I saw a terrible purpose growing before me and felt devoured by it, as though it were ahideous beast borne of me that would not give me a moment’s pause, that would hunt me across the dark and desolate mountains until I succumbed to the death that I had unfairly cheated once already. “I am not what they say I am. I am just me. We had a bad experience, that’s all. I nearly died and Lhapka did die. That doesn’t make me a god.”
We were silent for some time before Puk spoke, almost whispering.
“I know nothing of these things, Tashi. But I was atop that isle when the river rose up and took you and Lhapka. You were under that frozen water and ice for half a watch. I saw you come up out of the ice.”
He paused, for so long that I turned to look at him.
“I told no-one because I did not believe it, but I saw her as she broke the ice with a flaming blue lance and threw you out of the hole to safety.”
Forgetting self-pity for a moment, I regarded him. Hungry for him to tell me everything but wanting to hear nothing more as anything he did say would confirm the impossibility and madness of my situation. There was no lie in him. I saw the wonderment of what he had seen as clearly as if I had seen it myself.
“The goddess saved you. You would have been dead in under a minute otherwise.” He took a deep breath. “The gods want you alive. You are bound to them and to us, a conduit between our world and theirs. I don’t know if that makes you their kin, or you were simply in the right place at the right time. I don’t know. But I do know that all those people sitting back there see something dire and now suddenly they have hope. The Lord Regent and our own Abbott Tomas, who would still have doubts if the Maitreya herself was seated before him, agree. Consider that if they are right and the gods see the end of this realm, would they choose an apprentice monk from the north-west, a mortal, a boy, frail and without any extraordinary powers or godly attributes? Or would they want one of their own. I’ll wager a year of Pumi as Captain that they have asked themselves that question and they wouldn’t bestow that title lightly.
“You may just be Tashi … but you may be a whole lot more and you’ve either forgotten or chosen to forget who or what you reallyare.”
“I am just me,” I muttered despondently.
I made my way back with Puk to where the Lord Regent and all the assembled advisers and administrators and monastery personnel had remained. In turns they calmed me and I apologised to each of them for my performance. I was eventually seated before the regent as before.
“I am sorry to have placed such a burden upon you Tashi. And I do not believe that it is for your glory, or your Abbott’s, or even for His Holiness that you accept the mantle that is given to you. It is not for us to gainsay the will of the gods in this hour of great need or to try to understand more than what we shall be told, for that does not seem to be the way of the gods. You are appointed this quest, Tashi. You need to find the answer. If not you, then who? We shall support you in whatever way we can but it is for you to do this for the betterment or ruin of us all.”
Ha! Would that the regent had understood the truth of those words! And me also. But I sat there dumbfounded, thinking to myself, what quest? I was dreading having to leave my home and go to the capital. But this now seemed much worse– a quest? To do what?
“I can see the fear and doubt in your eyes, Tashi. And had you been given half of the answers to questions I have also, then my mind would be more at rest as well. But so be it.
“One of your proctors, Master Panuaru, said you had mentioned the Nagara Jaya Sri . Do you know what that is?”
“No, Lord Re– …. Tenzing,” I said, falteringly.
“It means ‘Holy City of Victory’ in one of the dead languages from Irth’s
very ancient past. It took a long time to find but your Master Archivist, Jangbu, traced it back to an obscure period of history from many thousands of years ago. You may also have heard of the mighty sword of legend called the Jaya Sri with which Lord Krishna battled the demon lord Naraka, if you credit the story of that legendary battle. In other legends from other times I have heard of a similar sword of heavenly might referred to as the Preah Khan. It is said that they are one and the same. And, judging from what you have told me, you have seen, and held, even in the depths of fever, the mighty black-bladed sword of Lord Krishna himself.”
“I can remember it only as a dream, Lord Tenzing. But I remember it
more clearly than anything I have ever remembered; the look of it, the shape of the hilt and quillons, the etchings on the blade. It is burned into my memory.”
“That is well”, he said. “Maybe you can make a rend ering of it so we can study it ourselves a bit later. But to return to my point, I think the answer lies in those words you uttered to your Abbott Thomas – Nagara Jaya Sri. My advisers have surmised that the messages in your dreams point to our one hope in saving this realm and that hope is the one weapon which was left on the battlefield after the fall of the Demonlord Naraka; the mighty black-bladed sword of eternity, the Dragon’s Tooth, the Phoenix Claw; the Jaya Sri.
“I see no other course of action. Y ou must find this Holy City and I believe from there, you will find the Sword of Power. Go now. Pray for wisdom and for the salvation of us all.”
I looked at him with a measured expression, of both hope and hopelessness.I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. They wanted me to find the sword of legend, a thing of myth from ancient texts and crumbling scrolls kept in the bowels of the monastery. And even if such an impossible mission could be undertaken, and an artefact of unearthly power of the most ancient lore recovered, what then? How would a mythical weapon that had been wielded by the Supreme Being heal the universe, if healing it needed?
Chapter 7: Festival
And theirs’ will be an abundance of joy and happiness, for they will lead a holy life.
From theMaitreyavyākarana (The Prophecy of Maitreya) In the two months since the Lord Regent and his entourage had been whisked away in a flyer back to the capital, I had spent much of my time in council with Abbott Tomas and various of the Masters poring through ancient manuscripts for any clues that might assist in setting my feet upon this quest, such as to the geographic whereabouts of the ancient city of Nagara Jaya Sri.
Likewise, the entire population of the monastery including students, acolytes, journeymen, masters, staff and even Abbott Tomas, continually prayed for some hint from the gods. After nine weeks we had found nothing that could provide us with any kind of guidance whatsoever.
Dejected and with no real sense of hope, it was decided that an answer would present itself in time and that I should begin my own lingkhor that I would have needed to go on in one year’s time anyway. Ancient tradition held that I could not be properly elevated without then immediately embarking my own lingkhor.
Now that I was supposedly a lama, and would be graduating a year faster than I had thought, it was necessary for me to complete the journey that I had looked forward to since I was a small boy. TheAgōgē prepared us for this. Hunger, exposure, cold, bandits and more than just wolves. I would discover aspects of myself that could not be tested in a classroom. The ability to survive in the wilderness, to hunt, to make camp,to fight for one’s life if set upon in the wild, and if necessary, to beg, to steal and simply to do whatever is required to survive. But also bring cheer and teaching to the myriad small communities and nomadic clans scattered across the high planes.
It was time to put my feet upon the path of my future and with the gods’ aid, come through into manhood. I had no idea how long that would be but Master Jai said he took about four months, although because he was travelling in the depths of winter, he became trapped in a small village for a month when the mountain passes became too snowed-in to traverse. I silently thanked the gods we were now in summer.
Dorje was due to begin his also and it made me feel much more comfortable that he would also accompany me, although the plan to send a train of monastery staff including two Sera Ngari warrior
s, which I think secretly thrilled Dorje no end, made it seem less of a personal spiritual journey and more of a mass migration. It also surprised me that Abbott Tomas insisted on Pemba accompanying us as well. He was just slightly younger that Dorje and would have been due to start his own lingkhor soon also. But I was confused by his inclusion. Surely Master Panuaru had communicated the enmity that existed between the two of us?
I remember it was the week before our failed expedition that I had faced Pemba across the training mat in combat class. It was later in the day, our bout being the last for the day. And while the frigid winter gale blew ferociously outside the training hall, inside it was a different story. Dorje and Rogel cheered me on from the sidelines. The room was packed as many younger students and some of the masters had turned out to watch or participate in the training session. Yeshe sat upon a pile of mats nursing a sprained wrist after her own bout and Lhapka and Puk sat cross-legged at either side of the mat with a cloth and bucket of water, charged with attending us between rounds.
Pemba was slow and clumsy but compensated with size and incredible strength. Standing as tall as Dorje he was easily the fattest student anyone could remember. He came from a wealthy and politically motivated family that lived near the capital that thought him the next Dalai Lama. He was spoilt, belligerent and a bully, seeing his advancement to the leadership of the Government in the same way as Dorje saw his admission to the Guild of the Golden Dragon; a foregone conclusion.
My blows would have had more impact on the base of a mountain but his could easily kill if they landed well enough. It had been a momentous struggle. Given my speed and dexterity, I had managed to avoid any direct attacks that may have gone very badly for me. I didn’t escape unscathed however. In a cunning feint within a feint, he had managed to clip my face as he swung his cudgel, the metal shod end brushing my mouth and chin at an angle that left it swollen and bruised. A more direct hit might have killed me. My face felt numb and my bottom lip the size of a melon.
Master Panuaru had felt that it would be a good test of both our skills but I knew the truth behind it. He wanted to test me harshly after my recent victories, wanting to find reasons either to propel me through the rankings or to prove to me that as much as I emulated Dorje and Rogel, I would not be their equal.
He called the final round. Rogel came over to where Puk crouched by me, holding a water-soaked cloth against my chin and coaching me in getting inside his defences.
“Or, you could keep on running around like you have been and I’m sure he’ll drop dead from the exertion of chasing youbefore too long.” I gave him a look to say that I wasn’t done with him yet and stood up. Rogel backed away and the training mat again became the wrathful domain of an unstoppable behemoth. Pemba stomped breathlessly around the padded training floor, his head hunched, his training apparel black with the sweat that cascaded from him. Although I had not got in many punches and kicks, the successful blows had hurt him.
Even though he was so fat, key pressure point attacks had partially paralysed his left arm and his laboured breathing told me I had winded him. His look told me that no-one as skinny and insignificant as me was going to be allowed to put him through this much pain. If he could grab me or otherwise knock me down in the next two minutes, I would not rise again. It was rare for training bouts to become personal but this one had, for Pemba at least.
As he moved, he not so much breathed as gulped the air and his exhaustion showed in the careless lunging and grasping of his attacks. Master Panuaru moved around the mat, refereeing and coaching us as he went. He shouted at Pemba, pushing him, driving his rage, goading him to attack, I think as an attempt to get this normally lazy and indifferent student to move as much as to test me.
I was much fitter and still had reserves of energy to help me through this last round. Dancing and leaping to avoid his lunging strokes, I parried and blocked his wild cudgel swings as required to get inside his defences where I could aim for pressure points with which to weaken him further. Frustrated and wrathful, he tried a final lunge, expecting to surprise me into parrying back and away from him where a carefully concealed feint would have brought me into the path of his cudgel. Instead, I feinted low toward him as if diving under his attack and a split second later, leaped with all my remaining strength upwards.
The initial feint had achieved its objective of forcing his attack lower and gave me the space I needed above him to perform a twisting mid-air pirouette. While his wild cudgel swing would have taken the head off a wild boar-synth and did succeed in sending half a dozen bystanders scattering, I threw my own towards the ceiling as I leapt. All this happened in a fraction of the time it has taken me to write of it, but I remember, as if time had slowed to an infinitesimal crawl, the instant where, being momentarily suspended above him, I brought down both hands on either side and clapped his ears in a stinging manoeuvre designed to deafen and disorientate him. As I descended, I snatched my cudgel out of the air as it started its downward path and struck him in key areas in his back to temporarily paralyse him then smacked him across the backside, adding to his forward momentum which propelled him into the crowd. Bodies sprawled left and right and he hit the polished oaken boards with a sickening thud, totally unconscious.
I stood with my cudgel, gasping air and immediately knelt in the centre of the mat, placing the cudgel by my side. I received the accolades of the crowd while several brothers heaved him up and carried him to the infirmary. Master Panuaru looked approvingly at me and nodded ever so slightly to show that I had passed. I heard later that Pemba had awoken in the infirmary in paroxysms of pain, his head ablaze with ruptured eardrums and his lower half partially paralysed.
Needless to say, an animosity had grown between Pemba and me as if there was a score that needed to be settled. I did not understand why he took our bout so personally but then pride and honour were always on the line and he obviously felt that a rematch was the only way to come to terms with what he and his friends considered should have been an easy win for him. And it would have been, had I not had a helping hand.
Until Pemba had been assigned to the journey, I had been indifferent about the size of the caravan. But, feeling suddenly as if the expedition was going to involve the entire monastery, I approached Abbot Tomas. He waived aside my concerns saying that with reports of wolf attacks high and others due to begin their own post-ordination lingkhors also, it would be sheer folly to send a lone monk out of the front gate and expect him to make it more than a league or two before he was set upon.
“Not to mention how important you’ve suddenly become Tashi. If I had my way you would not be going anywhere. I would gladly empty the entire monastery and have the hundreds of students and staff scouring the mountains and plains. But it seems that you are appointed to this quest and on it you must go.” I was pleased at that. “The festival is in a few days Tashi. You’ll be elevated before you know it and then you’ll be starting your journey. And if I have to watch you, the Panchen Lama, walk out of the front gate, then I’ll not have it said of me that I did anything less than I could have in seeing you get through this is one piece while you are out there!” I could not argue with that.
The festival that Abbott Tomas mentioned was Losar. It has ever been our most important festival, celebrated for time immemorial and the chosen time upon which senior acolytes are elevated to journeymen and some journeymen monks are elevated to masters. From my earliest memory the New Year festival has marked the beginning of the warm season and was held concurrent with the Ongkor Festival, where the nomadic farming families in remote rural areas waited and prayed for a bumper summer harvest.
Losar was celebrated over fifteen days, with the main celebrations held on the first three days and ending with The Great Prayer Festival, Monlam Chenmo, the grandest of the religious festivals where Buddhist scriptures would be fiercely debated and religious examinations were held for all students, including us. Every year, disciples from all over came to worship the Buddha and take those
examinations.
We were looking forward to Losar as we would have our first official taste of changkol which was served on the first day of the festival, a beverage made from chang (which we had enjoyed on our trip to Kyichu). Gyalpo Losar (King's Losar) was celebrated on the second day and although we did not have a King as such, the Dalai Lama performing the role of Head of State supported by the Lord Regent and the government in running the Commonwealth, we did celebrate our spiritual and secular leaders, toasting peace, prosperity and charity. On the third day would be the much-anticipated formal elevation ceremony and celebration.
For the previous five days, the holy ritual of Dorje Phurba or Vajrakilaya had been recognised. For the whole five days, Abbott Tomas, showing an uncanny endurance, had led a solemn circumambulation of the monastery holding an ancient three-sided dagger called a Phurba.
Of the many other religions I had studied, some ancient and some modern, including the syncretic Bon and Taoist religions, most worshipped some hallowed physical artifact, like one religion that paraded a special cloth from thousands of years before man first ventured beyond the rim of the world that had apparently wrapped the corpse of its founder. Then there was the Alhajar Al-Aswad, worshipped by followers of the crescent moon or the Torah, mezuzah and phylacteries of the secret revivalists of a most ancient religion that was thought to have drifted into obscurity eons ago. More modern religions such as the Jovian worshippers prayed to a sealed sphere inside which they had reportedly, by their technologies, gathered a sample of the metallic hydrogen from the core of the world they worked to ignite into a star to one replace the aging scarlet disc that was our own Surya, and so bring their own god to life.
The Vajrakilaya is the divine tulpa or emanation of our beliefs. The Phurba itself is symbolic of those mystic attributes of the Vajrayana. It is an ancient relic of our order, older than the monastery itself which has stood for tens of thousands of years at the end of this desolate valley overlooking the Beyul Khenbalung, under the protective and unwavering gaze of the Mother Goddess. Imbued with the very power of the gods we believed it to be a nirmanakaya manifestation of Dorje Phurba, that is, the physical body of the Buddha.
The War of the Realms Page 10