The Temple of the Sun

by Moyra Caldecott

  ‘I say Olan was right and I will stake my life to prove him so!’

  The roar of approval that went up this time could be heard far and wide and could not be stopped by anyone until it had spent itself naturally.

  The dancing and the singing that followed this was truly wild and joyful.

  Dark destruction past, the moment of regeneration is always one of joy.

  Within the next few days calmer discussions were held both with the villagers and the inner council of the priests at the Temple.

  It was agreed after some small dissension, that though unorthodox, the move was a good one.

  Karne was installed as Spear-lord in a ceremony presided over by the Lord High Priest, and given official authority by the highest powers in the Temple. They hoped by this means to avert angry reaction from other Spear-lords who feared their positions would be usurped by commoners and local peasants.

  Messengers were sent across the land where the rule of the Spear-lords had most hold, to explain that it was now possible in certain very specific circumstances, for a local man held in great respect by the community, to succeed a Spear-lord, but only at the discretion of the priests of the inner council of the Temple, and after rigorous investigation.

  He would hold his authority in trust for the Temple and it would be removed from him if he abused it.

  Olan’s widow bade farewell to the village she had lived in for so long and returned to the house of her parents.

  Fern and Karne moved into the great house, and within days Isar began carving every wooden post and beam he could find in it with beautiful designs.

  Karne took charge of the running of the village and Fern set about creating another garden that would bring delight and peace to all who walked in it.

  * * * *

  Meanwhile Kyra gradually grew stronger, but Vann who attended her as healer had to tell her that in bearing Deva she had suffered such damage that she would never again be able to bear a child.

  When she heard this she dropped her face into her hands and sobbed, but the Lord Khu-ren who came to her soon after this took her hands and lifted up her face.

  ‘My lady,’ he said tenderly, ‘we have Deva and we have each other. Why do you weep?’

  She felt ashamed and dried her eyes.

  Deva fed upon her mother’s milk and grew delightfully round and rosy.

  When Kyra could walk again she carried her on her hip everywhere she went and talked to her as though she could understand all the things her mother said. Deva chuckled and looked around with large, dark eyes as though she were surprised and joyful to be alive.

  ‘Do you think she will have powers to be a priest?’ Kyra asked Khu-ren eagerly. ‘She should, with both of us so deeply involved.’

  He smiled and shrugged.

  ‘She is herself,’ he said.

  A shadow crossed Kyra’s face.

  ‘Is she?’ she asked sadly. ‘Remember the dream I had upon the haunted mound the night she was born? I sometimes wonder,’ and her face was pensive, ‘what claim we have upon her if she is that ancient queen...’

  Khu-ren kissed her into silence.

  ‘She is Deva now ... our child ... enjoy her ... love her. When she is grown to be a woman it will be her decision what place she takes. You know as well as I do that no one is born exactly as they were in a previous life. The differences in Deva and in Isar now may change the destiny that seems to us so closely and inevitably linked.’

  ‘But the dream?’

  He smiled.

  ‘You thought it meant that you would die in bearing her!’

  Kyra laughed.

  ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘I see I am not to be allowed to worry!’

  ‘That is right,’ he said.

  * * * *

  Gradually Kyra resumed her studies and her work. Fern looked after Deva while her mother was busy, and the great house of the Spear-lord Karne became a second home to her.

  Isar was always at her side and it was he who taught her how to walk and how to say her name.

  Kyra had made it clear that Panora was not to be allowed anywhere near her daughter and if Panora was at Fern’s house Deva was to be brought instantly back to her mother.

  Fern’s first trust in Panora had disappeared, but the girl still came to the house as though she were welcome, and Fern could not bring herself to be unkind to her. She was always ill at ease when the girl was around and kept a close watch on the children, but Panora showed no signs of harming them. She was in fact most helpful and kind, singing to them and playing with them as often as they wished.

  Fern kept her word to Kyra and kept Deva out of her way, but Isar was often off with her, apparently visiting other villages far afield.

  It was after such a visit when Deva was three summers old that Isar brought news to Karne that Hawk-Eagle’s brother, who had been living all his life on the other side of the western mountains, had at last received word of Karne’s position in Hawk-Eagles old village and was intending to do something about it.

  ‘What is he intending to do?’ Karne asked Isar curiously.

  ‘That I do not know. I heard it as a rumour from people who had not even met him.’

  At the time of Karne’s installation as Spear-lord there had been a certain amount of restlessness amongst the warrior race, but as no one had a personal stake in the village concerned and the priests of the inner council of the Temple of the Sun had great authority, nothing had been done about it. But Karne knew it would not take much to rouse them if they had a specific leader who had a claim on the village.

  He was reluctant to give up his position now, not only because he enjoyed the responsibility it gave him, but because he felt he had really made a positive contribution to the well-being of his people. The village economy was healthy; the people happy and well fed. Other villagers came to admire his work, and the carvings of Isar upon the houses were becoming famous.

  He had introduced the system of the Seven Elders from his home community and the villagers really felt it was their village and took great pride in it.

  His greatest triumph was that several Spear-lords in the district, on seeing how well the community was run, had allowed their villages the privilege of the Seven Elder system. They still retained ultimate control, but many matters were turned over to the Elders, and the Council of Elders could bring to the attention of the Spear-lord any problem the villagers had that the Spear-lord might have overlooked.

  On the other hand, other lords, those who had been Olan’s enemies in his lifetime, turned the other way and became more self-assertive, determined not to relinquish the smallest part of their power and privilege.

  During the first processional Karne and Fern attended, walking with the traditional splendour of the warrior caste behind the priests along the Sacred Way, they could feel the antagonism building up around them, particularly as the crowd cheered incessantly whenever they appeared.

  Fern was afraid and her heart was very low. She had no wish to be a great lady walking in grand robes and living in a house too big for her needs. She had no wish to stir up change and restlessness. To her, each person’s life should be spent in perfecting his or her private relationship with the universe. From this all else followed. Pushing and jostling for power positions relative to each other was, to her, a waste of precious time and energy, and could lead nowhere but to sterility of spirit and thence to the destruction of the material world.

  To know one’s true self and one’s position in the scheme of the true universe could be compared to a person, seeing clearly, walking forward and attending efficiently and steadily to the real needs of his fellow human beings and the natural world of which he was an integral part.

  Not to know one’s true self and one’s position in the scheme of the true universe could be compared to a blind person blundering and stumbling about in a room full of unfamiliar things, knocking them over, breaking them, and achieving nothing.

  Karne would have agreed with much o
f this, but he was caught up in action now that was running too fast to be stopped. His strength was that he had been long enough with Maal, Kyra and Fern to know the value of deep thinking, and to have a reasonably clear idea of who he was and why he was, and yet enough joy in physical and challenging action, enough excitement in quick decisiveness, to ride the coming storm with some elation.

  He held his head high in the procession and his eyes sparkled to meet those of his adversaries.

  He believed what he was doing was right. The old warrior caste and the old ways had served their purpose. His people, or at least some of them, were ready now to think for themselves and be more than chattels.

  * * * *

  At the same time as these thoughts were occupying the minds of Karne and Fern, Kyra was facing the most difficult part of her training.

  For years they had been trained to sense the inner levels of their own thoughts, to use them for greater understanding and awareness. They had been trained to go beyond even the innermost levels of their own consciousness and join with the great flow of spirit-consciousness all around them.

  She worked hard, struggling many times and through many difficult trials to reach the state when she could feel that she was as ready as it was possible for a human being to be to take the final step to become Lord of the Sun.

  At noon on one never-to-be-forgotten summer’s day, she passed from tall stone to tall stone in the northern inner sanctum of the Temple, touching her forehead to the sacred rocks until she felt their power working through her. And then, standing in the centre of the sacred inner three, she closed her eyes, feeling the throbbing of their energy through her body and the strength of the earth through the bare soles of her feet.

  Around her she could hear the faint swish of sound as the priests, touching hand to hand to form a continuous circle, walked round and round the outside of the stones, adding the strength of their spiritual experience to the forces in the circle of stones.

  She began to feel stranger and stranger, as though all the blood, all the life-force in her was draining out. She briefly remembered the first time she had felt this and had thought she was dying. This time she knew better, but she could not quite dispel a tiny thrill of fear as finally her body went cold and numb and she could no longer move a limb.

  She tried to concentrate on the feeling that was coming to her from the stone, tried to concentrate on the words that were forming in her mind that she had been taught to use at the moment of separation.

  ‘I am not Kyra. This body I lend back to the elements from which it came. It is nothing to me. I am nameless, Formless. I am the point of consciousness on which everything rests. I am conscious of everything and am no longer limited by that discarded shell I see below me. I AM.’

  It worked!

  She could see her body surrounded by the three stones that symbolized the God-spirit, its manifestation in matter, and the human spirit which formed a bridge between the two.

  She could see the priests moving and murmuring, round and round the circle. She could see the outer rock circle, the earth bank beyond, the colleges, the priests’ houses, the burial mounds, the forests, fields and villages...

  She was high ... high ... high...

  She knew this time she had a particular mission. It was not enough as she had done before to blunder accidentally into far-off lands. It had been decided where she would go and whom she would meet, and her journey must be controlled and her arrival must be accurate.

  She deliberately blanked her mind of any distractions, and visualized in passionate detail the mountain area her teacher, the Lord Khu-ren, had described for her.

  First she saw in her mind’s eye a terrain of enormous dimensions, plains that seemed to lie in baking sun forever and ever, and beyond them the rising foothills and then the mountains themselves. The greatest mountains on earth.

  She visualized herself as an eagle flying closer, and as she approached the range her vision became more restricted in scope, but in detail more and more explicit.

  At last she stood upon the mountain side and saw around her a proliferation of beautiful plant life, from the enormous bushes richly decked with clusters of waxy purple flowers to the tiniest ferns and mosses.

  She lifted her gaze and beyond the mountain where she stood she saw, rising to the blue immensity of the sky itself, a giant peak of virginal crystal, the sunlight glancing off the sharp facets of its sides, the rock she knew to be below the ice and snow darkly silent and brooding.

  She stood very still and watched the eagle whose body she had borrowed lift off and fly to a craggy place a long way to the east.

  She felt the mountain silently about her, and its power was greater than the puny stone circles her people built.

  This rock seemed conscious. She felt as though it were examining her. She was afraid of the force she felt, the unusual strength of the thoughts that came into her mind.

  The air, the watching plants, the invisible rays from the mountain itself seemed to be working on her, purifying her, clarifying her mind until she could see everything, not only the things around, but everything in great and perfect detail from every angle simultaneously.

  Vision upon vision of incredible intricacy arose for her and she saw the beauty of her earth contained like a leaf in amber, its own beauty far outdone by the beauty of that which contained it and was everywhere around it.

  Even the crystal giant above her she could see now was just one peak in a series of peaks, each shimmering with a richer and more brilliant light.

  She felt her heart would burst, unable to contain so much visionary splendour, so many feelings crowding into her of understanding and awareness. She wanted to cry to the Lord Khu-ren for help, to escape from this throbbing, powerful place. If what she had been taught about earth currents was correct, this place must be the centre of them all.

  Her people were right to send her to these mountains to test herself against them.

  The vast energies that had formed them were still within them and she knew that now and for as long as they stood they would be a challenge worthy of any man’s acceptance. Some would test themselves bodily against the rock faces and the ice and ultimately against the peak of peaks. Others would stay in meditation and in silence absorbing the spiritual energies to the limit of their endurance and capacity.

  Feeling herself almost at that point she began to tremble, and as though in answer to her unspoken plea for help she noticed that a man had joined her.

  He came crawling out of a hole in the rock face of the mountain and stood before her blinking owlishly in the light.

  He was the thinnest man she had ever seen, a skeleton with a fine white pall of skin drawn over his bones, but his eyes were alive and dynamic.

  She remembered now she had seen just such a ragged, ancient, bony man amongst the grand Lords of the Sun.

  ‘Yes,’ he said smiling, and when he smiled his hideous skull face became beautiful. ‘Yes, we have met before.’

  She felt better now that she was no longer alone. She knew also she had succeeded in her task, because he was the man she had been sent to meet.

  ‘My lord,’ she said reverently, bowing. ‘I am greatly honoured to be in your presence.’

  He moved his bony hand to indicate the beauty of the mountains around them.

  ‘It is not I!’ he said, and she understood he meant her to be reverent towards the mountains, not to him.

  ‘I have been sent, my lord,’ she said softly, humbly, ‘to learn from you.’

  He smiled again, this time amused.

  ‘And what is it that you have been sent to learn?’

  ‘If I knew that, my lord, I would not still need to learn it!’

  He nodded, pleased by her reply.

  ‘But I can teach you nothing,’ he said gravely.

  ‘Could I at least ask you a question?’

  ‘You may ask, of course, but whether I can answer it is another matter.’

  ‘I must ask it. I
t is something that has worried me from time to time but I have never dared put it into words before.’

  ‘Ask it then.’

  ‘You are a man of great understanding ... perhaps the greatest in the world...’

  He stared at her expressionlessly, neither denying nor accepting the compliment.

  ‘Would it not be better for the world if you were among people giving of your understanding to them ... helping them with their lives ... rather than staying locked up in this cave ... in this mountain ... benefiting only your own spiritual development?’

  She poured out the words, horrified at herself, hardly realising what she was saying until she had said it.

  He looked at her long and unblinkingly. It did not seem that he was offended. Nor did it seem that he intended to answer her question.

  ‘I am sorry...’ she stumbled out, trying to break the silence somehow.

  He lifted his hand to make her silent, and then carefully chose a flat stone and sat upon it cross-legged, going almost immediately into a kind of trance.

  She watched him for a while, puzzled and ill at ease, at a loss to know what to do next.

  At last she felt the need to sit beside him, cross-legged too, and so she did.

  She stared at the scenery around her, wondering at its beauty and its remoteness from any other living human being, and wondered about the question she had asked. She was not even sure why she had asked it because it was quite acceptable to her that a holy man or hermit, while taking no apparent part in the world’s affairs, could in fact influence it through the minds of others. He could also be a channel through which beings of the higher realms could guide and protect the world. If malevolent forces were present he could play a role in intercepting and counteracting their influence on weak and immature minds.

  She realised she had asked the question because she had accepted the answer when it had been given to her at the college with only part of her mind. She needed to know that what she had been told was indeed true.

  They sat in silence for a long time and Kyra had never experienced before such profundity and clarity of understanding.