Shadow on the Stones

by Moyra Caldecott

  There were more dark places than before in which to hide, but also more risk of tripping over or bumping into something.

  By this time of the night his own people would have been soundly asleep, but a great many of Na-Groth’s people seemed to be still awake.

  Groups of them were gathered, drinking barley ale. Their laughter came in strangely regular little bursts, as though the laughter had nothing to do with the way they felt, but was expected of them.

  Others were wandering about, poking around other people’s cooking fires, as though hoping to pick up leftovers. He saw one or two find something and instantly pounce on it, looking furtively from side to side.

  They did not see him.

  One ate whatever it was, and then slithered away into the shadows, while the other hid what he had found in his clothes, and ran from the place.

  Gya smiled wryly to himself.

  Who would have thought that he, swift, proud Gya the bowman, would have become a nocturnal scavenger no better than these other human dogs?

  Again a fleeting ripple of pity touched his heart.

  Had these people once been as carefree and as kindly as his own people had been?

  His face darkened.

  He remembered how he had attacked Isar, a harmless stranger.

  Was Groth’s dark taint already upon them?

  * * * *

  Just before the first light of dawn, Na-Groth’s warriors crept up on the position their spies had given them for Karne’s motley army. They could see the humped shapes of sleeping figures, just faintly where they showed against the sky, or in the last dying glow from the watch fires.

  Swiftly they moved, their weapons ready.

  Clubs were raised, axes and knives lifted to position above unsuspecting bodies.

  No sound was made.

  The leader held his breath for one long and fateful moment and then, with a short, sharp exhalation, plunged his blade into the first of the sleeping figures.

  Instantly his men were about their grisly work.

  No one was spared.

  Violence and hate had won.

  Strangely the enemy did not fight back.

  No sound came from the camp.

  Na-Groth’s men would have expected some screams and groans, if not resistance.

  Could they have killed the whole army in one instant?

  Na-Groth’s captain stood up and stared into the dark.

  His men stood poised and uneasy.

  Not sure what they had done.

  Not sure what there was still to do.

  And as they listened, they began to hear, fine and eerie, a high pitched note, that seemed at first so faint that it could have been one of their own body-sounds, and then, gradually, gradually becoming so strong that they were aware of it outside themselves, and everywhere surrounding them ... above them ... in the air ... in the sky...

  It was unearthly.

  It was like nothing they had heard before.

  It chilled their hearts.

  Some flailed about with weapons trying to find the source, but there seemed to be no source.

  The sound was everywhere in equal intensity ... strange, thin, hollow, inhuman... It seemed to pervade the universe, and grow stronger every instant.

  The warriors who had been so bold and confident, part of a well-disciplined unit, began to break up in panic.

  Each man suddenly seemed to be alone, in the dark, with some mysterious and unknown force homing in on him.

  Terrified, Na-Groth’s rabble scattered, stumbling and fleeing, the sound pursuing them, rising in pitch, until it seemed to be the sound of mockery and of triumph.

  Above them the sky slowly reddened, appearing menacing to Na-Groth’s men, but friendly to the men of Karne who were merry as they climbed down from the trees, holding the small reeds through which they had been blowing, high above their heads, as an offering of gratitude to their God and his hieroglyph, the Sun.

  The torn and gashed condition of their sleeping rugs was a small price to pay for their lives, and they sang as they prepared their breakfast, already incorporating the name of their leader, Karne, into a hero’s song.

  * * * *

  The coming of dawn brought more problems to Gya. Grey faced with weariness he looked helplessly around him, wondering how he could possibly escape notice during the daylight hours.

  The palace was so heavily guarded it seemed an impossible task to approach it, and he was beginning to despair of ever helping Isar.

  He must find somewhere to hide.

  Even as he reached desperation, he found Berka, the ragged child of the night before, staring at him again. She seemed to have an uncanny way of seeing him when he thought he could not be seen.

  He stared back at her, unsure whether she was friend or enemy.

  He tried smiling to put her at her ease, but the smile was not as relaxed as he had intended it to be.

  She did not smile back, but after another prolonged stare she suddenly beckoned to him to follow her. He hesitated. There was still no overt enmity in her eyes, but he could not be certain that there was friendship there either.

  He decided to allow his intuition to guide him, and followed her. The fact that she led him from cover to cover and was constantly darting looks, not only at himself, but in every direction, convinced him at last that he was right to trust her. If she were going to give him up to his enemies she would surely have led him straight to them.

  They had a few narrow escapes, and each time it was the presence of mind of the child that saved him. She seemed to be used to this kind of secrecy. She knew the movements of her people, and how to avoid them.

  She brought him eventually to a halt beside a pile of wood and rotting hide that must once have been a shack. The best timbers had been removed, and rubbish of all sorts had been piled up against the remainder. The smell was sickening, and Gya could not imagine what she intended. He was startled when, with calm assurance, the self-possessed little girl began to move some boards and revealed that the whole heap was hollow inside and would afford adequate shelter.

  Obediently he crept past her as she indicated, and she nodded with satisfaction as he took up his cramped position inside.

  She pointed at him and mimed sleep.

  He nodded, and whispered ‘thank you,’ but, as he was still not sure if she understood his language, he blew her a kiss. This place was bad, but it was better than being captured.

  She seemed to understand the kiss and, for a moment, something like unguarded warmth flickered across her wary eyes.

  Then she replaced the wood, and was gone.

  He was in darkness.

  * * * *

  Inside the palace Isar had waited miserably for the dawn, but saw nothing of it when it came.

  The small room he was in had no opening, except the one heavily covered with hides and carefully guarded.

  The air was stuffy and oppressive, and his one comfort, a small chalkstone lamp with its flame guttering in a pool of oil, had been removed by the guard not long after he was brought to the place.

  The little chalk-stone lamp had reminded him of his home and he ached to see the smooth, gentle, feminine curves of the chalk-stone hills around the Temple. This was a harsh and rugged land, the hills high and craggy, Na-Groth’s plain, a stronghold.

  Would he ever see his home again?

  He doubted it.

  He fell to fitful sleep about the time Gya was being shown to his hiding place by Berka, and Karne’s men were celebrating their victory. He did not wake again until he was roughly shaken and dragged out of the room.

  He was taken to a larger one where he was pushed on to his knees before the same old man who had originally led him into the palace, the priest of Groth, Gaa-ak.

  This time he was too tired, too dazed and too much in pain even to contemplate defiance.

  He remained kneeling, looking around him with bloodshot eyes, amazed at the richness and variety of furs that hung upon the walls.<
br />
  ‘I trust you are well rested,’ Gaa-ak said.

  Isar looked at him stupidly.

  The guard poked at him.

  ‘I slept a little,’ Isar muttered with a dry throat, thinking of water.

  ‘You are a carver of wood,’ the old priest of Groth now said, more as a statement than as a question.

  Isar showed surprise.

  ‘We knew of your coming,’ Gaa-ak said in reply to Isar’s unspoken question. ‘We were waiting for you.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We knew.’

  ‘I was coming...’ Isar started to say and then stopped.

  ‘To see Janak, the greatest wood carver this side of the Great Ocean,’ prompted the harsh voice of Gaa-ak.

  Again Isar looked surprised.

  ‘Is he...?’

  ‘He is dead,’ the old man said coldly.

  Isar was shaken. Janak was a great man and there was no one to match him in his skill.

  ‘Na-Groth ordered his death before he knew who he was. A pity. We need him now’

  Isar stared at the man.

  ‘We will just have to use you instead,’ Gaa-ak added coldly.

  He was watching the boy closely.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ he said sharply.

  Isar looked at him again, but said nothing.

  ‘We need someone skilled at woodcarving. Your life has been spared only because of this.’

  Isar had wondered why they had not killed him.

  He looked around gloomily at the sombre walls, the dark columns.

  He had seen no carving in the palace. What did they want carved?

  Gaa-ak was pacing up and down, a muscle twitching at the side of his eye, giving him the appearance of a ghoul, winking with a kind of dreadful and deadly bonhomie.

  Isar shuddered and looked away.

  ‘Do you not want to know what it is that we must have carved?’

  Gaa-ak prodded him with his staff as he said this.

  Isar looked at him wearily.

  ‘I want to know,’ he said obediently, but with no enthusiasm.

  The priest of Groth looked pleased and conspiratorial.

  ‘Follow me!’ he commanded, a gleam of excitement in his eye as he strode from the chamber.

  Isar looked questioningly at his guards. They shrugged and hauled him to his feet, keeping a spear at his back as he followed the old man along the dark passages, through the great hall, now empty except for guards, and out through the main door, into the daylight.

  Although the sun shone, it was not as it was at Isar’s home, flickering through leaves on to the heads of children playing. It was sifted through layers of dirty air to fall dully on dull surfaces.

  Isar was marched forward until he stood before the enormous mass of the statue of Groth. There he was pushed roughly to his knees again.

  He noticed that many people were on the ground before the statue, crawling or kneeling, praying in whining, wheedling voices for favours.

  The boy who had been used to the Temple of the Sun looked around him in amazement.

  The movement of his head elicited a sharp blow from Gaa-ak’s staff.

  ‘When you are in the presence of Groth you look at no one but Groth,’ the old man snapped.

  Isar looked at Groth.

  Groth had no face.

  ‘Pray. Pray for your life,’ hissed the old man giving him another push with his stick.

  Isar prayed. But not to Groth.

  ‘Aloud!’ snarled Gaa-ak.

  ‘I do not know the words,’ stalled Isar feebly.

  ‘Speak after me,’ the man said, and bowed his stiff neck reverently to the wood and straw.

  Isar felt more sick and more afraid than he had ever felt before.

  ‘I will not pray to a false god,’ he thought bitterly.

  But if he was to live...?

  And if Groth was nothing but wood and straw what was the harm in it?

  Words Kyra had spoken long ago came back to him.

  ‘Thought has power. Belief has power. If people believe in a thing strongly enough they invest it with power.’

  He was afraid.

  Had this monstrous creation been given power by the peoples belief in it?

  He heard the old man intoning words in a loud, high pitched, unnatural voice.

  ‘Lord Groth, mightiest god in the universe, hear my plea...’

  It was clear he expected Isar to repeat them, and when he did not, the guards struck him savagely.

  ‘It is only wood and straw ... nothing but wood and straw...’ Isar told himself over and over again, and then, swallowing hard, the pain of the blows bringing sweat to his brow, he said with his mouth the words the priest of Groth wanted to hear, but inside the sanctuary of his own mind he cried to his own God, his own helpers in the Spirit realms, his own people.

  He shut his eyes and tried with all his might to visualize the tall stones of the Temple of his homeland, and the priests who served there. A picture of it came to him, and, instead of the dusty forecourt with the monstrous statue, he saw Kyra and Khu-ren and the priests of the inner council walking from stone to stone, touching them and intoning the words of the ritual to fend off harm.

  Loud and clear he suddenly echoed their words and stood upright, all pain gone, his face transformed.

  The old man beside him appeared momentarily to falter and crumple. The supplicants grovelling in the dust at the feet of Groth looked at him with glazed eyes.

  ‘Spirits of the realms deeper than man’s heart, rise to our aid.

  ‘Spirits of the realms higher than the Sun, visit us now at the time of our need.’

  ‘Enough!’ shrieked the priest of Groth regaining his strength. ‘You are faced with the greatest god the world has ever known and you blaspheme!’

  Isar stood his ground watching impassively as the old man frothed and ranted.

  He knew he would not be killed. They needed him.

  Behind him there was a movement and a sound.

  Groth’s beautiful, cold Queen, with all her entourage, was emerging from the palace. They seemed to glide across the forecourt with the rhythmic motions of a snake, and came to rest not far from him.

  ‘What is it you want of me lady,’ Isar said boldly, meeting her gaze.

  She smiled, a small and ominous smile, and her eyes flicked over him like a whip.

  ‘Has my lord priest not told you?’

  ‘I am to carve something – but what it is I do not know.’

  She looked at the old priest.

  ‘He is an old fool and not long for the world,’ she said icily.

  Isar could see the fear in the old skull face, and felt almost pity for him.

  Behind the Queen he sensed Lark’s presence, but dared not look at her.

  ‘Why,’ the lady Maeged said, jerking her long robes about her as she moved imperiously nearer to Isar, ‘you are to give our god his face. There is no greater honour than that!’

  Isar was amazed.

  He looked up at Groth’s faceless head.

  Until now he had felt the vast statue’s presence and menace, but had not paid much attention to the details of its construction.

  He studied it now with the eye of an artist, and noticed that, apart from its immense size, which was impressive enough, it was built with great skill. Trunks of trees, branches and twigs, were all woven in a way to give it bulk and solidity, the finer details supplied by woven straw.

  He wondered why Na-Groth had not seen to the matter of the face before. There was no doubt that the right mask would add much to the image.

  Maeged was standing before him, studying him, as he studied Groth.

  ‘You will do it,’ she said, ‘or you will die like the man who destroyed the last face.’

  Isar looked his question, and shivered to see brooding pleasure in the Queen’s eyes.

  ‘It was in another country ... before we came to Klad,’ she said. ‘He was killed piece by piece ... by Groth himself
. His face was the last to go.’

  Isar felt ill and could not resist a quick look at Lark.

  In meeting her eyes, he was filled with such strength and comfort, it was almost as though they were free and together again.

  He forced himself to look away from her in case the fell Queen intercepted their communication.

  ‘You will do it?’ Maeged asked, but the tone of her voice was such that there was no question of his refusal.

  ‘I will do it,’ he said.

  Her eyes flickered like those of a snake darting at its prey.

  Swiftly she turned on her heel and snapped her fingers.

  Her attendants lifted her trailing robes from the dust and she swept off across the forecourt, back to the palace.

  Isar noticed that Lark had taken advantage of the disturbance of the Queen’s going to slip away. The people in the forecourt had fallen upon their faces, the guards were concentrating on Isar, and the old priest, Gaa-ak, was occupied with his own worries.

  Isar had the presence of mind to turn away from Lark, so that his following eyes did not give her away. But his heart went with her.

  Only Berka who was watching everything that happened from the shelter of the houses that bordered the place, saw her go and slipped forward to join her.

  8

  The Lords of the Sun

  The Lord Khu-ren had decided to call together the full power of the Lords of the Sun. This was not lightly nor easily done, but he felt it was justified.

  The Great Temple was full of people, men and women alternating, hand in hand, moving rhythmically in circles, the life energy of their bodies helping to increase the power needed for the transfer of Spirit-Forms from across the world.

  Within the northern sanctum the Lord High priest and the lady Kyra waited for their peers, feeling the pulse of energy build up around them.

  Gradually the beat of the drums and the throbbing of the earth seemed to come from within them.

  They felt themselves to be in a vortex where time and space and physical reality had no meaning. The singing in their heads was the singing of the spirit spheres, the myriad realms of God, each sphere spinning with its own energy, each humming with its own voice, the full and separate syllables of each sound making up the secret name of God, only one letter of which was entrusted to each sphere, and our whole universe contained, with other universes, in only one of the spheres.