She would have liked to stay forever, but something was pulling her away.
As though he sensed it, he looked at her and the strange, silent spell that had been on her and in which she had understood so much was broken.
He stood up, bowed slightly to her, and returned to his cave.
She saw that the afternoon must have progressed a great deal since she arrived, and a long purple shadow from the immense peak was lying across the land almost to the horizon. Everything in its path had a strange softness as though it were dissolving.
She too stood up and forced herself to shut her eyes and remember who she was and where she had left her body.
She longed to open her eyes again, to stay in this powerful, beautiful place but she knew she was not ready to leave forever her husband and her daughter, no matter how much beauty and understanding were offered in their place.
With this thought she was home, and she opened her eyes to the encircling stones of the northern inner sanctum of the Temple of the Sun.
Before her stood the Lord Guiron and the Lord Khu-ren, and behind them many faces she knew of the Temple Priesthood.
She was shivering and very, very tired, but before the smallest detail of it could fade she was forced to give a description of everything in absolute completeness.
At the end she was allowed to go and she knew by the faces around her that she had passed the test.
* * * *
The day of her inauguration as one of the select group of Lords of the Sun was a very great day for her.
This time, after the long procession down the Sacred Way a great many of the community around were allowed into the Sacred Circle in orderly groups.
To call all the Lords of the Sun together needed great power and the outer circle was filled with concentric circles of people, male and female alternately, each turning rhythmically within the next, until the northern inner sanctum itself was reached and that was surrounded only by the highest priests.
Deva and Isar hand in hand were among the outermost children’s circle, and Fern and Karne were with the Spear-lords and their ladies.
The fact that Karne’s sister was to be inaugurated as Lord of the Sun gave him extra status in the eyes of the ruling caste, and many who were wavering which way to go now joined his side against the dissidents.
The low and vibrant sound of drumming set the pace of the circling figures.
The Lady Kyra, the Lord Guiron and the Lord Khu-ren, being the only three Lords of the Sun present, were alone in the inner circle, each standing regally against one of the standing stones, facing the great central three, the focus of power, their backs to the moving rings.
As the drummers increased the speed of the beat, the speed of the circling figures increased, and so did the build-up of energy.
Gradually, as the humming, vibrating note that issued from the throats of the encircling people and the drums of the drummers grew louder and louder, and the energy generated by their bodies and thoughts grew stronger and stronger, Kyra noticed changes happening within the inner circle.
At first a kind of flimsy shadow appeared before each unoccupied stone, hardening at last into what appeared to be the full bodily forms of the other Lords of the Sun.
She felt great joy to see Quilla from the Island of the Bulls, now quite healed, standing straight and tall in her traditional dress, supple and graceful as ever. Kyra was glad the bull’s horns had left no scars to mar her beauty, but even as she thought this a little thought that should not have entered her head as one of the Great Lords of the Sun entered hers. She looked quickly at the Lord Khu-ren to see if he was looking at the girl acrobat with more than ordinary interest. If he was, nothing showed upon his face and Kyra was ashamed to have even entertained such a thought, even for an instant, at a time like this.
She met the eyes of the old hermit from the great mountains and she knew he at least had seen her thought. She flushed. But his eyes were amused, not accusing.
Then there was no more time to think irrelevant thoughts. She ‘left’ her body against the rock and in ‘spirit’ form moved slowly around the circle bowing to each lord in turn, receiving each one’s blessing, each one making a sign particular to his or her race or culture on the newcomer’s forehead.
She received the sign of the circle, the sign of the Star, the sign of the Crescent Moon, the sign of the Tree of Life...
The ancient hermit of the mountains made no sign at all but looked deeply into her eyes and she saw a vision of her world, among a myriad other worlds, all reflected in the small black circle in the centre of his eyes.
When she had completed the round she knelt in the centre of the stone circle and bowed so low that her forehead rested on the earth.
From the earth, through her forehead, she heard the drumming and the throbbing of the vibrations set up by the people of her community and she was filled with great love and a feeling that all that she heard beat with the same rhythm as her own heart.
She did not know how long she stayed thus.
At last she lifted her head slowly and looked around.
The Lord Guiron, the Lord Khu-ren and the Lady Kyra were alone in the inner circle.
No one else was in sight.
The great outer circle was completely empty.
She looked dazed.
‘Come,’ the Lord Khu-ren said, and took her hand.
They followed the High Priest, Guiron, out and across the little wooden bridge.
The circle of Power lay behind them, dormant.
16
Panora’s War
Panora was not at the inauguration of Kyra as Lord of the Sun. She was in the far west visiting Hawk-Eagle’s brother, Nya.
Nya had not seen his brother since they had been children and he knew nothing and cared nothing about him, his land or his people. Nya’s people were mountain nomads and lived wild and scattered, coming down to the settled communities in the valleys only to raid and take what they needed for the winter months, sometimes trading their furs, sometimes not.
It was Vann, Kyra’s friend, who had first brought Nya to the notice of Panora. His own family had suffered greatly at the hands of Nya and his rough people, and it was in telling the story of one of Nya’s raids that Vann mentioned he was one of two sons of a man called White Hawk. Panora knew that Hawk-Eagle’s father had such a name and knew also that he had died in the clutches of a bear when his sons were very young, one coming east with a relative, the other staying in the mountains.
No sooner had she skilfully extracted from Vann the exact location of Nya, than she had sent a series of messages to him bringing to his notice that his brother had been murdered and his village taken over by his murderer.
When she could slip away unnoticed herself she travelled west to seek him out, stirring trouble against Karne all the way, and promising the anxious Spear-lords a leader who would restore their threatened privileges to them.
Nya’s camp was in a forest by a waterfall and Panora was treated with great suspicion when she first appeared. But so unafraid was her carriage and so flattering her words of welcome to Nya and his untidy band of ruffians that she was soon accepted and was squatting with the lord himself, tearing at a boar steak and swilling ale as though it were her usual drink.
‘What is your interest in this?’ Nya asked at last, when he had listened at length to Panora’s speech on how it was his duty to march east and seize back his brother’s land.
Panora was careful how she answered.
If she were truthful she might have said that she had no interest in the particular case at all, but that she was tormented by an ancient spite which she saw a way of satisfying by using Nya.
She was tired of the kind of servant-to-master relationship she had with her father, tired of the settled orderly existence of the Temple and the communities around it. She had a kind of aching itch deep inside her that would not be cured until everything the Lord Guiron and the Temple stood for was overturned, and Isar
was king again, her mother queen, and she a princess treated royally.
Until Wardyke’s coming she had not even known what it was that ailed her and made her so dissatisfied. He had filled her head with stories of ancient times, the splendours of her mother’s palace and the wrong Guiron twice had done.
He had poisoned her mind against Karne and Fern whom at first she had felt to be her friends. And when Wardyke was killed Panora had brooded long and bitterly on how she could avenge not only his death, but that of her ancient royal mother as well.
On hearing of Nya, and feeling the stirring of anxiety among the Spear-lords that their long established powers were being undermined by changes and decrees from the inner council of the Temple, she saw her chance.
A war would relieve her restlessness.
A war would ease her dissatisfaction. It would destroy the upstart Spear-lord and the treacherous priest.
The Temple would be razed to the ground and she would build a palace for her mother, the queen, and her mother’s chosen husband, that would out-rival the ancient palace that had stood upon the Field of the Grey Gods.
She would be powerful and grand instead of a servant-messenger, a half-grown child tolerated everywhere, but nowhere loved.
She would be the instrument of vengeance, the instrument that would change the balance of power in the whole country.
The more she thought about it the more grandiose her schemes became.
But to start them she needed to use the weapons of a band of violent men, and then she needed violence to breed violence, hate to breed hate, and in the final holocaust she needed power to destroy what she wanted to destroy, and build what she wanted to build.
She must not lose control as Wardyke had lost control.
But these thoughts she did not express to Nya.
‘Justice is my interest,’ she said sweetly.
He snorted. It was not a word much used in his vocabulary.
‘All right,’ Panora tried again. ‘Hawk-Eagle was my friend. I want vengeance.’
That he understood.
‘And you,’ she added, ‘will get his lands, his riches, great honour and power as Spear-lord. No longer will you have to live from day to day in the mountains, killing for every scrap of food. Food will be plentiful all the year round. People will respect you and you will live in a great house with furs upon the floor. Your lady,’ and here she looked at the filthy ragged crone at Nya’s side, ‘will wear jewels and soft clothes and drink sweet wine instead of goats’ milk and bad ale.’
Nya’s woman showed her rotten teeth in a greedy smile.
Nya looked with disgust at her and this point did not seem to attract him.
‘Perhaps,’ Panora said to him softly, ‘you would prefer another woman. One of the east, bred among the Spear-lord caste, fine of feature, tall and straight of limb.’
This pleased him better and he smiled at last.
‘You say there are many who will join us on the way?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will serve under no other man!’
‘No,’ Panora said, ‘you will be leader. They will follow you. It is your vengeance that will be done, your land that will be reclaimed. They will help you because your cause helps theirs.’
Nya thought about it from every angle. It seemed a good enough proposition to him. He and his men enjoyed fighting, and to gain so much this time would add to the attraction.
But being treacherous himself he was always on guard against the possibility of treachery in others.
‘And what do you take when all the fighting is done?’
‘Nothing of yours.’
‘What then?’
‘I take what is rightfully mine.’
‘And what is that?’
Nya was not entirely a fool. He wanted to know exactly where he stood before he committed himself.
‘A place of honour too.’
‘Aha!’
‘But it will not conflict with yours. I promise. You will have your brother’s land and much besides that you have conquered. I will have vengeance for my friend and a place of honour I have always been denied.’
‘Hm-m.’ Nya thought about it.
‘Surely if I show you the route to take where the most will join your force, and give you aid in every way from my knowledge of the Temple area, a small reward of land or honour from your bounty would not be too much to ask?’
Nya shrugged.
‘We will see. I will think upon it this night. In the morning I will give you answer.’
Much time that evening was spent in drinking and carousing.
When they finally retired to sleep Panora could not imagine any one of them being in a fit state to think anything through!
She settled under a hide tent in a ragged sleeping rug beside a badly smelling woman and her four children, and thought about the future and the palace she would build, riches, power and glory.
In the morning Nya gave the answer ‘Yes,’ and voices and fists were raised with guttural shouts of affirmation.
At the turn of the next moon cycle the band moved off, pillaging as they went the villages that would not join with them, growing in strength with the ones that would.
* * * *
Back at the Temple of the Sun, little Deva, the shining one, sleeping beside her mother, woke screaming in the night, and spoke of horrible hordes marching upon her loved ones with death in their eyes.
Kyra was troubled but rocked her to sleep pretending that there was nothing to worry about.
This was the first time that Deva had revealed a dream and Kyra was not sure if it was the result of far-sight or of the usual childhood fears when faced with a new and inexplicable world.
She and Lea and Khu-ren discussed it, but could find out no more about it as in the morning Deva had completely forgotten she had suffered it at all.
‘Let it rest at that,’ Kyra said. ‘I do not want to raise these fears again by probing. She is too young.’
But Khu-ren spoke to Isar and asked him to keep his ears and eyes open for any more rumours like the one he had brought about Hawk-Eagle’s brother.
Isar’s fame as a wood carver was growing rapidly and he often spent time in distant villages carving for people who admired his work. He had great pleasure and satisfaction in this and Karne saw that he had training with the best craftsmen in the Temple area.
* * * *
It was on a day that he was very far from home that he heard the first rumours of a vast army that was moving across from the west, devastating everything in its path. He even saw straggling groups of refugees, carrying what possessions they could upon their backs and telling horrifying stories of murder and rape, burning of homes and stealing of crops and cattle.
‘Their leader is a giant with long black hair and beard, his eyes like the dead,’ someone told Isar.
‘And at his side is a strange creature, half demon, half little girl. He seems to do everything she tells him, and yet great warriors tremble at a look from him!’
‘Sometimes flocks of giant black birds follow them for great distances and eat any crops that have been left behind or hidden. The villagers are starving!’
Isar was horrified. He mounted Karne’s horse and rode as hard as he could to the Temple. Arriving there he found others before him bearing the same kind of tale.
Some of the Spear-lords who had taken to the new ways and appreciated the help of the Elders, and were loyal to the priests, had come as soon as they heard of the trouble, and the whole Temple community was in an uproar.
The Lord Guiron called all the messengers together and he and his chief priests listened gravely and silently to all the differing accounts. Through the exaggerations and the distortions he managed to build up quite an accurate picture of what was happening.
So it was coming about as he had feared!
* * * *
Kyra remembered her daughter Deva’s dream.
She also remembered she had not seen Panora an
ywhere for a long time. She started to make enquiries and it soon became clear that no one, not even the Lord Guiron had seen her. Nor had anyone missed her.
Kyra was convinced ‘the strange creature, half demon, half little girl’ with the advancing hordes was Panora.
This was Panora’s war.
* * * *
The Lord Guiron and his priests called a meeting of all the friendly Spear-lords and the Elders of their villages and sent them back to their communities with words of strength and comfort, advising them to prepare defences but to do nothing until they heard from the council of the priests.
‘You will have protection from us,’ the Lord Guiron told them. ‘It is only in the last resort you will have to fight.’
He then called upon the Lord Khu-ren and the Lady Kyra to visit him in the privacy of his own house.
‘There is much that has been unspoken between us in the last few years,’ the Lord Guiron began.
Khu-ren and Kyra were silent, not sure what was coming next.
‘I speak of the story that began in the palace they now speak of as the Field of the Grey Gods.’
The Lord Khu-ren nodded. How long had he known that they knew? There had never been any sign.
Guiron’s face seemed very tired and old, as though he were oppressed with memories too sad to carry further.
‘I have paid for that ancient guilt many times and now it seems not only I, but those I love and cherish, will have to pay again.’
Kyra put her hand upon his arm with warmth and sympathy.
He was such a great Lord and yet at this moment to her woman’s heart he was like a lost and desolate child.
‘This war,’ Khu-ren said, ‘has roots in other matters than your guilt. People used to privilege are fighting to keep it against the tide of change. This is an old story, nothing to do with you or what you have done.’
Guiron sighed.
‘There is no time for games. What you say is only partly true. The flame that sets this mess of straw on fire is Panora. She lives only as long as my guilt lives. She plots only as long as my guilt is not expurgated.’
‘I have often wondered why you have kept her by your side,’ Kyra said thoughtfully. ‘Was there no way...?’
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