The Temple of the Sun

by Moyra Caldecott

  Kyra was silent.

  Then said in a very small, sad voice, ‘I really do not think I am strong enough to be what everyone expects me to be.’

  The beautiful girl smiled and there was an element of mocking mischief in her eyes.

  ‘If you are not, then what makes you think you will be worthy to be the wife of the great Lord Khu-ren?’

  Kyra was trapped.

  She sat, thinking very deeply, for a long, long time.

  When she became aware of her surroundings again she was no longer in the dark and oppressive labyrinth.

  She was in the palace enclosure on the Island of the Bulls, amongst the crowds she had encountered once before while ‘travelling in the spirit’.

  The crowds were shouting for the young acrobat to risk her life against the monstrous stamping beast that tossed its horns and raised red dust with its hard hooves.

  The beautiful queen with the bare breasts and gold snake ornaments and her court retinue were seated, as before, on the dais raised above the sweat of the enclosure.

  She raised her arm and, from a wall of translucent alabaster, the young girl Kyra had been speaking with in the labyrinth leapt gracefully into the arena of the bull, and as before danced to him while the crowd chanted and stamped and clapped, the rhythm quickening as the girl’s movements flickered faster and faster.

  Kyra stood paralysed with fear for her as the beast suddenly lunged forward. Quick as light the girl leapt, seized the horns and was over the fierce head and back almost before the creature was aware of it. Perfect agility. Perfect timing. Perfect sense of inner communication with the bull to judge its every twist and turn. In the moment she was arcing across its back, Kyra saw the two disparate beings as one. Harmony and beauty were there in that moment where danger and suffering should have been.

  Once on the other side of the bull, separate from him again, the girl leapt up on the wall and stood arms raised, her face transformed with triumph and excitement as the crowd cheered and cheered.

  Kyra felt tears of pride and emotion for her beautiful friend pricking behind her eyes.

  And then she was awake and had the day to face, but she had made a decision. The way through a labyrinth, Maal had said, could as easily be the way of unfolding enlightenment as the way to confusion and despair.

  She would not go to the Lord Guiron for his advice, nor to tell him that she was giving up her studies.

  She would keep her love secret as before, and she would demand nothing of the Lord Khu-ren or of life.

  She would concentrate on making herself worthy to be a priest.

  And then ... maybe...

  But of this she was no longer prepared to think.

  * * * *

  By the end of the summer she was ready to take the star test. Although her studies had been at the college to the south, her test was taken in the main Temple of the Sun.

  On a clear, moonless and cloudless night, she entered the great stone circle of the Temple and lay upon her back on the grass, her feet towards the east where the sun would rise.

  She was alone and the whole night was hers.

  This night she must not let her attention wander for an instant.

  The star the High Priest had chosen for her was rising at the moment she lay down and she must watch its progress across the sky, unwaveringly the whole night long. No matter how tired her eyes became she must not let it out of her sight for an instant.

  The effect of the high earthen ridge around the circumference was to cut out all sight of the landscape and the villages around. She was isolated in a circle of power in complete darkness, alone with the stars.

  As the night progressed, she totally forgot herself lying on the grass. All that existed was the one star she followed, brilliantly in focus, while an incredible pattern of subtly changing points of gold moved round in the background of her vision.

  The star she watched not only moved with slow but inexorable majesty across the dark forever hole of the night sky, but grew in brightness and in power until she felt it like a sharp needle point actually penetrating the centre of her forehead.

  It seemed to her the earth bank and the tall stones surrounding her not only kept the rest of the world out, but concentrated the power of the stars and whatever realms of reality that lay beyond her normal consciousness, until they grew in strength and became the only reality of which she was aware.

  It seemed to her the needle of the star she watched pinned her through the centre of her forehead to the earth and she could not move her body. In her stillness she could feel the earth moving. She was no longer loose upon its surface but was joined to it by this thin, sharp beam of force that passed from the star to her, through her into the earth, and through the earth until it came out the other side to continue its journey...

  Her mind ached with the strain of thoughts that were coming to her.

  Her forehead ached with the pain of the sharp beam passing through it.

  She felt very strange as she turned with the earth, feeling the earth move, and the star stand still.

  But the thought she was trying to grasp kept returning until at last her mind could encompass it.

  It was the realization that the beam of force from the star that was passing through her and through the earth, and through the universe beyond, was returning to the star of its origin from the other side!

  As though the whole universe was a sphere, yet of such a kind that there was no material solidity to it whatever, and therefore no bounds of inside and outside.

  She was like a bead on a necklace, threaded through the line of force that was curving with the universe.

  As she grasped this there seemed to be a kind of brilliant explosion in her mind, or was it in the sky?

  But suddenly, from every star in the sky, there seemed to be the same fine beam of light, and each one was threaded through the pain in her forehead, through the earth, and through the universe beyond and back again to its original source.

  The sky now instead of being black with separate points of light, was crisscrossed with fine arcs of light, each starting in a star, or...

  Did they start in her head?

  She could no longer tell if she was the centre from which all the beams were coming, or whether she was the passive recipient of the beams from the stars.

  Was she the beginning of all things?

  She?

  Who was she?

  She could not remember her name.

  She thought and thought in a sudden kind of panic...

  ‘What is my name?’

  But she had no name.

  The more she tried to remember the more the beams passing through her head hurt her.

  At last exhausted and in agony, she accepted that she had no name.

  And with that acceptance the pain ceased, and she lay in wonder, watching the cycles of light weaving their magnificent pattern all around her and through her.

  The beauty of it! The blissful peace and happiness she felt that anything could be so perfect occupied her for the rest of the night.

  And when the sun slowly rose and the vision faded, she remembered her name.

  And with the remembrance she moved and felt pain in every limb.

  Slowly she dragged herself to her feet and looked round her with weary and bewildered eyes.

  The dawn light revealed the circle as she had known it before, the grassy bank, the giant stones. Above her the first flights of birds called cheerfully to their fellows.

  Around her stood a circle of the highest priests in the Temple.

  She looked from one to the other with aching, bloodshot eyes.

  The Lord Khu-ren was amongst them, but she was too tired even to react to him.

  The Lord Guiron spoke at last.

  ‘My child,’ he said gently. ‘You must tell us all that happened to you in the night.’

  She began to shake her head, thinking how impossible it would be to put all that into words.

  ‘You must try
,’ the High Priest said. ‘It is important.’ He spoke quietly, but with great authority.

  Stumbling for words the young girl started the story.

  The priests around her stood silently, impassively, listening.

  No one helped her when she could not find the words, but gradually, clumsily, the story emerged exactly as it had happened.

  As she finished speaking, she could feel herself slipping into darkness, her body cold and infinitely weary.

  Then for the first time one of the priests moved.

  The Lord Khu-ren stepped forward and caught her in his arms as she fell fainting.

  9

  The Haunted Mound

  The winter passed in training for healing.

  They learned a great deal about the body and the natural ways it had of healing itself. They learned how the mind, clouded by fear and doubt, could hinder these natural ways, and how they as priest healers could bring back confidence to the patient so that the ways of nature could work again freely.

  It seemed the mental image a person held of himself had great power to influence his body. They were taught to change, with great tact and skill, the self-image of illness the patient held tenaciously within his mind, to one of well-being and health. The image changed, the patient visualising himself well, the healer’s work was done. Nature did the rest.

  They learned that when the illness had gone too far for the patient’s own body to heal itself, they could transfer the strength of their own life-force, to aid the natural healing processes within the patient.

  They learned to do this by laying their hands upon the sufferer and directly ‘willing’ the strength which they knew flowed through them from the great source of life, to enter his body and make him whole again, to bypass, to push aside, the impediment within the patient that was preventing his natural supply of life-force from entering.

  They also learned to use the power of thought to do the same thing when they were too distant from the sufferer to touch him physically.

  They studied how to prevent illness, what to eat and how to exercise. The movements they practised were always simple, slow and effective, control of body built up gradually, stage by stage, until it became a perfect instrument for the use of its owner on earth.

  Kyra enjoyed the classes and worked hard.

  But one day in early spring when she was in the middle of a set of rhythmic movements, her concentration was broken by the sudden stinging of the thought that Fern needed her.

  She had seen very little of Karne’s family lately, as they had been busy having another child and she herself had been occupied with her own determination to make good and fast progress in her studies.

  As the thought from Fern reached her, she stopped in mid-movement, and a look of puzzled concentration came to her face.

  ‘What is it, Kyra?’ her teacher asked.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Kyra said hastily, ‘but I must go. I am needed.’

  The teacher did not question further but let her go.

  She ran faster now than she had ever run. Her body was at its most proficient because of the training she had undergone, and the distance between the college and Fern’s little house seemed much shorter than usual.

  She found Fern alone with the new baby, weeping. Karne was away from home with Olan, and Isar was lost.

  ‘Oh Kyra!’ she cried when she saw her. ‘You have no idea how I longed for you!’

  ‘I felt it,’ Kyra said gently. ‘Now tell me.’

  She put her arms around her.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Isar has wandered off somewhere and has been gone for ages. I have looked everywhere and all my friends have been helping, but no one has seen him.’

  ‘Was Panora with him?’

  Kyra knew the girl spent a great deal of time with Isar.

  ‘I have not seen Panora for a long time. I was cross with her once ... Oh Kyra ... I did not mean to speak so harshly ... I think I was jealous because Isar seemed to prefer her to me ... and I told her to go away. She did, and I have not seen her since. I thought that perhaps Isar had wandered off to look for her. I know he missed her. I feel so ashamed! If only I could unsay those words!’

  ‘Calm yourself. No words can ever be unsaid, but new ones can be spoken. Come, I will help you find him. But first you must be quiet. I must try to “feel” where he has gone.’

  ‘Oh Kyra!’

  ‘S-s-sh,’ Kyra said softly, stroking Fern’s head. ‘Gently ... you will make your baby upset.’

  Fern buried her face in her second child’s soft body and rocked backwards and forwards, her cheeks wet, but her sobs stilled.

  Kyra moved outside the house and sat in the garden, first letting the beauty and the peace of the spring leaves and flowers distance her from the disturbing anxiety and fear of Fern.

  Then she began to empty her mind as she had been taught to do.

  Dark and disturbing impressions began to come to her and at first she thought she was witnessing a burial, and her heart jerked to think it might mean Isar was dead.

  She struggled to regain her concentration and this time received impressions of a lake, a mist, the shadowy figure of a woman.

  ‘Guiron’s lover!’ she thought with shock.

  Again, her own thoughts having intruded, she had to force her way back to meditative calm again.

  But no more impressions would come to her.

  She would have sat longer, trying yet again to see Isar, if Fern’s anxious face had not appeared.

  ‘Did you learn anything?’ she asked, her eyes so full of pain, and yet so trustful that Kyra could work miracles.

  ‘Something,’ Kyra said guardedly, ‘but I cannot work it out yet. I need more information.’

  ‘Try!’ Fern said, tears beginning again. ‘Oh Kyra, I love him so!’

  ‘I know,’ Kyra said soothingly. ‘I know. We will find him. Is it possible for a neighbour to look after your baby while we go and search?’

  ‘Of course. They have been wonderful to me. Someone has even gone to fetch Karne and he is a long, long way away with Olan.’

  ‘good. Find someone to take the baby, then find me an old and reliable villager who has a good memory for the old days.’

  Fern did not question the commands, but obeyed immediately.

  The baby was happily settled. The oldest woman in the village was brought to Kyra.

  ‘I believe,’ Kyra said to her, ‘there used to be a lake somewhere not far from the Temple, which was drained many years ago. Do you remember it?’

  ‘Oh aye!’ the old woman said, ‘I remember the lake.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘It were on the other side of the haunted mound,’ she said darkly.

  Kyra looked enquiringly at Fern.

  ‘I think she means that enormous mound we saw from the Ridgeway when we first arrived. It is supposed to be haunted. No one will go near it.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Kyra remembered. ‘And the lake was there?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Fern said, shrugging.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kyra said to the old lady. ‘Come,’ she said to Fern.

  They went as swiftly as they could but it was a long way and the sun had passed its zenith when they came within close sight of the weird manmade mountain.

  ‘What makes you think he will be there?’ Fern asked, still worried.

  ‘I am not sure ... but I kept getting a picture of that lake ... so it is possible...’

  ‘I am glad it is no longer a lake,’ Fern said, out of breath from trying to keep up with Kyra.

  Kyra did not mention the other impression she had had, of a burial.

  ‘Are you sure it was not another lake?’ Fern suddenly felt anxious again. ‘A lake still filled with water?’

  ‘No, it was the one that is now dry land. Of that I am sure. Do not be afraid.’

  As they approached the strange mound they noticed the signs of village life had ceased. It stood very much alone in a great bare space and they c
ould see the flat plain to the west, now overgrown with reeds and marsh grasses, that had once been a lake.

  They were just about to bypass the haunted hill and make for the area where the lake had been when Kyra’s eyes were drawn to the top and she saw standing there a tall and impressive warrior figure. The sun was behind him, his silhouette black but surrounded by fire. His arms were raised and in one a battle axe caught the sunlight and flashed malevolently.

  Her heart missed a beat.

  She knew who it was with a strange and terrible certainty.

  ‘Fern!’ she cried.

  Fern looked at her.

  ‘I want you to promise me something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You will stay here and not move until I return. If you do this I will bring Isar unharmed to you.’

  Fern looked as though she were about to promise, though puzzled, when a movement or a flash of light drew her eyes upwards to the summit of the mound.

  ‘Isar!’ she cried in delight and she was off towards him before Kyra could stop her.

  To her the figure on the top of the mound was that of a small boy with red hair, no more than about five summers old, waving a bulrush from the marsh over his head.

  Her mother’s love propelled her up the side of that steep and forbidden mound faster than Kyra could manage, and when Kyra arrived at the top mother and son were happily sitting side by side, arms around each other, kissing and laughing.

  Kyra stared at them.

  She knew she had not been mistaken in what she had seen, and she just as certainly knew that this was the child Isar with his mother, with a bulrush in his hand.

  The harsh, mocking sound of a rook as it flew off from the long grass on the side of the mound brought back the chill to Kyra’s heart.

  There were things she must find out before it was too late! Isar offered no explanation for his actions and his mother asked for none. The three of them made their way back to Fern’s home as quickly as possible, there to find Karne returned, just about to set off with torches to look for them.

  Kyra did not disturb their happy reunion with any of her own forebodings, and when they had eaten and put the children to bed she kissed them both and returned to the college.