She looked up at the shimmering leaves and the slender silvered trunks of the young trees.
‘These are my friends,’ she said. ‘I would rather be among them than among strange people.’
‘We need water,’ Karne said, beginning to feel anxious and bustle about, putting more wood on the fire.
Kyra stood still and seemed to be listening, though not necessarily with her ears.
‘There is water,’ she said. ‘I will fetch it for you.’
She took all the skin bags they had and set off to the east.
‘Watch where you go!’ called Karne sharply, remembering the terrible long night and day Fern and he had spent worrying about her the last time she had wandered off to explore. They had only realized she was not coming back when it was too dark to risk looking for her. They had passed a sleepless night and a worrying morning before they located the entrance to the cave. The bending back of the bushes and the remnants of the fire she had kindled to light her torch had shown them where she was. When Karne had seen the many passages within the cave he had insisted on returning to camp to bring all the ropes and fibres he could find so that they could tie some to the entrance and always have a thread to follow back.
It was in this way that they had tracked her through the labyrinth and found her at last.
This time Kyra was not away long and returned with plenty of fresh water to warm at the fire to wash the little creature when it finally emerged.
They made Fern as comfortable as possible and sat close to her while she worked to bring her baby into the light. Karne cradled her head and shoulders in his arms when the effort seemed too great, and Kyra waited to receive the child into the world, her heart beating with a strange excitement.
What an awesome mystery this was – the clothing of the immortal in the mortal, the spirit from regions far beyond our knowledge opening its physical eyes in our world, our reality.
She was always amazed how suddenly the last phases of the immensely long process passed. One moment Fern was lying in Karne’s arms as she had always known her. The next moment her face distorted with effort into a stranger’s face, and then there was the slithering arrival of a whole new being upon the soft grass.
Swiftly Kyra did her part as she had seen others do in her home village when children were born. Soon the strange new person, who was from then on to be an integral part of their lives, was washed and wrapped in soft woollen cloths and held close to the breast of a mother whose face was transformed with joy and love.
Karne leant close, thinking more of Fern than the child, but happy too.
There was no look of Wardyke in the tiny creature, but much of Fern. Upon his head, standing up on end like fur upon a squirrel’s tail, was a shock of Fern’s red-gold hair.
Kyra found herself crying with delight, and kept touching the tiny, perfect hands.
‘Look at the nails!’ she said. ‘How can anything be so small and yet so beautifully just as it should be?’
This set them all to laughing, and the rest of the morning passed joyfully in tending their new charge and wondering at the magnificence of its construction.
When Fern and the baby at last were sleeping in the warm sunlight, Karne and Kyra sat a little apart talking softly.
They both felt tired, but unable to relax. They talked of many things, but mostly of the thought that had struck both of them as they watched the little creature feeling blindly for the source of milk and nourishment in its mother’s breast: wonder at the sheer miracle of consciousness, the primitive form the baby now showed which in a few short summers would become as complex and as sophisticated as their own.
‘This experience, more than anything I have ever had,’ Karne said, ‘has convinced me that we do not just begin in flesh and end in dust. Nothing could learn as much on so many levels as this child will need to learn to reach the kind of consciousness that we now have, unless it brought with it some skills and aptitudes, some form of memory or consciousness, which would give it readiness to accept all that this world can teach, interpreting it upon its ancient knowledge.’
Kyra smiled.
She knew that many times in the past Karne had doubted much of what she and Fern and Maal believed. It was good to see that he had now found a way of understanding and accepting.
Later they talked of Wardyke and wondered if he had left his trace upon the child as Fern had left the colour of her hair.
Karne’s face grew grave when they were discussing this. He would say nothing to Fern and he wished it had not even arisen in his mind, but he could not stop a faint trace of misgiving.
‘I would feel happier, Kyra,’ he said at last in a low voice, ‘if you would try to reach within the child and set my mind at ease upon this point. Pray for it, weave protection about it. Give it strength to withstand any influences that would be harmful to it or to Fern.’
He did not mention himself. She knew his concern was only for his wife.
‘I will try,’ she said, ‘but you know my powers are very uncertain, they sometimes work and they sometimes do not. I can promise nothing.’
‘Try,’ Karne said firmly.
* * * *
Kyra carefully took the baby from its mother. Fern stirred slightly and murmured Karne’s name, but did not wake. Karne sat beside her while Kyra took the baby to the other side of the clearing, sat upon a boulder and rocked it gently in her arms. When she was sure the disturbance of the move had not woken it, she kept it still, cradled in her arms, and lowered her own head to rest her forehead on its forehead. Karne could see her going very still, as she had many times before when she was sensing things beyond the capacity of his own senses.
He watched with great attention but could not see her face nor anything that would indicate to him what she was thinking as she held the child.
At first she was distracted by the sweet snuffling noises the baby made as it slept, the way its mouth and cheek muscles moved as though it were dreaming of sucking, and she had to fight her loving sentimentality and force herself to ignore the baby shell and look for the real self within.
The immediacy of the soft, warm forehead upon hers began to fade and gradually images began to come to her, images of distance and feelings of wandering in strange places. Nothing definite at first. Nothing that she could recognize.
The feeling that she had most persistently was of another world, of skies that were not blue but like burnished copper, of people who protected themselves from light instead of seeking it. Of strange plant forms that grew in darkness and withered with the touch of the fiery light that radiated from more than one giant sun.
She felt a fear of light. She found herself longing for the cold dark cave she had been trapped in recently. Strangely she could see in the dark. Or could she? Was she looking at objects outside herself or were they all projections from her own mind, as in dreams upon this earth?
‘Strange to be afraid of light,’ she muttered to herself. ‘light goes always with the highest forms of understanding and awareness ... the light of the spirit Realms ... the light of God.
‘Are these people evil then, that they seek the dark?’
She searched herself, the child, for more information, but felt no trace of evil.
‘light is a construct too, a symbol,’ she thought she heard the words within her head. ‘Light and Dark have no relevance to what eternally Is. You have made an idol of light, as others have made idols of wood and stone. You can see in darkness and in light.’
‘Is this child in my arms from this strange world of burning suns?’ Kyra asked the voice that seemed to be speaking these words within her head.
‘The child is called Isar. He has lived many lives but lives now upon your earth. Ask no more of him than that.’
‘I must ask one more question,’ Kyra cried. ‘Please, I need to know. Will he have Wardyke’s lust for power and cruel needs?’
‘The child is called Isar and lives now upon your earth. Ask no more of him than that.’
‘But...’
But she knew there would be no more answers.
She opened her eyes and looked at the child within her arms. His eyes were open now, but instead of the wandering bluish blindness so familiar in newborn babies’ eyes, she knew he was looking directly at her, and seeing her.
She stood up and held him out to Karne.
‘His name is Isar,’ she said quietly, humbly. ‘I know no more than that.’
And Isar he was called.
* * * *
When Fern felt rested and strong enough to continue on the journey Kyra wove a little carrying basket for Isar and Karne strapped it on to Fern’s back.
When they had left the waterways they had thought that they would have great trouble making progress towards the south across the land, most of which was deeply forested. But they soon found the network of trackways that Ayrlon had described to them. The whole country seemed to be criss-crossed with narrow tracks that led straight from Sacred Circle to Sacred Circle. Where the tracks had become overgrown and difficult to follow there was always something they could use to sight their course upon, a tall stone standing singly, directing the eye to a notch on a far hill and indicating the direction of the track, or through a burial mound raised above the landscape, or even through a series of shining ponds leading the traveller onwards with little flashes of light. Sometimes there were marking stones or, on hilltops, cairns built up high that could be seen for great distances.
Strangely, when they were on the track, however indistinct it might be, Kyra could ‘feel’ a kind of power flowing through it that led her on. On several occasions when markers had disappeared and Karne had insisted the right direction lay one way Kyra would argue and claim that she could ‘feel’ it was in another direction altogether.
After the second time Kyra had been proved correct, Karne gave up and left the orientation entirely to her, no matter how illogical it seemed at times. It was as though she were following definite but invisible lines of energy that ran through the earth, which at some points had been marked visibly by the inhabitants of the area, but which at other points had not.
Where they came upon well-worn, well-marked tracks, they knew they could not be far from human habitation and they rarely failed to find welcome waiting for them in villages. Many times they were sorry to move on and leave new found friends behind.
Where they found a Sacred Circle Kyra would question the priests about the Temple of the Sun, and the picture she built up of it intrigued her more and more. There seemed to be a great deal of inconsistency in the descriptions, and she formed the impression that it was something different for each priest who had studied there.
She wondered what it would be for her.
Not all the stone circles they encountered gave rest and peace to their weary limbs and spirits.
One day in a mounting storm they hurried to follow Kyra’s instincts that told them a stone circle was not far away. The branches of the trees above them were groaning and creaking ominously in the rising wind and they hoped to reach its shelter before the storm broke. Clouds like the black wings of night were closing in on them.
Isar upon his mother’s back howled and sobbed. Fern took her husband’s hand and they walked faster than they had ever walked, in silence and growing fear. The storm had some strange quality about it, some malevolence that seemed supernatural.
Kyra was troubled. She ‘felt’ the stone circle not far away and yet she also ‘felt’ a kind of warning.
‘Perhaps we should stay here and see the storm out before we go any further,’ she said.
‘No,’ Karne said. ‘At the circle there will be houses. We must be under cover when this breaks.’
It seemed sensible, and in the wild cry of the wind there was such menace they could think of nothing else but getting to the village as quickly as possible.
They hurried on.
As the rain broke from a black sky ripped asunder by a tremendous dagger of lightning, they saw the stone circle before them, livid in the eerie light of the storm.
But nowhere in sight were the houses that they had expected and longed for.
Karne ran forward, the rain already soaking him through and tearing at his flesh.
Nowhere were there houses.
The circle was deserted, overgrown with brambles and stinging nettles.
It seemed a long time since anyone had used this desolate place for worship.
Fern crouched against the dead trunk of the only tree in the area and tried to protect her baby from the icy stinging rain and the constant frightening flashes of lightning.
Kyra stood in the middle of the circle soaking with the water that poured over her and tried to ‘sense’ where the nearest shelter would be.
Nothing came to her but a feeling of great evil. This was a cursed place.
‘We must leave at once!’ she tried to cry out, but for some reason she seemed trapped where she was and her voice would not carry through the storm to the others who were crouched together, outside the circle.
Her limbs were becoming cold as stone and impossible to move. Terror was in her heart. She remembered the feelings she had experienced when she had tried to ‘spirit-travel’ for the first time and had thought she was dying, but this was somehow different. Different and more horrible.
Meanwhile Karne and Fern had been startled by the visitation of an old and hideous crone who appeared apparently from nowhere and was suddenly beside them.
When Karne had pulled himself together from the shock he spoke to her as boldly and as calmly as he could.
‘We are travellers, weary and far from home. Is there a village or shelter nearby we may use while the storm lasts?’
The woman laughed harshly.
‘There is no shelter here,’ she said.
‘Nearby perhaps?’
‘Nowhere! No shelter anywhere!’ she almost screamed.
Fern was trembling uncontrollably with fear and cold, but Karne managed to keep himself enough under control to say sternly, ‘Old woman, you must live somewhere! Will you not give hospitality to strangers?’
The old creature shrieked with laughter and as suddenly as she had appeared she vanished.
Karne put his arms round his terrified wife and child and tried to think what to do next. He looked for Kyra and saw her in the circle, crouching in an unnatural position as though she were being twisted and knotted by an invisible force.
Not pausing to think but that he loved her and she was in trouble, he rushed into the place, seized her stiff and icy form, and dragged it back to where Fern and Isar were weeping against the dead wood of the old tree trunk.
He rubbed his sister’s icy arms and slapped her stony face.
‘Help me!’ he cried to Fern, and they rummaged in their bags and found what furs they had and wrapped Kyra in them, all the while calling her name and beating and rubbing her, trying to get the blood flowing again.
‘She is dead!’ sobbed Fern.
‘No, she is not. But she will be if we do not get her warm!’
They clung together, their own bodies trying to warm each other and her.
Mercifully the rain and storm began to pass, and when Kyra finally opened her eyes there were already breaks appearing in the windy clouds.
But Kyra’s eyes were bloodshot and feverish. Her lips, blue with cold, uttered strange sounds as though she were talking another language.
They had brought her back to consciousness, but she was in some kind of dreadful fever and incapable of speaking to them in any way they could understand.
Fern and Karne looked at each other in despair.
‘It is this place,’ Fern said, shuddering. ‘It is full of evil. See, no trees grow, no birds fly about or sing! We must get her away from here.’
Exhausted as they were, Fern gathered up all she could carry and Karne lifted his sister in his arms. They had no idea in which direction to walk, but they knew they had to walk.
Stumbling
with pain and weariness, at last, at nightfall, they saw the fires of habitations, and the people of the village took them in.
Karne told them their story, while Fern and Isar and Kyra were put to bed in a warm house and covered with dry fur rugs.
Once rested and refreshed Karne and Fern were told the story of the derelict circle they had so unluckily stumbled across in the storm.
‘It is said that in the ancient days a witch lived in that place, an old crone, hideous and disgusting, who had the power to make herself into a beautiful young girl for brief spells of time.
‘All the communities had refused to take her in and she lived alone, riding the wind it is said and causing storms to devastate the crops of all the villages that had refused her hospitality.
‘One day a handsome young man and his friends were walking in that place and found her in her temporary guise as a beautiful young girl, and the young man fell in love with her. He spoke of taking her to live with him and told her how much he loved her and how he would never leave her.’
‘ “Not even when I am old?” she asked.
‘ “Never!” he said, gazing at her beauty.
‘At that moment the spell she had put upon herself wore off and she returned to her hideous, ancient self.
‘He drew back in horror, and he and all his friends turned to run.
‘But she stood upon a boulder and screamed at him, ‘‘You promised never to leave me, and you never will!”
‘And with that she cast a spell that to this day no one knows how to break.
‘The young man and his friends were turned to stone and anyone who crosses her path within that circle turns to stone as well!’
Karne and Fern were horrified.
They remembered the unnatural, twisted stiffness of Kyra, the terrible coldness of her flesh...
Had they saved her just in time from that dreadful curse?
Kyra was very ill for a long time, and even the priest who had some knowledge of healing was doubtful of her chances of survival, but she did not die, nor did she turn to stone.
One day her fever seemed to have gone and they told her the story.
The Temple of the Sun Page 6
