‘How did he know this?’ Shan said. ‘Had he seen this realm with his own eyes?’
‘Not with his physical eyes, perhaps,’ Sinaclara replied. ‘Hotekh preached passionately about the importance and necessity of truth – of what he saw as goodness – and how we can only find this truth through the light of our own reason. For Hotekh, this was the soul itself.’ Sinaclara’s face took on a dreamy expression. ‘If we can only step beyond our senses, break the chains of illusion, which create and sustain our ‘real’ world, we could enter the Kingdom of Intelligence, and experience the sublime enlightenment to be found within its divine light. It’s around us all the time, but we are blind and deaf to it, through our own ignorance and limitations.’ She smiled. ‘I like to believe that Hotekh really did experience his Kingdom. He was a very wise man, and extremely honest. He died for his beliefs.’
‘He was persecuted for them?’ Shan did not expect such a thing to happen in Mewt, where wisdom and knowledge were held in high esteem.
Sinaclara nodded. ‘He was put to death for corrupting the youth of the city. It was thought the ideas he put into their heads were strange, and that the young people would no longer attend to their duties. It was true a number of them became prone to meditating continually in their search for the Kingdom of Intelligence.’ Sinaclara shrugged. ‘Ironically, Hotekh had already claimed that the only way to enter the Kingdom was to surrender the physical body.’
‘So he claimed.’
‘So he claimed,’ agreed Sinaclara. ‘But the reason I’ve told you about him is because his teachings had such an influence on other thinkers for many centuries afterwards. His work also has great relevance to workers of magic, who seek to transcend the mundane world. I like Hotekh’s ideas. Think hard upon them, Shan. Are we not chained within this world by our senses, believing only what they can perceive? How do we know that is true reality? We might only be analysing mere illusion, those shadows cast by the light of the Kingdom. People kill each other for what they believe in, what they think to be truth.’
Shan considered this. ‘Perhaps Hotekh wanted to believe there was more because he couldn’t bear the real world and its horrors, and that’s why he dreamed up the Kingdom.’
‘That’s a good point. It was an argument vehemently taken up several centuries later up by a new breed of sages. A Magravandian magus, Ipsissimus Masooth, was the most eminent of them. His argument, however, was more political than spiritual. As you know, Magravandias is ruled by an emperor, who is believed to be an earthly incarnation of the god Madragore. A god, being greater than a man, could be said to be part of the larger power of the universe, therefore part of the Kingdom of Intelligence, which is greater than our world. You can see that Hotekh’s beliefs actually legitimise men like the emperor. Can that be right? Can that be truth? The emperor’s rule is oppression, a tyranny of religious fear. Masooth was brave enough to speak out against it and published a treatise of his theories. Nobody had dared to say anything like it before. He disputed the existence of any realm beyond the visible, and claimed that ideas such as the Kingdom were merely illusions created by our minds, and that all our impressions derive from what our senses perceive. From these impressions come our ideas. It was, in fact, the exact opposite of what Hotekh preached. Masooth was denying the upper realms that traditionalists believed in, saying that we’d merely thought them up for our convenience, to uphold our dearly-held ideas. There is no divine light, Masooth said. What we perceive with our senses is all there is. So how can we have a divine emperor? He was called to the Fire Chamber, where the councillors of the emperor sat in office. There he presented his arguments, and the debate went on for many weeks. Neither side could really prove their point beyond doubt. Masooth defied the councillors to come up with an idea they first had no impression of. What about a mountain of pure diamond? one of them said, no doubt thinking himself very clever. I have never seen it with my eyes, yet I can imagine it. Doesn’t this idea come from the Kingdom of Intelligence? Masooth batted this aside as he would a fly. Rubbish, he said. You can think of diamonds and you can think of mountains, both of which you have seen before. It is merely a matter of association in your mind to link the two and thus come up with a diamond mountain.
‘Eventually, the councillors became so exasperated, they exiled Masooth from Magrast and told him he would be put to death if he dared show his face there again.’
‘Hmm,’ Shan murmured. ‘It seems to me that a philosopher’s life is perilous, perhaps even futile.’
‘Indeed,’ said Sinaclara. ‘But their trials have borne fruit which we can now taste for ourselves. You have to decide what you believe in, Shan. Can you conceive of an idea without having had any experience of it? It’s more difficult than you think. It’s a question that has eluded the greatest minds since Masooth’s courageous treatise.’ She pulled a sour face. ‘Personally, I don’t like his ideas. They’re too cut and dried and tediously staid. I don’t like to think that nothing else exists in the universe except our own minds and their meagre interpretations. The thought is frightening, don’t you think?’
Shan was silent for a moment, inwardly agreeing with what Sinaclara said, yet he felt he ought to argue, that she expected it of him. Eventually, he said, ‘You seem to able to discuss it without fear.’
Sinaclara smiled. ‘One of my greatest lessons was to understand that fear always takes shelter in belief, something those pathetic Fire Chamber councillors could obviously not accept.’
Shan wrinkled up his nose in perplexity. ‘But what about the peacock angel? You still have beliefs, don’t you?’
Sinaclara nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes and no. Once you realise that your belief may be founded upon fear, fear of nothing, and of no purpose, then conflict ends, fear ends, belief ends and knowledge starts. If I have a belief, it is in the life force of the universe, and Azcaranoth is merely one of many of its masks. That mask happens to suit me. I like it and work with it.’
Shan thought it was rather more than that, but held his tongue, saying only, ‘Who taught you this lesson?’
‘It was the Caradorean poet, Almoretia Crow. Her most striking idea was that it is folly for us to think we can have true knowledge of everything. She felt that truth was relative. She was a tortured soul, who believed all conflict arose from fear, a fear that leads people to justify their beliefs enough to kill and be killed. She wrote that the only way to conquer this terrible condition of the soul was simply to accept things for what they were. Almoretia proclaimed through her songs that the only way to accept this was to live as if there were nothing beyond this life, as if we were not created for a purpose. Essentially, she thought we were born from nothing and thus will return to nothing.
‘But, if that is true, what are we to make of our lives?’ Shan asked.
‘That is the beauty of her philosophy,’ Sinaclara said, ‘because, if our future is not preordained, if it is merely a big black nothing, then what we project into that nothing will be our purpose. And this can be anything which we ourselves affirm and more importantly, choose.’
‘It sounds difficult and lonely,’ Shan said.
‘It is,’ Sinclara said. ‘That’s the whole point, Shan. Almoretia’s dirges spoke to me, even though I don’t wholeheartedly agree with them. They tell of the anguish of being abandoned to our own choices, of having no god who gives succour, purpose and answers and who can take responsibility for our life and all the choices and mistakes that we might make. And that anguish of responsibility, of being responsible for everything in our world, is the only misery of life. But joy and ecstasy can be found when we affirm our choices, in the face of nothing. I learned the hard way that if something bad happens because of a choice I make, then I must affirm it as if I willed it to happen, as if it had been my goal.’ She leaned towards him earnestly and her voice became a low hiss. ‘Every pit of misery, every instance of suffering, hardship and heart ache, affirm it, Shan, as your own, as your life, in the face of nothing.’
Shan swallowed with difficulty, feeling as if she’d slapped him. Did she know about what had happened to him?
‘If you can do this,’ Sinaclara said softly, ‘then you are what Almoretia termed a genuine man, a man of great strength, whom no other can crush or conquer. Do you understand what I am telling you? Do you?’
Shan’s eyes felt hot. ‘I didn’t make it happen,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I didn’t.’
Sinaclara regarded him with a fiery gaze. ‘Affirm it, Shan. Take it into yourself. Take strength from it.’
He spoke hurriedly, gasping in a small voice, like a child. ‘I could have gone to the forest that day. We needed some kindling. I could have gone there. Then I wouldn’t have been in the same place.’ He put his hands over his face. ‘Did I will it? Did I want it to happen? Oh, great gods!’
‘You wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t happened,’ Sinaclara said.
Shan was silent.
‘You’re alive, aren’t you, and your experiences have made you the perfect companion for Taropat, because you understand some of what he’s been through. The Shan that was would have lived and died an ignorant peasant. If I said to you now that I could alter time and send you back to your home the day before the Magravands came, would you do it? I’d let you go back with full knowledge of what will happen. You could make your escape, hide, even warn your people. Many of you could survive. But you will never have this. The knowledge you’ve gained will be forgotten. Taropat, Nip, Thremius, myself, all the people you will meet in the future, you’d never have known us and never will. You’d never make a difference, and still the Magravands would vanquish Breeland. Think on it, Shan. Think hard. If you had the choice now, would you go back and live that little life under the yoke of Madragore?’
Shan closed his eyes, shook his head. ‘No,’ he whispered, then uttered a groan. ‘How can I think that? My fatherc My auntc What does that make me?’
‘I can’t send you back,’ Sinaclara said gently. ‘And no one’s asking you to live through it again, are they? It’s over, Shan. Accept it as a situation that merely is – or was. Go forward and walk in the light of the true sun.’
Shan lay back exhausted in his chair. ‘Is this what Taropat had to do – with Khaster, I mean?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Sinaclara. ‘I was there some of the time while he was doing it.’ She stood up and came to crouch beside his chair, reaching out to stroke his face. ‘Through all this, there is one constant, my Shan. Life itself. The great force that creates and sustains it. That is certainly not open to interpretation. Whether you accept that there are creator gods or not, we are alive and there is an energy that has given us this life. If we become fully aware of the life force, we can attain the power to change our surroundings and our destiny.’
‘How?’ Shan asked.
Sinaclara pushed the hair away from his face. ‘Through magic, of course. You must learn and remember that where your intention goes, so energy flows. Only life energy has the power to create and recreate. There is no other secret to it than that. The hard part is to learn how to direct your intention in harmony with your own life force.’
Shan had already learned a lot from Nip about how a magician should be able to perceive and manipulate the essence of nature. He had also learned from her, and from Taropat, about the nature of fear and how awareness of it, and the subsequent freedom from its effects, was the first thing that set a magician apart from ordinary people. Everything that Sinaclara had told him expanded these concepts, but how could he live by them? Ideas were one thing, practice another.
Sinaclara went to pour them both a glass of fruit cordial. ‘The prophet Mipacanthus wrote that we are all part of the music of the universe,’ she said. ‘There is no division between us and any other mote of energy. We are beings of energy. We are the song.’
Shan took the glass from her. He wasn’t sure it felt real in his grasp any more.
Time passed strangely in the house and garden of the pavoniata. Surely, only a few weeks had passed yet Shan felt as if he’d lived there for years and had years’ worth of experience. He could see that he stood at the foot of a long, lonely road up the side of a dark mountain. He had dedicated himself to a particular path. Sinaclara had not spoken directly of how Shan might become the person Taropat had wanted him to be. With her, Shan’s journeys had been to the deepest corners of his own psyche, yet now he felt as if he’d been given weapons that might be effective against the might of the empire. He understood what motivated its leaders. He could see the great cloud of fear, shot with red and black, that was the god-form of Madragore, created by men, sustained by men. Sinaclara had given him hope. She had taught him how it might be possible to reshape the mask of the god. His youth gave him freshness and clarity. Thremius had spoken of how he learned from the young. Shan felt he had the experience he needed to go forth and change the world.
At night, he would lie awake in the starlight and plan the future. He saw himself smiting the Dragon Lord and the evil prince, Bayard, through the force of his will and his own goodness. He would lead armies under white banners. As to who would make up these armies, he had yet to decide, but surely Taropat had some idea. Shan thrummed with energy. He felt privileged. He felt strong.
One night, Shan awoke in darkness to find Sinaclara standing by his bed. She put a finger to her lips, then whispered, ‘Come.’
He scrambled out of the blankets, put on a dressing gown and followed her into the silent corridors of the house. She was barefoot, dressed only in a simple shift of dark blue, her hair unbound down her back. She took him to the temple, which was ablaze with the light of a thousand candles. The indigo curtains were drawn back to reveal Azcaranoth, resplendent above his altar. The temple was full of Jessapurians, who were humming a low song in harmony.
Sinaclara stood behind Shan before the angel and put her hands upon his shoulders. ‘Speak to him,’ she said, ‘for one day you might have need of his presence.’
‘What should I say?’ Shan asked.
‘What your heart feels,’ Sinaclara said. ‘Ask for his help in those matters that press upon you.’
Shan stared up at the angel and thought, I do not want to ask for help. I want you to show me something. Show me the future.
He closed his eyes, willing an impression to come to him. He could see a dark king enthroned, surrounded by a lurid indigo light that hurt the eyes. This king held a sword in his hand. Suspended above his head, rather than resting upon it, was a tall crown that emitted a strong golden radiance. There was power in this man, but he seemed evil. Shan thought his face looked as if it was made of frozen lightning.
Is this a true king? Shan thought. Am I to conquer him? Or is it my king? Is he part of myself?
Then the image changed. He saw a mighty city of crystal, rearing up towards a sky of aching blue. He saw ethereal forms gliding in and out of the narrow towers. He heard their holy song. A city of angels. Azcaranoth’s city. And in his head, he heard Sinaclara’s voice, ‘This you will see with your eyes one day. Dream of it, my Shan. Learn its territory.’
The image faded from his mind and he opened his eyes. He felt Sinaclara’s hands upon his shoulders, heard her heavy breathing. He saw that the peacock wings of the angel had unfurled, revealing his body. It was covered in scars.
Chapter Twelve: Rites of Winter and Death
In the garden, leaves dripped from the trees and the chill breath of winter was immanent in the smoky mist of morning. Sinaclara said that a festival was approaching, one that was far older than the nameless god Shan had known in childhood. ‘It is the time of dark and of cold,’ she said, ‘when the fields are unyielding with frost, and life sleeps in the earth. During this time, the world dreams, and in her dreams, she relives the past. Images of the dead appear to those who are aware enough to perceive them.’
‘I know of this festival,’ Shan said. ‘In our village, we would put out saucers of blood and milk for the spirits. Girls would wear red ribbons in their hair and th
e lads red garters on their knees. On the night of the Grave, we’d build a bonfire on the green, and dance in a circle to keep the spirits at bay.’
‘These are old customs,’ said Sinaclara, ‘memories of older practices. In ancient times, the Night of the Grave was called Aya’even, which in the old tongue meant the feast of the dead. It is but one point on the great wheel of life, death and rebirth. Because of its associations with darkness and the dead, it has within it inherent hope, for without death, there cannot be life. This is why it is still celebrated by those who no longer remember its true meaning. The memory of that hope lives on.’
On the eve of Aya’even, Sinaclara told Shan she would take him into the forest. ‘There you might meet Lord Aya himself, for now you have eyes to see.’
Shan paused before saying, ‘And the spirits of the dead. Is it possible to see them on this night?’
Sinaclara eyed him for a moment, then nodded. ‘Yes, as creatures on the web of wyrd, it is our duty to lead stray spirits to their lord at this time.’
‘Is it possible to discover whether someone is yet in this world or the next?’
‘It is possible,’ said Sinaclara.
They went into the forest just before dusk, which now came earlier in the day. The sun’s descent painted the sky crimson and against it the branches of the trees looked black and stark. It was as if a vast fire burned beyond the wilderness, as if the world burned. Tendrils of mist seeped through the trees like astral fingers, feeling for the living. Black crows made a cacophony high overhead, the sound of madness, and it seemed to Shan as if the whole forest rustled and quivered with unseen running things that twittered and clicked just below his hearing.
Sinaclara led them to the trunk of an ancient oak and here they sat down among the groping roots. The Lady had a leather satchel with her, which now she opened. She took from it a flask and two cups of hard stitched leather. Shan would not have been surprised to learn they’d been fashioned from the skin of a man. ‘What are we drinking?’ he asked, knowing Sinaclara would offer him no ordinary brew.
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