Andreas laughed and smacked Kouros lightly on the back of his head as they passed through the brown doors. A few paces later they stopped between two rectangular guard towers framing the entrance to the monastery, looked up, and stared.

Brown-gray and medieval, the monastery’s soaring stone walls embraced a multi-level complex of courtyards, chapels, formal rooms, warrens of smaller rooms, and corridors, all arranged around the main church and built upon a once nearly inaccessible height. Its irregular exterior flowed with the land. At its greatest, the complex stood at 230 feet east-to-west, and 175 feet north-to-south.

In an arch above the doorway an icon of the ever vigilant Saint John stood as spiritual protector of the monastery. Toward the top of the wall sat an opening once used to rain hot oil and molten metal down upon invaders threatening harm of the secular sort. Andreas wondered what kind of reception the abbot had in mind for them.

He gave another quick glance toward the top of the wall, nodded to Kouros, and stepped inside.

3

A gray-bearded monk met Andreas and Kouros just beyond the entrance and gestured for them to follow him, never bothering to ask who they were. He led them into the courtyard and with a quick turn to the left, into the main church. An elaborately carved, wooden iconostasis covered in icons separated the main part of the nine-hundred-year-old church from the altar area, and a large mural of the Second Coming seemed to grow up and out of the east wall. They passed through the main sanctuary into a small chapel lined with Byzantine paintings, then outside and down some steps to arrive at what seemed just around the corner from where they’d first entered the main church.