Breathing heavily, and having noticed that many others had joined us as the noise of battle was heard beyond the large training room, I decided that enough was enough and clapped the blade as it came towards me and used the momentum to throw poor Wirimu across the room. I still held the sword and grasping it by the handle, rammed it into the stone floor so that it gave a loud metallic retort and sprang back and forth, a quarter of its blade buried.
I walked over to Wirimu and extended my hand. He could see the incredulity etched on the faces of his kinsmen and grasped it firmly. I pulled him to his feet and put my other hand on his shoulder and thanked him. The assembled warriors formed a large circle around me, and then spoke in a loud voice to everyone assembled there.
“You have skill and energy and youth. But what you face is beyond anything you have seen before. I want all of you to be able to do what I have done now, and much more. It is not just about strength. You are strong and fearless. Buteven the strongest can be brought low.” I suddenly thought of Dorje, bloodied and near death, and then my vision of him alive and well. “There is art in combat, and many elements you need to master; speed, dexterity, intelligence, guile, deception and wisdom. I have not even mentioned weapon lore.”
I walked along the line, feeling like an apprentice of Master Jai, looking into each face, challenging them to follow me.“Arise! Arise and fight! Take what I give you and go forth, each of you made into an unstoppable weapon, more deadly than any sword or gun, more powerful than the black horrors that hunt you in the dark watches and impervious to fear and grief. I want each of you to train eighteen of your finest. And for those eighteen to train the next, and so on until the armies of the black land shake with fear at the mention of theKarākau Hondo. I want every man, woman and child to know the lesson as well as the first and you will prevail!”
I moved to the centre of the circle and looked to rock of the ceiling above me. I clapped my hands above me and a blinding light shone forth from my amulet. I floated above the floor, the light gently bathing the warriors encircling me who dropped to one knee, bowing their heads.
“Remember this day! As the gods are my witness, we will not fail. You know what it is that hunts you and while one of you draws breath, you will fight, you will prevail and you will win!”
They all looked up to me, punching the air in unison. Amidst much yelling and chanting of‘Karākau Hondo!’ or ‘Holy Warriors’. I drifted back to the ground but I was immediately lifted up by the crowd and borne from the room. Theirchanting changed then to ‘Dharka dahabka! … Dharka dahabka! … Dharka dahabka!’
Goldenhawk! A name that would reach every corner of the multiverse and with praise and adornment but also with hatred and pain. I took the name as I was to take their future in my hands. I had done what I intended. They saw what I could give them and they wanted it.
I sat outside in the early evening having just completed another training session with my troop. The heat of the day had diminished and I watched the sun sink below the western horizon. I sat cross-legged and called to the sisters who suddenly appeared and fluttered down like tremendous butterflies to each sit on my knees.
“What have you found?” SoKhri spoke first. “Lord, we found some of them and others we are still searching for.”
“Who have you found?”
“The young one, the Pandit and the ones left behind.”
“Puk!” I exclaimed, with relief. “What of him? And of the others?” “Where do we start, Lord?”
“As much as you know.”
“They search, but in vain.They think you dead, Lord.” Me-Khri then spoke.
“Once the survivors had returned to your home, they sent out a second group to find you. Would you like to speak with him? By our arts you could see himand speak with him.”
“I could go there myself but I’m not sure what it will mean and if I could return here. I’m here to help these people but I think it is imperative that Puk and the others know where I am, wherever ‘here’ is, and can help if at all possible.”
With the sisters’ help I walked through a campsite. It was late at night. The air was the air of my home and it was ambrosia. I breathed deeply, thinking I had never tasted anything so sweet – such is the power and comfort of home and hearth to a man’s spirit.
As the gleaming cities of Lüun cast a bluish glow over the night of my homeland, I recognised at once the most Holy Mountain and knelt instantly spending a few precious moments in mani.
I had never been here but knew that this camp was near the monastery at the base of the mountain on the outskirts of the city of Tisé. In the patched light of many campfires and the azure moonlight I could see that the plain was awash with yurts and ghers and every other contrivance to house the thousands of pilgrims that had descended upon the Holy Mountain. I wondered then if these were mere pilgrims or were they refugees? Had the monsters from the black land started their assault?
Ahead of me I saw a lighted path that led to the steps of the temple. The interspaced fires cast the temple into darker shadows so that the large chorten behind it obscured much of the cobalt of the mountain side.
Even at this late hour, some people sat at the temple and prayed or did their own circumambulations of the temple and spun the ordered rows of prayer wheels as they went, chanting softly to themselves. The hanging fires burned and spluttered as a slight breeze whipped though the airy confines. It reminded me of our own prayer room hundreds of leagues to the north-west.
I approached the thirty-foot-high golden statue of the Maitreya at the back of the temple and bowed with my hands clasped at my forehead and prayed. I felt strengthened in mind and body and re-purposed. Moving around the large alcove I studied the intricate mosaics and hangings that decorated the temple. I looked also at the interspaced statues of long-dead lamas seated in peaceful repose atop chest-high pillars and clothed in dusty robes. I turned to go and the sisters led me unerringly through the encampment where I found Puk safe and warm in a deep sleep and I was glad that amid all the violence and death and carnage, we can still at times find peace.
I knelt and placed my hand on his woolly and unwashed mop of hair. He moved and breathed deeply. He spoke in that sleepy drawl people have when in that deep place where all things are at peace and anything is possible.
“You are alive then Tashi, I feared the worst.”
“I am alive; very much so.”
“When I handed you the necklace before you left, I thought you would
come back. But then I saw the ragged caravan of drays and camions loaded with the injured and dying andmy heart sank.”
“I am sorry, my friend. I was … detained.”
“That was a lifetime ago. We have been through so much. We have lost all hope. We find no trace of you– where have you been? Over hundreds of leagues there has been no hint, no sign, no word from the townspeople we find or the nomads of the plains, but what the quite stirrings of the crisp autumn winds can tell. I am tired, Tashi. We all are tired. Even Abbott Tomas loses hope. Are you dead? Are you just a dream?”
“A dream to some and a nightmare to others!” I whispered. He started to stir but I put my hand on his forehead. “Shhhh, rest my friend. Sleeeep. You need your strength for the battle that is to come.”
He moved restlessly and tears streamed freely down his ruddy cheeks. I could see the pain he was in while he wept dream tears.
“I’m glad you are with us. I can now tell Abbott Tomas that you watch from above. No matter my pain, I will make it. My thigh is heavily bandaged from where the black horror swiped at me. The wound freezes and burns. Master Panuaru says I may lose the leg, even though it is only a surface wound. I hope that he is wrong.
“I am glad you are here with us Tashi. I thought we might all perish, but you are here now.”
As he slept, I pulled back his blanket and unwound the bandage from his thigh. The smell was overwhelming. In the darkness I could not see it properly but I knew that he would lose it. He was obv
iously in tremendous pain and discomfort but would not give up. I was astounded at his bravery and sacrifice.
I placed one hand on his thigh and one on his forehead. White energy poured through me and he screamed out.
I stood in the shadows and watched Abbot Tomas, Yeshe and Dorje run to him. It was then that I knew Dorje was alive and well. Thank the gods.
“What happened,Puk?” yelled Dorje who was the first to reach him. Abbot Tomas pushed him aside and knelt beside Puk.
“What happened lad?”
He hoisted himself up onto an elbow and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, looking around, looking for me.“It was Tashi! He lives!”
“How do you know?” He looked up at Abbott Tomas.
“He came to me!”
“Where is he now?” asked Yeshe.
“He was here I tell you!”
“You’re safe now, Puk. Rest. I think you’re delirious. That wound on your leg is getting bad.”
Puk sat up. “You think so?” He pulled off the wrappings, stood up and walked casually toward the light of one of the fires. “What do you think now?”
His leg was unmarked.
Once the excitement was over and everyone had turned in, I walked between the tents and up a slight rise passed many guards to the entrance of a large decorative marquee where I knew I would find Abbott Tomas. I walked through the flowing and transparent red walls of the interior until I came to the central room. Even at this late hour, Abbott Tomas was awake and seated, with his back to me, at a small desk, writing in a journal. I looked over his shoulder.
It is late. I will put this record away for a moment and try again to sleep. But I wanted to make some record of the good news we have received before I retire. Arriving here at the pilgrim encampment, I have met an old friend that I had never thought to see again, a black robe, who told us of a holy man, an anchorite, that makes the journey there each month to prophesy and call the gods from their silence. They say he is mad and rails about demons and death. But he knows of the lost Erdeni! Young Rogel has talked with many of the pilgrims and reported that the yogin lives in a cave a dozen leagues west of Tisé. We shall see.
He thought for a moment and started to write again. And the most amazing news. Puk had a dream about Tashigang coming to him. And his leg seems to have healed of its own. I would not have credited it but it was rotten with sepsis at dusk. I tended to Puk myself and I had arranged for it to be taken off in the morning lest the sickness take his young life. But there was not even a scratch. Puk is convinced Tashi is alive but I’m of the belief, and it gives me grief and heart-rending sorrow to think such things, that Tashi has met an evil fate and now walks among us as a bodhisattva. And yet I cannot give up. I will not give up until I know what evil the boy endured. We might all perish but I, and we, owe him that much.
“Fear not, dear Abbot.” I whispered over his shoulder. “I walk with you.” I was determined to find this anchorite and as time was short and only a few watches remained before the dawn, I set out. When I found the entrance, I marked how hidden it was and wondered whether my friends would indeed find it.
On entering, it first appeared dark and without life but after many twists and turns I saw the ebbing glow of a fire. As I walked to the edge of the small room that contained simply a bed roll, a low chair and table and a reasonably sized alter, I didn’t at first notice the hunched shape stirring the contents of a pot hanging over the fire.
“Who is it? Who’s there?” It was the weakened sound of old age, a man with no more than a few years remaining to him at best.
“If you be a demon I will strike you down! Behold!”
He brandished a staff and reached for something at his throat. His hand fumbled about and he found nothing.
“Oh! Dear me … wait!” He stormed over to a chest that I could see in the fire light and opened it and started riffling through. “It must be here somewhere!” he mumbled to himself.
I paid him no heed and instead looked around at the interior of the cave. The old man had obviously lived here for years … many years. While he crouched on his knees and riffled through a chest over on one wall, I walked passed him into the alcove that housed a small alter. I was surprised to see that prayer-wordings had been chisled into virtually every inch of the rock wall as well as across the ceilings. In the dim light I could not see much detail but I did decipher the many glyphs of warding against some monstrous threat. The more I read in that dim light, the more I understood.
I heard a final cacophony of pots and pans and other debris and then a loud exclamation and suddenly a bright albedo cast the smoky alcove in a blinding light, my silhouetted shape stark against the white of the rock, now devoid of shape.
“There is no need to brandish that at me, Sibu.” I said without turning to face him.
The old man stopped. I then turned to look at him and saw him standing there, the heavenly brilliance of the lotus pendant clasped firmly in his right hand, undimmed. In that healing brilliance I was revealed and Sibu, who I could now see in the light and who must have been blind for many years, looked directly at me. The years melted from him and I could, without a lie, see the shattered remnant of the man who had fought so bravely against the demon-king.
“You’ve come,” was all he could say. He sank to his knees and tears poured down his face. I did not know what he could see with those useless eyes but then the lotus pendant was a powerful relic indeed.
I walked to him and held him to me, me standing and he still on his knees.
“Your Holiness, don’t be angry with me that I took so long. I have prayed to gods and searched and searched for you.”
“I am not angry, Sibu. You are a great holy man, a Rishi.”
I knelt down and looked into those blind eyes that saw nothing but whatever images played outin the old man’s mind. I held his face in my hands and saw the lines that ran deep but I had seen the young man a moment ago and knew that soon he would be that young man again and would indeed work on through the countless lives to come to guide and educate as a bodhisattva.
“Now, Sibu, I do not have time to spend with you now to cover the lost years. But I must ask that you do something more for me. A war is coming, the last war, which we saw only a fraction of in the palace in the underdark. But people are coming who can win that war. You must guide them to me. The lotus pendant will guide you.”
“Must I leave my cave?”
“You must leave everything. This will be the last thing I shall askof you.”
Chapter 17: TheKāwharu Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
S.N. Archives: Whitman W. Ref: Irth: 6.6.4.1-2
Amidst much security, and shadowed by my constant companion Irirangi, I was ushered into a large chamber with a high ceiling. There were people everywhere. I had expected a throne room but this seemed more of a tactical “war room”. Similar to the outpost we had seen, groupings of strange machinations littered the floor of the room and many senior commanders stood around tables of light, upon which danced holographic images which crackled and danced in and out of reception, gone one minute and then showing various landscapes and horrific scenes with crystal clarity the next. There was a lot of competing radio chatterand many orders being given … scouts reporting large force moving on your position…the Pinnacle has been hit Sir! Fighters down… their war engines havebreached the thirtieth parallel … defences holding,but .. crackle … crackle!
We approached a central area and I looked at the broad and muscle
-bound back of a large warrior, fit, sleek and quite plainly built for combat. His minders spoke to him and he whirled to face me. I don’t know what I was expecting but apart from being darker of skin and a head taller than me, it was like looking into the eyes of my own kin. I could not tell how I recognised him but it might have been like looking at any of my friends.
“At last!” he smiled. “You are Tashigang?”
“I am, my lord.” I bowed.
“Your skills are already legendary. I am glad you are here. Walk with
me.” His accent was marked but his knowledge of my tongue, his enunciation and use of the appropriate inflections and grammatical peculiarities for the region I called my home showed an amazing degree of understanding and control.
I turned to Irirangi and she nodded and left.
We walked along a series of corridors and through various chambers, flanked by various officials and security until we came to another chamber where he bade the others to remain outside. He closed the door behind me and walked round a desk. Behind it, leaning against a shelf was a thing I had not thought of since first coming here: the black spear that I was impaled upon as I plummeted towards the desert surface.
He saw where I looked and then met my eyes.
“May I?” I asked.
“By all means,” he answered and handed it to me. I held it in both hands, turning it over and looking at the unusual carvings and magical runes that ran the length of the shaft. In one sense it seemed just like any other spear, but there also existed something else. It was as though it carried its own persona, infused within its core: indelible. My chest immediately pained me and I rubbed it unconsciously with my free hand while I continued to look at the spear head.
Being the weapon of a demogorgon, it was larger and heavier than the spears I had trained with. I looked up to see Te Waharoa studying me with his arms crossed.
The War of the Realms Page 27
