for their entertainment. I would be happy to serve you in the same capacity, Milady," she offered willingly. Bethany smiled at her and cupped her chin softly. She turned to face the sea, and looked far out to the hazy horizon. Both of them looked out over the brilliant blue Tyrrhenian with wonder.

"Have you been to sea, Milady?" Valeria asked, feeling more at ease in her presence. Bethany recalled her many journeys stretching back over the millennia, across many lands and many seas.

"Yes," she said at last.

"I have always dreamed of it. It is so beautiful," Valeria sighed, and then remembered herself. "I'm sorry... Milady!" she added.

"Please, call me Bethany, sweet Valeria?" she asked.

"I would do anything to please you, ma'am... but my mistress would have me whipped if I should ever show such disrespect to my betters." Bethany looked into her eyes with gentleness and pulled her hands up to their breasts with hers.

"I myself was born into servitude, Valeria. You will never be less than my equal," assured Bethany. The slave-girl seemed puzzled by this, but was enamored of Bethany's kindness, which she was not accustomed to from those she was given to serve.

A bell rang, calling the girls in the garden to breakfast, and Constantina led her sisters through the garden gate, beckoning Bethany to join them. Valeria, who had already eaten with the servants, accompanied her, to stand in waiting while she broke her fast. Upon a marble trestle set on a trellised terrazzo outside the villa, seven girls shared fruits and bread, and a bright, joyful morning. Bethany could only draw a stark contrast with how her previous night was spent, and quietly enjoyed the mirth of these beautiful young girls, as she was introduced around the table by Constantina. She was the focus of their interest, and Bethany relayed some of the story of her travel down the coast of Italia, with no mention of vampires or demons.

After breakfast, Bethany and Valeria walked the western edge of the lands, over which the tower of the villa had survey. Bethany discreetly searched the sea coast below the cliffs for any sign of Isyra's body washed in to shore from the now-gentle sea. She knew that Isyra had been drawn here by the same information that she had discovered, as she had traveled around the rim of the Mare Hadriaticum - rumors of the predations of Lamashtu upon children, as they slept in their nurseries in homes scattered across towns and villages of Etruria. Her pattern was legend. The horror of her nocturnal visitations was known for centuries, from ancient Sumeria to Rome. Isyra had pursued her for centuries, and now Bethany and Melissa had joined the hunt. Time was running out for their friend, for Erishkigal would soon call Isyra to serve in Lilith's stead in the bleak underworld of Kur, if she could not bring the Goddess her betrayer.

Constantina had caught up to them before the afternoon had brought long shadows over the meadows, and the three of them were back near the villa. The tower loomed above them, and its foundations wrapped around the rocks of the escarpment plummeting down to the sea. A window was open in the tower above them, and Bethany believed she saw the shadowy outline of a figure standing by the window. In front of them, a marble staircase descended around the stonework of the foundation, until it joined a steep, back-switched path leading downward to the beach. Bethany started down the staircase, but the younger girls held back.

"You are going down to the sea?" Constantina asked with concern.

"Too strenuous a walk for you two? Going down is the easy part!" Bethany teased, "We can make it back before sunset." Both girls looked at each other and Bethany wondered what their reservations were.

"The stairs are forbidden?" she asked, "...or the beach is forbidden?"

"Milady, the path leads past the cliff-face, and the Grottos there are forbidden," Valeria explained. Bethany looked down the gently-turning staircase.

"Who builds a marble stairway to a forbidden place?" Bethany puzzled. "Well, you two stay here. I'll take the chance and run past the caves!"

The two girls looked at each other again, and resolutely stepped down to join Bethany on the third step, emboldened by her confidence.

"I wonder if you know of the trust you engender, Milady?" Valeria took Bethany's hand, and she smiled at them both, and took Tina's hand also. Together, they started down the forbidden stairs.

"Have either of you ever seen these caves?" Bethany asked.

"Tina wandered down here when she was very young, but Fausta came and shooed her back up to the house," Valeria answered.

"Did they scare you, Tina? These caves?" Bethany asked of the young girl.

"No, ma'am," replied Constantina. "Fausta did!"

"Fausta scares everybody!" Valeria offered. "She is a witch!"

"Witches are usually very wise women," Bethany replied. "You mean she is still pagan?"

"She does not favor the Christians," Valeria assured, "but the Christians hold her in equal contempt. They believe she is helping to hide the identities of those who still meet quietly to carry out the rites of the mystery cults, which still flourish secretly." Bethany felt she must get to know the children's nurse better. They had by now descended many flights of the staircase, and it was narrowing to hug the edge of the steep slope more closely. Soon, the polished marble treads gave way to native stone, which had been carved out of the very rock of the cliff-face.

"What are the legends surrounding these caves?" Bethany inquired, as the dark recesses opening into the solid rock yawned ahead of them on the right of the path below.

"They are not legends so much as they are prophesies, Milady," Valeria said in a hushed voice. "Fausta has told us that since she herself was young, it had been foretold that when the age of gods and demons drew to a close, these caves would be their last redoubt," Bethany stopped dead in her tracks as she looked above the mouth of one of the largest cave openings and saw an image carved into the stone which she never expected to see. Unmistakably, there was the head of a great lion looming over the rough opening.

Fearing the great caverns yawning beside them, the girls flew down the steps ahead of Bethany, and after she paused to gaze deep into the dark recesses in the cliff-face, to ponder once more the significance of the lion-head carved into the stone far above, she skipped down the stairs and joined her companions nearing the beach far below. The golden sands felt comfortingly warm in the afternoon sun, and the girls were overheated and glistening with sweat, after racing each other down the last flights of steps. Bethany strolled down the beach and stepped into the bubbling foam rising up over the sand from a spent wave, and hiked up her skirt around her waist, enjoying the refreshing water swirling around her feet.

Constantina playfully kicked water upon her friends as they all three danced through the edge of the sea. Valeria retreated up the beach, but Bethany and Tina were getting each other soaked, so Bethany finally pulled off her clothes altogether and splashed through the warm sea naked, wading into the deeper waters and diving into breakers as they cascaded onto the shore. Tina followed her example, and shed her dress too. They beckoned Valeria to join them, but she shook her head shyly from the shore.

"She's so afraid of anyone seeing her without her clothes," Tina laughed. "She'll never strip!" Valeria made a face, and plopped herself down in the sand, watching, while Bethany and Tina bathed and played with each other in the warm Tyrrhenian Sea. Tina was enamored of Bethany's beautiful body, and splashed water upon her full breasts, just to see her nipples pop out.

They were both soon worn out from wading against the undertow, and pushed each other down in the shallows to let the broken waves wash around their nude bodies, while they reclined on their elbows. Tina turned and gazed upon Bethany's glistening figure, as the sea splashed off her upturned breasts.

"You're very beautiful, Bethany. Do you have a lover?"

"I have had many!" Bethany smiled. "And yet there is one..." She said no more, but Tina knew from the wistful look in Bethany's eyes that she was sad to be apart from someone very special.

"Have you read the poetry of Sappho?" Constantina asked. "We have learned about her life on her Isle of Lesbos. I love poetry. Hers has moved me greatly."

"Your people come from Lydia, not so far away from Lesbos," Bethany observed, "centuries ago."

"So they say, Milady. On my mother's side, that may be true. My father is Roman. Many have come to this beautiful place. The Tyrrhenians only the latest. My sister's friend Claudius is a young poet of local renown, whom my father patrons. He writes about this place as it has been through the long ages. Feniglia, Cosanus... it has gone by many names. Claudius has named it the Silver Mount in his poems. My father has taken a liking to that name. It has been an inspiring place to have lived. But Lesbos... there I would like to have called home, living and learning as one of Sappho's students. I was born too late," she mused.

"Is it merely her poetry which inspires you, or her brave life?" Bethany asked.

"Centuries ago, Sappho taught women to love women," Constantina said, defining her thoughts. "That is where true passion lies - the deepest of intimacies. Have you ever engaged in the love Sappho espoused, Bethany?"

"I believe it was the very purpose for which I was created," Bethany reflected. Tina knew then that her friend's deepest love, though parted from her for the moment, was another woman. She smiled, and leaned over, cupping Bethany's breast with her palm, while planting her lips upon her new friend's. Constantina was suddenly drawn in by a magic she had never before felt. The experience of Bethany's brief kiss left her trembling and breathless, as if she had kissed Aphrodite herself.

"Where did you learn... to do that?" Tina gasped, and not expecting an answer, she kissed her again, soulfully and passionately, unable to withdraw. Bethany gently leaned her down and caressed the young girl with her eyes—warm and knowing eyes, into which Tina lost her heart. The desire she saw seemed enchanted, almost mythical, and even knowing she herself was but a surrogate, Tina drank the irresistible desire she saw in those magical eyes into her very soul, and surrendered everything she was to the pleasure of this consummate seductress. Bethany's lips glided lightly down her neck, and Tina thrust her young breasts upwards, begging for Bethany's touch. She caressed them with her moist lips, and took the young girl's nipples into her mouth, one by one, suckling her to ecstasy.

Bethany could feel the girl's heart pounding, and hear her ragged gasps, as she tried in her excitement to catch her breath. Tina felt lost in a dream of sexual abandon, inundated with sensations so profound, her corporeal body felt removed from the physical experience, to inhabit some Platonic ideal of carnal rapture. When her climaxes became so overwhelming that her nubile body felt it could no longer contain them, she became dimly aware that Bethany's tongue had explored her entire body, beyond her mind's reckoning of time, and had just parted from her spasming sex, with a finely-spun tendril of viscous dew pulling apart from between her enervated sex, and the wet lips of one who had made Aphrodite herself scream out in delight!

 Constantina's body trembled, slowly emerging from the dream, back to the moment. The tidal pool they shared together could be a pond of her own juices for all she knew, but Constantina was content beyond all her experience. Bethany looked up at Valeria a few cubits away, to see her glistening fingers between her thighs, and the setting sun reflected in her wet, enraptured eyes. She too had lost count of both their time there and her own climaxes.

When the three girls had composed themselves, the urgency of the coming twilight soon impressed itself into their lulled consciousnesses, and they gathered their clothes and dressed, as they walked towards the steps leading up from the beach. The sun peaked out one last moment from a gap in the layers of far-off clouds hugging the horizon, and Bethany looked up to see the lion's head far above them, bathed in a golden light, which suddenly changed in hue to green before it was extinguished, but the light had not come directly from the sun. Shadows cast above the great carving pointed away from the source of illumination below, and as they ran up the steps to beat the coming night, Bethany saw the source of the sun's reflection off the path ahead of them.

Upon the bare rocks below the mouths of the grottoes, lay a brilliant disk, shined to a mirror-like polish. Bethany jumped across a short gap between the stairway and the rocks, and stooped down to pick up the shiny object. It was a round disk, emblazoned with an image of an ancient deity astride two great lionesses. The runes which stood out in relief were Akkadian, and Bethany recognized it as an amulet to the Goddess Ishtar, the Akkadian name for Innana. This, she realized immediately, had fallen from the neck of Isyra!

(c) Bethany Frasier
December 1, 2011

                                                                         Chapter 2

Melissa strayed off the dusty road and found a shady place to rest under a grove of date palms, not far off her path. She had been walking for hours, and even in sandals, her toes were powdered with a crusty layer of Northern Egypt, which puffed out in a cloud when she stamped upon a flat, exposed rock, levered-out of the sand by a hidden root. She reclined against the woven husks of a leaning palm-trunk, and pulled her sandals from her aching feet, shaking out the desert dust. She reckoned she had enough water in the skin bladder slung around her shoulder to reach the next oasis along the road to Alexandria, even if she poured a little over her hot, tired feet, so after taking a swig to soothe her parched mouth, she rinsed the dust off her bare toes, and re-corked the skin-flask.

She idly entertained the urge to pour the entire flask of water over her long hair and down the cleavage of her ample breasts to refresh herself before the last stage of the journey, but she knew it was a foolish notion. Bethany might do such an impulsive thing, ever trusting to the Goddess to provide vital necessities along her path when most needed, but even a Priestess could not always expect such convenient grace in the desert, where one's very survival was always a test. The Providence of the Gods and Goddesses were at Their own divine choosing, and expecting predictability from the lofty pantheon was foolhardy.

Her friend and lover, now far away across the sea, often took such audacious chances, as she was doing even now, but she was no fool, Melissa noted to herself with a quiet smile. More than once, Bethany had survived danger while boldly trusting to luck, where none could be reasonably expected, but hers had always been better than Melissa's. Perhaps her lioness-heart made her so daring, and fortune truly did favor the bold, but Melissa had always trusted to wisdom, for that was her divine gift.

Indeed, wisdom was what she hoped lay at the end of her long journey. Her task in going to the great annex of the Library of Alexandria was to glean any obscure secrets from the archives of the Serapeum which might reveal a weakness in their quarry that they might exploit. It was little to hope for after the long hunt, but time was running out for their friend Isyra, whose millennia-old search for the vampyre Lilith might come to a fruitless end without their help. That was the task with which their Goddess had charged them—to find and capture Lilith and Lamashtu, her demon counterpart, so that Isyra might at last be free of the onerous bargain Erishkigal had bonded her to, three thousand years ago. Even for a Goddess, an aeon was a long time to be patient!

Melissa lifted the gauze of her long, cotton skirt and waved the hem up and down to help the afternoon sun dry her feet before she set out again. She might reach the great northern capital of Egypt by nightfall if she kept up her pace, for she was anxious for her long journey to come to an end. She had not long resumed her walk along the wide west road when she heard ahead a loud clamor. The nearer she drew to the great city, the more settlements she passed, built up along the natural route of commerce along the coast.

As she entered the outskirts of the town, the canvas awnings of a bazaar stretched out into the streets, shading the merchants and their wares from the harsh African sun. It was from the narrow alleyways stretching back from the merchants' stalls that the commotion arose, and as she walked into the little village, she saw the backs of a crowd of excited men in white keffiyeh, who were all waving their arms and shouting angrily at someone she could not yet make out.

As she stopped to see what was happening, a young girl wearing torn wrappings broke through the crowd of men, and pushed her way to the front of the bazaar, as the crowd turned to shout after her with undisguised hatred. She ran straight towards Melissa and collapsed at her feet, but the crowd began to close in around her, picking up stones to hurl at the young waif.

"Stop!" shouted Melissa, and such was her tone that the men were startled, and momentarily stopped short and heeded, until she could ask what offense the young girl had committed. The girl's older brother stepped through the crowd and spat on the ground at the girl's feet.

"She is shamed!" he exclaimed.

At first, Melissa thought the young man was going to grab the girl by the arm and drag her away, but he stopped short when he saw the look in Melissa's eyes.

"Always she comes for water without permission from her uncle. Always she allures the men when the bazaar is most full, and now she has tempted my companion to pull her shawl and reveal her ornament. It is sinful, and she is dirt. She flaunts her beauty and the men are helpless. Now, she has brought dishonor to herself and must be punished!" The young girl knelt closer to Melissa, and grabbed the hem of her skirt.

"This young one is not responsible for the lust in men's hearts! Her beauty is a gift from the Goddess. You defile that gift, taking it as an invitation!" Melissa asserted. "It is in your own hearts you must look for shame!"

"Baahhhhh!!" Her brother shouted. "So do you always protect one another. It is not your place to come unbidden and interfere! It is men who decide when a woman has sinned," and he lurched forward again threateningly.

Melissa stood fast and narrowed her eyes, blowing a fine breath through pursed lips. Before the young man could reach down and pull his sister away, he swatted his neck and cried out in pain, ducking and swatting the air, again and again, as he was stung over and over. The crowd of men fell back and gave way, as a swarm of angry insects lit on their exposed skin. They ducked, and beat at the empty air frantically, and soon the crowd fell apart, as the vanguard among their ranks broke away in all directions.

"Perhaps you should cover your exposed flesh better! It is such a temptation to my friends!" taunted Melissa, as the girl's brother struggled to his feet to get away.

"Take the bitch and begone!" He gasped. "Neither of you are welcome here!" He turned, and stumbled away with the fleeing crowd of men. Melissa laughed and lifted the girl up to face her.

"You are safe now. What is your name?" Melissa asked.

"Amunet," replied the girl, giving Melissa a hug.

"Do you wish to remain here, or will you accompany me to the city?" she asked the girl, who was looking around in wonder at the men fleeing into the alleys behind the bazaar. She dusted off her dress and threw the tatters of her shawl off her head and smiled at Melissa in gratitude.

"Let's go!" she replied.

"First, let's go to the well and draw water. My flask needs filling, and I don't think we need permission from the men any longer. Gather what you need for the journey from your house, and join me at the well."

The rest of the afternoon's journey was now more pleasant, as Melissa shared her long walk with a companion, and learned about her new friend. They laughed and chatted together until the sun settled low in the sky, and at last they reached the outskirts of Alexandria. The city had been a marvel of the world for seven centuries, and everywhere they looked, they saw magnificent architectural wonders built by the Ptolemy's. The great Library, now moved to the Temple of Serapis, had accommodations set aside for visiting scholars, who came from far and wide to study the ancient scrolls gathered in its archives for hundreds of years, since Ptolemy founded the vast institution centuries before.

It was a great seat of enlightenment, and its current curator, Hypatia, was a woman, so there was no thought of the narrow prejudices which still existed outside the stone halls of the Serapeum. All were welcome to share the accumulated knowledge of the known world. Melissa and Amunet were shown to their quarters by a custodian, and their immediate needs were provided for before they retired for the night after their long journey. Their first order of business was to visit the baths, to soak the dust of their journey from their skin.

The baths were huge, and fed by fountains which adorned the center of the pools. Tapestries brought by ships from around the Levant decorated the high-ceilinged chambers, and Amunet was amazed at the beauty of the place. She never dreamed such places existed in the world. Side pools were fed with fresh spring water, to wash away the sweat and grime of the road, before the girls then joined other women, already in the great central bath. They both disrobed, and Melissa understood why the men in her village considered Amunet an irresistible  temptation, even if they had never been privileged to see her as Melissa now did.

They relaxed in the refreshing waters and swam together, innocently admiring each others beauty, until the weariness of the road was soothed away. After their ablutions, they wrapped themselves in towels and returned to the wing which housed their apartments. There were two beds in their rooms, but Amunet stayed close to Melissa and desired to share a bed with her, just as she had done with her sisters and cousins back home. Amunet was still only a young girl of sixteen, but since the girls of her village were sequestered away from the men in their living quarters, they had learned to turn to one another for pleasure, and Amunet was no stranger to the love of other women. Indeed, Melissa had told her of Bethany, and Amunet had shared her stories of femme passion with the girls of her community, so the girls would not be lonely in their quarters during their stay.

Their first night together was not their first night of passion, but more of simple intimacy. Though Melissa's vigor was renewed, Amunet fell fast asleep in her arms, so tired was she from the adventures of her day. Melissa held her in her arms, nestling her bare breasts into her companion's back, and so safe and secure did the young girl feel, that she did not move or turn from that position all night. Melissa breathed in softly through her sweet-scented hair, and thoughts of Bethany filled her mind until she too fell into sleep, and her dreams were vivid, recalling the love she had shared with the lioness of Innana for centuries uncounted. She also dreamed of a young girl falling, falling out of a stormy, rain-swept night, and worried for the safety of her lover and sister-Priestess, but trusted in their Goddess to keep her safe until they were once again re-united.

The next morning, Melissa was eager to explore the endless tomes housed in the Serapeum. Although there was a system cataloging the contents of the vast collection, many of the more obscure scrolls which dealt with ancient mysticism were housed in chambers hidden away from the main library. These scrolls were considered arcane, and even dangerous to those uninitiated in the arts of magick and sorcery. She would have to gain the trust of the librarians to be granted access to them, but she had been here years before, and a few were left among the curators who remembered her and the ancient knowledge she herself had contributed to the library. And if they had aged, she seemed to defy the passage of time, which itself lent an aura of mystery and magick to her, now that she had returned.

The times had changed though. For centuries, the great library was sacrosanct, and the rulers of Alexandria supported the unfettered accumulation of knowledge, no matter what its content, but the rise of Christianity had brought with it political intrigue amongst the power-brokers of the capital city, and many of those who served the Pope in Rome, wielded an undue influence over the freedom of scholars to pursue their studies, especially when the church deemed them heretical. Hypatia herself was wary of the influence the Christians wielded to stifle the freedom of knowledge that had been the hallmark of the library since its inception. She was a woman of great stature and independence however, and Melissa was glad Hypatia held the forces of darkness at bay.

Amunet sometimes accompanied Melissa into the remote recesses of the Serapeum, trying her best to understand what was being searched for, but Melissa would only share what she deemed safe for the young girl to know. Melissa began to feel her researches were being watched by invisible eyes, and she did not feel comfortable drawing attention from parties she did not know whom they served. She decided it was safest not to put Amunet in any danger from curious observers, until she could ascertain their loyalties. She sensed the political climate outside the library was asserting itself among different factions working inside the library, and figuring out whom she could trust added an additional layer of difficulty to her research.

She had communicated her fears to Hypatia herself, but the answers she got only confirmed her suspicions that the renowned Curator of the Library was not altogether certain anymore who were her friends and who were her enemies. Although sometimes she worked far into the night, Melissa always enjoyed returning to Amunet in their chambers, for the young girl's innocence and exuberance always soothed her. There was a quality not unlike Bethany about her, which she found very comforting and familiar. Many nights, they shared their bodies in sapphic passion, and their mutual trust grew as weeks went by.

After a time, Melissa began to suspect that even if the information she sought existed somewhere among the endless shelves of scrolls, it was being guarded and kept from her. All the references to the demon Lamashtu she found contained similar entries, stories and accounts which she had known herself for centuries. Indeed, few who had survived an encounter with the dark demon knew as much as Bethany and Melissa did, who had battled her to a draw in the Underworld of Kur centuries ago. Still, she believed there was something, somewhere, transcribed by coevals of Lilith herself perhaps, which remained undiscovered.

One librarian had been more helpful than most in pointing her in the right direction, and she trusted her own judgement that the woman was not corrupted by the forces which sought to compromise the integrity of the library and its patrons. She had an affinity for Amunet as well, and took pleasure in showing her friend scrolls which might interest her, while Melissa delved alone in the dark recesses of the lower archives.

One day, Melissa tired of the darkness of the lower levels, lit only by oil-lamps and candles, so she sought the sun in solitude out on the sea-walls of the harbor of Alexandria, and wondered at the awesome grandeur of the Lighthouse guarding ships from the rocks out in the distance. It towered high above the tiny island of Pharos, upon which it was built centuries ago, and she wondered why she had never before thought to view this wonder of the world, so close at hand. It was the tallest structure in the world, and remained so for centuries to come.

While she sat on the quay watching ships slowly edge their way past the lighthouse into the harbor, she became conscious of the passage of time and the changes in empires she and Bethany had witnessed across the centuries. Sumer was gone. Akkad fallen. The gleaming cities of Assyria and Phrygia, leveled and lost to time. Even Gods and Goddesses were perceived differently by the civilizations which had risen and fallen in their time, but the Goddess herself, by whatever name she was revered, would guide them for the remainder of their days, even if She was forgotten by those who now sought to make Christianity the cult of the masses.

The changes she saw coming frightened her, for it heralded the loss of history, the loss of enlightenment. The Christians seemed to be afraid of knowledge, and increasingly strove to suppress it wherever they spread. She feared for the future of the library, and wondered who would remain to preserve wisdom if Cyril and his mob succeeded in destroying the multi-culturalism which for centuries had defined Alexandria as the center of enlightenment.

Melissa knew that many of the pagan believers in the ancient gods of Greece and Rome were being forced into hiding, to practice their beliefs in secrecy, fearful of the intolerance of the Christians. Mystery cults now kept the old pagan faiths alive, forced into hiding in fear for their lives. Who would preserve the old knowledge, if its adherents were driven into hiding, or killed by the mobs incited by the frenzy of religious fanaticism? Then she realized she couldn't be the only one to see the hand-writing on the wall. Secret societies must already be extent, hidden from the attention of the Christian fanatics.

Hypatia was the public face of tolerance, and must know already her political influence was drawing danger to her personally. Her paganism would one day be her undoing, if Cyril and his mad monks of the desert monasteries ever gained real power. That day was coming. Then she understood her next course. Melissa returned to the Library and sought out Sacmis, the old librarian who had given her the most help during her searches. She found her with Amunet, who was helping her file scrolls.

"Sacmis, who are the secret ones who watch my every move in the lower archives? Though they have never made themselves visible, I know their eyes are ever over my shoulder. What do they want, and for whom are they working? Why do they hide?"
 
Sacmis asked Amunet to carry a stack of scrolls up to the public reading room in the center of the Serapeum, and as she watched the girl disappear up the stairs, Sacmis bade Melissa to follow her. Together they wound their way through mazes of racks holding dusty tomes that few even knew existed, then into a dark catacomb-like vault that descended even to the lowest foundations of the ancient temple. Through a dark door, which creaked upon its rusty hinges, she pointed the way into a dim passageway, at the end of which lay another heavy door with an ornate lock.
 
"This is their lair," she whispered "Whoever they are, your answers will be found beyond that door. I am not allowed beyond this point. They come and go by day mostly, but you must be careful, for they are unpredictable. Learn their patterns if you can, and if you deem it safe, and only then, use this!" With that, she pulled an old brass key from a gap in the stone and showed it to her before returning it to its hiding place. Then she withdrew, leaving Melissa alone in the dark shadows.


                                                                         Chapter 3

A knock at her door disturbed Bethany from her reverie, and she quickly put the silver amulet she had been studying around her neck and hid it under her blouse next to her breast. Just as she had concealed the ancient talisman, the latch-string pulled upwards and her door opened a crack.

"Milady, may I come in?" came the hushed voice of Valeria. Bethany rose and invited the young servant-girl into her chamber, giving her a light hug after she had curtsied respectfully. In the candle-light, her long auburn hair glowed as radiantly as did her skin. Bethany guessed her to be only a few years older than Constantina, perhaps not yet twenty.

"Your feet must be tired from our long walk, Milady. Please allow me to bathe and rub them for you," she requested. Before Bethany could answer, she took the basin of water and poured it into a copper kettle, and hung it over an iron hook in the fireplace to warm.

"We will bathe and rub each others tired feet," Bethany insisted, "and enjoy each others company."

Valeria smiled at the prospect of being allowed to stay the evening, for she enjoyed the companionship of one who seemed so worldly, yet treated her as a sister. She had been given in service to many of her master's guests who had visited from the far reaches of the Empire, but always before, she had been treated only as a slave or concubine. Bethany pulled out a stool and bade her guest to sit while the water warmed, and tell her about her life in this household. The young girl blushed, and demurely began apologizing for her simple, uninteresting life, but Bethany took a brush from the table and turned her toward the fire-light. Lifting the young girl's billowing tresses from her shoulders, she began brushing the wind-blown tangles out of her long hair, and smoothed it with her hands while she asked if Valeria had enjoyed herself on the beach.

"Please forgive me for not swimming with you today, Milady," she began, "I am so awkward."

"You are not awkward in the least!" reassured Bethany. "I'm sorry if I caused you embarrassment."

"It's not that I am so modest, as Tina suggested. Its just..."   She faltered, and struggled for a way to explain. "I simply did not want Tina to see..."   She hesitated again.

"...the way her father has treated you," finished Bethany. With her hair away from her back, in Bethany's hands, the neckline of the slave-girl's tunic could not entirely conceal the healed scars of numerous lashings she had suffered in her young life. Bethany had seen much cruelty in the world she had so long walked, and yet the mind of one who could take a whip to so innocent a child as this was beyond her understanding. Valeria wished she could hide her shame simply by clenching her tunic close to her neck, but Bethany put her breasts against the girl's scarred back and wrapped her arms around her in a close and comforting embrace. She could feel Valeria's tenseness dissolve with a quiet sigh, as she leaned her head back against Bethany's.

Wisps of vapor were curling up from the copper pot over the fire, and Valeria kneeled to swing the kettle out from the fire and poured the heated water into the ornate porcelain basin. Bethany helped her set the basin on the floor between them, and then directed her to sit down across from her on the stool while she lifted her feet into the soothing water. She sat on the edge of the bed and put her feet on top of the pretty young girl's, and their feet played together in the warm water, taking turns immersing each other in the deep center of the bowl. They felt the warmth surging upwards as their toes danced, and they rubbed each others insteps.

"The friend you have been searching for..."   Valeria began shyly, "Is she... your lover?" Bethany recalled her last tender moments in the embrace of Isyra with her lover Melissa in the distant past.

"No, my dear, not in the way you mean. She was briefly, long ago," Bethany shared. "Her true lover she may yet find one day, if the Goddess wills it," Bethany ran her toes softly up Valeria's leg, and despite the warmth of her touch, the young slave-girl shivered. She remembered how she felt on the beach, watching Constantina being seduced and driven to ecstasy by the touch of this woman who now was touching her. Her eyes slowly traveled up Bethany's body, and a beam of firelight flickered brilliantly in reflection from something shiny suspended from a fine chain around her neck.

She realized Bethany was leaning towards her, her beautiful face closing the distance between them, and the mirror-polished amulet, spinning first in one direction, then the other, had her mesmerized. It softened into a twinkling blur, and was then extinguished as Bethany's lips met hers. Valeria closed her eyes and she was a slave no more, except to whatever desires were Bethany's, and whatever pleasures this mysterious seductress offered, she would succumb, not merely her body, as she had with others, but for the first time, her very soul.

Their lovemaking was as a dream. The fire seemed to build as their passion did, crackling and hissing upon the hearth, making their naked skin glow in pulsing copper-red, as they joined together upon the bed, struggling for complete closeness and intimacy. They shed their gowns and their heartbeats raced, as nothing save the shining amulet remained upon either of their nude bodies, and as it was pressed between their soft breasts, its metallic disk warmed with their body heat, leaving an impression of a Goddess astride the two great lionesses who bore her, into Valeria's glistening skin. How many hours passed before the fire smoldered in the banks of its ash and embers, neither were aware. Their fuel was as spent as the fire's.

The candles surrounding their bed had all burned down and gone out, but Bethany felt the warm mist of Valeria's quiet respiration on her neck, as their bodies intertwined in the near-darkness. Half-awake, Bethany heard a soft grinding of stone against stone, and lifted her head just in time to see a sliver of dim light disappear into the darkness as what she judged to be a large hearthstone was pulled back into place beside the dimly-lit fireplace. She eased herself out from under her sleeping lover, and crept silently to where the sound seemed to have come. Her eyes made out the dimmest of outlines of fading light around what seemed to be a loose stone among many large stones, which formed the wall into which the fireplace was set. Had someone slipped into the room while she and the young slave girl were consumed in passion, Bethany wondered... and for what purpose?

Bethany was wide awake now, and set her fingers probing around the mortar, pointing the stones to one side of the great hearth. Her nails dug into the cracks between two of the stones, and as she pulled, she felt the stone shift in place. She could not pull it away from its position, as she lacked the grip, so instead, she tried pushing and the stone moved inwards. She put on her gown and braced herself on the floor between the bed and the stone wall, pushing as hard as she could with her feet, and the stone slowly slid inwards.

She pushed her head through the opening and heard an echo of footsteps, and glimpsed a faint light receding far below, until the only sound left was a deep whisper of air murmuring through far-off passages in the deep darkness. She finished shoving the stone into the recess behind, until she could crawl through, and felt the floor fall away to the right, behind the wall, As she shimmied around through the narrow opening, she found that both headroom and legroom expanded into a stairway, which she crept down silently.

She could no longer see any light fading upon the walls of the old stone stairwell, but if she stopped and listened carefully, faint echoes of footsteps could still be heard in the darkness, descending downwards far below her. She tread carefully, fearing a misstep that might send her tumbling down into the total darkness, but her bare feet felt the way ahead nimbly, as she tried not to lose the echoing trail of footsteps still barely audible far below. She knew her own soft footfalls could not be heard, but still, whoever was below her on the endless staircase stopped occasionally, as if listening behind for pursuit. After descending many long minutes in total darkness, the spiral staircase straightened out for a stretch, and suddenly Bethany felt the wall fall away from her left hand, which she was using to orient herself by feel.

She stopped and groped around in the darkness to discern the reason the stonework had receded on only one side. Edging her toes carefully along the front of the step, she sidestepped along the stone tread, and at last her hand touched the wall again. She finally realized that she had reached a branch in the stairway, and another set of steps split away, climbing back up to her left in another direction. She was sure the last footsteps she had heard had passed below this point, so she continued downward carefully, until the branch narrowed and she could once again touch the left-hand wall as well as the right. She descended more quickly as the stairs twisted once again into a spiral, and continued downwards without change for more turns than she could keep track of.

Without warning, the stones beneath her feet no longer dropped away with each step, and she nearly lost her balance as the floor flattened out into a straight corridor, just as pitch-black as the stairs had been. A few yards beyond (as nearly as she could guess), the right-hand wall dropped back into the opening of a doorway, and her hand stretched out until she felt the course ridges of rough woodgrain under her fingertips. She stopped still and listened for a moment, with her ear close to the door, but nothing could be heard. She lingered there for a short time, realizing that she had not heard any sound of footsteps since she had passed the wye, where the stairway had branched apart, now far above her.

The darkness was oppressive, and the cessation of sound had deprived her of one more sense with which to orient herself, so doubt and indecision began to play mischievously on her mind. Should she give up and return up the stairs to the safety of her bower, or continue on? Was this only the first door of many, or should she try to open it and risk facing whatever unknown might lay on the other side? She felt around and located a cold iron ring near the center of the door, but did not risk moving it for fear of making a clanking sound. She felt that as long as she made no sound at all, she was still safe, for no one could know of her presence. She finally proceeded onward down the dark corridor until it turned sharply to the right, and shortly thereafter, the cut stone she had been accustomed to feeling beneath her feet changed to irregular rock, that undulated unevenly beneath her bare feet.

She found this very disconcerting, as it suggested she might have descended into a cave, where not even her sense of touch could be relied upon to keep her from immediate danger. But before she had taken more than a few footsteps forward, the path began to slope downwards again, and the walls on either side of her outstretched arms disappeared. For the first time, fear began to claw away at her confidence, as she crept slowly onward without any way of orienting herself. She could get desperately lost very quickly, and never find her way back! But before she had gone far enough to lose her sense of direction, she began to hear something again. She felt it at the same time. Wind. An icy draft was slowly moving through the space around her, and far below, she heard the deep, lonely moaning of cave-winds. The air seemed much damper too, and she began to shiver with the cold.

Curiosity drove her forward, even if she risked losing her way back. The path beneath her bare feet seemed to fall away on either side of her, and if she strayed too far to the left or right, she risked slipping downward and falling, perhaps into an unseen and endless abyss. The floor ahead rose a bit however, until after a couple dozen paces it seemed to crest, and then began descending again, steeper and steeper, until she began to fear she would lose her footing no matter which direction she turned. She almost turned back when a stone gave way beneath her feet and she lost her balance, tumbling forward in the darkness. She stretched her hands out, hoping to catch herself before she hurtled over a cliff in the darkness, and her fingers and palms were scraped raw as she rolled over and over on the jagged rock before she came to a rest on her side.

For many moments she was afraid to move, fearing she had broken a bone, until the pain began to subside and she could stretch her limbs, feeling for blood or injuries. 'Sure-footed as a lion, huh?' she thought to herself, shaking her head. All sense of direction was lost now, as she slowly crawled on her sore hands and knees, feeling her way along until the floor of the cave rose up into a wall. She pulled herself up and rested against it, wishing she had had enough sense to have turned back and returned up the stairs when she had the chance. She realized she had just survived a very dangerous precipice by a miracle, and going back that way might be suicide. She was afraid to go back and afraid to go on, but knew she might be trapped in darkness forever unless she found her way out.

As she sat in the pitch blackness, wondering uncomfortably what to do, she listened to the deep rustling of the cave-winds and detected a new sound, almost hidden by the soft whistling of the air. Somewhere ahead, the echoing sounds of the sea could now be definitely heard rolling through the great cavern. She struggled to her feet, and kept both hands on the wall from which she had just risen, walking it hand-over-hand, for fear of losing her balance again. A hundred cubits further she chanced, by hugging the rough rear wall of the cave as it descended in a gentle and irregular slope. There seemed to be no corresponding wall to her left and she guessed she must now be walking along the edge of a sheer cliff-face, which fell away into emptiness on the other side.

Bethany knew she must have descended into the inner recesses of the forbidden grottoes, hidden in the seaward side of the mount upon which the great house above was built. They were almost inaccessible from the outer cliff-face, past which she had climbed on the stairs from the beach the afternoon before. These secret stairs down which she had stolen in the darkness must be the only way to reach the caves without a climb, unless one had wings! She was dreadfully tired, and feared one more slip might be her end, so, buoyed by the hope that morning might bring some light into the caves from the tunnels leading out to the sea-cliffs, she huddled against the rock and closed her eyes, comforted by the far-off sound of the sea, breaking against the beach below the rocks.

She awoke still in darkness, engulfed in complete silence. Even the sounds of the sea were gone. She could not even believe she was awake, so utterly deprived of sight and sound was she. Only her pain was real, and it was beyond any she had felt when she had fallen asleep. She wondered what was wrong with her, and in the darkness, she tried to feel for her injuries, but she could barely move. She felt very warm and she could feel her skin drenched in sweat, but through the pain she began to feel something else: her own nails digging into the scratched and ragged skin of her palms, as she clenched her fist tightly around something hard as a diamond.

She opened her eyes and to her surprise there was light, flickering on the rocks around her. Ahead of her, wisps of flame were leaping upwards from the abyss beyond the ledge upon which she sat, and as her eyes adjusted to the changing light of the fire, she looked down to see what was clenched in her death-grip. Her eyes widened in utter surprise, and her body shook at the sight of the impossible thing she was holding. She raised it from her lap, turning it so the long cord attached to it fell away to the side, trailing onto the ledge in a coil beside her. The sparkling blue handle dazzled in the firelight, and she gasped in recognition as she held before her unbelieving eyes the Goddess Innana's most prized symbol of her divine power on earth: the lapis lazuli measuring rod and line, stolen by Lilith in Kur three thousand years ago!

Her mind reeled at what she was seeing, at what couldn't possibly be happening! Trembling now, she slowly looked down and found she was naked, with a lapis lazuli gemstone covering one nipple. She knew the other one was on Melissa's nipple, in the ancient Sumerian Underworld. She took a long, deep breath before confirming her dread suspicions. She widened her thighs and slowly looked down to her sex, where a black onyx slave-ring pierced her flesh from one side of her clitoral hood to the other.

Her blood-curdling scream pierced the silence of Kur, echoing up through the well of fire where she had just battled Lamashtu, the fell demon who had burned the slave-ring into Bethany's sex by dark magicks. She had saved her lover from the death-grip of the demon, and won back Innana's most precious periapt of power, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, for she was dying! She felt the life draining from her terrible wounds, and as she fell over upon the token of her Goddess, she thought of Melissa, and with her last breath, passed from the world of the living.

                                                                      

                                                                          Chapter 4

With the help of Sacmis, Amunet learned to assist in watching for the shadowy figures who occasionally came and went through the confusing maze of corridors leading down to the lowest vaults of the Serapeum, marking their habits as best she could. Melissa kept watch on the secret door from a vantage of darkness, and learned when the shadow-men entered and departed. She counted their numbers with difficulty, for not all of them frequented the chamber with any predictable pattern of regularity, and they moved with stealth at all times. After many days and nights of patient waiting, Melissa learned there were periods when no one appeared to occupy the chambers beyond the secret door, and determined how long it might be safe for her to enter, unobserved and undiscovered. The long watch had tried her patience, for she knew Bethany and Isyra were both in the last stages of their pursuit of the demon Lamashtu, and might be in mortal danger even now, without a clear plan how to battle the fell creature.

 The secrecy with which the shadow-men surrounded themselves convinced Melissa that there were undoubtedly other protections in place within their inner sanctum which could reveal her intrusion if she were caught off guard, so she spent the days before her intended entry planning a diversion with Amunet, which might allow her time to hide or escape. Without knowing who these people were, or whether they were possessed of supernatural abilities, her plans might go dangerously awry, without a contingency for any unforeseen eventuality. Amunet grew increasingly apprehensive as the time grew near when Melissa intended to enter their lair, for she had grown fearful of the dark, robed figures, whose movements she had helped track. She had grown to love Melissa, and worried for her safety, venturing into so mysterious a place. They obviously wielded power, but what Amunet was not yet fully aware, was that Melissa did too.

                                                                             o0o

Melissa spoke little more on the night of her sojourn into the sanctum. She spent the late afternoon in meditation, sharpening her senses and hoping for any insights she might obtain through communion with her Goddess, but little was forthcoming by way of inspiration or enlightenment. Melissa was uncertain her intentions were even in line with the Goddess' desires, for she didn't even know whose interests the shadow-men served, man, God or demon, but she trusted her instincts as a Priestess that the outcome would in the end be blessed. Amunet came to her side as the afternoon waned, and Melissa gave her instructions on what to do if she should be detained before she could return in the morning. The young girl held Melissa close, and they stayed in each others embrace until dusk, when they at last supped together and gathered up what they needed for the night ahead.

Many of the things Melissa carried with her at all times, but she gathered special crystals and amulets to protect her from magicks she feared might be guarding the lair of the shadow-men. They spent their last hours together sharing their experiences during the times they had been separated in the great city, for Melissa wanted Amunet to keep her mind sharp this night.

The library was very nearly deserted when they quietly descended the steps from their apartments into the lower archives of the Temple of Serapis. Even the large doors at the main entrance were shut this night, for Hypatia was away in another part of the city, meeting with groups of scholars and community leaders who might continue to fund the transcription of the scrolls and manuscripts which found their way to Alexandria by ship or caravan. Amunet stayed close to Melissa's side, taking short, quiet footsteps, emulating the stealth Melissa exhibited when she desired not to be heard.  In the distance, they heard the echo of a door swinging to, and guessed it was one of the custodians of the annex, retiring for the night. Melissa brought Amunet down to the place where she had watched the door of the secret sanctum, and there they waited, attuned to every whisper of a sound, until they were sure it was safe. They risked no torch or candle, until Melissa had made her entry, but once inside, she would need light to see, so she carried a small lamp to be ignited with sparking-stones given to her long ago by Miokos during the Age of Ilium.

Quietly, she slipped through the shadows until the great door was in front of her, and retrieved the key from the niche where Sacmis had indicated. The fact that the key was known by anyone outside the brotherhood of the shadow-men suggested that the barriers to the interior that really mattered could not be breached by a mere key and lock. In fact, the use of the key itself might trigger the very alarm she hoped to defeat. She struck a spark to the wick of her lamp, and the pale glow illuminated the surface of the door dimly. She attended to the keyhole closely. Nothing seemed remotely unusual about either it or the key, and she wondered if she might be over-thinking the problem. Second-guessing her caution might be her first mistake, she decided, so she continued her examination of the ancient door.

Holding the lamp next to the keyhole, she noted that there was no flicker of the steady flame. Not a breath of air was passing through the keyway from the other side, which aroused her suspicion. She slowly passed the lamp across the surface of the door in several directions from the keyhole until she noticed the flame suddenly dance and smoke. She withdrew the lamp and tried to repeat the phenomenon. Roughly the width of two hand-spans to the right of the keyhole, there was air passing through what appeared as a solid wooden surface. The visible keyhole was the trap—a ruse, to reveal an unauthorized intruder.  The real keyhole was concealed by illusion. Melissa carefully slid the key through an apparently solid surface, and it disappeared into the door. When she could push the key no further, she slowly turned it and heard a curious wisp of sound. The illusion was dispelled, and the real keyhole became visible as the false one disappeared. She had unlocked the door and confirmed that the sanctum was indeed protected by magick. But she had only defeated the first barrier.

Amunet breathed a sigh of relief as Melissa gave her the signal that she had successfully opened the outer door. She watched intently as the great door swung inwards and the flame that Melissa carried before her slowly disappeared into the dark recesses of the interior. She said a prayer to the Goddess for Melissa's safety, as the silhouette of her friend blended into the shadows ahead of her. The hidden lock was a device for catching the unwary. The shadow-men had arranged for Sacmis to become aware of the secret key precisely to lure an unwitting spy to fall into their snare. Melissa knew the second barrier would be more subtle, designed to stop whoever might have the cleverness to elude the first trap. The next one would undoubtedly require more than wit to overcome. It would more than likely require sorcery.

Melissa was conscious that her time to solve the puzzle might be limited before someone returned to discover her, so she wasted no time. From the pouch slung at her hip she withdrew two crystals, one dark and one clear, and held them together in her palm so they resonated with a harmonic vibration that she could feel tingling upon her skin. She stepped forward carefully, testing each footstep with a gentle pressure before committing her full weight. The floor seemed to be made of the same stone which marbled the rest of the lower galleries beneath the Serapeum.

Melissa suspected that since the great edifice had originally been consecrated as a temple long before it had been converted to a library, that the shadow-men had not been around when the foundations were laid. Any protections they had erected had to have been overlaid over the existing surfaces of the structure, so they were either illusions or magical barriers. She looked for any change in the architectural motifs upon the visible surfaces that differed from the rest of the library, but the passageway through which she walked appeared similar to the many others she had traversed during her exploration of the vast library.

She had proceeded far down the corridor before it occurred to her that no other hallway within the Serapeum extended so far in one direction without any turns. She spun around and walked back a few paces until her lamp revealed the outer doorway through which she had entered. It had taken her many minutes to proceed forward, but only a few seconds to return to her starting point—another illusion, she realized! She set her lamp on the floor and searched through her pouch until she withdrew pieces of azurite and moldavite. She touched the azurite to her forehead to dispel illusion and clear her vision. It would unlid her third-eye chakra, through which she could see to the truth of things. Hoping that the moldavite would reveal any supra-dimensional constructs erected to establish pathways through solid stone, she concluded that the shadow-men weren't able to alter space and time. They had limits—the limits of mere mortals, for only the gods could truly change reality.

What they possessed was knowledge of the arcane. They knew spells and enchantments to cloud the mind, or confuse already clouded minds. The knowledge gathered from the fringes of ancient empires had been brought to Alexandria for centuries. But every scroll and every tablet concerning demons and the occult found its way down here. These were the custodians of the ancient tomes which contained the answers she sought from aeons past.

This was a hidden library within a library, but with no ordinary librarians. These mysterious guardians of secret knowledge, unlike the librarians with whom she had worked during these many weeks in the galleries above, were jealous curators of ancient texts which were kept from public view, known to few, and protected behind walls of both stone and magic. Melissa understood only too well the cult of secrecy that sequestered hidden knowledge, for as Priestesses of the Eternal Goddess, she and Bethany led similar lives, which were forever cloaked in mystery, and the paths they walked were known to few but the gods.

Melissa extinguished the lamp on the floor and let total darkness enfold her. She knew she could trust neither her sight nor any tactile sensations she encountered in this place, for they would be tricks of the senses. She sat on the floor and closed her eyes to the darkness, focusing her thoughts until she entered a deep trance, cutting off all physical sensations, so that her mind was all that remained of the world. Her perception, freed from the distraction of her physical senses, re-tuned into her third-eye chakra, which she had stimulated with the vibrations of the azurite. The revealed world around her began to impress upon her mind through a boundless spectrum, unlimited by the narrow confines by which her physical senses received impressions of only her immediate surroundings. Distance, parallax… all the subjective perceptions which give the mind a one-sided view of reality disappeared from her consciousness, and left her with the universe as it existed, not as it was perceived.

With the clarity of her inner eye, she attuned to everything, near and far. Even time and space opened out into infinity, without her mind being pinned to a single location within either. She 'saw' everything, as her mind opened outwards to receive the universe, but she knew she risked becoming lost in it. She searched for herself in the vastness of the cosmos and tried to focus her attention upon details germane to her immediate task, but found the attraction to the totality of existence an almost irresistible allure. The most riveting facet she found was the all-surrounding presence of other minds. They pocketed reality, universes within the cosmos, each one mirroring the world outside themselves in different ways, distorted and incomplete.

Melissa imagined this was the way the gods perceived the universe, and wondered how long she could continue without succumbing to madness. She knew she might soon be overwhelmed by the immensity with which mere mortal minds were not prepared to cope, but she had lived for thousands of years. Her affinity with the Goddess would strengthen her endurance. It also led her to Bethany. Out of the endless sea of minds, Bethany's shone out to her like a beacon in the void. To her all-seeing 'eye' she appeared alone and in darkness, as both woman and lioness, but she was hurt, bleeding, and in danger. Somewhere across the Mediterranean, Bethany's spirit was flickering like a withering flame. She was teetering on a knife's edge between life and death, and the revelation of her lover's peril shocked Melissa out of her trance. 

Shaken and in doubt, Melissa attempted to focus on the dragonfly mantra, to call forth the spiritual totem and symbol of the link between their hearts. She hoped by establishing the link with Bethany that she could re-enforce her life-strength and pull her back from the precipice of whatever danger now threatened her, but the connection had always been elusive, coming unbidden, except by forces beyond their own control. She beseeched the Goddess for strength and focus.


                                                                    Chapter 5

Bethany awoke disoriented, surprised to have awakened at all. She was not even sure which century she was in. The last memory she could recall seemed to be her final moments of life, as she lay dying of terrible wounds suffered in her fierce battle with the demon Lamashtu in the fire pit before the sixth gate of Kur. But that was three thousand years ago! Then she remembered her long descent down endless stairs into the darkness of the grottoes beneath the old Roman estate on the cliffs above the Tyrrhennian Sea in Tuscany. She remembered Constantina, and the passionate night she had shared with the slave girl Valeria. That sweet memory was more real to her as she tried to gather her wits, but her current surroundings seemed indistinguishable from the rock-walled pit where she had fought the demon to a standstill in the ancient Sumerian underworld.

She peered over the edge of the rocky ledge upon which she sat, and saw a dim light reflected off the rough-hewn walls of the chasm far below her. The light was not the glow of hell-fire. It was weak and pale, but it was daylight. She looked down at her apparel and recognized the gown she had thrown on when she had left Valeria in her bed the night before. In the cavernous twilight, as she gazed off to her left, she saw a natural rock bridge spanning the chasm, illuminated dimly from below. In the wan light of day, she now realized how perilously close she came to stumbling off that narrow span in the total darkness of the previous night. Peering down into the depths of the chasm below, she knew a fall in the darkness would have undoubtedly ended her seemingly immortal life. She was grateful for what little light there was, for she would now be able to safely retrace her steps back up the treacherous rocky path she had followed down to this point, to rejoin the stairs up to the world above these forbidden grottoes.

She suspected that somewhere below her, deep within the inner recesses of the caverns behind the coastal cliffs, could be found the secret lair of the demon Lamashtu, where she took refuge during the day after her bloody nocturnal hunts over Tuscany. She also suspected that Isyra had already discovered its whereabouts, and had encountered the dark demon herself, but had either lost a battle with it, or failed to prevent its escape. If her vampyr friend from ancient Akkad had been the one she had seen falling from the winged creature as it climbed into the stormy clouds only a couple nights before, what hope would Bethany have of challenging the fell demon alone, without weapons or armor?

She stood exposed to the cold rock in her bare feet, with only a dressing gown for cover. Even assuming she could once again take the form of her inner lioness, how could she defeat the creature now, when she had failed to defeat it three thousand years before in the fire-pits of Kur? Turning to gaze once again upon the pinnacles and needles of stone rising up from the endless depths receding far below her, she turned, and with renewed strength, leaped across the narrow rock bridge and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel carved into the ancient rock.

As she climbed back up the dark stone stairs, she wondered where across the sea Melissa was, and whether she was close to finding a solution how to capture the demon alive, to return either it or Lilith to the justice of Erishkigal. She had found the old wooden door set into the left side of the tunnel, but it was locked when she tested it. Climbing the steep, spiral staircase grew more tiresome with each step. In the darkness, she trusted her footing, but when she finally reached the branch in the stairs she had passed the night before, she decided to take the right-hand path, which she guessed led up to the great house on the cliff's edge.

After countless turns, the spiraling steps abruptly straightened out, and still in darkness, soon leveled off into a straight corridor. Into the black corridor she proceeded slowly, listening for any sound. A soft light appeared up ahead, and as she cautiously closed the distance, she saw that it traced the pale outline of a door set into a niche on the right-hand side of the stone corridor.

After discovering the door handle in the darkness, she froze before she could attempt to open it, for she heard muffled voices engaged in a conversation from the room on the other side:

"Is she well enough to be moved?" asked a male voice.

"Her wounds are healing, but she is as cold as death!" answered a woman's voice.

"Have you discovered who or what she is?" inquired the first voice.

"No. She has revealed nothing, but Sienna and Pavia are taking turns at her bedside. If she speaks in her sleep, they will attend to her words."

"What of the other?" asked the male, in a voice nearly too soft for Bethany to hear.

"She cannot be found. A slave-girl was discovered in her bed asleep this morning. The girl says she knows nothing of our guest's whereabouts, but she was naked when we found her, so they appear to have spent some time together last night. If she learned anything, we will beat it out of her!"

"No, I will talk to her," and no more was spoken, but Bethany soon heard a door being closed inside the room.

She listened for any indication that the room was still occupied, but after many minutes, she decided to venture through the door, if only to escape the oppressive darkness by which she was feeling smothered. The light on the other side of the door nearly blinded her when she pushed it open, but as her eyes adjusted to the daylight streaming through an open window, she found herself in a chamber lined with shelves full of scrolls, impressed wax tablets and hand-bound tomes. Upon two large writing tables in the middle of the room were various transliterations left in carefully divided piles, held down by stone paperweights. Near a hearth was an ornate curule-chair covered in dyed woven fabric, with arms trimmed in leather. Upon the back of the chair was emblazoned a crest with a large Roman letter "A". She perused the parchments left on the table and recognized several different languages - Sanskrit, Greek, Egyptian, Cuneiform, and Gallic Latin.

Having adjusted to the daylight, she turned to look at the door through which she had entered, but saw no features distinguishing a doorway anywhere along the wall where it should have been. The outlines of the exit were invisible, concealed by the ornamentation of the coffering adorning the wall. She saw no way of returning by the way she entered, so she was trapped in the main house without a retreat. The doors to the library were an ornate affair, emblazoned with the same monogram as the chair. Bethany guessed that it stood for the family name of the nobleman who owned the estate.

As quietly as she could, Bethany pulled one of the great doors open a crack and peaked out into a marbled hallway lined with carved stone busts on elaborate pedestals, presumably representing the ancestry of the illustrious family that had founded the latifundium. But before she could venture out, she froze, as a hand on her shoulder restrained her exit.

"Please stay and talk," said a voice behind her, and she wheeled around to see a young man in fur-trimmed robe addressing her. "The secret door from which you entered is but one of several which lead to my sanctum. Forgive my stealth, but I needed to see what you would do, having found your way, rather surreptitiously, into the very heart of the Ahenobarbus Estate. You are quite the explorer."

"I apologize for my intrusion. Are you the master of this house?"

"No. I am a guest too—but a rather permanent one. I am Claudius Rutilius Namatianus, the master's poet and librarian, and you have found your way into my sanctum."

"Do your duties include the instruction of the master's daughters?" Bethany inquired.

"I understand they have taken you into their midst. Yes, I am their tutor. Constantina tells me you are well-traveled and learned beyond your years. You have already discovered some of the secrets beneath this villa, I see. Quite resourceful."

"Simple curiosity. My chambers were entered in the middle of the night from a secret passage, and I followed my uninvited 'guest' down the dark stairs I discovered below my quarters. Can you shed any light on my shadowy intruder?"

"That would be my friend Fausta. Please forgive her clumsy attempts to spy on you. My curiosity about you prompted her to clandestinely seek for clues to your true identity. You see, we have another mysterious guest residing with us, and your coming was too much of a co-incidence for the two of you not to be connected in some way. Constantina has told you of the prophesies bound up in this ancient place, which I have rechristened Mons Argentum in my poems. Your arrival here is no happenstance. You have come to a confluence, by some design beyond my reckoning.

"Any man who has walked among the powerful knows power when he is in its presence. Your demeanor is that of no servile woman, and though you may endeavor to seem in appearance a person of little import, you comport yourself otherwise." Claudius invited Bethany to sit, for he had a poet's curiosity and sensed he had found someone with answers to his many questions.

"If you deem my arrival of significant consequence, I implore you to help me. I've traveled far in search of a friend, and I fear she may have met with danger here," Bethany began in earnest.

"Tell me of this friend you seek, and you may enlist my aid. Please tell me everything you know, for this may be a moment in the story of this place when the prophesies tied to this mount are meant to come to pass."

"Her name is Isyra. Long ago, she made a bargain with a goddess to pursue and effect the return of Lilith to judgement for her crimes against the sister-Goddesses of Sumer. But Lilith is a dyad, a woman of dark means who has joined with a demon to become one entity, though she can appear in either form at will. As the demon Lamashtu, she is fierce and dreadfully powerful, but as Lilith, she is sinister beyond words, and treacherous in her schemes.

"Before Isyra bargained with Ereshkigal, she made a desperate bargain with Lilith to save her people from the doom of war against the overwhelming armies of Gilgamesh. She is bound to Lilith by blood, for they share the same curse. Isyra has been pursuing Lilith for a time beyond reckoning, and if she fails to return her prey to Ereshkigal, she will be called back to Kur to serve in her stead. Her time is running out, and I am bound by friendship with the help of one other to come to Isyra's side to carry out her quest."

"One figure in your incredible narrative is left out," Claudius noted. "I believe your friend may be here, but you were both carried to this house unconscious and weather-beaten by someone as yet unnamed. You spoke of another friend involved in this pursuit. Could this person be the mysterious figure who delivered you both to this estate, injured and senseless?"

"No, the other of whom I spoke is my lover Melissa, a priestess of great wisdom, and she has journeyed to the Library in Alexandria to search any secrets about our opponent which may assist in our quest. My unseen benefactor, and presumably Isyra's as well, remains a mystery. You suggest our friend Isyra has been brought here as well. May I please be taken to her so I may be sure it is really her?"

"Fausta and Constantina's sisters are tending to her wounds. She is being sequestered until we could determine her identity and intentions. The caverns below this mount have long held their mysteries well guarded, but the Ahenobarbas have delved many passages into their depths in anticipation of the day when the prophesies may be revealed. I fear your demon-prey has taken up its abode in the inner reaches of these caverns, and your arrival is the harbinger of the fulfillment of prophesy. We shall soon see."

Claudius lit a lamp and led Bethany back through the hidden door in the library wall from which she had entered. They proceeded down the dark stairway, past the fork, and downward to the recessed doorway Bethany had discovered the night before. He withdrew a large key and unlocked the rough wooden door. Inside, Bethany saw a pale figure sleeping on a bed, watched over by Pavia, whom she had met at breakfast the day before. "Isyra!" Bethany exclaimed. At the sound of Bethany's voice, Isyra awakened.

   
                                                                        Chapter 6

"You have seen through my eyes, Melissa. You have stretched your mind beyond your body to perceive past the scope of your vision. To be a goddess is to know what lies beyond the boundaries of mortal perception. But you enter upon these powers at great peril, for the human mind is unprepared for such knowledge—such hideous truth. As my Priestesses, you and Ariel have been given abilities beyond the ken of mere mortals, yet you are not fully endowed with the powers of the Olympians. So, beware. You have stretched your vision beyond its limits to see the mortal peril of your lover, but fear not for her life, for I have taken her into my care. Tax yourself no further this night and I shall offer you respite and comfort in my manner." With that, the Goddess withdrew, leaving Melissa alone and exhausted in the darkness.

She awakened to the sounds of footsteps approaching beyond the outer door. Her plan had been to enter the sanctum, garner what secrets lay hidden here, and withdraw in stealth leaving no trace of her presence. To her chagrin, she realized she had slept through the night, and was about to be discovered by the Shadow Men as they returned to their redoubt. Her first instinct was to hide, but upon reflection, she considered that the Goddess may have put her to sleep in this secret keep for reasons beyond the recovery of her senses.  She resolved to make a show of strength, whatever came through the door. The darkness that had surrounded her for hours yielded to a wan light as a hand holding an oil lamp pushed through the door opening into the crypt from outside.

"Melissa, run!" Amunet screamed from outside. The door slammed shut, silencing her young friend.

Melissa stood before the man in the shadows and studied him closely. He had the look of a monk, but his robes were not of any order with which she was familiar. She was inclined not to trust him but for the fact she was brought to him by a trusted friend. Sacmis she felt was one of the few amongst the Librarians of the Serapeum in whom she could share her confidences, and while this old mystic was obviously connected to those whom she suspected had interfered with her research, he might also be the one who knew the answers she had journeyed so far to learn. The old man studied her just as closely and in his eyes she saw... wisdom. She had not felt so transparent since the day long ago when she had withstood the scrutiny of the Oracle of Kyprios upon the wooded slopes of Mt. Troodos centuries before.  

"Who are you?" the hooded figure demanded.

"Who are you, and why have you been spying on me?" Melissa countered defiantly. The darkling figure laid aside his lamp and crossed his arms.

"My name is unimportant. Only our mission is. You have come a long way. What exactly do you seek?" he inquired. 

"Only knowledge," Melissa answered honestly.  

"And to what end shall you use the knowledge you seek?" the robed man pressed. 

"Hypatia has given me free rein to study the arcane lore here in the lower Serapeum. The tomes here are free to everyone to whom Hypatia has granted leave. Why do you interfere, and what is your interest in my research?" she demanded. 

"Keen, I would say! For you seem to be looking for things which I and my brethren have kept hidden for thousands of years." 

"You are monks?" she began, and after a thoughtful pause, "...but, thousands of years? The Library itself is not that old, by centuries!" 

"You might think of us as librarians, who are antecedent to the Library itself. Throughout our tenure we have gathered knowledge when the world around us was darkened by ignorance. When the Ptolemy's built this temple of enlightenment, ours were the first scrolls brought into the great collection of knowledge here, and though we are a secret order, it was deemed this might be a sanctuary where we could gather still more knowledge for our purposes."  

"But what has that to do with me?" Melissa inquired. "Why have you been watching me?" 

"Because we are watchers!" he said simply. "We are a council whose task it is to watch over the ones who protect the world. We have worked in secret for thousands of years, but you have stumbled now into the very heart of our lair, and we have discovered you are searching for the very thing we ourselves seek to find: a way to slay a demon vampire—the first Vampyre, Lilith!" 

Melissa was stunned. For thousands of years Lilith had walked the earth, gathering powers to herself by means arcane and sinister. She had befriended Goddesses and Demons alike, seducing them, bargaining for power to avenge herself of the wrongs she perceived had been done to her since her first days in the Garden. Her soul had turned to darkness and she had betrayed even She whom Bethany and Melissa served as Priestesses throughout their time. But always they thought they had been the only eyes which sought her out, for their friend Isyra's fate was bound up with that of the Dark Lady. Now there were others joined in the hunt, and Melissa hoped it was a good omen, but for one misgiving: they were charged with bringing Lilith back to Erishkigal alive, while these Watchers sought her death. 

"What do you propose? An alliance?" inquired Melissa. She felt ill at ease falling in with any earthly faction, for she and Bethany served the Goddess alone, and guarded her interests in secrecy, and without compromise. 

"We have yet to figure out exactly who you are, and why you also pursue our quarry," said the old man. "Things Sacmis has told us about you seem impossible on the face of it, unless you are a demon very different from our experience, possessed of powers as magickal as our slayer. Sacmis, however, is one whose instincts we have learned to trust, and she trusts you." 

"I have the same regard for Sacmis as do you," admitted Melissa. "She has helped me separate the wheat from the chaff, and has saved me much wasted effort in my searches. I will continue to rely upon her instincts where you are concerned, if only out of necessity. We both have our secrets, you and I, but perhaps if we merely share some of what we know about the Dark Lady, we can be of benefit to one another." 

"Then please follow me," said the cloaked figure, as he rose and touched the wall behind him. The heavy stone creaked inwards revealing an inner chamber beyond the small, dark room they now occupied. Melissa watched as he beckoned her to follow, but the room beyond was lighter and more opulent, and Melissa wondered at the secrecy she had already been entrusted to by being invited into what was obviously their inner sanctum. As she proceeded through the doorway, a narrow passageway opened up to reveal a large, well-lit chamber lined with marble shelves upon which were lined thousands of scrolls, a veritable library within a library. 

"What do you know about Lilith, and why do you search for information on such matters as demons?" the librarian asked. Melissa knew the time for secrecy was past if she was to get the information she needed.

"My mission is one of devotion. I cannot tell you who I am, but I serve at the pleasure of one who guards the world in greater capacity than even your fellowship, and she has given my companion and myself the abilities to act on her behalf to represent the will of the Olympians in this world." Melissa confessed.

"Haughty aspirations, but the fact that you have penetrated our veil of secrecy indicates you do possess abilities beyond those of most mortals, and I suspect, having found your way past our defenses, mortality is not a thing you fear. Your appearance belies your true nature, I suspect. Now, what is your business with the Dark Lady?"

"We have known Lillith for many centuries. My companion was transmogrified by Innana to serve as her  lover and mate when Lillith was spurned in the Garden by the first man, but Lillithu turned to darkness instead and was cast into the void, where she acquired her fell powers and demonic allies. She paired herself with the demon Lamashtu and they share spirits as a dyad, with the ability to transform from one to the other, and through that incarnation she has wrought much suffering in the world for aeons. She is thus nearly unstoppable, for Lamashtu is a demon of immense power. When we have confronted her in the past, Lilith has fought us as the demon with whom she shares identity and we have lost the contest at great cost."

"This companion you speak of, surely not the frail girl we found outside of our sanctum waiting for you?" the librarian surmised.

"No. She is but a recent friend I've taken into my care. My companion has journeyed alone beyond the Levant, seeking out our quarry. But I must find a way to help her when she finally confronts Lamashtu or she may once again perish in the battle. We have been charged with bringing Lilith back to Kur, to the underworld of Ereshkigal to face justice for her crimes. If we fail, another of our friends, an innocent victim of Lilith's curse, may be forced to serve in her stead."

"You have been to Kur?" the librarian answered in astonishment.

"The underworld was where my companion and I last fought Lamashtu to a standstill. Without the intervention of the Gods, she would have perished from her injuries, having saved my life for a second time."

"If you were truly in Kur, you must be demons yourselves, for no human soul can escape there once entered."

"Lord Enki had the foresight to instill the spirits of two Galla demons within our bodies, which we traded to Ereshkigal for our escape to regain the world above once again. But our friend Isyra, who shares Lilith's demon blood was sent back with us to capture Lilith and return her to Kur. She has been pursuing the Dark Lady for many centuries, but her time is running out, and we have been enlisted to join the quest. We are now very close to the end of the chase, and need but an edge we lacked in our last encounter."

"And you come to us for that edge, if such knowledge even exists. You have filled in many gaps in our records of the history of this creature, and your knowledge of events from the annals of the ancients reveals the truth of your claims. Our order may not have the guidance of the gods, as do you and your companions, but I see that we may have some resource that may help you, buried in our ancient scrolls. We will assist you, but we must know more about your companion who is the one that must face the enemy. What power does she wield that enabled her to battle the demon to a standstill?"

Melissa's instincts towards secrecy had been honed for millennia. She and Bethany had walked the world through the many ages of mankind serving the purposes of the Goddess with hidden identities and clandestine motives. They moved events and influenced history in subtle and unnoticeable ways, representing the powers of the Great Mother without revealing the nature of Her interventions through the obscurity of their actions. She now faced a moment when she would be forced to compromise her instincts to save her friend and lover, and enable her to complete their task. But even Melissa did not know everything about her companion.

 "In our time together I have only seen her in the form the goddess gave her—in appearance, not unlike myself. She conceals her true nature well, and it is revealed only in the direst of need, and not always at her own bidding. Always in the presence of a supernatural power is it manifested, a god or a demon. I believe she cannot bring it forth otherwise, as if she must tap into their unearthly power to become the feral beast from which she originated. I have not seen her change. But I have heard it. I was chained by the demon Pazuzi with my back bared to its stinging whip. She could not abide my suffering, and leaped upon the demon's back. The sound was terrifying as her voice became a deafening roar and her fingers became claws as sharp as knives. Then she changed back and freed me from my bonds before I could turn to see the transformation."

"You have not told me her name," the librarian probed. Melissa once more hesitated, fearing she had already revealed too much, but her need was too pressing.

"In her human form she is Bethany. But her true name is Ariel, lioness of the Goddess. Innana transformed her from one of the great twin beasts She rode astride. And only in that form was she able to contend with Lamashtu at the seventh gate of Kur."

 "An intriguing tale," said the robed figure, "One that may shed light on your dilemma. I must confer with my brethren and confirm what I suspect when I research the relevant records. Go to your young friend awaiting you outside our chambers and return upon this day's sunset. We may have an answer for you then."

 

                                                                        Chapter 7
 

At the setting sun, Melissa made her way back into the lower vaults of the Serapeum to learn the counsels of the Shadow Men. They were now the only outlet for her mission’s success at her long journeys end. The door to the sanctum was open, and no magic would she require to gain entry this time. Amunet had once more accompanied her down the stairs into the heart of the library, but remained outside the door awaiting her return. This time, Melissa was met by nine robed figures seated across from her at a long table, but only one rose to address her, the same man with whom she had spoken that morning. 

“The forthcoming battle under the Argentum Mons has been long foretold. You have a stake in the outcome, but so do many, not all of whom even understand the true nature of the players in the struggle. Perhaps not even you. I realize you fear for the life of your companion because you interpret her last battle with Lamashtu as a loss. I can only tell you that the next battle may have a much different outcome.” 

“You speak in riddles,” said Melissa. “Why can you not make plain what you appear to have discovered?” 

“We have delved into the history of encounters with demons, both major and minor. The ones with the most relevance to your dilemma are those with the ability to traverse the barriers between the underworld and the world above. Since the appearance of Adam, mankind has flourished upon the circles of the world and demons have retreated to the underworld where they are bound by its inherent barriers. Some few, however, are powerful enough to emerge into our world and return across the barrier at will. Lamashtu is certainly one of those few.  

“But why is there hope that the next encounter with Lamashtu in our world will be any more successful than the last battle in the underworld?” asked Melissa. 

“That battle you counted as a loss. But it may have been only a stalemate.  What piqued our interest was not your account of the battle with Lamashtu, but your tale of your previous encounter with Pazuzu.  Pazuzu is a powerful demon, perhaps greater even than Lamashtu. And yet your friend defeated him without a scratch. Did it not seem odd to you how easily the demon succumbed? We will tell you now the missing piece of the puzzle you came to find. You seek a power to defeat Lamashtu, but that power is Pazuzu. They are natural enemies and have always been. Pazuzu is the only demon with the might to match its nemesis.” 

“I do not understand,” said Melissa. “Pazuzu is dead. I saw the corpse of his hideous body.” 

“Pazuzu is a demon spirit, not a mortal. How could your friend have killed him? When you relayed to us your encounter with Pazuzu, we realized there was more to the outcome than you perceived. We believe Pazuzu deceived you, in all probability with a purpose very much connected with your future destiny. He saw an opportunity in your meeting at the third gate of Kur, and attacked you with the specific intention of calling forth the lioness to defend you.” 

“How would being strangled by an incensed lioness avail him?” asked Melissa, mystified by this enigmatic proposition. 

“Demons are complex entities. Not all are pure evil like Lamashtu. Pazuzu is the spirit of the southwest wind, and not all winds blow ill. Pazuzu has occasionally benefitted mankind by defending them against other more sinister demons, and by defeating Lamashtu, he would do so again. But he may have found a clever way to come at Lamashtu with the element of surprise by concealing himself inside another less powerful entity. When he encountered the two of you, he recognized such an opportunity in your friend and he drew forth her hidden beast. He chose to instigate a battle with the lioness with the intent of sacrificing his physical form and transferring his demonic spirit into the lioness without her realizing it. There he has lain dormant, awaiting Ariel’s inevitable clash with Lamashtu, when he will manifest once again to redouble her ferocity.” 

"You’re saying Bethany has carried the spirit of Pazuzu inside her for nearly three millennia without sensing his presence?” Melissa gasped incredulously. 

“Time means nothing to an immortal demon. It is clear to us that Ariel survived her first battle with Lamashtu only through the presence of Pazuzu’s spirit inside her. Her death would otherwise have been irredeemable. Why Pazuzu chose not to reveal himself to his enemy at that time is not clear to us, unless there is some hidden purpose only he is aware of. The true battle is apparently to be fought in this world, not Kur. Therein lies the prophesy of Argentum Mons, and it is there in Tuscany that all the entities involved in the prophesy have now arrived. The final battle is imminent.”  

“You have said that demonic spirits cannot die. If Lamashtu cannot be killed, what outcome from this confrontation will serve either of our purposes?” Melissa posed. 

“We have discussed this at length, and there are several possible outcomes suggested. The caverns beneath the Silver Mount may be a hell-mouth. Many demonic battles take place on or near the portals to the underworld, and this may be why the powers-that-be have decreed this location to be the confluence where this struggle will occur. Your goal is to return Lilith to Kur. If defeated, Lamashtu and Lilith may once again be separated into two physical entities. Your friend will return Lilith to face Ereshkigal, and Pazuzu will drive Lamashtu back to the underworld as well, where she will no longer pose a threat to the children of womankind upon whom she has long preyed.” 

“You assume much,” said Melissa. “Surely, there are other outcomes less favorable. How do we know Lamashtu won’t recognize her ancient enemy and retreat from Argentum Mons once more without engaging in battle?” 

“There are two more powerful players in this drama who may also serve a purpose. One is the vampire Isyra, in whose cause you claim to have enlisted. The other was sent by us before we knew all the facts surrounding Isyra’s existence. She is a mystic, a demon-slayer who was sent to kill the vampire. She has been tracking Isyra since she left the Levant, but we have no way to recall her, or alter her mission. However, one of our order resides at Argentum Mons, where he serves as advisor to the Roman lord who presides over the estate. He too may play a role if fortune brings your friends into his counsels. Otherwise, we cannot say what may happen other than what the Fates decree.” 

Melissa was stunned by these revelations. She wondered if her Goddess knew that Bethany had been used as an unwitting vessel by a powerful demon through all the long aeons they had served Her, or was this all part of a greater plan of which even She was unaware. The enormity of the implications made her mind reel, and yet she and Bethany had always been servants of a greater good, through designs that only the gods themselves knew. As Priestesses, they had been elevated to tasks which as mere mortals they could never truly conceive, but perhaps this convoluted plan was the only method by which the task Ereshkigal had set to them could possibly succeed. The nine robed figures stared at her enigmatically as she digested the information they had imparted. 

She pondered her next course, for if the knowledge she had gained could somehow be imparted to her far-off lover, would it be an advantage to her or a disadvantage? If Pazuzu was to attack Lamashtu in surprise, then Bethany had best not know the demon was concealed within her. But would Bethany summon the courage to face Lamashtu without knowing she had a hidden advantage? Lamashtu had all but extinguished her life during their last encounter, and even after three thousand years, that terror lingered in her lover’s memory. In gravest need, Melissa believed she could convey to Bethany the secret she had learned using their most intimate connection, the third-eye chakra her Goddess had warned her to use only at her peril. The leader of the nine broke the silence. 

“We have entrusted you with this knowledge and brought you into our confidence having only recently discovered you are the beloved of a personage whom we hold in the highest esteem. Had we not learned this, our trust would not have been so readily forthcoming.” 

“To whom are you referring?” asked Melissa. 

“One whose poems have been entrusted to us to protect through the ages. She wrote about you and Ariel during your time with her upon Lesbos, centuries ago.” 

“Sappho!” Melissa exclaimed. “You have guardianship of her work?” 

“Our Aeolian scholars have been collecting and preserving her writings for more than two centuries. We have surmised from her accounts that you both were her lovers for a time, were you not? In her letters, she described you with such passion and devotion, as the inspiration for her verse and her way of life.” 

Melissa looked away wistfully, recalling a long ago memory. “We were blown by a southwest wind to the shore near Eresos where we met a young girl, noble-born, waiting by the coast with her younger brother. They both looked to the sea for the return of their elder brother, a wine trader who had journeyed to Egypt. They welcomed us as we had come from Egypt and sought us out for news from the southern sea. We were told of the recent loss of their father, how distraught with grief their mother Cleis had become since his death. We offered consolation and the blessings of our Goddess Aphrodite. Her younger brother Larichos fell entranced by Bethany, and we were welcomed into their family.” 

“You present a rare opportunity for us to learn from your perspective if you are willing. Your arrival comes at a critical moment. There are forces gathering outside these hallowed walls which would destroy everything Hypatia has accomplished here. We fear for her safety, and wish to complete our work and remove our collection of scrolls before the Christian mobs desecrate this temple of knowledge. With your help, we may accomplish our task before it is too late. Hypatia even now negotiates with the leaders of Alexandria for their political support, but Cyril and his mad monks have cast a shadow on her pristine reputation, and we fear for her life.” 

“That shadow portends a coming age of darkness I fear," said Melissa. "This repository of ancient knowledge is sacrosanct. I would not see it destroyed. I will offer what I can to complete your codex of Sappho’s work if you will agree to conceal all her references to Bethany and myself. The influences we have rendered during our travels cannot be part of history’s written record. Upon this our Goddess would insist.” With that, Melissa and Amunet repaired to their apartments above in the great galleries of the Serapeum.