The Temple of the Sun

by Moyra Caldecott

  She lay for a long time with her face turned to the wall, tears dripping down her cheeks, too weak to say anything.

  But that night her fever rose again and in her delirium they heard her call again and again for Maal, complaining that he had promised to return to her and be with her.

  In the early hours of the morning, Fern, keeping vigil by her side, thought she heard Maal’s voice speaking from Kyra’s mouth, saying quite distinctly that he would return, but that he had not promised it would be in this lifetime.

  When Kyra recovered enough to be aware of what was being said to her, Fern told her of this.

  Kyra could remember nothing, but tears gathered in her eyes as she listened to Fern’s words.

  ‘I want him in this lifetime! I need him now!’ she said, her face pale and desperate.

  Fern stroked her head.

  ‘You think you need him. But no one knows what he truly needs. Maal will come to you when you really need him.’

  Kyra wept.

  She felt so weak, so tired. It was all too much to bear.

  After a while she drifted off to sleep and in her sleep she dreamed fitfully about the cave she had been trapped in and the strange stone shells and sea creatures she had found so deeply in the earth.

  When she awoke she felt in her carrying pouch for the perfect stone sea urchin she had brought from the cave.

  She turned it over and over in her hand. She knew there was something she was ready to learn and it was somehow connected with this stone shell.

  Was it that the universe was full of forces that we did not understand and that they were available to us if we made ourselves available to them?

  Words that Maal had said about good and evil came to her now. To him good and evil lay in the motive, the will, behind an action, not in the action itself. A force that could be used for evil could just as easily be used for good.

  The stone shell lay in the palm of her hand. Why or how it had been turned to stone she did not know, but she felt no trace of evil in it, no menace, only significantly that it was part of the natural processes of the universe.

  ‘I will keep this with me always,’ she said to herself. ‘It will be to me like Maal’s stone sphere with the spiral markings. It will be my talisman, my centre of strength. I survived the test within the cave,’ and she knew this had been a severe and important test, ‘and I survived the cursed circle. I will take it as a sign. A power has been brought to my notice and I will use its positive energy and not its negative. For me it will bring life, not death; spirit, not stone.’

  Having decided this she held it in both hands and tried to will herself to feel better.

  ‘My talisman will cure me,’ she said firmly. ‘The mysterious force or energy that transformed it from living shell to stone, I now reverse!’

  She concentrated her whole being on what she was trying to do.

  She felt the cold stone warming in her hands and began to tremble, wondering briefly if she was mistaken in trying to use it in this way.

  The trembling grew more violent.

  * * * *

  Karne and Fern returned from being with the villagers to find her seated on her rug clutching her hands together, and shuddering from head to foot as though she were in the grip of some supernatural force.

  ‘Kyra!’ they cried. ‘Kyra!’

  But she could not stop shaking.

  Thinking that it was coldness that made her shiver so they pulled all the rugs that they could find over her.

  ‘No,’ she said at last, pushing them aside. ‘No, I am not cold.’

  Gradually the shaking stopped.

  She sat quite still and carefully released her hands. The knuckles had gone quite white with the tension of her fingers gripping the stone talisman.

  She looked at it for a few moments and then looked up at them with a beautiful smile.

  ‘It worked!’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This is my token of power. It will work for me whenever I truly need it. I was meant to find it and I was meant to suffer in the finding.’

  ‘Are you sure it is not an evil power like the witch who turned those men to stone?’ Fern asked anxiously. She was ill at ease that something that had once lived and moved in the ocean should now be stone and buried deep in the earth.

  ‘It will be what I make of it,’ Kyra said. ‘Its powers can be used for good or evil.’

  ‘Do you mean you will be able to turn living things to stone!’ Fern cried in horror.

  Kyra looked at her.

  ‘Did you learn nothing from Maal?’ she asked. ‘If he would not call spirit power to do evil work for him, I would not call this strange power to do evil work for me.’

  The answer did not really satisfy Fern, and she was never really at ease with Kyra’s talisman at any time, but she dropped the subject now and turned to tend to Isar who was ready for his milk.

  Kyra insisted on standing up in spite of their protests and claimed that she was completely cured and felt strong enough to walk.

  Karne tried to persuade her to spend at least a few more days at the village, but when he saw that she looked perfectly healthy, he decided to delay their journey no longer and they set off the following morning.

  * * * *

  The last stages were relatively easy. It was late summer and the weather was warm and pleasant. Fruits, nuts and berries were ripe for picking, and a track along a ridge was so well trodden and wide that it seemed designed for pilgrims to the Temple of the Sun.

  They found themselves singing as they walked and were often joined by other travellers for days at a time. They found a path on a ridge high above the forest level with a view on either side of mildly rolling countryside cleared for terracing and planting. Unfortunately it was also above the spring line and Karne had to make frequent descents to find water when they made camp for the night.

  Villages were more frequent than they had been and seemed to grow larger and larger. When they remarked on this to the people in one of the villages, they laughed and suggested they should wait until they saw the size of the community that served the Temple of the Sun before they were impressed.

  ‘In these parts we call it Haylken, the valley of priests and kings.’

  ‘Kings?’ Kyra asked.

  ‘It used to be a place of kings in the ancient days,’ they were told. ‘But now there are only Spear-lords who walk in procession with the priests with gold upon their heads, their women decked in amber and in jet.’

  ‘They might as well be kings compared to us,’ the wife of their informant said. ‘We farming people all bow to them, and what they demand of us we give them. When they ask our labour no one dares deny it.’

  ‘In the valley nearer the Temple each village is ruled by a Spear-lord. But here we are still free.’

  ‘One came to our village once,’ a boy said eagerly, ‘and carried on his wrist a hawk with yellow eyes who did his bidding and tore at flesh whenever he commanded it!’

  ‘Birds are sacred and should not be used thus,’ Kyra said.

  ‘If you had been here I wonder if you would have spoken so boldly on the subject then,’ the boy’s mother said.

  Kyra was silent.

  She remembered the time when she had ‘travelled in the mind’ to the Temple of the Sun to meet the great Lords who gave help in the matter of Wardyke. She had seen many such tall, grand people as the villagers described, but no hawks to tear at flesh.

  ‘Haylken,’ Karne said musingly, ‘the valley of priests and kings. It has an exciting ring to it!’

  His eyes shone.

  For a long time he had chaffed at the constrictions of his own village and longed to travel to the centre of the world. The Temple of the Sun was this for all their countrymen and now that they were nearing it he found that it was not only a place of priests and learning that Kyra would enjoy, but of splendour and adventure that would have challenges for him.

  Fern was not so pleased. She love
d the country life and would have preferred to settle in a forest glade somewhere nearby and leave Kyra to her studies in this strange, alarming place. But she knew Karne would not be content with this, so she and Isar must follow and see what comfort they could find in this valley of priests and kings.

  ‘There must be trees there and growing things,’ she thought. ‘We will make a garden and draw it about us like a veil, and live our lives as quietly there as though we were in the heart of a wood.’

  * * * *

  Karne was as anxious now as Kyra to finish their journey. Even he, with all his restless energy, had had enough of travelling and of discomfort and danger.

  ‘First you will see the Field of the Grey Gods,’ and old man told them. ‘Then on every side the smooth round humps of the burial mounds.’

  ‘The Grey Gods?’ Kyra enquired.

  ‘Yes. The Grey Gods in anger among themselves shattered the mountains in the ancient days and scattered their debris over all the area. It is said the stones have magic properties and none but priests dare approach them. The gods in olden times helped the priests to take some of the tallest stones to build their Sacred Circles, but no man alive today can tell when that occurred.’

  Kyra was intrigued. She longed to learn about the powers of stone. Would she be allowed to approach the Field of the Grey Gods when she was a priest and learn from their secret energies?

  ‘Come,’ she said to Karne and Fern, ‘let us be on our way.’

  They left with many offerings of food from their friends and many warnings not to be tempted to enter the Field of the Grey Gods no matter what happened.

  ‘Not even animals go in there,’ called one voice after them.

  ‘And do not forget to bow the knee to the burial mounds,’ another called. ‘Much evil comes from lack of respect to the dead.’

  Fern shivered slightly and wished she were back in her own village, her own wood.

  Karne gazed about him impatiently as though he half hoped something would pounce and need to be fought off.

  Kyra fingered the stone sea urchin in her hip pouch and said a little prayer for help and protection from the spirit Realms.

  ‘We will be all right,’ she said at last. ‘We have come so far and through so many dangers, and it is the wish of the Lords of the Sun that we should come to this place. We will have protection.’

  ‘And anyway,’ Fern said hastily, ‘there is no reason for us to go anywhere near the Field of the Grey Gods or the burial mounds. We will stay on the track and make our way straight to the Temple.’

  ‘I wonder if they know you are coming,’ Karne said to Kyra. ‘I mean ... did the Lords of the Sun...?’

  ‘Of course. Remember the vision I had the night Maal’s white stone seemed to turn green like the one worn by the High Priest?’ And she fingered the pendant that hung about her neck on a leather thong.

  She heard the High Priest’s voice as she had heard it in her vision. ‘You who now have my mark upon you will follow me and learn what I have to teach.’

  She had no real doubt that she was expected, but what exactly would happen when she arrived and how she would know where to go worried her somewhat.

  They stopped talking and proceeded in silence, each with their separate and different thoughts.

  By evening they had seen nothing of the Field and the mounds and settled with some disappointment to another night of camping.

  Isar was restless in the night and cried a great deal. Whether he sensed his mother’s anxiety or whether there was something else that bothered him in the night so close to the Field of the Grey Gods they could not tell, but when the morning finally came none of them had had much sleep.

  They broke camp earlier than usual and when the sun had barely started its journey across the sky they suddenly came upon the field of grey rock they had been told about.

  They stood amazed.

  It did indeed look as though an angry god had scattered broken rock in every direction, and it was almost as though plant life as well as animal life did not dare venture among the magic stones. The grass was poor and a few brambles and briars grew, but the trees stopped neatly at the edge of the Field as though a giant knife had cut a swathe and forbidden them to advance further.

  For a great distance the rock seemed to have been dropped in chunks from above, instead of pushing up from within the earth as it normally does.

  They stopped and stared for a long time, and then continued on their way, looking always over their shoulders to see if the rocks were still there.

  Isar wept inconsolably.

  Kyra would dearly have loved to venture off the path and try her secret senses against them. Surely at last she would be able to tell what it was that made priests choose one stone rather than another for their Sacred Circles.

  ‘I will just...’ she began, unable to restrain herself any longer.

  ‘Oh, no, you will not!’ Karne said sharply, seizing her arm just in time.

  ‘I would not go far ... just let me test that stone there ... it is hardly in the field at all!’

  ‘Do not let her, Karne,’ Fern said anxiously. ‘We have been warned and Isar can ‘feel’ something here. I know he can. Listen how he cries!’

  ‘We have only been warned by simple superstitious people who understand nothing, and Isar is just hungry and tired of travelling. If I can stand within a Sacred Circle and not be harmed, surely one stone...?’

  ‘No!’ Karne snapped.

  ‘Why not?’ Kyra challenged. ‘Surely you do not believe the story that they told!’

  ‘What I believe or do not believe has nothing to do with it! We are near the end of our journey and I do not want any more delays!’

  Karne could be very authoritative when he chose. ‘There will be time enough for you to test yourself against those rocks...’

  ‘With priests to guide and help you,’ Fern added.

  Kyra sighed deeply.

  It would be good to reach their destination at last.

  She allowed herself to be persuaded and they continued on their way.

  They saw many burial mounds and bent the knee to every one of them.

  And then they gasped, for what they saw they were not prepared for, in spite of all that they had been told.

  Below them on a plain and on gently rolling hills that stretched as far as they could see, there was a sight that took their breath away.

  A giant circle of raised earth, overgrown with grass, and within it the hugest standing stones they had ever imagined, and running towards it and then out on the other side, like the curving body of a snake, an avenue of standing stones that seemed to run forever.

  The Temple itself stood in some isolation, but beyond it in every direction stretched clusters of habitations to the horizon.

  How many people lived around and served this Temple? The number was unbelievable! Kyra began to feel very insignificant and very much afraid. Fern sensed it and held her hand. She was horrified herself to think of so many people living so close together. The forests and wild places seemed mostly to have been pushed aside, and little plumes of smoke from cooking fires seemed more common than the trees.

  They stood upon the Ridgeway looking down upon the scene for a long time, trying to make some sense of it.

  They noticed that the houses nearest the Temple were the largest. Some were circular as those in their own home village were, but many were long and straight as though they housed a great many people under one roof.

  Fern looked beyond at the spreading landscape wondering where her own small hearth would be. She noticed that what had at first appeared to her to be an unruly mass of houses formed a kind of pattern. The habitations were in groups with fields and trees dividing them from their neighbouring group and each one seemed to be centred on a home much larger than the others. The plain was dotted with small villages, not one vast shapeless mass of people as it had at first appeared. The travellers were not used to seeing two villages nearer than a few days’
travelling and this is what had confused them at first.

  Fern was a little less upset.

  ‘What is that strange hill?’ Kyra pointed beyond the Temple, to the south west, where a tall unnatural-looking hill rose suddenly from a flat field.

  ‘It looks manmade, but there are no sacred stones upon it!’

  ‘It must be some kind of burial mound,’ Karne said.

  ‘But who would be so great as to command such burial splendour?’ Kyra asked, awed.

  Indeed it was a gigantic mound, steep sided and different in character from all the other mounds they had seen. It had a kind of sombre majesty, a brooding watchfulness.

  ‘We will find out nothing by standing here,’ Karne said decisively. ‘Before the night we must find a place to settle.’

  They started moving again, Kyra and Fern growing more and more ill at ease as they approached the Temple. It was so huge!

  ‘We will leave the Ridgeway here,’ Karne said. ‘This track leads down towards the Temple.’

  ‘I do not think we should go directly to the Temple!’ Kyra said nervously.

  ‘Why not? It is to reach the Temple we have travelled all this way!’ Karne said impatiently.

  ‘Perhaps ... we should make some enquiries first among the villagers.’

  ‘You have not come as a villager. You have come to be trained as a priest!’ Kyra could sense a note of determined pride in Karne’s voice. She remembered those early days when there was no doubt he felt possessive of her powers. He had encouraged her to use them and driven her well beyond her own wishes in the matter.

  Her nervousness was making her fall back into her old submissiveness to him, but she was older now and grown greatly in inner strength, and managed with an effort to assert herself at last.

  ‘We will wait here,’ she said suddenly, with great determination, ‘at the crossing of the paths, and I will go into the Silence and look for guidance.’

  Karne looked as though he were going to protest.

  ‘Sit!’ she said with a sternness that surprised even herself.

  Karne sat.

  Fern sat close beside him and was glad of the time to rest and suckle Isar. She was not looking forward to meeting so many strangers.