The Rose upon the Rood of Time (Dark Spiral Book 1)

by Segoy Sands

  Deniela half-consciously caressed the polished wood of the low table between them, where they sat on orange and cinnamon rugs. “You look radiantly well, elkirrianda yemeje,” she used the formal words. “I was ill for a month after the first rite. I didn’t settle at all until the third rite. You may be among the lucky ones. We learn to look for certain signs, of course. May I ask how you feel?”

  Ashe sat, knees folded under her, cheeks warm and fresh from the hot springs. Yesterday morning, they had cut away the waist-length tresses of the acolyte, leaving her a shock of red hair that made her look a war prisoner. But Deniela hardly had to ask her how she felt. The girl was in bliss so deep that Deniela herself felt drawn into the sweetness. Without a doubt, beside the rich smells of tea and the warm colors of the carpets, and the honeyed candles blazing on the live rock walls, the girl was still seeing the rainbow.

  “I feel well.”

  “Your heart is warm? You were blessed with the vision of the olonö?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is well and good.”

  One never wanted to put crass words to it. But it would also never do to let the girl think she was the only one. Far better for her to know they all shared the warmth, and the further one walked the path the less cold there was. It was said so.

  “Now your relationships in the Serai are changed. Your ties with Eccle are altered, as are your ties with me. My door is open. I am mother to you, not Aksama.”

  “I thank you, Mother.” A smile colored her cheeks. Her skin was white and freckled, like sparks that leap from fire onto snow.

  “Daughter, in the Serai, who is your dearest friend?”

  “Bennaea,” Ashe made a wry face. “We all call her Bennie.”

  “Yes, Bennie.” The girl was a favorite with many, an ebullient spirit. That ebullience was spirit. “Yes, yes, Bennie,” she nodded, sipping tea. “She is wonderful.”

  “And Tamra. When the rite went wrong, she suffered. So did Ajieka Yeme.”

  Deniela nodded judiciously, hiding her unease. Tamra’s mind was hurt and Ajieka Yeme blamed herself, but why did Ashe mention it now? Ajieka of course would have worked it out by now. She’d have analyzed it a thousand times. One of the four Lakins she’d chosen for the rite was polluted. Was Ashe hinting she knew she’d been the one? “We all accept the risk of our rites. It has always been thus.”

  “They don’t like me now, Tamra and Ajieka,” the girl said.

  “Yes, maybe so,” she said frankly. “The pattern patternless brings us friends and it brings us foes. Who can say which of the two help us more along the way? To whom do we owe the greater debt? ‘Ask of the owl in the moonless dark,’ the verses tell us, ‘none can dowse the waters of the heart.’ We cannot control these things, nor can we guess their deepest causes or furthest ends. Tell me, daughter, are we here to change the pattern?”

  “No, to believe so is the fallacy of concrete identity,” the girl said.

  “And are we here to impose outward peace?”

  “No, Mother. We pledge ourselves to a far more beautiful path. We become peaceful ourselves.”

  The cave room felt smaller, more intimate, than it had since, years gone, she had been attendant to Gafell, the previous Aksama, during an audience with a young aksa, Reese, who had fallen into disgrace on Naarwa. A calamity, that one. The sisters of Naarwa had failed to manage her, and so, to the outrage of many yellow ambas, she’d travelled all the way to the Serai to meet the Aksama with a child in her arms. Why she had willingly courted the Yellow Aksama’s severity, when her own more forgiving Blue Aksama had dismissed her, no one could guess. Deniela had always felt there was a meaning in her being present at that meeting. Naturally, Reese and her girl child should never have been allowed to leave. Yet Deniela had felt firsthand how the pattern moved around them, in furious intricate beauty.

  Reese’s request had not been unlike Erete’s request, that the Serai raise and train a child of anathema. Gafell had refused. Deniela was perhaps the only living sister of the Spiral who fully understood the consequences of that refusal. Perhaps it had been a mistake. Reese’s daughter had been the ruin of Naarwa and had grown wilder than Saoirse during the Sei Sí revolt. Eventually, she appeared to achieve self mastery, but now that daughter had a daughter of her own.

  “Can you do that?” Deniela shook her head. “Can you be peace? I have seen people try, but mind is the problem. Mind itself is navash, contaminate. Some think we renounce matter and devote ourselves to mind. Tell me, is matter real and mind a ghost, or is mind real and matter a ghost? It’s a pretty riddle. Either answer denigrates experience. If we are not to betray our experience, then we must admit that when the mind cognizes matter it is navash, a stone that prevents eternal vision, a finite eye. The geometers would tell us that abstractions are most real, and have their correspondent in the vacuous actuality of independent objects. They would keep us in the cold and vicious circle of thoughts and things.

  “So what is the way out of this vicious circle, daughter? What antidote is there to ignorance but wisdom? And what is the source of wisdom but primordial awareness? It must be experienced. Mind must watch until the grosser levels dissolve into the hidden, and all that’s solid melts into moment-to-moment impermanence, all that’s limited become spacious. Matter is the unforgiving stone that blocks spontaneous self-realizing, self-emptying sweetness. But ignorance and sweetness cannot occur together. Thus it is that the sweetness clears away ignorance. When the sweetness of no-essence arises, navash subsides, and the clarity of the primordial mind emerges, as the luminous full moon rises in the cloudless night sky. Mind itself is non-mind. It is navan. It arises of its own, unfabricated, uncontrived. What is done without mind is navan.”

  Even as she explained to the girl, hardly more than a novice, she found the explanations brittle and insufficient. She could not deny what she was sensing in the room, the bubbling, the qassïg, which she had never felt outside the qiva with such force. It opened her, beyond her own conceptions, though the girl seemed to drink in her words, closing her eyes, focusing on the meaning, nodding at the idea that inner peace, naively understood, was a false goal.

  “For hours in the darkness,” Ashe asked, “we focus our minds on the airgid ardaigh, but no one explains its meaning. Can you tell me?”

  “We speak of the three channels, the three winds: the Arru, the Urra, and the Irri. We speak of the demons, the supernals, and the spirit beings. Are these all outside of us? No. What are the Arru and the Urra if not the knots that bind the Irri at the seven places and into the five senses? We are vayu, wind, held in the coarse body.”

  The girl’s breathing has slowed, her concentration deepened.

  “You have learned Radda’s Emptiness by rote, but one day you may also study The Book of Metals, which deals not with the sweet and graceful ways of the Lady but with the cold and convoluted ways of the Ellenic priests, who have sought to seize with their own hands the stakes that pin the pattern patternless. Some will say that these were never meant for man. Some say they err in seeking to know and to manipulate the secrets of our making. I do not know. The older I grow, the more I suspect that these secrets are not hidden from us. We will find them, and should we do so before we are mature enough to understand and to respect their inmost principles, we will be destroyed. Eventually, the dreams of the old scholar priests of Ellene may be realized, and they may themselves, through their skills or their science, work the pattern. Yet that is not our concern. Our concern is with the wisdom that makes that pattern yet is free of the pattern. Our concern is not with knowledge and power but with the sweetness. And the older I grow, the more strongly I feel that even the younger sisters may come more quickly to understand the teachings of the Süleviae through the dark mirror of the masculine priesthoods’ consolidated error.”

  Closing her eyes, Deniela slowly recited:

  …death my desire

  That I in vain in various paths have

  sought but still I live
>
  The Body of Man is given to me

  I seek in vain to destroy

  For still it surges forth in fish & monsters

  of the deeps

  And in these monstrous forms….

  He could not take their fetters off

  for they grew from the soul

  Nor could he quench the fires

  or they flame out from the heart

  Nor could he calm the Elements

  because himself was Subject…

  Reorganize me shooting forth in

  bones & flesh & blood

  i am regenerated to fall or rise at will or to remain

  A labourer of ages a dire discontent a living woe

  Wandring in vain…

  For every one opend within into Eternity at will

  But they refusd because their outward forms

  were in the Abyss…

  Her voice ceased and, in the deep quiet that fell, the girl was like a leaf shivering.

  “In the body are one hundred major and seventy two thousand minor channels, but the three of greatest import are the red, white, and black: Arru, Urra, and Irri. In the moon rite, we drink lyf to help the senses expand at first. But lyf should soon be abandoned, for it leads to dullness. One must preserve the fire of one’s will to know the seven spirals of the body as the seven abodes and seven aspects of the Lady. Seven the spirals, seven the eyes, seven the knots made in Irri by Arru and Urra.

  “During long hours of practice, you have felt the different forms of bliss arise, the first of which is in the forehead. You have felt the warmth rise from your core. You have been trained to watch patiently for the five signs, the five alterations in your perception of the sense world: like a mirage, like a wisp of smoke, like the flickering of fireflies, like a glowing beeswax candle, and like a sky free of clouds. There are many practices, many methods of unbinding the body, depending on your disposition. One may take a lover, if it is conducive.” She let her absorb this, but not for too long. “How, then, are the Arwen arrayed?” She used the pedagogical tone that would let the younger sister know her questions were rhetorical.

  “When the Irri begins to open we call it la narañanye. And just as la narañanye reveals itself in visions of the seven, so each of the Arwen reveals itself as one of the three Elkirri. Areieliela Lareielia is the living Arru. She is the Red Door. Tirin Tavin Tavili is the living Urra. He is the White Door. Nembulo Nucifera is the living Irri. Sometimes Nembulo is male, sometimes female. To be taken by Nembulo is to enter the Black Door, and to see the world as the burning rainbow.

  “Lyf came to us by the hand of the seven Süleviae, and it has helped us to loosen the spirals and ride the subtle tide of la narañanye. But this path requires transmission, too. Anyone can sense the sweetness. Animals and children feel it, naturally. Few recognize it as la narañanye, in its voidness. How easily we mistake this voidness either for true existence or non-existence, and what great errors we make. Such was the error of the Ellenic scholars, seekers of paradise, makers of war, here in our land now as Bedes, Moretti, and Blakes. Misinterpreting the Santi Scrolls, they confused the winds and worked with metals. So, then,” she asked briskly, “what are the metallums?”

  “I confess ignorance,” she said.

  Pretending disappointment, Deniela again recited from memory:

  …then as the seed shoots forth

  In pain & sorrow. So the slimy

  bed his limbs renewed

  At first an infant weakness. periods

  passd he gatherd strength

  But still in solitude he sat then

  ising threw his flight

  Onward tho falling thro waste of night

  & ending in death

  And in another resurrection to sorrow

  & weary travel

  But still his books he bore in his

  strong hands & his iron pen

  For when he died they lay beside

  his grave & when he rose

  He siezd them with a gloomy smile

  for wrapd in his death clothes

  He hid them when he slept in death

  when he revivd the clothes

  Were rotted by the winds the books

  remaind still unconsumd

  Still to be written & interleavd with

  brass & iron & gold

  Time after time for such a journey

  none but iron pens

  Can write And adamantine leaves recieve

  nor can the man who goes

  The journey obstinate refuse

  o write time after time…

  She shuddered at the horror of it, but such was the male way, regenerative, self-divided, endlessly devouring yet insatiate, consuming the tender child when the ancient of days was spent, inscribing itself in its scribes, and making every mind its scribe and book and sacrifice, bound in iron words, laws, and numbers, self-absorbed in uncreative sorrows, thirsting for the knowledge of its own bindings.

  “The Blakes of Bysshe, bending their minds on Arru, contrived the Blade of Numbers. The Bedes of Pio, bending their minds on the Urra, contrived the Rood of Time. The Moretti of Mora, forcing the dark door of Irri, contrived the Death Metal. These are the three metallum, the Blade and Rood and Morfin, wielded by the three priest classes, the Elliri. These are the three books of iron, brass, and gold. Once before they came to our land.”

  She let her long fingers, with their green-enameled nails, fan out over the faded green pattern in an old porcelain plate. Cathbad in all of his proud beauty sat upon a tall black horse with the rune-etched metallum glowing in his hands. A dusky girl of sixteen rode towards him on a small white Orroch horse, throwing down her shield and spear as she came, la narañanye around her.

  “She might have opened the way, a second Jivana, but instead she seized the Rood and took it within herself. How great was our loss, then? So, tell me daughter, how long must we wait for the Jivana?” She let her gaze show Ashe the weight of her responsibility as Aksama. “Should we wait until we must pay again the price Lady Duna paid? Should we go on waiting, even until men have trampled the Spiral and made us their slaves in both body and mind, as they did before in ancient Sanskra?”

  Ashe looked down into her tea. Deniela could not help noticing how pretty she looked, in her plain saffron sarasra, with her new-shorn red hair. All those words had passed right through her. She was still so enviably deep in bliss.

  The Aksama smiled. “It’s lovely tea, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It’s lovely tea,” she agreed.

  3 THE RIVER OF LIGHT

  Dillan had no special fondness for his cousin Keene, but he looked forward to his visits home from the Aurum more than his own fathers and brothers, and no doubt more than Keene did himself. The men in the Kinihoun family had a way about them, and had agreed amongst themselves that Keene no longer fit that way. His brother’s Bren and Galen never ceased to mortify him and his father Cogan met him with monotone sarcasm. To compensate, Keene put on learned airs, which made him an even more eminent object of scorn. He displayed this assumed superiority, occasionally, by lending Dillan a hand at chores. As far as Dillan was concerned, it was a slightly more creative, and certainly more welcome, way of expressing that obnoxious streak of Kinihoun pride. Fortunately, when no one was looking, Keene’s conversation grew lively: less a postured disquisition on the dusty pontifications of dead scholars than a blow-by-blow report of life among the Bedes, which should have been dead boring. Only, this year a Blake-in-residence had come to Aurum Cruinn.

  Now Dillan could not care less about the Bedes. All they wanted was their Rood, as if it had been unfair of the Spiral to wrest it from Cathbad’s hands when he invaded with his mercenary Skårsans. Cathbad was clearly a madman. No one else would expect Skårsans to work together long enough to accomplish even a goal so personally satisfying as pillage and plunder. They lost interest too quickly, placing somewhat of a higher premium on one another’s throats. Even there, they were rather ineffective. Somehow, no
matter how deep and self-perpetuating their blood feuds, they never fully succeeded in exterminating themselves.

  One thing the Bedes had for them was their unity of purpose, but they were as cockamamie as Cathbad if they thought their insistent and holy suits for the Rood were going to garner sympathy. The Rood War was hundreds of years ago, but the Orroch had long memories. They still blamed the Bedes for the deaths of some of their holiest Süleviae, who broke their vows to stop Cathbad. Not that Dillan was about to start lighting icons and watching for signs and tingly feelings. If he wore an amulet of L’Avana, it was because his mother gave it to him, as a lame consolation when she let his father take him away. So what bloody right did the Bedes have to their metallum, and who the hell cared if they renamed it the ‘healing’ Aur? They set up a Grael King on a fancy throne in Galloway, and then a hundred Aurum monasteries sprouted across the land, as if chaunting alone could fix the world. Evidently, even they didn’t think so. They wanted their damned holy Aur back so badly that they spared themselves no expense and no indignity in sending ceaseless embassies to the Spiral ceaseless embassies on its account.

  The Blakes were another lot. They’d come in their black ships and the Grael King welcomed them, as did the Bedes of the Aurum. No one knew why they were welcomed, or what they wanted, except that they were Ellenic priests like the Bedes, and knew the old metal craft. To believe Keene, this Mane-Blake, in temporary residence at Aurum Cruinn, was a disciplined man, not yet gray, who savored silence but could demonstrate uncommon wit and elegance. In short, he sounded adroit enough to find Keene an easy mark. Still, anything he could learn from Keene about the Nesso was valuable. It might help when he joined the mannerbund.

  “So,” Dillan huffed as he worked, sounding more sarcastic than he’d intended, “does your Mane-Blake think the Spiral should give back the Rood?” Keene was helping him spread cartloads of sheep manure in Cogan’s barley fields. The trick was to plant close enough to choke out weeds, but then thin and fertilize before the soil was exhausted.