Kingdom of Stone

Welcome to this, the fourth instalment of Series Saturday. Which means I have just 4 weeks to go until I’m racing for charity, eek!

This week’s story is inspired by the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. It’s one of the Wonders I didn’t know much about but it was fascinating to research and I hope you enjoy my tale inspired by it. 

As always, this is a story for charity so if you would like to donate please visit the link in the sidebar >>>

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Jesse Lyman stared at the enormous stone structure in front of him. He turned and gawped at the wasteland that seemed to stretch endlessly out behind him. It was still and silent as death. Cold as it, too.

It shouldn’t be like this.

Jesse couldn’t seem to recall where he had been moments before or how he got here. Nor could he remember a thing about his person or history – it would be another five minutes before he even remembered he was called Jesse Lyman.

Yet he knew that he knew this place. And he knew that something wasn’t right.

Memories began to trickle into his mind, like condensation dripping down the side of a cold glass of beer.

Jesse remembered his name. He remembered sailing, all the way from America, his homeland, to England. And while he couldn’t yet recall what he studied, he knew he was a scholar. As clearly as he now knew that this building before him had been of importance to his work.

Indeed, yes, his teacher had brought him here, to Greece, just to study it.

Jesse supposed that he ought to go in.

Fifty feet of white marble towered before him, straight as a razor. A burning in Jesse’s gut told him that something was amiss; like trees stripped of their leaves. Not from the natural shed of autumn, rather, as if someone had forcibly shorn the poor things to their bare trunks.

He approached a set of wide, marble steps that led up to the building, disappearing inside the walls about halfway up. Jesse’s foot was on the first step when a prickling sensation on the nape of his neck made him whip his head around.

His heart thundered in his chest but nobody was there.

Fear hit him like a punch to the gut. Somebody should be around, he realised. Memories flooded his mind: a busy scene of scholars digging, talking, sketching, pitching tents and wiping their brows in the searing Grecian sun…

A bead of cold sweat broke on Jesse’s forehead. The cold, the deserted wasteland… something horrible had happened.

But perhaps… perhaps everyone was inside?

Jesse steeled himself and started climbing the steps. They continued up through a tunnel cut into the rock and as he approached he smelled something rotten. A few more steps and he heard a low buzzing permeating the still air. Flies. Something in that tunnel was dead.

Jesse prayed that something wasn’t human.

A few more steps and his prayer was answered. The stairs in the tunnel were littered with the rotten, fly-infested corpses of animals. Blood stained the white marble, oozing from slit throats of deer, cattle, goats and dogs.

Jesse gagged and made the sign of the cross over his chest. The poor beasts had been sacrificed. The young American pondered turning back but his interest had been piqued and he had to see what was further inside the building: scholarly curiosity, he supposed.

He carefully picked his way up the stairs. It was slow going, as he had to take care not to slip on the blood-slickened marble or trod on the soft, decomposing flesh of the animals, but he made it to the top, emerging from the tunnel and gulping down air like a man half drowned. He hadn’t realised he had been holding his breath.

The stairs emerged onto a platform. A faint breeze blew through columns that bordered it and held up a roof in the same marble as the base structure. Jesse made his way to the edge of the platform and looked out across the wasteland of dry earth and brown shrubs.

Again, he had the sensation that what he was seeing was not right. He thought that he ought to be able to see the ocean from here, but the horizon was an endless stretch of dirt and rock and… and there was too much space between the columns.

Jesse didn’t know where the thought had come from but he knew it was right. Something should have been standing between the columns. Standing. Watching…

The memory of a man’s face carved in stone came a second too late.

Jesse felt something hard slam into his shoulders. He thought his knees would buckle but something caught him under his arms and hoisted him into the air. It spun him around to face the wide, flat terrace. 

It wasn’t empty anymore. 

Jesse caught a glimpse of an assembly of grey people before being thrown to the ground, knees and elbows slamming painfully into the marble. 

He yelped and scrambled to his feet, turning to see what had thrown him.

She was a goddess carved out of stone, powerfully muscular and bedecked in armour and weaponry that made Jesse cower backwards. 

Images flashed in his mind. Carvings in marble… an epic battle… Greeks and Amazonians. 

It was what had been missing from the smooth expanse of marble at the base of this building. That sense of lacking he had felt: it had been the absence of the Greek warriors and the Amazon women.

Jesse slowly turned and his stomach dropped like an anchor. 

Rows upon rows of warriors crowded the terrace, all of them watching Jesse intensely. He felt sick as if he were at sea in a raging storm, nausea roiling in his gut like waves crashing against the ship’s hull. 

Jesse knew that if they wanted to kill him, he didn’t stand a chance of fighting. Between their massive size, hard rock bodies and sheer numbers… he was helpless as a newborn lamb. 

Interspersed among the warriors were the statues that should have been standing between the columns. 

Men, life-sized though dwarfed by the gargantuan warrior women beside them. 

The figures began to shuffle and the sea of living statues parted. Through the centre came a couple, head and shoulders taller than the tallest warrior and cast in bronze rather than stone. 

At their heels was a gaggle of stone lions and proud long-snouted stone hounds. 

They stopped a few feet from Jesse and stared down at him. 

“Bow,” the man said. Jesse did, too afraid to refuse. 

The woman spoke next; “hail, Jesse Lyman, newest subject of Halicarnassus. I am Artemisia, Queen to Mausolus. Swear now fealty to your new king, Mausolus, or forever be cast into the eternal darkness of the underworld.”

Though the eyes of Mausolus were the same, flat bronze as the rest of him, they seemed to burn with anger as Jesse hesitated. His legs shook horribly but he bowed as low as he could and said, voice cracked and wavering, “I – I swear fealty to my new King Mausolus.”

Mausolus nodded in acceptance. 

“We thank you, loyal subject, for your sacrifice to the great Mausoleum,” said Artemisia. “Have you any final words before your service begins?”

Jesse almost choked. He didn’t understand what was going on or what the bronze queen meant by his ‘sacrifice’ or by his ‘service’. There was only one thing he could think to say. 

“Why?” He asked. “Why am I here? I was a good Christian. If I’m dead or something, why am I not with the Lord in Heaven? I will be loyal to you now, I swear it, but I am afraid I do not know what sacrifice I made.”

Artemisia looked down at him and said, not unkindly, “you sacrificed your life to this mausoleum. In life you studied it, helped uncover the ruins after it had been destroyed to earthquakes. Without you, our memory might have been lost. 

“Your ship was wrecked in a storm as you sailed back to England. I fear others from your crew may soon join us too. We will take care of you, Jesse Lyman, and you will continue to serve us in our kingdom of stone.”

Thanks for reading! See more from Series Saturday here.