Fern dried her eyes, knowing that it was useless to continue fighting the inevitable.
‘No. You will tell her, my love, when I am safely gone.’
‘But...’
‘I am going. The Temple is slow to resort to arms and busy with the devious ways of mind and spirit. In case they do not work, I and other armed men will be ready’
‘It is a long way to Klad,’ she said forlornly. ‘The methods of the Temple may be the only ones that will be effective and in time.’
‘No one will be more pleased than I if their methods work. I go only in case they do not.’
‘And because you cannot sit around and do nothing no matter how many priests command it!’ A flicker of amusement passed through Fern’s eyes.
He smiled broadly and touched her under the chin, looking down into the golden brown depths of her eyes with amused tenderness.
‘I love you,’ he said and then, suddenly solemn, ‘I will take care.’
She watched him go, the green curtain of creeper that hung from tree to tree making a kind of archway, hiding him from her sight almost immediately.
The night would be soon upon him. A patient man would have waited until dawn. But Fern knew that every man must do things in his own way, at his own pace.
His way was not her way, nor the way of the Temple, but that did not mean it was wrong.
* * * *
The same night that saw the beginning of Karne’s journey, and Isar sleeping upon the hillside in Klad worn out by the pursuit of the hunting dogs, found Deva in sleep far away in time and place, walking in the garden of her former life.
After the experience of the night before she had not tried to come to the garden, but had deliberately tried to think of other things at the time of going to bed.
She lay flat on her back in her rugs and thought about Isar. Not the danger he was now in, but the happy times they had had together.
She remembered how she used to sit beside him while he carved figures in wood, sometimes for her and sometimes for other people. Grown-up people made a great fuss over his work and took it for their homes.
She had been with him a few summers ago when he had been carving the sacred symbols into the wood of the great columns that lined the entrance to the Temple from the ceremonial avenue.
There had always been wooden columns marking the entrance, but it was Kyra who suggested to the inner council that Isar should mark them with the sacred signs.
‘I have seen those marks on houses,’ Deva said.
‘You have seen them everywhere.’
‘And on stone...’ Deva continued thoughtfully.
‘Everywhere!’ he said vaguely, pausing briefly in his work to wave his hand, his gesture taking in the circle of the great Temple, the low hills studded with burial mounds surrounding it, the sky surrounding the hills.
She looked around, puzzled.
‘You mean everything seems to go in circles, and the signs are circles within circles?’
He nodded abstractedly, concentrating on pressing his blade into the hard, dark wood at just the right angle, to draw it with all his strength against the grain.
‘Is it because our eyes are round that we see round?’ she demanded.
He did not answer.
‘Or does everything go round anyway, quite apart from how we see it?’
He was still silent, concentrating on his work.
She stood beside him, a small figure determined not to be ignored, silent for a few moments, but soon with another question.
‘Why do you put that sort of path from the inside to the outside?’
‘Or from the outside to the inside,’ he said enigmatically.
She was beginning to get very irritated with him.
‘I do not think very much of our secret symbols,’ she said boldly, lifting her chin, her black eyes flashing at him.
This gave him pause and he looked at her shocked.
Pleased with the effect of her last words she decided to give him something else to think about.
‘I have seen much more interesting symbols carved on stone columns in a garden I go to sometimes.’
He was silent for a few moments.
He stood up and looked straight into her eyes.
He knew Deva was mischievous and could not always be relied on to tell the truth, specially when she was trying to attract attention to herself.
‘What sort of symbols?’
‘Birds and animals and ... men looking sideways ... sometimes men with animal heads ... all sorts of different things!’
‘Where is this garden?’
‘It is a secret.’
‘I thought as much,’ he said. ‘You are making it up.’
‘I am not,’ she said hotly.
But she had lost his attention and he went back to his carving, an irritating expression of disbelief on his face.
She was furious and stood silent and fuming for what seemed a long while, and then she took one of his best knives and while he was not looking carved some of the tiny figures she had seen in her ‘dream’ garden on a sliver of flat chalk stone she found beside her on the ground.
They both worked silently, completely absorbed in what they were doing. It was the arrival of the Lord Khu-ren, her father, that shattered their concentration. Deva would never forget the next few moments. In them she learnt how painful it was for her when Isar was angry with her, and also that her ‘dream’ garden might very well have a reality she had not before been sure about.
Khu-ren found the two young people apparently peacefully and harmoniously at work together, and he greeted them lovingly.
Isar looked up and saw Deva using his best wood carving knife on stone, and with an unaccustomed shout of rage he seized it, cutting her finger accidentally as he did so.
She screamed as blood spurted out.
The peaceful scene was instantly transformed to one of chaos. Isar was shouting, partly with anger about his knife and partly with horror at what he had done.
Deva had the attention she wanted and used every trick to keep it. The cut was not really very painful but she made a great fuss and was carried off by her father to have it bound with healing leaves and cobweb.
Isar trailed behind, distraught and anxious, convinced he had maimed her for life.
When Khu-ren straightened out her clenched hand to bind the finger, the piece of carved chalk stone, now stained with blood, fell on to his knee. He put it aside while he was working on her hand, but when the bleeding was staunched and the two youngsters started grumbling at each other again for what had happened, he picked up the chalk stone in order to distract their attention from their grievances.
‘What is this?’ he asked, holding it out and looking at it carefully, expecting to see that Deva had been copying the sacred symbols Isar was carving on the wooden column.
Instead he saw, carved crudely but unmistakably, the symbols of his own land, the land of the desert and the Great River, that he had left so deliberately behind when he was a young man.
His face grew grave and he stared at the carved stone long and intensely.
Deva and Isar became silent.
They could see his change of mood and were at a loss to understand it.
He repeated his question, but his voice was now stern and serious.
Deva was a little frightened. Her father could be very formidable at times.
Seeing that she could not answer, Isar spoke quickly for her, as he had often done before when her mischief had led her into trouble.
‘It is nothing,’ he said.
‘Nothing?’ Khu-ren said pointedly, holding out the piece of stone for Isar to see.
Isar saw some extremely clumsy scratchings, one of which resembled a bird with very long legs, and one that could have been a man but he seemed deformed. His body was facing forwards, but his feet and head were facing sideways.
He looked puzzled. Why should this make Khu-ren so grave?
‘Where have you
seen these things?’ the High Priest demanded of the little girl.
Nervously she shook her head.
‘Nowhere,’ she whispered drily.
He looked at her with the same black eyes as her own, long and penetratingly. Then he looked at Isar.
‘She ... she said she saw them in a secret garden. But I think she was just making up stories as usual,’ Isar said.
Deva flushed with the injustice of this remark, but was not sure enough of herself to contradict it. She seemed to be in some kind of trouble because of the scratchings, but she did not know why. She decided to stay quiet until she was certain of her position.
‘They... they are very good,’ Isar ventured now, feeling sorry for her. ‘Do you not think so, my lord?’
‘No,’ said Khu-ren, ‘I do not think so. And I do not like lies either.’
Isar put his arm around Deva and she snuggled up to him.
‘My lord!’ He lifted his chin to speak defiantly, but before he could say more Khu-ren held up his hand to silence him.
Isar was silent, not because of the authority of the High Priest’s gesture, for he would have dared anyone to protect Deva, but because he could see the man’s mood had changed again.
‘Never mind,’ Khu-ren said. ‘We may be making too much of this. They are just the idle scratchings of a little girl after all. I am sorry I frightened you,’ he said to Deva and kissed the top of her head. ‘Run along now!’ He waved them away and went off himself, but Deva noticed with rage that he took her piece of stone with him.
‘Idle scratchings!’ she said bitterly. ‘I will have you know that they are copies of symbols I have seen in the most beautiful garden in the world. They are from columns that hold up a roof to make a shady walk around the garden because the sun is very hot there. Much hotter than here!’ she said fiercely to Isar. ‘Your fair skin would be burnt to ashes there. But mine would be all right!’ she added proudly.
Something stirred in Isar’s memory, something from his childhood. He had known once, but the knowledge was as vague as dream knowledge, that he and Deva had lived and loved before in ancient times and the garden she described seemed fleetingly familiar to him too. But the image was too unclear. He could not be sure.
‘You must tell me more about your garden,’ he said gently to her, stroking her black silky hair soothingly.
‘You said I was making up stories!’ she said sulkily.
‘I was wrong,’ he said humbly. ‘It is very easy to be wrong about things.’
They found a bank to sit upon and she told him about her ‘dream’ visits and what she had seen there.
He listened intently but could not say truthfully that he believed she was really visiting an ancient garden (in memory), or whether she was dreaming about an imaginary garden.
But then he thought about the scratchings on the stone and how disturbed Khu-ren had been.
It was strange.
* * * *
Midsummer had come and gone four times since then and now he lay upon an alien hillside with danger all around him, a girl who could not speak beside him, and Deva wrapped in her rugs in the High Priest’s house, and yet walking in a garden half a world away in a time long since passed.
* * * *
This time Deva had drifted into the garden while she was thinking of Isar and the occasion when he had cut her finger. Surprised, she still felt pain in the same finger in her dream, and looked down at her hand. A small snake was slithering away across the hot paving stones and she knew she had been bitten.
She screamed.
Someone came running.
It was a boy, slightly older than herself. Someone she had never seen before. Someone lithe and muscular and dark, someone who excited her so much that she stood still, holding her finger tightly to stop the poisoned blood flowing, but making no sound.
Within moments he had a dagger in his hand and was cutting her finger. He seemed so sure of himself she made no murmur though she expected the pain to be extreme. Having cut, he sucked and spat the mixture of blood and venom on to the smooth white crystal of the paving stones. She stared at it with horror, dazed by the suddenness of it all.
He was still sucking and spitting when the king’s guards came running and seized him, beat him and dragged him away.
‘No! No!’ she screamed, but they did not listen to her. She tried to run after them, to explain, but she began to feel as though she were falling and everything was growing dark around her.
She must have fainted.
Time in that ancient land must have passed, because when she became conscious again she was lying in a strange room on a bed of black wood with four gold panther heads at each corner.
Men were bending over her.
One was her father.
She lifted her arms to him at once and struggled to tell him of the boy who had saved her life, and must himself be saved.
He soothed her with his large and finely shaped hands, he gazed at her with loving concern, but he did not understand a word that she was saying.
Desperately she sought the right words.
The words that came made sense to her, but not to the men who surrounded her.
She looked around in despair.
She was caught between two lifetimes.
She was at once the girl of the garden, the daughter of the architect, who had been bitten by a snake and rescued by a boy who should not have been in the king’s garden, and yet she was speaking in the language of Deva who lived now in another life and in another time.
Weeping with frustration she found herself awake in Deva’s own time, Kyra at her side questioning her gently about her bad dream.
‘It was not a dream,’ she sobbed. ‘It was not a dream!’
‘The garden again?’ Kyra asked softly.
Deva did not answer, but her mother knew by her face that it was so.
‘Tell me,’ she commanded softly.
Deva was wide awake and sitting up fiercely.
‘I will tell you nothing lady, until you bring Isar home.’
Kyra shook her head sadly.
‘You do not help Isar this way, daughter,’ she said. ‘Nor yourself.’
‘You do not help him lady! You do not help him!’ she cried bitterly.
‘There is no help in former times. Now is the material we have to work with. Now we try everything in our power to help him and ourselves.’
‘Have you spoken with him? Have you found him?’
Deva clasped her mother’s hands, for the moment forgetting that she had sworn to ask her nothing until she brought Isar home.
Kyra’s face was grave.
‘We think we gave him deep and restful sleep...’
‘Is that all!’ Deva cried in anguish.
‘A rested and refreshed mind and body could make the difference between life and death in such a situation of danger.’
‘But have you not spoken with him?’
‘I was on my way to the Temple when I heard you cry out,’ Kyra said.
‘O no!’ Deva was in despair again. Her mother rose.
‘Gently, my love,’ she said tenderly. ‘Tonight the moon is full, the stars are right, and the powers of the Stones will be at their greatest. Tonight we will reach him. Do not fear.’
* * * *
But Deva did fear.
Their communication with him could only mean greater danger for him. They were not going to call him home. They were going to ‘use’ him to do their work in Klad.
She lay in the dark tossing and turning, sleep impossible, reasonable trust and patience far from her. The darkness seemed to press upon her like a suffocating incubus mocking her helplessness, whispering to her of Isar’s danger.
She had failed him once long ago when he had been flogged and imprisoned for trespassing in the king’s garden, and she was failing him again.
Where Kyra had moved the door skins to allow her exit, a wedge of blue-grey remained, drawing Deva’s eye.
There was
a way out of the darkness if only she had the nerve to take it.
The dark hole of her chamber had a doorway. Outside the doorway the full moon was climbing steadily above the Temple, the sacred place of tall stones, the inner sanctum which was forbidden to non-initiates.
She sat up, cold and rigid with fear at the daring idea that had come to her.
She rose instantly, her decision made.
She took light from the torch that burnt all night beside the entrance to their house and lit several little chalk-stone oil lamps.
She searched her mother’s chamber for the robes she had worn when the messenger from Klad had arrived.
With trembling hands she transformed herself into the semblance of a priest and set upon her head the diadem of jet Kyra had worn at her inauguration.
Time was passing and she must not be late.
Where was the long blue cloak that would complete the image?
Her mind was racing.
There was a kind of justice in the fact that to save his life she had to trespass in a forbidden place just as he had done at their first meeting in that other life so long ago.
There was no doubt that she would be punished too.
But nothing mattered to her except his safe return.
She found the cloak at last and drew it about herself.
The moon was high enough for her to need no torch and she flitted unseen from shadow to shadow until she neared the Temple entrance. Then she walked boldly forward as though she had the right to pass into the Sacred Circle.
The young priest who had been set at the entrance to warn away anyone not part of the night’s work, half raised a hand to stop her, but let it fall again as she swept elegantly past him.
Once within the Circle she came to rest in the shadow of one of the giant stones that rimmed the outer bank. From there she could see without being seen the ceremony taking place in the northern inner sanctum.
She wanted to be sure she knew the position of everyone before she moved.
Up to now she had been so intent upon her purpose she had had no warning pangs to give her pause, but now the majesty of the scene before her filled her with the beginnings of doubt and fear.
The great Temple was always an impressive sight and held within its high sloping banks and its circle of giant Sacred Stones, a kind of powerful energy, that ordinary people found almost too strong to bear. Deva could feel it now. The whole scene seemed charged with significance and power. The shadows of the rocks were blacker than ordinary shadows and lay at the feet of their masters like deep holes leading into the earth. The stones themselves gleamed eerily in the moonlight and the figures of the priests moving around the sanctum seemed at once very small next to the tall stones and yet very large compared to their normal selves. The darkness of their cloaked bodies was like the darkness of the shadows, as though she was looking not at them, but through them into ... unimaginable depths of Being ... pure consciousness, without form...
Shadow on the Stones Page 4