Publisher's Synopsis
The Sibyl's Urn by John Argo is a fantasy, pieced together in late lamplight, from the author's notes and studies of ancient Rome. Odd spirits keep knocking the ink well over, or hiding the quill, or giggling as they shuffle the pages out of sequence. Try not to be scared, and by all means have fun. By fun we mean equal parts dark & scary chills, and intellectual stuff like etymologies pregnant with dark meaning, plus history, architecture mythology, and other thick and brothy fare for brainy folk. The mystery of Amalthea--whom we meet, oddly, on an airplane; everything in this book is a bit odd--is founded in myths far older than Rome herself. Flying back and forth across ancient Roman history, we are present at the founding of Rome, and we are there when the great spectacle finally draws to its conclusion. Beautiful Amalthea, and an ageless cricket she keeps in a cage, assist a mysterious professor who seeks long-ago truth, and leaves only his name as a legacy when the sands of time all too quickly blow away his footsteps. This is an adventure in life and death, past and present, a study in word origins and odd bits of learning tattered in a confusing night wind, stirred up by a capricious garden genius. We meet figures of myth and history-for example, a beautiful Vestal virgin imprisoned in a tower after being raped by the War God, up in the Alban Hills. She gave birth to twin sons swaddled by Fate in tragedy. One murdered his brother, and the killer founded Rome on that bloody note. The Great Forum of Rome itself is a defiled cemetery, from a time before there was a city. The Forum must by ritually cleansed, day after day, century upon century. Our silent candle flickers taller and brighter to its doom, as Rome survives her allotted time. In a cave by the sea, a young priestess in white sits in an underground cavern. Overcome by vapors from deep in the earth, she scribbles cryptic messages on oak leaves. She is the Sibyl of Cumae. Her revelations are guarded by the Ten Men atop the Capitoline Hill in Rome. The Sibylline scrolls are kept under lock and key in the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest. These withered old pages are the city's fortune, a sacred road-map interpreted by sages as generations run like sand in an hour glass. Two Egyptian scribes maintain a library, in a palace on the Esquiline Hill, where more of the Sibyl's scrolls are hidden. They are what our professor is after. Emperors and goddesses would kill to possess them. Our professor desires their knowledge. Amalthea guards their secrets. You need them as your only ticket home from a journey that is both wonder and nightmare. Welcome to the quest for the Sibyl's Urn. You are not the first. You will not be the last. But will it be your last adventure? Turn the pages and find out. But always look over your shoulder, and have care...that giggle you hear is the garden djinni from ancient times who has driven more than one generation of masters and mistresses to distraction. Est quod est.
