‘I think our next move,’ Karne spoke slowly and with deliberation, ‘is to try and see Maal privately, without Thorn around, and talk to him, ask him outright the things we want to know.’
‘Oh Karne, do you think we can?’ Kyra was relieved he was making the decisions.
‘Yes, that is what we will do,’ Karne continued his line of thought, almost as though Kyra was not there. ‘I should have done this years ago . . . it was just that he seemed so difficult to approach . . .’
I know. I think mother is right. He has withdrawn himself the last few years more than I remember when I was small.’
I tried to talk to him a little while ago . . . the time when Thorn announced that a new priest would be arriving and you said you felt that there was something wrong . . .’
‘What happened?’
‘I was just about to go to his house . . .’
‘Karne!’ Kyra was shaken at the daring of this.
‘. . . When I saw Thorn on the path.’
‘And then?’
‘And then . . . nothing. I thought I had better leave.’
‘I wonder about Thorn . . . there is something about him . . .’ Kyra’s voice was puzzled.
‘He seems to have organized everything . . . the new priest . . . everything . . .’
‘And he talks about Maal’s death as though it is pre-arranged!’
‘I noticed that,’ Karne said thoughtfully.
‘And Wardyke frightens me,’ Kyra said with a shiver, her mind running on.
‘I think,’ Karne said slowly, ‘I would have accepted Wardyke quite happily if it had not been for the strange things you have been feeling. He seems right enough as a priest. I mean, he looks as I imagine a priest to look. I cannot sense anything wrong with him. Everyone else seems to like him.’
‘There issomething, Karne, I am sure of it,’ Kyra said worriedly, ‘Or rather, sometimes I am sure of it. At other times, I do not know. Oh Karne . . . I am so confused!’
Karne put his arm around her shoulders.
‘All right, little sister, calm down. We will go and see Maal about it.’
‘Now?’
She looked up, alarmed.
‘Why not? While we are in the mood.’
‘I do not think we should . . .’ She had lost all her conviction and courage.
‘I think we should,’ said Karne firmly.
‘But what are we going to do?’
Kyra ran along beside her striding brother, still flustered with anxiety about the whole project.
‘We cannot just go in to his house and demand to speak with him!’
‘Luckily that will not be necessary,’ Karne said.
She looked questioning.
‘I saw him set off for the hills when we left home. If we hurry we may be able to come upon him as though by accident.’
Kyra was relieved. This was certainly easier than braving the mysteries of the dark interior of his house, but she had her doubts that they would come upon him ‘by accident.’
The day was hot and pleasant, the birds busy about their songs, the villagers peacefully pursuing their age-old tasks in the valley, content that they were well protected from all harmful spirits by the ministrations of their new and magnificently tall guardian-priest.
* * * *
The hills to the north of their village were rocky and wild, but there was quite a walk before one even reached them. Karne began to wish that they had brought some refreshment with them. He stopped when he found a little brackish stream running through the heather and had a drink, and then he plunged his whole head into it to cool himself and shook the water from his hair like a dog. After her drink Kyra sat on the bank with her sandaled feet dangling in the water, her eyes on the hills, thinking . . .
Once they started climbing they were soon above the spring line and there was no more water to be found, but the views around them were almost as refreshing as drink to Kyra.
Karne was just about to say that they must be prepared for a long hard day as they had no way of knowing exactly where the old priest had gone to find his solitude, when he noticed that Kyra was walking purposefully as though she knew exactly where she was going. Having faith in her strange powers, although not understanding them, he fell back so that he was walking behind her, following her lead.
At first she cut straight across the rough heather and their legs were sorely torn by the tough little branches. At one time she even disappeared to her shoulders in a sudden hole, the heather having hidden it from her sight, but Karne, after laughing at her discomfiture, soon had her out and on her way again. After that experience she went slower and picked her way more carefully, but she showed no sign of being uncertain of the direction to take.
She found a track and followed its meanderings for a long way. In the distance, further to the north, a lake was gleaming like a jewelled clasp in the folds of a soft blue cloak.
About noon they found Maal sitting on a granite boulder gazing into the distance. He turned to them as they arrived but showed no surprise that they should be there.
The two young people flung themselves down at his feet, exhausted and somewhat out of breath. No words were spoken, but even Karne could feel they were not unwelcome.
The silence went on for so long that Karne began to wonder if the other two were communicating in some way without words. He looked hard at both of them, but he could not notice anything. They were both sitting, relaxed and peaceful, gazing at the beauty of the ever receding lines of hills and valleys that stretched away through every shade of blue to the northern horizon.
He decided it was up to him to take the initiative.
He stood up.
‘We have come,’ he said firmly, ‘to ask you many questions.’
Maal looked at him with his piercing eyes, but they were not unfriendly. Karne remembered how he had been warned when he was a small boy never to look directly into a priest’s eyes. He was half afraid, but his own determination to find out all that he wanted to know sustained him in his purpose.
‘What is it that you wish to know?’ Maal asked quietly.
Karne hesitated. Where to begin? There was so much he wanted to know.
‘To phrase the right questions is as difficult as to provide the right answers.’ Maal smiled quietly as he spoke.
He was right. Karne had never realized it before. Somehow he had never had difficulty asking questions in the past, but that might have been because they were not so important or, if they were, that there was not much chance of their being answered.
He knew now the old priest would answer his questions and the answers might change the course of his life. He must be careful what he asked.
In that moment, as he stood upon the hill, with the rocks and the wild plants around him, the lake now a shining eye staring blankly at the sky, he knew the answer to at least one of his questions. He knew why it was that the community was content to let the priest carry the burden of knowledge, the mystery of Mysteries, by himself. They were afraid that, if they knew what he knew, more would be required of them than was required by the comfortable round of daily chores, the friendly chat, the warming hearth fire. They were deliberately preventing their own development, afraid of what the next step would demand of them. By facing the priest, asking to enter his secret knowledge, he, Karne, was taking a step from which there would be no going back. The way to deeper and deeper understanding was through deeper and deeper commitment.
As these thoughts came crowding upon him he felt shaken and breathless, almost as though they had entered his mind by physical force. He took a deep breath and looked first at Kyra and then at Maal.
They were both sitting quietly looking at him, and it was as though they were together and he was a stranger.
‘What shall I do?’ he asked helplessly, as though he had spoken his other thoughts aloud and they knew what they were.
‘It has to be your decision,’ Maal said.
Karne turned away from them
and strode about on the rough hilltop, trying to sort out in his mind this new development. All the time he was doing this they sat very still. It was almost as though they were part of the hill, the rock, the growing things, the air. And he, the intruder, was stirring things up, bringing change and discord.
At last he stopped and faced Maal, his decision made. He wanted to know. No matter what happened.
And as he made this decision all the sense of being torn apart by discord ceased. He joined them in their calm acceptance of what must be.
Maal lifted his hand and made a gesture for Karne to sit. Karne sat.
‘Your first question?’ Maal asked with a smile.
‘Who is Wardyke,’ Karne said immediately, ‘and why are we afraid of him?’
‘Two questions,’ Maal said mildly.
‘They are connected,’ Kyra spoke up for Karne.
Maal smiled again, sadly this time.
‘Yes, they are connected,’ he said, and was silent so long that Karne was beginning to think he would not answer. Kyra and he looked at each other, uncertain what to do, wondering if they should repeat the question. But they need not have worried. The old priest was preparing to speak at last.
‘I do not know who Wardyke is, but I know he is not the priest who was chosen and trained for you.’
Kyra took a sharp breath at this. This confirmed her impressions.
‘You mean he is not from the Temple of the Sun?’
‘He has been there. He knows much of the mysteries that are taught there, but he does not carry with him the final mark of the priest.’
‘What is that?’ Kyra asked quickly.
Maal looked at her closely.
‘You will know that mark one day.’
‘Why not today?’ Karne’s curiosity had made him bold, but Maal was not to be drawn on matters he had decided were not yet for them to know.
‘Did you know that a new priest was coming before Thorn announced it?’ Kyra asked.
‘Yes, I have known for some time. It is the way.’
‘Is it because you are getting old?’ Kyra tried to soften the harshness of the question by the gentleness of her voice and expression.
Maal bowed his head in affirmation.
‘Thorn says you are ill?’
‘I am tired and I must move on. There is other work that I must do.’
‘Another community?’ Karne asked.
‘No.’
‘I thought you said . . .’
‘I did not.’
‘But . . . but surely that is what you meant?’
‘You cannot know what I meant until you know a great deal more than you do now.’ Maal’s voice was sharp. Karne was momentarily silenced.
Kyra spoke up.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘I know we should not be questioning you like this. But you did call for my help . . . and I need to know . . .’
Maal’s face softened. He looked affectionately at her.
‘You are right, my child. I owe you much and will owe you more before the sun is back to its full height. But I cannot tell you now everything I have taken many years to learn.’
‘Tell us at least more about Wardyke and how we can help.’
Maal was silent again at this, thinking hard.
‘I think,’ he said at last, ‘the way you can help me most is for Kyra to go once more into the Sacred Circle . . .’
At this Kyra flushed slightly. So he had known of their trespass!
‘. . . and,’ he continued, ‘take a message for me to the Lords of the Sun.’
‘But how?’ Kyra was bewildered and frightened. ‘How can I?’
‘And who are the Lords of the Sun?’ Karne asked breathlessly.
‘Across the world, in places beyond even your imaginings . . .’
‘Beyond the sea?’ Karne interrupted.
‘Yes, even beyond the sea and beyond the lands on the other side of the sea . . . there are people believing as we do in the Sacred Mysteries, and amongst them some have been chosen as Lords of the Sun. Their training is long and arduous, but they have great powers and can see much that is closed to even the most highly trained priest.’
‘But surely,’ Karne said, noticing Kyra’s terrified face. ‘You should be in touch with them. How can Kyra possibly . . .?’
‘Wardyke knows this is what I want to do. He will not let me near the Sacred Circle.’
Maal spoke with conviction.
It was true. They had noticed and remarked that Maal had not been near the Sacred Circle since Wardyke had arrived.
‘But . . . it is not guarded. Perhaps you could get in some time when Wardyke is not there.’
Maal smiled and shook his head.
‘It is not so easy, my children. Wardyke is a powerful magician and has cast an invisible ring of force around the stones so that they will not admit me.’
Kyra gasped.
‘But what about me?’
‘Wardyke does not realize you could be a threat to him. There is no ring of force cast to keep you out.’
Kyra looked miserable. It became clearer and clearer that somehow a great deal was expected of her and she did not feel at all confident that she could fulfil Maal’s expectations.
‘But . . .’ Karne realized her predicament. ‘Even if she does manage to pass unnoticed into the circle . . .’
‘As she did before,’ Maal said with a sudden twinkling smile.
‘As she did before,’ Karne admitted. ‘But last time she tried to travel in the mind as you had done. She could not manage it and nearly died.’
Maal nodded.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I would not ask if there were another way.’
‘Besides,’ said Karne with sudden inspiration, ‘if Wardyke is a magician, so are you! It is part of being a priest.’
‘Yes!’ cried Kyra joyfully, thinking she saw a way out.
Maal shook his head sadly.
‘I have been neglecting the magic aspects of my priesthood for many years now, and could not compete with Wardyke’
‘But why?’ Kyra cried accusingly.
‘Because, my child, I found something more important.’
What could be more important than magic! Karne would have given his right arm to be able to practice magic effectively.
‘I used to think, as you do, that the practise of magic was of great importance and gave me great power. One day I tried to use my magic on a traveller from a far-off land, he was a merchant bringing flints from the south, a simple man I thought. We met on these very hills and fell into conversation. He challenged me as priest to perform magic for him. Being foolish I chose to accept the challenge and said I could ring him with an invisible wall of force through which he could not step. It was very similar magic to the one Wardyke now has wrought on me. I know I should not have used my priesthood knowledge for an idle trick, but he was mocking our religion and the ancient mysteries and I wanted to prove him wrong. I performed the rites perfectly and confidently expected him to be trapped within the ring. But he was not. He walked out of it with a smile and said, and this I will never forget, “Your magic is worked around my body. You forget I am spirit and am everywhere.”
‘I sat till it was dark upon these hills and thought about it.
‘He was right, and what he had said I had always known.
‘Indeed, this I had been taught in the Temple of the Sun, but somehow it had become overlaid by all the ritual and the magic tricks so that they had become the most important part of my religion to me. It was as though I had been given a great and precious Truth wrapped in layers of dry straw, and I had come to believe the straw was the Truth.
‘Much of what he had said in criticism of our religion began to make sense to me. I resolved to throw away the straw and find the inner gift of Truth.
‘But in doing this I made yet another mistake.
‘I was so continually searching into the depths of my own Being to find “the spirit that is everywhere,” that is more powerful
than magic, and that nothing can cage if it has the will to be free, that I sought solitude, I resented the intrusion of people, of duties, of anything that distracted me from my purpose. Before, I had neglected the inner life by concentrating on the outer; now I neglected the outer by concentrating too much on the inner. To me the whole of material existence became unimportant. Only spirit mattered.
‘But this is not as it should be. Spirit and matter are part of the same whole: different manifestations of the same God. The same source. Each develops because of the other, not in spite of the other.
‘I see this now, but it is too late.’
‘What do you mean – too late?’ Kyra said. She had strained to understand what he had been saying. It was not easy, but she thought she grasped some of it. The rest she stored in her mind to think about later.
‘I have had my chance as your priest and I have failed.’
They both opened their mouths to protest but he raised his hand to silence them. It was strange to think a priest could make mistakes like any common man.
‘If I had my time again, knowing what I know now, I would be a better priest to your community. No. Say nothing. Time, an ambitious Elder and an unscrupulous impostor-priest have forced me to see where I was wrong. I left a gap which Wardyke could fill. I should have taught this community to rely on the living truth and the individual power of their own eternal selves so that no one could come and take them over as Wardyke has done.
‘But my time in this life is used up. I can pursue the matter further only in another life.’
‘You mean you are going to die?’ Kyra asked in a hushed voice.
‘You may call it dying if you wish.’
There was silence between them for a while.
‘And you cannot use magic any more?’
‘I cannot and I will not.’
‘But if it would help . . .?’
‘It would only help the immediate future – if at all. We must not defeat Wardyke with magic; it is too temporary a measure. We must defeat him by growing in ourselves till we are greater in inner strength than he, till his magic circles will have no effect upon us, as they did not upon that flint merchant.’
‘But it has taken you years and you still have not managed it!’ Kyra said wonderingly. ‘What chance have we?’
The Tall Stones Page 6
