The Festival of Bones: Mythworld Book One

by James A. Owen

  Michael nodded as a few pieces of the story fell into place. “Meru—the ‘World-Pillar’, the “First of Mountains’. It’s a major element of Asian religious cosmography. I didn’t recognize it.”

  “Not just Asian,” said Jude, “but Sumerian as well.”

  “Back to Sumeria again. Is that significant?” Michael asked.

  “It will be,” said Jude. “It became readily apparent that she was mostly interested in talking to H—Ham and I were nothing more than a necessary tolerance, I think.”

  “Why was he special, other than the propensity for monosyllabic names?” Galen asked.

  “Initially? Because we weren’t supposed to be able to see her at all—several thousand pilgrims per year walk Kora around the mountain, but few if any ever see one of the Meru anchorites, and no one ever sees A. It’s one of the privileges of being a Zen Illusionist.”

  “They why…?”

  “Why did we see her? Because the pattern H and Ham walked around the cairn was a mandala—a pattern of revelation. And what was available to be revealed was A. When she realized we could see her, the next necessity was to determine if it was an accident, or if it was fate—that’s what the business with the boulder was about. It was a shapje—a footprint made by the Buddha himself.”

  “And when H’s foot fit the imprint,” Michael began, “that was the clincher.”

  “Exactly. According to A, those were two of the current qualifications necessary to become one of the anchorites.”

  “How many qualifications are there?” Galen asked.

  Jude shrugged. “I don’t think there’s a limit.”

  “That hardly seems fair,” said Michael.

  “That’s Zen for you,” said Galen.

  “Not the way the Meru practiced it,” said Jude. “There are many things about Zen Buddhism which I find both foolish and more than a little reprehensible. Nevertheless, there is still much to admire about the practice and its methodology of inspiring the intuitive grasp of abstract realities—a methodology which the Meru refined to a razor’s edge.”

  “How so?”

  “Through the absolute rejection of linear rationality in practice, not merely theory.

  “Zen may seem a very paradoxical system—those who can understand it clearly don’t need it. On the other hand, those who need it can never understand it, and therefore, clearly don’t need it either.

  “The primary message of Zen is that not only is there no ‘there’ there, there is no ‘there’ to be there—nor is there any ‘here’ here—nor is there any ‘thing’ to observe or be observed. Zen also teaches that the potential to achieve enlightenment is fundamentally inherent in all people, but that potential remains dormant because of their ignorance. It is best awakened not by scripture study, or practicing good deeds, or following a prescription of rites and ceremonies, but by a sudden breach of the shackles of common, everyday, logical thought.

  “The training in the methods it is necessary to master that leads to such an enlightenment is best communicated personally from master to disciple. The preferred methods, however, differ among the various sects. One sect emphasizes sudden shock and meditation on the paradoxical statements called koan; another prefers the method of sitting in meditation.

  “Zen Buddhists totally fail to either see, or understand, that ‘there’ and ‘here’ and ‘things’ are all entirely relative, and that all ‘realities’— all of them, and not merely one of them—is/are entirely relative.”

  “Relative according to one’s perception,” said Galen, “and the sole criterion of whether or not those perceptions are based on contact, or interpretation.”

  Jude glanced at the musician with a look of authentic respect. “That was the difference realized by the Meru, which they in turn taught to us. It took H and myself almost a full year to come to terms with what you have managed to grasp in a single night, Professor,” he said solemnly. “I had hoped you would take it all in with an open mind, but I must say, your prodigality is impressive.”

  “Don’t rush to judgement,” said Galen. “Understanding isn’t acceptance.”

  Michael cleared his throat, mulling over what was being discussed. “You said that they rejected linear reality in practice,” he said, chin in hand. “How is that done, exactly?”

  “As I said, what the Meru practiced was not Zen as we know it, but a practice older than time, from which Zen itself was spawned ages ago. A was what I guess you could call the ‘leader’ or ‘master’ of the group—although ‘director’ or ‘teacher’ might have been better terms. The Meru anchorites consisted of a teacher and twelve disciples, and as the youngest and most recent initiate, A was automatically installed as the teacher when she joined their group.”

  “The youngest is the teacher?” Galen said, astonished. “How does that work?”

  “The others already know what they know,” Jude answered. “The only way to learn more is to be taught by someone who has had different experiences than they—and A was such a person, and the last to come along in decades.”

  “But you said there were others much younger than A.”

  “Based on appearance, yes. But if you learned nothing else from Obscuro’s show tonight, you should have learned that appearances can be manipulated.”

  “Gotcha,” said Michael. “You said you and H learned from them—what happened to your pilot?”

  “The first day, we were told A’s story, and how she came to be at Meru—which was how they referred to the labyrinthine network of caves beneath the mountain. The second day, we were awakened by O, the huge Oriental, and the Indians, M and K, with whom we spent the rest of the day. The third day, we were introduced to S, the Swede, the Tibetans, G, R, T, and Melvin …”

  “Melvin? Do I even need to ask?” Michael said.

  “Idiot Savants can achieve enlightenment, too,” said Jude. “The Egyptians came in that night—U, U, and U.”

  “They were all called ‘U’?”

  “Yes—which caused a great deal of confusion while simultaneously making them the most responsive of the disciples—‘hey, you,’ and all that. We didn’t see the redheaded woman again until the last few days we spent at Meru, but after the fourth day, that hardly mattered.

  “The twelve came to us en masse that morning, and announced that since we had indicated ourselves as willing to be instructed, we could observe them at work in the center of Meru. They lit several lamps and led us more deeply into the network than we had gone in our tentative wanderings. I cannot say how deeply we walked, only that as we progressed, the air itself seemed to thicken and carry the weight of the mountain above.

  “Finally, we came onto a massive pair of wooden doors hanging on iron hinges. There was an immense mechanism attached which allowed them to open the doors, but it was an obvious addition to a construct which had been built by peoples larger than we. H, R, T, and O worked the mechanism, and slowly, the doors swung outward.”

  “What was inside?” Galen said, leaning forward. “The library?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Jude. “Oh, yes, yes, it was.

  “Past the doors was a cylindrical chamber some forty feet across. The walls were lined with shelves, and the shelves were laden with books. H was so entranced by the sight that he moved forward, unblinking, and was only snatched from the precipice at the last moment by two of the U’s.”

  “Precipice?” Galen said.

  “There was only a small lip inside the doors,” Jude explained, “otherwise the walls were ringed about with shelves, and no apparent system of ladders or scaffolds—which was bewildering, because the chamber had no ceiling, and no floor. Both directions were an endless flow of shelves and books which vanished into darkness.

  “M, K, S, and Melvin took copper oil lamps from a compartment adjacent the doors, lit them, and stepped out over the abyss—then walked as if across solid ground and placed the lamps in depressions between the seams of the shelves. Even with the additional lighting, we still could
not see any end to the library, in either direction.

  “The other disciples stepped into the chamber and assumed posts at various altitudes, all with no visible means of support—they simply walked about as if the air were as firm as granite.”

  “Or an inverted ceiling,” Galen said smugly.

  Jude acknowledged the remark with a wink. “Zen magicians are well known in the Himalayas for their ability to generate their own internal heat. This can be handy in a blizzard, and impressive to witness—but sometimes, you don’t want to generate heat; you just want to reach a book on the top shelf.”

  “I’m assuming you and the journalist were impressed,” said Michael, “and your Afghani pilot …”

  Jude bowed his head, regretful of the memory. “Hammurabi was a good enough man, and a devoted Muslim, but nothing in his experience had prepared him for what bore all the earmarks of blasphemy. While we stood looking goggle-eyed at the library, he disappeared, and we never saw him again.”

  “From your description, it seems they were not unaccustomed to visitors,” said Michael.

  “They were not unaccustomed to the arrival of new teachers, and the occasional pilgrim,” said Jude. “When a new teacher arrived, the previous teacher would indoctrinate them into the disciplines of the group, and eventually, the U’s would transcribe the narration of the new story. Melvin would sculpt woodblocks into letterforms according to the patterns used by the teacher’s native tongue, to preserve the fidelity of the story, and G, R, and T would begin the laborious process of printing and binding the new tale into a book, which would then be shelved and catalogued.”

  “If a new teacher only shows up every century or so,” said Michael, “then what constitutes their other labors?”

  “Maintenance. Books do wear out, and the inspection process must be ongoing to insure that any book in danger of disintegrating is immediately re-transcribed and reprinted. Obviously, they will never be able to replace or restore all of the volumes, but there are worse ways to spend a few hundred years.”

  “That explains how you came to read volumes which could not possibly have survived,” said Michael. “The Edda could be contemporary with Sturluson, because a thousand years is not an unreasonable amount of time for Tibetan paper to last, but the more ancient volumes would surely have crumbled if not maintained in the way you describe.”

  “Precisely. The method also preserved languages long dead, as it was not a process of translation, but one of simple transference—making a duplicate, so to speak.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “I’m not sure. Even G, the Tibetan who was the oldest among them had no idea how old the library was—only that it had been maintained by disciples such as he for thousands of years. He spoke of an old disciple who was there when he first arrived nearly six hundred years before. The ancient Nepalese, called L, spoke of an expedition to the bowels of the library cavern which took almost a year. The circular horizon never diminished, but he did say that they discovered a section of books which described human settlements dating back more than 800,000 years. They brought one back—a breach of tradition—and kept it near the doorway as a symbol of the significance of their work.”

  “What was the book about?” Michael asked. “A record of the ruling class, no doubt, or an accounting record of some kind.”

  “Actually,” said Jude with a smile, “it was an assemblage of children’s stories—there was even a nursery rhyme.”

  Michael shifted uncomfortably. “If the first order of business when a new teacher arrives is to record their story, then why wasn’t this done with H?”

  “H was a fluke. Normally, a new teacher appears when one of the disciples has died, which is seldom—and the old teacher then becomes a disciple. This time, however, three ciphers had arrived unexpectedly, and none of the anchorites knew why. It had only happened once before, and that was in a time before A. The anchorites said that they could not record H’s story, because it hadn’t happened yet.”

  “So you were allowed free access to the library, then?” Michael asked.

  “We were allowed to examine the books we could reach from the doorway, when it was open, and under supervision,” said Jude. “Once we’d been exposed to the whole of the mystery, there was little point in trying to bar us from further studies—though I suspect my interests were tolerated because I was with a teacher-elect. Besides, as the library was one of the primary centers of the entire complex, and since they only traded with the outside once every several years, there was no real contest between spending time in that treasure trove and walking Kora around a mountain at twenty thousand feet.”

  “I take it you hadn’t mastered the Zen Illusionist routine, yet,” said Michael, “else you’d have been zooming up and down the corridor on a regular basis.”

  “Illusion is one thing—magic is another. There are practical reasons why anchorites need great quantities of time and isolation to do what they do.”

  “There was no contact with the outside? None at all?” Galen asked.

  “There were some instances of contact,” said Jude, “but they were few and far between—mostly because no pilgrim had ever set foot on the slopes of the holy mountain. The anchorites traded with certain of the local monks for barley and fish, and A occasionally performed a Kora or two, but other than that, we were completely isolated.”

  “Back up,” said Michael, scowling. “You said the library was ‘one of’ the primary centers. What were the others?”

  “There was only one more,” said Jude, “and I’ve already mentioned it. There were a number of passages which branched off of the main tunnels—there were four, incidentally, one under each shapje Buddha left around the mountain—rooms for sleeping, food storage, recreation …”

  “Recreation?”

  “Melvin was nuts for Ping-Pong. There were also many, many unexplored tunnels, but only two were of any import—the one which extended vertically which housed the library, and a circular tunnel which housed the bodies of the dead.”

  “The dead teachers were interred inside the mountain?” Michael asked in surprise. “Is that actually a Buddhist practice?”

  “No, but you forget that this group’s beliefs and practices originated long before Buddha existed—their adoption of the term ‘Zen’ simply put a name to things they were already doing. The chamber was a huge ring some ninety miles in circumference. This was what we saw through the open door on our arrival—the remains of teachers past.”

  “So the precursors to the anchorites were Giants?”

  Jude shrugged. “Who can say? We weren’t allowed to wander the chamber unescorted, and the others were disinclined to go there themselves. I can’t say I blame them—knowing where your mausoleum is different than taking a stroll through it after dinner.”

  “How did you come to leave Meru?” Michael asked. “I don’t think I’d’ve been able to do it.”

  “It wasn’t really a question of choice,” said Jude. “None of the disciples had died in the time we were there, and one scab would’ve been a strain on their routine, never mind two. It was decided that we would be allowed to leave, with the solemn promise never to reveal the location or even the existence of Meru.”

  “Ah, aren’t you botching that up right now?” Michael asked.

  “I would be,” said Jude, “if it hadn’t burned to ash the day we left, and there were any anchorites left alive with whom I could break my promise.”

  “Oh, Christ,” breathed Michael. “What happened?”

  “The unseen disciple, a former Celtic priestess whom the others called Z, protested at the thought that we were to be liberated. She believed that like the disciples, we should be expected to live our lives in service of Meru, which was too unorthodox for most of the others, particularly A, to swallow. As for us, I was not unhappy there, but had other work I wanted to proceed with which I could not pursue in the bowels of a mountain; and H—well, I think he mostly was interested in going fo
r a cheeseburger and fries.”

  “How did the fire start?”

  “I can’t say for certain. All I know is that A and Z had some sort of an altercation, which ended in flames—the library doors, usually sealed, were standing open, and a stream of oil ran down the stacks and set the books alight. H was dashing to the fore of the conflagration, but there was nothing he could do. One of the U’s and H had already succumbed to the flames, and the smoke was rapidly filling the corridors. I ran—but before I did, I reached into the bookshelf closest to the doors, where the most recent volumes were kept, and grabbed blindly. What I emerged with was a burned arm, seared lungs, that manuscript, and my life.

  “The corridor I exited opened at a shapje near a monastery on the western slopes of the mountain. There was no sign of H, or the anchorites, but the pilgrims and monks I could see were either prostrate or fleeing in terror—smoke was billowing from a hundred points along the mountain above them, and a man suddenly appears from beneath the footprint of the Buddha. It was a good enough sequence of omens for me to request—and be given—food, shelter, and transportation to New Delhi. I returned to England, then applied for several teaching positions. The one I accepted was here in Vienna. And that, as they say, is the end of my story—for the moment.”

  That was as much a statement of finality as it was possible to make. All three were silent for a moment, then Galen spoke up. “The rhyme,” he said, tilting his chin at Jude. “How did it go?”

  “What?”

  “The nursery rhyme—the one from the million-year-old book. How did it go?”

  Jude’s eyes narrowed—was Galen playing him? No—the question wasn’t one of doubt or spite, the mathematician decided. Galen was putting it together; he was seeing a pattern in the chaos, and that was exactly what Jude had hoped for; exactly what was needed.

  “The rhyme was written in a tongue several languages removed from even G’s experience—but comparisons with other volumes gave a close approximation of what it was intended to express. I can’t duplicate it visually, but I can give you a phonetic recollection. If I remember correctly, it went something like this: