"I have something you can't resist!" said the brief note from a well-known dealer in stolen antiquities ... and forgeries, too. Although the old swindler had fooled her before, Akmara had a hunch this time. The curator's daughter fled the Trabzon Archaeological Museum and hurried down a garbage-strewn street.

From the rear of a parked Rolls Royce, an attractive matron noticed the teenager pass. She nodded to her driver to follow the girl. Closing the curtains, she removed a green-tinged scroll from a hidden compartment. She began chanting an ancient litany, a sad song about a futile battle and a land buried by the sands of time.

Akmara Hrumbi halted in front of a weather-beaten storefront. "Azmir's Antiquities," the door sign proclaimed in Turkish italics. "Another of his fakes or," she fantasized, "the key to a long-lost civilization?"

A rotund Turk waved the sexy, seventeen-year-old woman inside his mildewed shop. While scrutinizing his dusty displays, Akmara thought she heard a shriek. She peered out a window. Nothing! Then she glanced at a wrapped bundle on top of a nearby display case.

"This is what I wanted you to see," the entrepreneur wheezed.

Azmir carefully unwrapped the cloth and displayed a green-tarnished sword. Akmara's black eyes widened. The weapon appeared authentic, but she knew that Azmir's craftsmen were wizards in faking artifacts.

"It's badly corroded," she remarked. "But intact!"

"You know now unusual that is. Perhaps you would like to examine it?" He poured her a cup of muddy coffee.

"Yes," she replied, scrutinizing the three-foot, dull blade for signs of recent vintage.

The battered hilt felt comfortable in her right hand. But, when she waved it, she was shocked as her arm reverberated as if it had absorbed a blow. She had a fleeting image of a brawny woman wielding a gory sword. She needed to quit drinking so much coffee at the museum.

"Look at the flat of the blade," a voice whispered to her. Was she going crazy? Azmir had denied hearing anything. The amateur archaeologist detected numerous faded glyphs engraved on one side and took out her notebook.

Her hand shaking, she slowly translated the five-thousand-year-old Scythian writing. The phoenix character--reincarnation--puzzled her, while the magician symbol--supernatural powers--frightened her.

"Where was it found?" probed Akmara, her eyes burning into Azmir.

"I bought it from some guy who found it while herding his goats," he lied. It was probably stolen from a dig. "He was vague, but hinted that it came from a pile of rubble in the Caucasus's." Akmara wondered why a Scythian sword would be found up in those desolate peaks. She slurped her espresso as he began haggling over the price.

"Speak the verses!" murmured an eerie voice. Akmara felt compelled to chant the ancient words. She began to shiver after the last syllable left her lips. The room faded in and out of focus and the cuckoo clock stopped. She swooned and the weapon clanged to the floor. The blackness swallowed her.

Opening her eyes, Akmara squinted at the blazing sun and was amazed to find herself now in a wind-swept land. Scrutinizing herself, she noticed that a crescent-shaped shield was strapped to her left arm. Her Levi jeans and peasant blouse had vanished, replaced by a thigh-length, leather tunic and a bronze breastplate, hammered out to fit her generous bust. A helmet, with a horsetail plume flowing down her back, competed her armament.

Never an athlete before, she flexed her muscles and felt like an Olympic star. She slid out the sword belted to her waist. Recognizing it as the same one from the vanished shop, she gasped at the now gleaming, razor-sharp blade.

"What's happened to me?" she whimpered, sheathing the weapon. "Where am I?"

Akmara, spying the familiar Caucasus Mountains towering in the distance, realized that she had not left Trabzon. But, seeing how she was dressed and observing dozens of similarly armed females milling in front of a fortress, it dawned on her that she had somehow been transported back in time. She saw women waving from its parapets. Many of the warriors shouted greetings to her in Scythian, but she was too scared to reply. Soon, she overheard the citadel's name--Themiscyra.

"Bronze-Age Turkey," Akmara shuddered, pondering the armaments and architecture. "I'm in the capital of the Amazons--and it's not a myth."

Shouted orders gathered the soldiers into a phalanx. A centurion shoved Akmara into a company of young women brandishing bows and spears. Terrified, she remembered from her study of Greek mythology that these fierce women trained their girls in warfare.

"I don't think I belong here," she told one woman in halting Scythian.

"Surely, the daughter of Xamara jokes," laughed the soldier.

Akmara then spied Hellenic banners fluttering about two hundred yards away. Her jaw dropped. The Themiscyrans appeared to be outnumbered.

"Merciful Allah," she wailed. "This isn't possible!" The trembling girl heard a commotion. Parting their ranks, the female troops admitted a statuesque woman, dressed in ornate robes.

"Don't be afraid," assured Xamara in modern Turkish, while wiping the tears away. "I know who you are." She quickly touched the girl's face with a jeweled talisman. "Come, spirit of Sherat!" she intoned. The teen grimaced for a moment and then relaxed.

"Mother!" Sherat exclaimed, "Are you here to wish us victory?"

"We are doomed," the high priestess lamented. "But," she cried, "I have enchanted your sword." She massaged her daughter's firm shoulders. "The Goddess has told me that someday you will tell the world of our exploits. If we are to meet again, the invaders must never recover your weapon."

"I'm a warrior, not a scholar, Mother. Our swords will drink the Aegeans' blood and we'll send them to Hades," the youthful warrior retorted.

"There are too many this time," Xamara sighed, hugging her soldier-child. From a pocket, Sherat's mother withdrew a gold chain, with a lioness carving dangling from it. She placed it around her offspring's neck. "Only the bravest of us wear this symbol." The teenager swelled with pride. She knew her mother, a former war chief, possessed one, also. Then, the sorceress trudged back to the city gates.

Sherat grabbed a six-foot spear from an armorbearer. Hearing a ram's horn trumpet the command to advance, she lowered her lance. Emitting a blood-curdling warcry, she marched forward with the army.

Fighting ferociously, Sherat and her brave comrades dispatched many young Macedonian men. Mutilated female bodies, however, littered the battlefield also. While dueling one burly fellow, the priestess' daughter had her shield battered away.

Shoved to the ground, she cried out when an enemy's sword hacked through her thin armor into her right lung. Bleeding profusely, she feigned death. An hour later, a spear plunged into the last infantrywoman's belly. Then, after the last of the Greeks ran blood-crazed towards the fortress, Sherat struggled up.

Remembering her mother's admonition, Sherat dug a deep hole into the corpse-strewn sand with her blood-smeared sword and then buried it. Death saved her from witnessing the slaughter of civilians and the torching of her city.

Akmara awakened back in the antique emporium and was helped to her feet by a worried-looking Azmir. She searched for the sword, but it had vanished. Then, she noticed a beautiful lioness necklace of ancient origin dangling from her neck. Had the leering Turk given it to her to try on?

As she fingered the pendant, images of the Amazons' destruction swirled through her mind. "Was it just a dream?" pondered Akmara. Perplexed by her nightmare, she vowed that she would learn more about this mythical race of warrior women. Just then, a dignified woman, with an identical ornament around her neck, exited a luxury sedan idling outside. Striding into the shop, she smiled when she spotted a familiar face.