The War of the Realms

by C Steven Meldrum

  “Where does the path go,” asked Sibu, his eyes not leaving the creeping stillness of the water? “I don’t know. I think along the shore to the right, but Jigme and Pemba will go scouting once we are done.”

  “The water scares me.” Purba nodded his assent also.

  I also had a deep sense of foreboding. I remembered the oracle’s words but did not want to yield to such depressive thoughts. I, who have died, if it can be called that, have less reason than any to fear death. But even then, sitting on the rocky beach of that underworld ocean, it was not the lake that made me pensive and grim. I, who probably had more reason to fear water than most people after nearly drowning so many months ago, did not give the lake a second thought. I was instead focussing on those words of the goddess– until the time you have need of him in the kingdom of Shang Shung.

  … in the kingdom of Shang Shung.

  “ And here you are my Lord, … in the kingdom of Shang Shung.” Ussuri had seated herself next to me.“Do you know the residents of the township of Tsamda, which you will come to once you have left the darkness, believe that the snow-laden mountains of this region encircle Ölmo Lungring or Shambhala, the imperishable sacred land, the spiritual centre of the world?”

  I looked at her. We attributed that honour to the Holy Mountain itself. But one couldn’t deny the magic of this realm. Ussuri continued, “In modern times, the region of Shang Shung (for it has not been a kingdom for a long, long time) is still a place of great intrigue and religious power. I have listened in as many yogin, holy men, have passed on stories and legends of supernatural powers and spiritual triumphs conferred upon those who made the pilgrimage to the highland monastery of Dongak Drakgyeling. It is built near the supposed site of the fabled Silver Palace of Khyunglung Ngülkhar.”

  “What?” I asked her.

  “You have heard that name before?”

  “The Holy City of Victory! What a dunce I am. We have been making

  our way to it this whole time and I never considered that Nagara Jaya Sri might also be the Silver Palace of legend! I wish that we could be there now!” She looked startled. “Be careful what you wish for!” and was gone. I was perplexed by her reaction. I reserved my fear however. I didn’t consider myself a fearful person, having always thought myself brave and steadfast, particularly after years of training in personal combat and I felt proven beyond doubt after the fights against the raiders and against the wolves that had taken Lhapka’s life.

  What is fear th en? Academically at least, I knew what fear was; the ‘fight or flight’ animalistic instinct by which every species of life form on this Irth and elsewhere seeks to preserve itself. But what causes one man to fight, even if he doesn’t succeed, another to run, even if that means leaving others behind to die in his place and still a third to do neither but instead grovel on the ground in craven and humiliating abasement, begging for his life to be spared?

  To me it is a function of degree and a matter of on e’s self-possession. The coward suffers such an affliction towards pain, or the mere thought of pain of any kind, that he will spend his life building walls within unassailable walls to keep the wolves at bay, and in so doing lives a half-life, always concerned for what he has convinced himself he will lose rather than what he might gain. If he were an animal caught in a trap, he would chew off his own leg to escape the hunter but live out the rest of his days lame and dependant forever upon the succour of others. The brave soul is not without fear, however does not give in to it. He would rise above the pain and await the return of the hunter for an opportunity to overcome a threat to himself and his species. If he fell in doing so, that is his karma and a more deserving creature feeds, breathes and multiplies, as is the natural law of all life.

  I saw now that same craven fear in the eyes of the two retainers. Here was a new kind of world, the endless darkness of the Underworld. We who aspired to wear the black robes knew well the lessons of survival and adaptation in strange settings and stranger climes. But these simple folk, although hardy and trustworthy, were equally superstitious and pusillanimous. I knew then that if we did run into trouble down here, these two could not be relied upon.

  After some food and a short rest, Jigme and Pemba did indeed take off in opposite directions along the shore of the lake which quietly lapped at the stony shoreline. Jigme’s light sprint was the antithesis of Pemba’s slow and measured gait. Like some huge megathere he shambled off into the darkness.

  I looked at Purba and Sibu sitting there in ill-concealed terror of the subterranean lake before us, absolutely convinced that the augur’s words meant that this lake meant their deaths. In a gesture to allay some of their fear, I took a pail down to the water’s edge to fill it with water. Purba moved about collecting what looked like dry plant-life from along the shore.

  “Be careful, your Holiness,” said Sibu, who had busied himself with the mounts. I waded out to a depth just above knee height and pushed the bucket beneath the surface. The water was freezing, having never been warmed by any sunlight. I let out a groan as the water froze my legs, remembering the gelid bitterness of that night on the ice.

  I had just started to turn back with the teeming pail when something brushed my leg. There is a panic that arises when one thinks oneself alone and is proven to be wrong, and a greater panic that seizes control of all reason when it is something unseen and unknown in its own strange realm. I spoke about being brave and steadfast a moment ago but I now wore my fear like a cloak. In much less time than it has taken me to set it down, I fancied a panicked leap for the shore, imagining hideous tentacles and rending, teethfilled jaws from some subterranean nightmare born of the sulphurous pits in the lowest levels of the black land and set here to watch for any passing monks. But what I saw through the crystalline surface of the water was quite different.

  In the dim light I looked closely, and with what must have seen an expression of incredulity and unabashed awe, beheld what looked to be an almost human hand, gently taking me by my wrist, joined to an almost human arm and, just below the surface, the expectant look upon the almost human face. I say almost because it clearly wasn’t human but like a serpent would look if it was trying to be. A recognition dawned in me born of years of study. But to read of something from the safetyand comfort of the brother archivists’ massive library was a totally different experience to standing in this freezing lake, many miles under the Shang Shung and looking directly into the pale face and deep, alien eyes: aNāgī – a female water spirit. She drew me irresistibly away from the shore and in to the darkness. I felt again the bitter cold close over my face and thought I heard as I went under the panicked voices of Purba and Sibu running to the water’s edge.

  I opened my eyes and felt the strength of her grasp as I was pulled along through the water. My feet flailed behind me and, as if in a spell of some kind I could not resist, I didn’t struggle, I didn’t thrash about or try to kick away and claw my way to the surface that I knew was by now too far above my head anyway. As we plunged deeper and my lungs started to burn the knowledge grew in me that my lingkhor was now over. For anyone who has nearly drowned you will know of that terrible moment when you cannot control your body’s need to inhale, even if that be the bitter blackness. My lungs were suddenly bursting and I could do nothing as I breathed in the torrid ocean to my doom. I remember thinking– I hope the others make it back.

  But I did not die.

  I breathed, at first gasping and then more normally, not water, but air. It reminded me of the dream I had when I visited the cerulean depths of the long lake and spoke with the goddess. I was still in a kind of panic though. That had been a dream– hadn’t it? But I was here, now. I was awake, alive, for all I knew, and seemingly breathing normally many fathoms below the surface of the lake. How was this possible?

  Alive I may have been, but I was freezing cold and was still being drawn deeper and deeper into the ichorous dark.

  Before long, the blackness began to lighten to a grayish hue and then I co
uld see a tenebrous lightening of the water around me and suddenly theNāgī that swam with me was joined by many more, appearing to be a mixture of male and female. The bottom half of their bodies was clearly serpentine but the upper halves, with their faces, arms, hands and breasts displayed an indecorous forgery of humanity. Whether that was their form, or they adopted that for my benefit, I could not tell.

  The nubilous cinerea soon became more translucent and I beheld with wonder an aethereal city beneath me: not such a city as men or even mech would build but one I knew for a city that would be home to creatures such as these. Great underwater plants clung to rock faces and all manner of the beautiful and the hideous swam or crawled in that great underwater world, an unearthly garden that perhaps no human had ever seen. The sandy floor I was taken to was not merely a valley but an elaborate throne-room and at a point further on I could discern, atop a vast plant-covered and barnacle-encrusted hillock, a mighty structure of stone, a megalithic throne, upon which sat a mighty king whom I knew even as our eyes met.

  I bowed low before him which I thought would not an easy task in the weightlessness of these darkling depths. But I stood upon firm ground and no longer felt that I was immersed in water.

  “You know me, my son, as I know you.” The voice was deep and melodious and although he spoke through the water it was as though we were in any palace upon Irth. Even as I looked, the water around me was gone, mighty walls grew out of the air, carpeted stone floors and exquisite masonry with high windows and a decorative ceiling encapsulated the room that was the centre of a mighty palace.

  Servants in palace livery walked to and fro on errands for their king and the court was alive with nobles, petitionists and entertainers.

  TheNāgī, now no longer swimming but looking completely human and beautifully female, formally attired in exquisite and unearthly fashions, looked at me and said, “Come, our father-king wishes to speak with you” and led me forward through the throngs to stand at the lowest step of the dais. I immediately prostrated myself upon the lowest step.

  “Rise, my son,” said Lord Targo. “You have travelled far to be here and have seen much. You are welcome inmy home.”

  Guards in shining silver-blue armour holding decorative shields in their left arms and brandishing long awl pikes or huge glaives stood motionless around the audience chamber and upon each end of the dais below the king.

  “Thank you, my Lord,” I said. My voice sounded feeble to me. A golden chair was brought for me and I sat before the many tiered dais upon which the mighty father of the seas and husband of the Goddess of the Lake reclined before me.

  “You understand much of your fate. But the way is hard– a trial you will come to hate and blame we who know you better than you know yourself for the suffering you must endure.”

  “I do not understand Lord.”

  “You will, in time. Questions you have in earnest, I can see. Has not the tigress answered you?”

  “No, Sieur.”

  “Then it is not yet time.”

  Before I could say anything, he continued.

  “I have granted you a boon, for you are dear to me and mine. See now the amulet you wear, a gift from the captain of the wolves you met.”

  I did not understand at first but then my hand went to the necklace I wore about my neck, the one that Puk had fashioned in secret and run to give me ere I departed. My hand closed over no wolf’s tooth. I lifted it over my head and looked closely at it, aware of the hundreds gathered that watched me intently.

  It was still the living steel of themet’aegis tooth but it was changed. Interspersed with the chromium was a crystalline jade that seem to run like a river around the river of chromium. Together it created an artful illusion. But it was not just the material but the shape of the necklace which had changed. It now looked like an amalgam of a man and a bird, like a human with wings, or a bird with the features of a man.

  I did not understand but suddenly remembered seeing this same shape as a glowing beryl icon in the palace of the lady of the lake.

  Lord Targo waited patiently while I turned it over in my hand and eventually placed it back over my head.

  “Thank you, your Majesty,” I bowed before him.

  The Lord Targo smiled then stood and came down the broad steps to stand upon the smooth flagstones of the court before me. When he had been seated upon his throne, he seemed several hundred feet tall. Now he was no more than a head taller than me. And he was not the giant serpent that he had been during our first encounter. Here he was a man it seemed, aged, though youthful, angular and muscular in appearance with a flowing white beard. He wore a strange armour mostly hidden by a luxurious cape that flowed from his shoulders.

  He smiled. “You thank me without knowing what you have received?”

  An enormous hand he laid upon my brow, closing his eyes and speaking to himself. After what a few moments he stopped talking and placed a finger upon the talisman that dangled from the leathern cord around my neck. It became white hot. In my mind’s eye I screamed with pain as its heat bored into my chest, cooking skin and flesh and the organs beneath it.

  I opened my eyes and looked up into the powerful but kindly eyes of the King of Shang Shung.

  “I have gifted you with the Kriya-Shakti. It is part of you now and you are part of it.Use it wisely in the trials to come.”

  My heart skipped a beat and he obviously saw my shock for he smiled, a warm and almost parental smile. The Kriya-Shakti was the name ascribed to the nine miraculous powers: the eight mahasiddhis or great powers, and the ninth miraculous power, the most godlike of the siddhis practiced by tantric adepts, omniscience. My mind spun as if I were at the centre of a whirlpool. I was in a swoon. I felt like I did sitting before Abbot Tomas and Master Panuaru. My home and my friends seemed suddenly infinitely far away.

  He extended his hand to me and held a shining disc in it.

  “Take this, my son. There are many foes that you have yet to face and many are well beyond even the skills of the warrior-priest that travels with you. You have not yet faced your first test.”

  I wanted to ask him what that first test was but instead I accepted it from him and turned it over in my hands, awestruck.

  “What you hold was given to me by the Lord Vishnu himself, who you name Narayana, for my part in the Battle of Kurukshetra. I now bestow it to you; the mighty Sudarshana Chakra.”

  I could not speak. This was one of the holy weapons of the gods that Tetsuko had searched for in her long years of running up and down the Horologium. The Sudarshana Chakra was apparently crafted by the architect of the gods, Vishvakarman. There was a fable I remembered concerning Visvakarman's daughter Sanjana who was married to the Sun God, Surya. Because of the sun god’s perfervid light and heat, she was unable to go near him. She told her father who took the Sun and diminished his shine so that Surya and his daughter could be together. The magical effluvium that was the stuff of the stars that remained was fashioned by Vishvakarman into three magical artifacts. The first one was the magical flying chariot called the Pushpaka Vimana, the second being the mighty magical trident, Trishula with which Lord Krishna challenged the Demon Lord Naraka, and the third was the Sudarshana Chakra, a spinning discus that when thrown returned to its master’s hand. It was golden in colour and had two rows that spun opposite one another brandishing thousands of mucronate spikes.

  I stared in disbelief until Lord Targo produced other items also. He smiled at me.

  “For your servants who have seen much and will endure more, to give them such as to lift their hearts and fill them with valor and courage, I give you the holy conch shell called Shanka and the spirit of the lotus called Padma. You will make of them holy men who will gain much favour in this life. But these gifts will not protect them against the creatures that lurk in the depths so to each I also bequeath a kirpan. These were forged of the stuff of Heaven and have tasted the blood of Naraka’s demon hordes. May they serve you as well as they did their former masters.r />
  “For the warrior-priest, for his bravery and for what he will need to achieve in this life to ensure you succeed, I give the divine spear of Lord Murugan called Vel.”

  I was amazed. In ancient texts I had read, the goddess Parvati gave her son Murugan the Vel to vanquish the evil asura called Soorapadman. In the Skanda Purana,this spear helped Lord Murugan defeat all of the asura’s armies. Even when Soorapadman realised he had lost, and tried to hide from Lord Murugan by changing into a mango tree, the magic spear of the goddess Parvati split the tree in twain, its two halves becoming Parvani the peacock, Lord Murugan’s chosen Vahanam, or chariot, and the other becoming the fighting rooster, his battle emblem.

  As Lord Targo handed me the spear of the gods, I saw finely detailed Sanskrit embossing down the side; Vetrivel, Veeravel or Victorious Vel, Courageous Vel. I could not wait to give this to Jigme.

  “And lastly, I bestow to your troubled brother and fellow warrior the mighty Gada. It is a mace of extraordinary abilities and will serve him well through the trials to come. He will come to find both courage and purpose.”

  If reader, as we forge our way together through the drama of my life you accuse me of anything, let me be honest and accuse myself of something first: I am selfish. I know it and I think I might have already succeeded in convincing you of my simple desires that have nothing to do with the larger needs of the universe. Even there, prostrating myself in thanks and obeisance before the mighty Lord Targo, I still held onto an almost egomaniacal gleam of hope that I would one day be allowed to again be the boy I was; a humble, loyal and faithful journeyman of the order, nothing more. All the fantastical weapons and powers I have described were nothing more to me than tools which would help me achieve what I needed to then allow me to return to my life. In fact, and almost the inverse of that, was a thoughtthat I’d follow Milarepa and find a cave somewhere in the far northwest and become an anchorite or eremite, secluded and devoted to a life of meditation and prayer.