The Temple of the Sun Read online

  Quickly Karne seized the hands of Kyra and Fern and they ran fast and low for the path that led down to the bay where their boat was moored. The first glimmerings of the dawn light helped them and they were away, bruised and shaken from the scramble down the cliff path, before the villagers awoke amazed to find their priest crawling on his hands and knees within their Sacred Circle, muttering and sobbing and sifting through the earth to find thin splinters of metal, his face a mess of tears and blood.

  He looked up to find them staring at him, and for an instant fear of them showed in his eyes.

  In that instant he was finished as the tyrant he had been.

  Where the splinters of the ring had struck his face, sores festered and never healed.

  2

  Illusions

  When the time came to leave the ocean and turn their little craft into the wide and muddy estuary of the river that cut deep into the land, the three tired and discouraged travellers felt a surge of new hope and energy.

  It marked the end of the first phase of their journey.

  Fern was particularly glad. She sat in the front of the boat as they rode in with the tide, her long red-gold hair blowing back with the wind and her voice raised in song. Although they would still travel for many days on water, the land with all its rich profusion of growing things would be near. She could talk with the trees, ‘feel’ the surge of living sap in growing plants, take guidance and comfort from her familiar green world. The ocean was so cold, so unfamiliar and so vast. She knew the same force that gave life to the land was no less present in the ocean, but somehow she could never feel it there. She who had never been lonely in her life although she had lived most of it alone, tasted loneliness for the first time on the great and surging deeps. She would have clung to Karne but he was always busy keeping them afloat and moving in the right direction. Lines of concentration from staring into distances were becoming a common feature between his eyes. She turned to Kyra, but Kyra too seemed occupied in ways within herself that Fern could not share.

  The land was Fern’s medium, the forests and the thickets her domain. She would be happy there.

  * * * *

  The meeting of the river waters and the sea was not easy to navigate. Several times their little boat nearly capsized in the turbulence, and Karne and Kyra were kept very busy and nearly lost their nerve and balance. But once through this obstacle, the tide and a following breeze carried them easily to where the estuary narrowed and became a river.

  Ayrlon, the new priest of their home community, had said that for many days they could travel inland on this waterway. It led west and gently south. But when they found the course turning sharply north as it did at one point, they must leave it and travel overland for a while until they found another south-flowing river. There were many such and he gave them advice on how to choose the best. Luckily their boat was very light and could be carried between them when they had to cross the land, and it would always be useful as shelter in the night.

  ‘Always keep a fire going,’ Ayrlon had advised. ‘The forests are full of animals, some of whom may not be friendly. Fire frightens them and keeps them at a safe distance. Where there are caves use them, but look first that they are not inhabited by man or beast. Make your fire in the mouth of the cave. Many bears, wild cats and wolves seek shelter there from time to time.

  ‘Where you find villages rest with them awhile. Do not push yourselves too far too fast. You will find many dangers and difficulties on the way, and if you are tired you are that much less able to deal with them.

  ‘Give my greetings wherever you find people of our faith. I made many friends on my journey north and it is possible you will meet with them and they will give you kinder hospitality for my sake.’

  Kyra, Karne and Fern had listened to everything he had said.

  It had been a good day for their village when he arrived. The snow was still on the ground but the earliest shoots of spring were beginning to show through it. He came quietly, with none of the dramatic showmanship Wardyke had used that fatal Midsummer’s Day the year before.

  The people took Ayrlon to their hearts within a few hours of his arrival. He was a quiet man, small in build. He listened more than he spoke, but those who told him of their troubles knew he understood and walked away comforted, though more often than not he had said nothing.

  Kyra tested her feelings for him by a long night vigil of prayer and meditation near Maal’s grave, and in the morning knew for sure her first feelings had been true. He was to be trusted with her village, and their customary ways of peace would be safe in his hands.

  When she left she looked back with pain to leave her much loved home, but with calm in her heart knowing that everything was now as it should be.

  * * * *

  The first night up the river they camped on high ground on the southern bank in a dull and drizzling rain.

  Fern rushed about, ignoring the wet, joyfully gathering special roots and shoots to eat. Karne and Kyra could hear her talking excitedly wherever she went as though she were greeting long lost friends.

  They busied themselves by setting up the boat as tent and trying, at first unsuccessfully, to find a place where it was possible to make a fire. They had just succeeded in encouraging a rather damp and smoking version to ignite when Fern returned, still happy, but dripping wet, her hair clinging in long wet strands to her shoulders and back, water trickling off the end of her nose.

  The next day they paddled upriver still in rain and camped damply upon the bank again.

  The third day was better. The sun came out and their spirits were so uplifted that they made much greater progress and found, when it was time to camp, a small community of people living on rising land a short way from the water’s edge.

  After the initial suspicions were allayed, the villagers made them welcome and they enjoyed a real feast of river trout and heard many tall stories of river demons and monstrous forest ogres.

  Karne went fishing with the men the following morning and learnt to glide so silently in the water that the fish were not alarmed at his presence. After many attempts he was able to dart his hand out and seize a fat fish before the creature knew that it was in danger.

  He shouted and danced with joy at his first success so much they all had to move to another reach of water to continue their fishing, every fish within a great range having been frightened away by his exuberance.

  Kyra and Fern took some of the women into the forest and spoke to them of the gentle tree spirits and the living force that flowed through everything and had its source in that which was limited by no name, but had power and energy to drive life’s multifarious forms within a great and ever harmonious pattern.

  The river women listened attentively, but the girls could see they could not understand what was being said.

  ‘No matter,’ Kyra said to Fern. ‘It is like planting a seed. The ideas we give them now may lie dormant in their minds for many years, but one day the warmth of some experience will stimulate them into growth.’

  ‘But what about the ogres?’ a woman asked fearfully, looking around.

  ‘You give them their ugly shapes, their terrifying attributes and then cower in the night from them.’

  ‘But we feel them around us in the dark!’ the woman said.

  ‘What you feel are the urges in your own minds to evil, and you give them shape and form with your imagination. You put them outside yourself so that you need not feel guilty about them, so that you need not fear yourselves!’

  The woman looked at her with eyes that comprehended nothing of what she was saying.

  ‘Have you not felt hate for someone and wished him harm?’

  ‘Yes,’ the woman admitted reluctantly.

  ‘Then you have felt guilty to feel such hate, to wish such harm. So you have pretended to yourself that it is not you hating, not you wishing harm, but some other creature, some monster, some ogre who has taken possession of you. This image becomes so real you begin to
believe it exists apart from you, and when you tell others they join their fears, their hate, their guilt to the image as well. And so it grows and grows in your minds until you have all forgotten how it first began!’

  ‘But children have gone into the forest and been eaten by the ogres!’ Some of the other women joined in now.

  ‘The children may have been killed by wild boars or wandered so far they have not been able to find their way back,’ Fern said. ‘There may be a thousand natural dangers in the forest which could be overcome if you could control your fear of them.’

  ‘fear can kill,’ Kyra warned. ‘It is very powerful. If a child is fed on stories of monsters and ogres and it goes into the darkness of the forest, the cracking of a twig trampled by a small deer or the whirring of a bird’s wings could so destroy the balance of its mind that it might run and stumble deeper into the forest, terrified, no longer taking care, a prey to any natural danger.’

  The women looked doubtful, but as though they wanted to believe.

  ‘If you like,’ Kyra said after a pause to think, noticing that they were not ready to understand such teaching yet, ‘Fern and I will go into the forest and pray to the spirits of light we know and they will drive whatever it is you fear away from this place forever!’

  ‘The forest is not safe!’ the women cried.

  ‘Kyra has magic powers,’ Fern said, realizing what Kyra was trying to do. ‘She has started training as a priest.’

  The women were still puzzled. They lived cut off from the rest of the world and had no Sacred Circle and no priest.

  ‘I have magic powers greater than the ogres that you fear,’ Kyra said with confidence, ‘and I will destroy these monstrous ogres once and for all if you will do exactly what I say.’

  They did not fully understand even yet, but knew enough to realize that these strangers were very different from themselves. The one called Kyra spoke with such authority and conviction they were prepared to believe she was some kind of magician.

  The women began to draw back from them a little after this and their friendliness was now tempered with caution.

  ‘While we are in the forest asking the help of our spirit Gods make me a model of the ogre that you think lives in the forest. Fashion it of river clay and bring it to me at the river bank when it is ready,’ Kyra commanded.

  ‘There are several types of ogre,’ someone said.

  ‘Then make them all for me ... in clay ... as nearly as you can to how they look.’

  Fern looked at Kyra, but said nothing.

  For the rest of the day the women worked busily at the models.

  The men returned from fishing and were told the story. Some argued. Some helped. But by mid-afternoon they were all taking part in the activity, even if it was only to offer advice about the look of some particular eye or nose.

  Karne took Kyra aside.

  ‘What on earth...?’ he said.

  She put her finger to her lips.

  ‘It may help to dispel their fears. Why not this way, if they are not ready for the truth as we know it?’

  He shrugged and smiled and left her to it, setting about the task of gutting the fish they had caught and roasting them on the fire.

  Kyra chose sunset for the staging of her exorcism.

  She, Fern and Karne built a small circle of river boulders on the narrow sandy beach just below the bank, and scooped out the sand from within it, allowing the water to seep up from below.

  When the models were prepared and the sun was a red and gigantic sphere sinking into the treetops to the west, the villagers gathered to watch with some apprehension as Kyra lowered the hideous clay figures into the little pool of water she had prepared.

  She walked round and round the circle many times chanting improvised prayers of exorcism, while Karne and Fern scooped more and more river water over the models.

  Gradually the clay softened, the hideous features disintegrated and, as the sun finally set with a shaft of brilliant light catching the ripples in the river close beside them, the last ogre dissolved and was no more than muddy water.

  As this happened Karne, Kyra and Fern raised their arms and sang a song from their own village, a moving, rising hymn of praise to light and life and the spirit guardians of the world.

  So sweetly did the sound of their voices mingle with the birds homing to their nests, so uncannily did the last shaft of light from the sun fall now upon the little circle of stones and dye the muddy pool of water the colour of blood, that the villagers gave a great gasp of relief and believed their ogres were finally dead.

  * * * *

  That night the villagers sang and danced to the strangers, and this time there was no menace or cruelty in the dance as there had been in the hunting dance of their last host village, where, although no one was actually killed, the lust for killing was in the air.

  This dance was only of joy, and the air was filled with feelings of release.

  * * * *

  A day or two later the three were sorry to move on. They had made friends. The villagers believed that their monsters had been destroyed and they had been taught to pray to the friendly spirits of the river and the forest and the sun for help and comfort in everything they did.

  Karne had learnt to fish in a new and exciting way.

  Fern had found plants she had not encountered before.

  And Kyra had been taught to weave baskets of river reeds far superior to any she had ever seen before.

  They parted with warm feelings, villagers and travellers each having benefited in some way from their time together.

  * * * *

  Overland travel was not easy. The boat became ever more cumbersome and heavy to carry and, after several rivers had degenerated into rocky rapids before they had a chance to make for shore, it became virtually useless as a boat. They decided at last to abandon it and make their way as far as possible by land, crossing rivers when they found them by inflating their water carrying skins to use as floats and then refilling them with fresh water on the far side.

  Kyra was particularly sorry to see the boat go.

  The last day before it finally sprang a leak too serious for them to mend had been in many ways idyllic.

  For most of the day they had drifted and paddled gently down a very quiet and narrow river, the mossy banks close beside them, honeycombed with the holes of little furry river creatures who came frequently out to swim or bask on floating logs, totally unafraid of the unfamiliar creatures drifting past them.

  Karne hummed quietly as he occasionally pulled the paddle through the water to keep it on course and Kyra lay back upon their sleeping rugs and other travelling things, gazing at the sliding slopes of interlocking branches and light new leaves above them.

  They were in a kind of green tunnel. The reflections of the trees below them and the trees above, leaning sometimes down to water level, caused reflection and reality to join on an interface that was neither reflection nor reality, but a kind of otherness into which Kyra’s thoughts slipped and received a new and deeply stirring peace.

  Light played its part, sparkling between the leaves and flickering in the green world reflected in the water and in Kyra’s eyes. She hardly dared breathe for fear of dispelling the delicacy of the beauty that moved her spirit through so many levels of awareness.

  Karne and Fern were forced to bend their heads to avoid the branches of white hawthorn blossom and their hidden protective thorns.

  They were happy too, but in a different way from Kyra.

  Fern leant her body against Karne and they felt totally together, absorbed within each other, the green sunlight clothing them in one garment.

  Kyra did not notice when the boat stopped and Karne tied it to the brown and knobbled root of a tree. She lay still, gazing upwards in her own secret world, while he and Fern left to find a private place of their own among the tendrils, flowers and grasses.

  The day had to end.

  But not one of them would ever let it fade in the s
lightest detail from their memories.

  It was one of those precious days, seemingly out of time.

  * * * *

  The next day was rougher. Rapids battered at their boat, and muscles grew tired with hauling it in and out of the river, climbing banks, cutting through undergrowth. The whole character of the land had changed remarkably with the change in the rock formations.

  From the slow and gentle progress through a wide and meandering valley, hills began to close in upon the river and chasms of rock. Small trees and bushes, clutching a precarious living in shallow crevices in their sides, took the place of the mossy peaceful banks they had loved so much.

  By midday they agreed the boat’s usefulness was finished. From Ayrlon’s description, they had about exhausted the navigable rivers leading south. They decided to leave the boat, strapping everything they could carry about themselves, and set off to climb the steep side of the chasm wall, hoping to have a better view of the land still to travel from the top.

  With the added weight of her unborn child, Fern found the climb more than she could bear at times, and Karne, noticing this, suggested they make camp for the night on a broad shelf of rocks and grass, little more than half way up. There was a good overhang of rock to shelter them and plenty of dry wood for a fire. Their goatskins were full of fresh water, and they had a plentiful supply of fresh hare meat caught by Karne earlier in the day with his catapult.

  While Fern rested and Karne attended the cooking fire, Kyra wandered off to explore. She felt restless and did not want to settle yet to the chores of making camp.

  The rocks of these mountains were different from the ones she knew nearer home. She fingered them and brooded, wondering what it was she felt in them that seemed to lead her on and stir some feeling in her that she could not explain.

  She kept moving further and further from the camp site, led on by a kind of urge, almost a kind of hunger. Tender and beautiful ferns grew from the cracks in the rocks. Lichens of greater variety than she had ever seen clung to the long exposed surfaces of stone and the older branches of the trees. Hanging festoons of filigree lichen, reminding her of pale silver-green hair, hung from the twigs high above her.