Shadow on the Stones Page 2

  The beautiful circle that had stood since ancient times for communion amongst all the realms of Being, was desecrated beyond belief and seemed to crouch like a wounded and despairing animal waiting for death.

  Slowly Isar’s eyes moved from stone to stone and at every one he saw the burnt and mutilated body of a man, in some cases the hide ropes that bound them had not quite burned through.

  Their pain was still present and he fell to the ground with the weight of it.

  ‘O God,’ he sobbed, ‘O Lord of all that is! How could you let this happen?’

  A small breeze drily stirred the ashes.

  No answer came to him from the blind Circle of Stones.

  * * * *

  After this ... long after this ... he gathered himself together and turned back towards the east.

  Now he would go home.

  He would walk through the night.

  He would not rest until he had left the pain and evil he felt in this place, far, far behind.

  Night creatures called shrilly from the darkness.

  Moonlight drew grotesque shadows from the trees.

  Twigs cracked where no one walked.

  The world that had enclosed him up to now with such loving care, had turned hostile.

  At the dawn he found himself further west into the land of Klad than he had been the evening before, and no matter how fervently he wished it, he could make no progress towards the east.

  It was a long time before he came upon a village that was inhabited.

  He paused upon a neighbouring hill and watched it closely before he approached.

  He longed for friendly human contact and a warm and comfortable place to sleep, but caution held him to his post and he lay still, marking all who came and went with close attention.

  The village itself seemed unremarkable enough, a cluster of small homesteads of wood and turf, smoke from cooking fires rising steadily, the cattle and sheep driven to their separate enclosures of banked earth and thorn-brake by village lads. He saw girls drawing water from the stream and carrying it in leather bags and earthenware pots as in his own village. If he had not seen what he had seen, nor sensed the menace in the air, he might not have noticed that all he saw were moving sluggishly like a stream choked by weed in time of drought. Even the young girls carrying the water had no spring to their walk and instead of chattering and calling to the boys as girls in his own village used to do, they kept silent, with eyes down, and there was no whistling with the cattle drive or singing amongst the shepherd boys.

  He moved closer, every sense alert. He noted heaviness of heart, slowness, inertia, lack of any kind of hope or will to live, but there seemed to be no immediate danger.

  He looked at the sky and knew that heavy rain was very close.

  He decided to trust the village and, light as a deer attuned to danger, he sprang down the hillside scarcely dislodging a pebble from its resting place.

  He stopped at the edge of the village, facing an old man milking a cow.

  As soon as the man became aware of Isar’s presence, he stiffened as though expecting some harm to come to him, not believing that there was any way to avert it. He stopped his milking and stood up, arms hanging limply at his sides, head bowed, waiting.

  Isar stared at him.

  It seemed that he, Isar, was the one to be feared.

  He noticed that the man had an ugly sore at the centre of his forehead, but otherwise, apart from his weary docility, was not unlike a number of old men Isar had seen in his own community.

  Isar waited for the customary greeting of host to traveller, but it was not forthcoming.

  He was plainly expected to say the first words and, although it made him uncomfortable so to break with tradition, he felt obliged to do it.

  ‘I greet you, sir,’ he said gently, ‘and may the Spirit Helpers of the Lord Sun be with you, teach you their ways and keep you from harm.’

  The age-old form of words that Isar had used so often as greeting that they had become commonplace to him, seemed to shatter the mood of waiting resignation in the man.

  He looked up startled, his eyes instantly going to Isar’s forehead as though seeking something there, and being surprised that he did not find it.

  The man was plainly confused, not knowing whether to return Isar’s greeting or to run for cover.

  Isar slowly raised his hand in the salute to the Sun his mother had taught him before she had taught him to speak.

  Fear in the man’s face began to give way to hope.

  He opened his mouth, but no words would come.

  Slowly, tentatively, he raised his own hand in answer, and then in terror looked around to see if it had been observed.

  ‘Do not fear me,’ Isar said. ‘I am a traveller. I know nothing of this land or what it is you fear. I seek only lodging for the night.’

  Other villagers joined them, and stood behind the man, staring at Isar. His eyes went to their faces, seeking the one who was their Priest or Elder and who would speak for them without the fear the rest so plainly showed.

  On each face, on each forehead, in the centre, was a sore still festering, or a scar that bore witness to a sore that had once been there.

  His hand went involuntarily to his own forehead and he felt the smooth skin with relief, momentarily experiencing a twinge of fear that the mysterious power that seemed to hold this people subject had pierced his own forehead in some way since he had entered its realm.

  The villagers watched him warily.

  The man he had greeted turned to them and spoke at last.

  ‘He used the old greeting,’ he said with awe. ‘He is not one of them, nor of us. He is a traveller.’

  The villagers moved closer, still wary, but their curiosity and the dawning of hope in their hearts driving them on.

  ‘Where are you from, traveller?’ the old man asked.

  ‘From the east, from Haylken, the Temple of the Sun.’

  ‘Groth?’ the man said.

  Isar looked puzzled. He did not understand the word.

  The blankness on his face worked on the people like rain on a parched land.

  Suddenly there was movement and sound.

  He was seized and bustled and jostled until he found himself in a small and crowded house. Some of the people had pushed in with him, but the rest had scattered like frightened birds from a farmer’s field-strip when the farmer’s son shouts and bangs sticks together.

  The old man he had first approached seemed to be the one most in charge. Silent as the people had been before, now questions poured from them and their eagerness to hear his answers pulled him from side to side until he was dizzy.

  ‘How did you escape from the burning?’

  ‘How is it that the guards did not see you?’

  ‘Are you from the Temple itself?’

  ‘Were you sent?’

  ‘Do they know that we need help?’

  ‘Are they coming to help us?’

  They touched him. They kissed him. Time and again hands stretched to his forehead and trembling fingers felt the smoothness of his brow.

  ‘Stop, stop!’ he called at last. ‘I cannot answer all your questions until I have asked you some of my own.’

  ‘Ask!’ they cried, eager now to communicate in any way possible.

  They knew he was from the east.

  They knew he did not understand the dread word Groth.

  ‘Why is it that you all have wounds upon your foreheads?’

  ‘It is the Mark,’ they said. ‘The Mark of Groth. We are slaves of Groth.’

  ‘This word Groth – what does it mean?’

  The daring of his question silenced them for an instant and then they all tried to talk at once.

  ‘No,’ he laughed, holding up his hands to fend off the confused and flying words. ‘One at a time. I have not as many ears as you have voices!’

  They looked at each other.

  The old man Isar had first encountered, whose name he learned w
as Keel, was tacitly chosen to be their spokesman.

  ‘He is the new god,’ he said, and his voice carried fear even at his daring to speak the words so, without reverence.

  Isar looked amazed and sceptical.

  ‘How can there be a new god?’ he said scornfully. ‘God has been from Always. There is no Before and no After.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Keel lowered his voice and he spoke in the way a man speaks who has been told something, has accepted it, but has not understood it. ‘It is the same god – but before we did not know about him properly.’

  ‘And now you do?’

  ‘Na-Groth tells us about him.’

  ‘And who is this Na-Groth?’

  Isar could feel the thrill of cold fear that went through the people at the tone of his voice.

  ‘He is Groth’s spokesman. Groth speaks through him.’

  Isar was silent. It was plain that no amount of sceptical mockery from him would counteract the fear with which these people regarded Na-Groth and his god.

  ‘And what of the Spirits?’ he said at last. ‘Do they not speak to your hearts in the Silent times and tell you of your God and His ways?’

  ‘Na-Groth says we must not go into the Silence. He says that only he knows the ways of Groth. He says the Spirits do not exist. He says that nothing speaks to us in the Silence but our own desires and fears.’

  Isar’s heart was beating fast. He began to see what had happened here and how far it had gone.

  He too began to feel the fear and the despair.

  Fear and despair! Were these the inward marks of the new religion, as wound and scar were the outward?

  Was it possible his own people had misunderstood the nature of God?

  He thought back to the quiet field-strips and villages he had left behind so recently, which now seemed locked in some bygone age, with his childhood. He thought of the confidence he used to feel that all the great and distant stars above his head and the familiar grains of sand beneath his feet were contributing with all the realms of Being, visible and invisible, to a pattern of great magnificence, each in harmony with each, each dependent on the other.

  His silence worried the villagers. They began to move about uneasily. A lookout was posted at the doorway, and there was murmuring amongst them. Was the traveller a spy of Na-Groth after all? Had he falsely led them on to trap them?

  Isar felt helpless.

  Their anxiety preyed on his spirit. He felt it consuming him, and he had to work hard to regain his own inner strength.

  ‘No,’ he said at last, ‘I am no spy. I am a traveller and I am weary. Does this village not sleep when night comes to it?’

  Keel took his arm, remembering suddenly with joy, the old ways of hospitality.

  ‘We sleep indeed, though dreams are not welcome to us these nights. But first we eat. Woman, what are you about that you have not prepared the evening meal?’

  Isar felt the injustice of Keel’s remark for the woman, but she did not seem to mind.

  Soon the bustle of preparing the evening meal did away with all the tension.

  By the time they came to roll up in their rugs there was peace in the house and there were some who did not remember Na-Groth in their sleep.

  Isar slept long and soundly, weary beyond any weariness he had ever felt before.

  * * * *

  The priests of the Temple of the Sun were able to turn Isar’s journey to meet the woodcarver Janak, to their advantage.

  Through Kyra’s reading of the messenger’s last thoughts, they were now well aware of the situation in Klad, and the inner council decided that Isar was not to be brought home to safety, but was to be sent farther into Klad to seek out Na-Groth and destroy him.

  The priesthood had great powers, but they were still limited to human frames and needed human channels for their work.

  The priests of Klad had been killed, and though they might still be capable of helping in certain subtle ways within the deepest levels of consciousness, they too could only work through someone still physically upon the earth.

  Isar, although not a priest or a novitiate, was sensitive to more levels of reality than most men. He could be of great help to them.

  * * * *

  The Lady Kyra and the Lord Khu-ren worked far into the night among the tall stones of the Temple to contact his spirit, to strengthen and instruct it in the task it had before it.

  They called on the Spirit realms and were given Isar’s secret name, the one he had through all time and which was known only in the Spirit realms. There were times of crisis when it was possible for humans as highly evolved as the Lords of the Sun to call on the Spirits for this knowledge and be given it to hold in trust until the crisis had passed.

  These secret names were not given lightly, for the knowledge of them carried great power and humans were not on the whole to be trusted with such authority.

  Kyra and Khu-ren knew that when they had reached Isar his secret name would fall so deep into the hidden places of their minds that they would never again remember it with their surface consciousness. Nor would they forget it, for nothing that is experienced is ever totally forgotten.

  It would be hidden until they too entered the Spirit realms and were capable of remembering it without danger to Isar.

  Now, murmuring his names, his given name and his secret name, they passed from stone to stone of the inner sanctum, touching the Sacred Rocks with their foreheads. With each touching, the humming and vibrating of the rocks that was imperceptible to ordinary people, grew in their consciousness until it seemed to them the universe was filled with noise and energy through which the two names of Isar reverberated like giant drums.

  In their home beside the Temple their daughter Deva lay staring into the dark, her eyes stubbornly open against sleep, daring the darkness and the evil god called Groth to touch her lord Isar. Her thoughts were fierce and protective but they were only the selfish thoughts of a young girl in love, and went no further than the chamber in which she lay.

  Groth and Na-Groth were not aware of them.

  Nor was Isar, lost to consciousness, deep in Kyra’s strangely refreshing sleep.

  Nor were the villagers of Klad tossing uneasily at his side, worrying about the morning and what it would bring.

  * * * *

  Towards dawn Deva’s body refused to obey any longer the commands of her mind to vigilance. She fell asleep like a grey feather from a bird and lay snuggled in her fur rugs, a child again.

  She had not been asleep long when she began to notice that she was in a place she had often visited before in dreams, particularly when she was troubled. It was a place she recognized when she was asleep, but not when she was awake. If she had been there at all, ever, during her waking time, it must have been in a former life.

  The place was a garden. Flowers grew there that did not grow near her waking home. The earth was sandy and reddish and a ring of small fountains, catching the intense sunlight and reflecting it like silver, arose from a circular pool curbed with slabs of pure white stone.

  Sometimes she stood on the stone pavement gazing down into the white slabs, noticing that they were of a crystalline structure so fine that she could look into them and see the crystals in the depths as easily as those on the surface.

  At other times she looked towards the pool and through the veil of spinning, moving drops of silver liquid she could see purple water flowers growing, glowing with such intensity of light that it seemed they were alight themselves and were not reflecting the sun.

  During one ‘dream’ she looked up and thought she saw a roof of transparent rock crystal held up by a ring of tall, slender white columns. The sunlight was concentrated through the rock crystal canopy in such a way that a beam of brilliance that hurt the eyes shone down upon the water flowers so that they seemed to dissolve in light and she could only ‘feel’ that they were there, ‘remember’ that they were there, but she could not see them.

  At such times she felt great reverence an
d awe as though she were in the presence of something beyond our reality.

  But there were times when, although the place was beautiful, it seemed ordinary, and she found herself playing among the trees and shrubs with a small, sleek black cat...

  She was a child. This was her garden and her cat.

  Once, enclosed in green shrubs, unseen, she watched two men walk in the garden. One was tall and vigorous, speaking with his hands to emphasize his words, the other a calmer, older man dressed with careful elegance.

  She knew the older man was the king and the younger man was her father. She was proud of him. He was a great philosopher and architect, at this very moment engaged in supervising the construction of a remarkable building ... a building that pierced the sky with one sharp golden point, drawing power from the mysterious Spirit realms and dispersing it down the sloping triangular sides of stone into the earth, north, south, east and west.

  This night when Deva, who lived now in the body in another time and another place, visited the ancient garden in her sleep, she carried with her the faint remembrance of Isar and his dangers. The beauty of the fountains and the water flowers could not hold her. She was impatient with her playmate cat and walked distractedly among the green bowers, searching for her father.

  The parents of her present body would not bring Isar out of danger, but expected him alone to challenge the might of Na-Groth and his god.

  She would ask nothing of them again.

  Something in her longed for former times and homed upon an ancient love.

  But she was too anxious, her mind too active and demanding. Instead of allowing the ‘dream’ to take her into the garden and make its own shape, she tried to force the image of her former father to appear, and he eluded her.

  Dismayed she saw the lovely place dissolve around her and found herself awake with only longing in her heart and no comfort to sustain her through another day of anxiety.

  3

  The Chase

  Isar was awakened by a girl shaking his shoulder. He remembered her among the group of villagers who had surrounded him in the house the evening before, but she had kept silent while the others had been questioning him. She was a little older than Deva, pale and thin, her bones almost protruding through her skin, her eyes large and expressive.