‘Every chance. You have not made the mistakes I have made. You come fresh and strong to the task. I will help you and necessity will give you wings.’
‘But if we cannot . . .’
‘You forget we plan to call upon the Lords of the Sun.’
Karne decided that it was time for practicalities.
‘What is the first move we should make?’ he asked.
‘I may be able to pass within the circle without his seeing me,’ Kyra remembered her terrifying tasks, ‘but how do I reach the Lords of the Sun?’
‘I will have to teach you many things. It will not be easy, and it will not be safe, particularly for someone who has had no training in the Temple of the Sun.’
Kyra looked even more miserable, and even Karne was beginning to think the whole thing was becoming too difficult.
‘Would it not be possible . . .?’ Kyra started tentatively and then stopped.
‘Would what not be possible, my child?’
‘I mean . . . how do we know Wardyke is really bad? Does it matter very much that he has not the final mark of the priest upon him?’
‘The final mark is put upon a priest when he has passed the most stringent moral tests. Without that mark it is possible the priest has all the powers of priesthood, but there is no guarantee he will use them for the good of the people. If Wardyke has been refused the final mark, that means the High Priest of the Temple of the Sun thought he was capable of the misuse of his powers, and that means that your people are in danger.’
‘The very fact that he put up that ring of force to keep you out of the circle is a bad sign,’ Karne said.
‘Certainly it is. I think we should start Kyra’s training as soon as possible. She has much to learn.’
She looked so wretched and so small, he put his hand on her shoulder and through his fingers she felt the warm flowing of his own confidence in her, his love and need of her.
She bowed her head. So be it.
At least she would try.
Chapter 7
The Training of Kyra
As the weeks went by Karne and Kyra became more and more deeply involved in the new knowledge they were gaining from the priest. Maal arranged to meet them secretly at certain times in the hills, where they had met before, but one day he suggested they meet at the home of a friend of his, remote from the village and yet not as remote as the hills. Karne and Kyra had been finding it difficult to slip away unnoticed for quite the length of time required for visiting the northern hills. They were surprised when he mentioned a friend and thought perhaps he meant another priest or maybe even one of the Elders who was not totally loyal to Wardyke and Thorn. But they discovered it was Fern, a girl they had known slightly for years, a year older than Karne, living some way from the village in a beautiful leafy glade. On ceremonial days she came quietly to the village but on the whole she kept herself separate from the community. The richness of the plant growth around her homestead was well known and in times of drought the villagers had fed on food grown by her.
It was her father who had introduced the seed that gave the community the best wheat crop they had ever had and now it had become common practice to grow it year after year. Travellers from other communities had been astonished at the prolific yield and had bartered various goods for some of the seed.
Fern’s parents were dead now and she lived alone, still keeping the land lush and green around her.
Some of the villagers worried about her.
‘It is not good for a young girl to be always so alone,’ Karne’s mother often said.
And some thought her strange.
‘She talks to the spirits,’ Thon said. ‘Thera saw her the other day talking to that tree next to old Faro’s strip.’
‘There is no harm in talking to the spirits,’ Kyra said. ‘We do it every time we pray.’
‘But such talking, such prayer, is at the right time and the right place. We use the words of our fathers, at the times our fathers have chosen . . . the priest is our channel.’
Karne said nothing but he thought a great deal. It seemed to him in the last year he had become increasingly impatient with the round of prayers they had to chant each day. No matter how he concentrated on the ritual he could feel nothing flowing back from it. He had no sense of the spirits he was talking to hearing him in any way or even being aware that he was there and trying to communicate. He had not dared admit even to himself that at times he wondered if the spirit world existed at all. He thought about Fern and wondered if she had found a way to communicate that was better than the one that they were using.
Maal first took them to Fern on a day when rain had fallen, but the sun had followed soon afterwards. Everything was fresh and smelling good. In Fern’s garden raindrops were trapped on leaves and shone with sudden splendour as they passed. Kyra found herself gazing at one caught and poised on the tip of a tall grass spear, its weight slightly pulling the leaf towards the earth. She felt herself being absorbed into its luminosity and somehow becoming a form of light which shone upon the whole Universe . . .
‘Kyra,’ Karne shattered the precious experience and brought her back to the limitations of being contained within a human frame. ‘Did you ever see such flowers?’
Kyra looked and marvelled. Every flower she had ever seen growing in the fields or in the forests was growing in Fern’s garden, but somehow larger, richer, more magnificent. And flowers she had never seen were there in great profusion too. The colours, from the deepest crimson to the palest cream and white, midnight blue and mountain shadow purple, wove together in an intricate and dazzling pattern of delight, all set in rich and varied green.
Fern led them to a grassy bank and a fallen log and they sat surrounded by the garden. It was so beautiful and peaceful it was a while before they could bring themselves to talk and in the silence Kyra could almost fancy she heard the secret, intricate processes of growth going on all around them, roots pushing strongly but infinitely slowly through the rich black earth, branches lengthening, leaves unfurling, buds opening. Bushes of every kind of green surrounded them, some laden with berries. Fern saw Karne looking at them and asked if he were hungry.
His expression was answer enough.
Fern smiled, and then to Karne’s amazement stood very still in front of the bush with the most berries, not moving and not touching them. She seemed to be in a kind of silent communication with the plant world. After a moment or two she opened her eyes and picked the berries gently.
Karne’s eyes met Kyra’s.
When they had eaten their fill and all their mouths were stained with purple, they settled down to talk.
‘How is it that your plants grow so well?’ Kyra asked. ‘I have never seen such profusion of growth.’
No one Kyra had ever met cultivated plants for beauty or for pleasure alone. The villagers grew crops in the strips that were allotted to them outside the village, but never had she seen a dwelling house surrounded by flowers.
Fern was shy and seemed uncertain what to answer.
‘Fern has special powers, Kyra.’ Maal spoke for her. ‘Not unlike yours. She is in tune with the earth, senses its inner needs and works with the flow of life within it.’
‘You seemed to be talking to that bush . . . I mean . . . in your head . . .’
‘I was asking for the berries,’ Fern said simply.
Maal noticed Karne’s expression.
‘All life is animated by spirit,’ he said. ‘We should treat all things with respect. Our relationship with the plant world should be a relationship between two life forms, each respecting the other, different as they may be.’
Karne looked at the bush. He remembered with shame how often he had walked through a field with a stick, absent-mindedly knocking off the heads of flowers and grasses.
‘The earth has forces flowing through it, lines of power through which renewal and regeneration come,’ Fern said gently. ‘I work with these, and the feelings of need I get from the plants
themselves.’
‘My brother says you talked to that old tree next to Faro’s plot. It used to look as though it were dying, but now I see it has new leaves.’
I know,’ Fern flushed slightly. ‘I did not mean to talk aloud. The words themselves mean nothing to the plants. It is the feeling inside one, whether one is genuinely concerned for its welfare or not, that matters. It is a kind of communion through loving. Sometimes I use words just to help myself concentrate. But the plant cannot hear them, of course – unless perhaps it responds to the tone of them . . .’
‘You mean whether your voice sounds angry or loving?’
‘Yes. I suppose that could have an effect. Perhaps the resonance . . . But it is really the feeling that matters.’
Karne was still curious about the renewal of Faro’s tree.
‘But how did you make Faro’s tree grow again?’
‘It was not “Faro’s tree,”’ Fern said firmly. ‘No man can own a tree. A tree is a free spirit, like man.’
‘Sorry. But anyway . . . how did you make the tree grow again?’
‘I did not make it grow,’ Fern said patiently. ‘It grew, like man, when the life force, the spirit flow if you like, was not impeded any more by fear and anger.’
‘The tree “feared!”’ Karne was bewildered.
‘You could say that. Faro had cut many of its roots and branches, brutally and without warning, to extend his growing strip. If a tree has to be cut there are ways of doing it, with preparation and with the flow of nature, that does not harm the living creature or make it angry or afraid.’
‘Where does this flow come from?’ Kyra asked with interest.
Maal held up his arms and looked around him. He indicated everywhere, everything.
Kyra remembered the feeling of wholeness, of identity with the Universe she had experienced recently.
‘In a sense,’ Maal said, ‘it does not come from anywhere or go anywhere. It is a flow that is within us and within everything else which makes us all part of the same Whole. The flow is within the Whole and so consequently within us.’
‘As though we are all in a closed circle with the flow going round and round within the circle?’ Karne asked.
‘Something like that.’
‘Is that why our temple is a circle? A sort of symbol of the great circle in which everything is contained?’
‘Something like that,’ Maal said again. ‘Our little stone circle concentrates power by trapping a bit of it within itself and then as it follows round and round within the circle it gains strength . . .’
‘But that in a sense is impeding its free flow through everything and you said that was bad.’
‘Ah,’ Maal sighed. ‘It is all so complex and we have so little time. But I will try and explain. To capture the force within the circle and to use it for your own purposes should not be done lightly. That is why only the priest is allowed within the circle. Only he has the training and the strength to use the power the circle has generated creatively. An unwary and untrained person might be destroyed by the concentration of power.’
Kyra looked horrified. She had not forgotten she was expected to go within the circle and use its powers.
Fern saw her expression and put her arm around her and kissed her gently on the forehead. She had been informed by Maal of the situation as it stood and was prepared to help them in any way she could. She was sensitive to the earth and all its life forms but she could not leave her body and travel in the spirit, which is what Kyra must do to reach the Lords of the Sun.
There was silence for a moment as they all looked at Kyra and thought about her ordeal.
‘Come,’ Maal said, taking her hand, ‘we will go away from Karne and Fern and practice what you must do.’
* * * *
He led her deeper into the leafy wood and found a small clearing ringed with fronds of fern and feathery white flowers. The rocks lying scattered around were beautiful with lichen and moss. Sunlight flickered and skittered through the leaves of the trees high above them, their trunks tall and straight, forming a circle of living columns around them, a wooden circle of power.
Kyra lay down in the centre, her head to the east, her body aligned along the path of the sun. She looked straight up to the roof of interlocking branches above her and noticed the intricate patterning of leaves, subtly changing moment by moment as light breeze stirred among them but did not penetrate to where she lay in stillness on the earth. Maal sat beside her and waited for the frightened hammering of her heart to quiet down. She would not be able to travel far without the concentration of power from the Sacred Stones, but at least she could learn something of the technique.
He had questioned her again and again about every detail of her last experience and he was convinced that the most cogent reason for her failure was that she was afraid. He talked to her now quietly, gently calming her fears, trying to get her to relax, limb by limb. At last he could sense every bit of her body was lying limp.
‘Feel as though your body is heavy . . . sinking into the earth . . . sinking into the earth . . .’ His voice was soft, repetitive, hypnotic.
‘Sinking . . .’
He let her lie feeling this for a while. Then he as quietly fed her other suggestions.
‘Now feel as though your body is expanding . . . feel it stretching . . . your legs are growing longer . . . your arms . . . you are swelling . . . growing . . . becoming lighter and lighter . . . you are filling with air . . . you are floating . . . floating . . .’
She had her eyes shut and she could feel everything he suggested she should feel. His voice came as though in a dream from a long, long way away.
The solidity of her body was no longer there. She could make it become whatever she chose. But somehow she was still ‘inside’ it. She was not travelling.
‘You are separate from your body . . .’ Maal’s voice droned on and on. ‘Separate . . . You, Kyra, are not your body . . . your body is nothing but a dress you can put on or take off . . . put on or take off . . . a dress you can put on or take off . . .’
She could feel herself slipping, floating, separating . . .
Strange, now she was with the leaves, the brilliance of their flickering was hurting her. Far below her she could see two figures, an old man and a young girl. They looked familiar, but she was too comfortable, too relaxed to bother to work it out. She just kept drifting . . .
She could see so much more now, the rich profusion of Fern’s garden, Fern and Karne sitting very close side by side on the log, deep in conversation. She could see beyond them, beyond Fern’s little house, to the path that led to the village. Momentarily she seemed to drift off to sleep and lose her bearings and when she became conscious again she was not in the clearing with Maal, but beside the heap of stones that had been gathered for Maal’s burial mound. She looked around her in some confusion, wondering how she came to be there, and then she noticed that she was not alone. Wardyke and Thorn were standing quite near, talking.
‘He cannot have it here,’ Wardyke was saying. ‘We will put it over beside the clump of trees.’ He pointed.
‘But . . .’ thought Kyra, ‘but . . .’ She knew there was something wrong with this but she could not think clearly enough to decide what it was. She still felt half dazed and could not understand how she came to be there.
‘Do you still want a mound built?’ Thorn was asking.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Wardyke, ‘we will give him a mound, but it will not do him any good over there.’
That was it! She knew what was wrong.
Before she could stop herself she cried out.
‘But that is not where he wants it. It is not on the alignment!’
Her voice seemed loud to her and she was not standing far from the two men, but neither of them seemed to hear her. Wardyke half turned his head and listened as though something had disturbed him, but Thorn was looking right at her and yet did not see her.
He did not see her!
As sh
e realized this a shockwave of fear passed through her. She felt a terrible jerking and heard a snapping sound and suddenly she was back in the clearing with Maal, shaking with fear, very much the ordinary little Kyra. As she came back she had cried out and Karne and Fern came running to see what the matter was. Maal had his arm around her and she was crying.
‘I had such a horrible dream,’ she sobbed. ‘I heard Wardyke and Thorn plotting to move your burial mound away from the place you have chosen, and then when I called out to them they did not hear me or see me!’
Maal looked very interested.
‘Where did they say they were going to put it?’
‘By that clump of trees to the left, right across the field, nowhere near the alignment you wanted with the midsummer sunset mark and the Sacred Circle.’
‘Never mind your dream,’ Karne said impatiently, ‘what about the travelling? Did you do any?’
‘I do not know,’ she said miserably. ‘I think I went to sleep.’
‘I think not,’ Maal said quietly.
‘You mean . . .?’ Kyra opened her eyes wide.
‘I mean . . . I think you made your first journey. Now tell me everything you felt and saw.’
* * * *
They returned to the log as Kyra was anxious to get away from the clearing where she had had such a strange experience. Under Maal’s skilful questioning she told them every detail. They were all very excited and even Kyra could not help feeling a kind of nervous elation and pride at her achievement.
‘You see,’ Maal said, patting her on the head, ‘it was not so bad after all.’
‘I cannot believe it really happened!’
‘Will you believe it if Thorn and Wardyke really do move the grave to the very place you described?’ Karne asked.
‘Of course. But surely it will not be so?’
‘We shall see,’ Maal said thoughtfully.
‘But if it is so,’ Fern said, ‘that will be bad for you surely?’
‘In one way, yes. In another way, no. It will mean we are making progress with Kyra and we are that much nearer to being able to contact the Lords of the Sun.’
The Tall Stones Page 7