‘Think. What are your motives for taking this test now? Is it because you know you are ready, or is it because you are impatient to reach the next stage because of reasons quite unconnected with the growth of understanding?’
Kyra was silent.
She remembered a dream she had had the night before.
She was a small child and saw in the distance amazingly tall and beautiful shining Beings. A feast was being prepared for them, and as a great honour she was allowed to help prepare the feast although all the other children of her age had been sent to sleep.
Excitedly she rushed about doing everything her elders told her to do, but as she laid each delicious bowl of food upon the place of the feast she sampled a little of it. It was legendary food. Nothing like it had ever come her way before. She ate from every bowl a morsel, no more, thinking all the time how lucky she was to be allowed to stay awake and serve at the feast. She would see the shining Beings and hear their talk while all the rest of the children were asleep.
But before the shining Beings arrived to eat, she was in pain and ill with allthe bits and pieces she had swallowed, and she was sent home.
She missed the feast. She missed the shining Beings.
‘You see?’ her teacher said, looking at her closely.
She flushed.
‘I see,’ she said.
And she tried to be patient.
When her teacher thought she was ready, she took the test, and passed.
* * * *
The next few years passed very fast and very busily.
There was much to learn and as long as Kyra knew the Lord Khu-ren was still at the Temple College and she had his beads about her neck she was content.
Of course she listened with great attention whenever he or anything concerned with him was mentioned, and it was in this way she learned that in his own language ‘Khu-ren’ was a reminder of the Being’s radiance in eternal life and its secret and spiritual name.
She sat one night watching the stars and thinking about this for a long time. Names were important. His parents and the priest who named him at his birth must have known that he would be a special person, with spiritual powers well above his fellow men. To be a Lord of the Sun so young he must have travelled a long way on the journey of enlightenment before his present birth.
She thought about her own name, Kyra. It was not easy to put into common words but it meant in the ancient language of their people, which was now almost forgotten, ‘balanced for flight on the point of beauty.’
Maal had told her this and Karne had laughed.
‘What does Karne mean?’ she demanded.
‘Axe-head,’ Maal had said, and she remembered how Karne had not been sure whether to be pleased or insulted.
* * * *
Her studies in the Mysteries grew deeper and deeper and ever more difficult, but the college policy was sensible, and their concentrated sessions of deep meditative work and spiritual discipline were interspersed with periods where different but related faculties were called into use.
Kyra’s favourite of all these periods was the one when she was taught the whole process of making pottery, from finding the most suitable clay, cleaning it of impurities, kneading and thumping it to remove the air bubbles trapped within it which would make the pot explode when it was heated, to working it with her hands into beautiful and pleasing shapes.
She learned to build the little stone and earth oven and how to keep it burning at the right temperature.
She learned to scratch designs upon the surface of her pots before they were fired, and even how to use salt and ash and certain powdered rocks to change the colours of the clay.
The teacher encouraged them to become totally immersed in what they were doing and to forget everything else.
‘Become the pot you make,’ he said. ‘You are not making a pot. You are making yourself.’
* * * *
One Spring Kyra moved to the College of Star Studies further south and learned to calculate the movements of the sun and the moon and the stars.
She was privileged to be present at the ceremony at dawn on Midsummer’s Day when the great, dazzling orb of the sun rose directly above the Sun Stone and shafted light like a knife straight into the eyes of the High Priest who stood in the dead centre of the great circle.
It was at this moment that he lifted his arms and spoke in a loud and awe-inspiring voice.
And it was at this moment that he saw Visions.
It was from these visions that the whole wisdom and teaching of the Temple of the Sun took its form.
Around him the highest priests of the community stood and listened to his words. Beyond them were a ring of smaller standing stones brought in the ancient days from a temple of great sanctity in the far west, they in turn surrounded by a ring of immense stones from the Field of the Grey Gods, each linked to each with a lintel of finely worked stone.
The students and lesser priests stood outside the stone circle but were no less moved by the impressiveness of the occasion ... The darkness bursting into light, the inspired voice from the spirit realms speaking through their High Priest, the huge, oppressive rocks ...
Kyra’s heart beat until it hurt against her ribs.
She knew she was present at the meeting of great forces and the men within the circle at that moment might well be possessed and in great danger.
She knew one of them was the Lord Khu-ren, and as it grew lighter she could see him, his eyes shut and his face lifted to the sun, an expression that was not his own transforming him.
As the words finished issuing from the mouth of the High Priest, all the spectators found themselves singing, starting with a hum, the sound rising and rising until it seemed to reach the highest point of the sky where the last star flicked out as their eyes followed the sound upwards towards it.
And then the sound burst, and from hundreds of throats the hymn to dawn on Midsummer’s Day rose and spread outwards until the whole landscape was in light and sound. Even the sombre burial mounds that ringed the Temple at a discreet distance were transformed into something beautiful and joyful.
The air was suddenly full of birds, flying and swooping and arcing in time with the hymn.
Kyra was moved to tears. She wished the moment could last forever. She felt great thoughts within her, great feelings of wanting to help the world, to lift all human spirits up to join in light and love and absolute understanding.
The love she felt even for the Lord Khu-ren seemed almost a little thing compared with the love she suddenly felt surging in her for all of creation. It seemed to her there were no divisions. No one to love and not to love.
All was One and all was taking wing at this moment into timeless ecstasy.
She too shut her eyes.
And with Khu-ren she stood as though enclosed in a crystal of light, the walls of which were fading even as she became aware of them, the light from outside breaking through to them.
As its unbelievable brightness touched them, they both faded from sight.
She knew they were still there. She felt herself aware of herself and yet she could not see any part of herself. Only light. She felt herself aware of him, and yet she could not see him. Only light.
She remembered thinking with great joy, ‘We exist ... although all our visible and physical parts are gone!’
And then ... and then ...
Someone pressed her arm.
It was Lea.
She opened her eyes and stood dazed upon the grass outside the great circle. Her body visible again.
‘Come on,’ said Lea, ‘it is over. We have to go now.’
But there was something more.
She could feel the pull.
She looked into the circle and the Lord Khu-ren’s eyes were looking deeply into hers, gravely and with concern.
She was shaking uncontrollably from her experience and was very pale. Lea put her arm around her.
‘What is the matter? It is not cold.’
>
‘No ... not cold...’ muttered Kyra with her teeth chattering.
‘What is it then?’
‘Did you not feel anything?’ Kyra asked, her eyes lost and bewildered in this ordinary world of moving people and pale sunlight on grass.
‘It was very moving,’ Lea said. ‘The High Priest spoke with spirits.’
‘And you?’ asked Kyra.
‘I?’ Lea said surprised. ‘Nothing happened to me.’
And then...
‘You mean the singing? It was wonderful.’
‘It was beautiful,’ Kyra said, her voice quite faint with awe.
‘Yes, it was very beautiful,’ Lea agreed, thinking of the singing.
Kyra said no more but allowed herself to be led away.
* * * *
About noon, the morning ceremonies over, the students were spread out upon the grass well beyond the outer circumference of earth ridge and ditch, resting and talking amongst themselves about the experiences of the day.
Kyra was apart from the others and was lying flat on her back with her eyes shut, trying to recapture that marvellous moment of somehow being united with Khu-ren as though they were the two halves of the same Being enclosed in light, when she felt a shadow fall across her. She opened her eyes and looked straight up the tall body of the Lord, to his face leaning over her, his dark eyes, made darker by the lines painted around his lids, looking into hers.
She jumped up instantly, colour flooding to her face, and then stood awkwardly in front of him.
Three midsummers had passed since he first came to the Temple of the Sun, and in that time they had seen each other occasionally but had never spoken.
Now they stood together and did not know what to say.
She had grown taller in those three summers. She wore her hair coiled on the top of her head now instead of in a long and untidy plait as she had the first time he had seen her.
The cord she wore around her slender waist was black with a thread of gold to indicate that she had reached the level of studying the dark of the night sky and the gold of the stars.
‘I wish to apologize,’ he said at last, very gently.
She looked surprised.
‘I should not have taken you with me into the light. But ... I could not stop myself.’
She lowered her eyes and stood very still, afraid that he would see her thoughts.
So it had really happened, and she had not imagined it!
But it was the fact that it was his longing for her that had brought them together that was the most wonderful thing of all!
They stood awkwardly and silently for a while, and then he touched the beads he had given her, which she still wore. She felt his hand lightly on her throat and currents of feeling passed through the whole of her body.
She looked up at him and her eyes must have shown it all.
He withdrew his hand and stepped back a pace from her.
There was a tense silence between them.
But when he spoke again his voice was well under control.
‘The Lord Guiron tells me you are making good progress,’ he said.
‘So he has asked about me!’ she thought joyously.
The Lord Khu-ren smiled.
‘Yes, I have asked about you,’ he said.
She blushed.
‘And there has not been a time when I have not been aware of you,’ he said gravely, and she sensed a touch of bitterness and self-reproach in the gravity.
She thought he would hear her heart beating. Was this really happening?
‘Kyra,’ he said, and her heart lurched with anxiety, ‘you know this cannot be.’
‘Why not!’ the words burst out from her pent up heart with such violence she startled herself.
His eyes looked even darker now, and there was pain in them.
It was his turn to drop his gaze and turn away from her.
‘It is not possible,’ he said firmly and harshly. ‘We must both accept it!’
And he turned and strode away.
She was devastated.
‘No!’ she shouted, but it was unlikely he could hear her. ‘I will not accept it. I will not!’
She found herself stamping her foot and shouting like a small child and then she ran into the woods and sat weeping with her arms about a tree.
Priest? How could she be a priest with such longings in her, with so little self-control.
She would not be a priest!
Why should she be a priest?
If she said today she was giving it up, would anyone stop her?
It was too much to bear.
She was not fit.
She wanted only one thing and that was to be with the Lord Khu-ren.
But Khu-ren was a Priest. One of the highest. Would he give it up? Would he have to give it up?
Oh, how she needed comfort and advice.
But who could she turn to?
She had told no one of this love of hers. She had not wanted anyone, not even Karne and Fern to know about it. Somehow the very secrecy of it kept it safe. As soon as someone else knew, it was vulnerable, she was vulnerable in some way. She could not explain.
Even that it had become verbal and definite between Khu-ren and herself had brought about this danger now.
Before, when it was still secret, everything was still possible.
But now his words made her choke with sobs.
‘It is not possible,’ he had said with such finality. ‘We must both accept it.’
Sometimes she thought the Lord Guiron suspected. Ever since he had noticed the faience beads!
And then Khu-ren had said he had asked after her.
Should she go to the Lord High Priest now and ask his advice? But something held her back from him always.
She admired him. He was a great, great man. But ... the story of the spirit lady of the lake and Panora always haunted her somehow. It did not fit with his honoured position as High Priest.
And there was always the shadow of the mystery of his relationship to Isar between them.
But ... on the other hand ... if the story of the lady were true ... he must know better than anyone what it was to love someone more strongly than ones duty to the Priesthood.
She would speak to him.
She would tell him she was giving up the Priesthood. Of that at least she was certain.
And she would ask him if it would be possible for a priest of Khu-ren’s standing to take a wife.
She felt better when she had made this decision.
She washed her face in a stream and returned to the others.
8
The Star Test
On her way back to the Temple College her friends noticed that she was very tense and silent.
‘Tell me!’ Lea said gently, and Vann took her hand and showed that he too would like to help.
‘There is nothing!’ Kyra said defiantly.
Vann and Lea looked at each other.
But they loved her enough to leave her until she was ready to tell them.
* * * *
She could not at first find the Lord Guiron and, as she was weary from the travelling and the emotions she had been through, she fell down on her sleeping rugs and shut her eyes before she had even eaten the evening meal.
Her dreams that night were restless and disturbing. She tossed and turned so much that Lea, who slept next to her, woke her once and tried to quieten her with soothing words. After this she did not move about so much, but in her dream world she wandered hopelessly through a labyrinth.
It seemed to her that beyond every turn she would find the Lord Khu-ren. On and on she searched through the dark and hostile passages, but he was always just out of sight, just out of reach.
As she reached the same point at the centre time after time, she sat down on the cold stone ground and wept. Around her the labyrinth crouched, in silence and in mocking emptiness.
She would never find the Lord Khu-ren. She would never find the way out. There was no way!<
br />
But as there is a way in, there is always a way out of a labyrinth.
Despair had closed her eyes to it.
She thought of conjuring up his image as she had done in the great cavern.
But he had spoken of ‘the illusions of love’ in the same breath as ‘the illusions of fear’.
And she was weary of illusions now. She had felt his touch upon her neck and it was this kind of reality she wanted now.
‘I cannot help it!’ she said defiantly to the invisible spirit realms that she knew were always present, occupying the same ‘space’ she occupied but in different form, in a different ‘reality’.
‘I am not like you! I have a body and my body has needs as well as my spirit. Why do we incarnate on earth if it is not to experience earth reality, earth love!’
She lifted her tear-stained face and stared around her in the dark, defying the bodiless, formless Beings to answer her this riddle.
‘The answer is...’ a gentle voice spoke behind her, and she spun round to see the girl she had twice seen before in vision form – the girl from the Island of the Bulls, the lithe, naked acrobat who danced with bulls and somersaulted over their fearsome horns and yet, at the same time, was one of the noble Lords of the Sun.
‘The answer is, my friend, as you would know if you stopped weeping and stilled your mind as you have been taught to do, that we incarnate on earth indeed to experience earth reality, earth love. Spirit and body must both have fulfilment on this plane, and the love that can satisfy both is worth a great deal and must be cherished.’
‘Then why did he say the love between us was impossible?’
‘He too is body remember, great Lord of the Sun though he may be. He does not know everything!’
‘Then...?’
‘You must both learn to accept the pace of destiny. Because you cannot have what you desire now, this moment, does not mean that you may never have it. There are other lives than yours woven into the fabric of your fate. Each may have to take its course before the time is right for you.’
‘If only I could be sure I would have him in the end!’
‘If it was sure that I would not get gored by those horns I leap over in the palace games, I would not leap. You ask for certainty! You ask for the end of challenge and excitement, of development and the joy of achievement.’
The Temple of the Sun Page 13