Shadow on the Stones

by Moyra Caldecott

  Deva tried to stop herself trembling by reminding herself that she saw these men and women every day and they were not much different from herself.

  But even as she told herself this the power of the Temple began to work on her and she began to see the contrast between her own selfish, short-term desire to rescue her love, and their greater and more comprehensive one, to rescue a whole people.

  She put her hands to her ears as though the words were reaching her from outside.

  ‘I will not listen,’ she hissed. ‘He must be brought back. There will be another way to save our land!’

  Afraid to wait a moment longer she made her move and slid across the grass like the shadow of a snake, until she was just outside the inner ring of Stones where the priests were working.

  The priests stood just outside the circle, each marking a stone, each with his eyes closed, deep in concentration.

  At the very centre the two Lords of the Sun moved from stone to stone of the sacred inner three, murmuring softly and touching their foreheads reverently to the ancient channels of power between earth and sky, body and spirit.

  Deva leapt into the circle and stood as though frozen in Time, hearing as loud as thunder what had been incomprehensible murmuring to her a moment before, the given name of Isar and following it the Secret Name she had no right to hear.

  With the hearing of it the moon that rode in the white light above them seemed to explode and lightning burst from it, touching the tip of every stone in the great circle.

  Horrified, Deva saw herself in a cage of white fire, the faces of the priests huge around her, their eyes like black sockets in their heads.

  ‘Isar!’ she screamed and then, with all the passion in her body, the Dread Name she was never meant to know.

  With the speaking of it pain went through her like a sword and she fell into darkness like a pebble into a bottomless pit.

  ‘Deva!’ screamed Kyra, priest no more, but mother rushing to her child.

  ‘Deva!’ gasped Khu-ren.

  The priests outside the ring opened their eyes and stared astonished at the scene before them.

  They had heard and seen nothing, but had felt the sudden shattering of the vibrations that had held them locked into trance.

  Now they saw the two Lords of the Sun stooping over a third figure, lifting it to the moonlight. For a moment they fancied it was Isar returned magically in some way by the power of the incantation, but as the pale light fell on the face of the limp figure they saw it was the beautiful girl child of the High Priest and the Lady Kyra – Deva, who charmed and plagued them as they went about their business in the Temple community.

  They drew closer, but did not dare to cross the invisible line that divided the inner circle from the outer.

  * * * *

  In Klad Isar jerked awake, his name exploding in his head.

  He sat up and looked around him, bewildered, his heart pounding. He half expected to find himself at the centre of a thunder storm, but everything was strangely calm. The moon was full and brilliant, throwing the landscape into relief, picking out with light the beaded threads of streams and flat surfaces, darkening the shadows of cliffs and trees and rocks.

  Awake he was not sure that it had been his name that he had heard. Asleep it had seemed to belong to him and he had responded, but now he knew it was not Isar. He struggled to remember it more clearly but already it was slipping away from him like water draining into sand.

  He looked at his companion. She was curled up, her knees drawn up to her chin, sleeping soundly.

  Should he wake her and suggest that they travel on? He was refreshed and restless now, anxious to move, troubled by the strangeness of his experience.

  It was light enough to find their way and probably safer than by daylight.

  He began to long for home with a desperation that was almost an ache ... Home where there was quiet and peace, long hours to sit carving or dreaming, helping his mother tend the growing things of the garden, carrying the water from the spring for her. She always wanted water from the spring rather than from the stream which was nearer.

  ‘It comes from deep in the rock. It is fresh and clear and full of earth energy. Drink. You will see what I mean.’

  Thinking of that water now gave him a thirst.

  He touched Lark’s shoulder and she sprang up, instantly on the defensive, fear and the moonlight making her eyes gleam unnaturally in the dark.

  He was sorry that he had woken her and tried to tell her so. He tried to explain the name he had heard in his head.

  ‘I am certain I was being called home.’

  He could not see the expression on her face.

  ‘We will move on now. It will be safer at night. Easier to hide from Na-Groth’s men.’

  She nodded and gathered herself together turning towards the west.

  ‘No!’ he said. ‘I am going home. I have been called home. They know there is nothing I can do against Na-Groth.’

  She did not turn, but continued to gaze in the direction she wished to go.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ he burst out angrily. ‘What could I possibly hope to do?’

  He hated her silence. How he longed for talkative little Deva!

  The girl’s quiet was confronting him with a decision he did not want to make.

  ‘Well, I cannot help it,’ he said at last, ‘if you want to go and throw yourself at Na-Groth’s feet I cannot stop you. But I am going home!’

  He picked up his carrying pouch with determination and slung it over his shoulder.

  He looked at her.

  She had not moved.

  Her small face was set and cold.

  ‘You would do well to come with me. You will be safe with my people. Here there is nothing for you but pain and death.’

  She looked at him with her large eyes, but she gave no sign that she had changed her mind.

  ‘I am going now,’ he said. ‘Are you coming?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  She stared at him in silence.

  ‘Thank you for saving my life.’

  He waited a few moments longer, but she did not move.

  ‘Goodbye then,’ he said again and turned to go.

  He looked back at her, but she still did not stir.

  He started to walk, looking over his shoulder time and again, hoping she would follow him, not believing for a moment that she would not. Deva often played tricks like this, but he always won in the end. She hated to be left alone and when she saw she was not going to get her own way she always gave in.

  But Lark was not Deva.

  Suddenly the dark smudge of her figure on the hill disappeared.

  His heart leapt. She was coming.

  But when some time had passed and there was no sign of her he was worried. He stopped where he was, standing in as much light as he could, hoping she would find him.

  ‘Perhaps she is playing a trick on me and will stalk me in the shadows, making me think that she has gone the other way.’

  He still could not grasp that she would dare Na-Groth’s country, alone.

  He walked on, slowly, thinking to give her time to catch him up.

  The night wheeled slowly past.

  He strained to catch the smallest sound of breaking twig or rustling leaves that would betray her presence, but gradually it became clear to him that she was not going to join him.

  With an exclamation of irritation he stopped in his tracks and sat down upon a boulder. He had to think.

  A dark feeling of despair took over his heart. He was lonely, afraid, anxious. He did not know what to do.

  All he knew was that the thing he most wanted to do, to go home, was somehow impossible.

  He had never felt so lonely in his life.

  He, who loved to be alone, was now lonely and afraid.

  Almost without realizing he had made the decision, he stood up and turned on his heel.

  He ran, clambering and scr
ambling over the moonlit screes, trying to retrace his steps to where he had last seen her.

  When he came to the place where he thought they had slept, the shadows around him were different and he was not at all sure that it was the place after all.

  He pressed on and on, the night riding beside him like his own shadow.

  The pale glow of dawn found him deep into Klad with no sign or trace of Lark to comfort him.

  * * * *

  Deva was not dead, but she lay in a coma so deep that all the healing arts of the Temple priesthood could not penetrate the dark shell that enclosed her.

  Kyra watched by her bed until she was too weary to lift her hand in protest as Khu-ren carried her off to her sleeping rugs. Of all the powers she had, the skills she had developed in the long hard years of training, not one would come to her aid now that she most needed it.

  Sitting beside her daughter, the only child she had or could ever have, her thoughts were dark and sad, weights holding down her winged spirit.

  Gently Khu-ren reminded her of the dangers of an invasion from Klad and the urgency of their work with Isar to prevent it happening, but she could not listen. She understood the selfishness of Deva’s love for Isar now. She experienced it herself. Nothing mattered to her if Deva died. And if Deva died it would be her fault. She had been too busy to realize how desperately her child had wanted Isar and how incapable she was of controlling that want. She should have helped her to understand, helped her to hold herself in check.

  Tears flowed freely down her pale cheeks, worry gripped her mind like a cold hand, holding it immobilized so that she could not seek help from the deep inner levels of her consciousness, nor climb to the Spirit realms to ask their help.

  Khu-ren, loving them both, knew that there were things to be done. He had tried to use the power of the inner sanctum without Kyra’s presence, but the place had been so disturbed by Deva’s act of sacrilege, the great priest found himself curbed and limited.

  The way the priests worked with the flow of energies from nature had always been dependent on a subtle balance of their own spiritual vitality, concentration and respect.

  No one demanded anything of the Spirit realms.

  No one carried his own desires into the circle or took knowledge that was not freely given.

  Khu-ren feared for Deva’s life and sanity.

  She had heard the secret name of Isar. She had spoken it loud and clear.

  Would she be allowed to walk the earth again in the body of Deva, having that knowledge?

  Would Isar suffer for it?

  There was much a High Priest did not know, and Khu-ren sighed to think of it.

  He went to a little wooden chest in which he and Kyra kept many precious things, and he took out the flake of chalk-stone stained brown with Deva’s blood and scratched with the signs of his own country.

  He read them aloud.

  ‘The Spirit of Man is many...’

  He pondered long and seriously.

  Many summers ago Khu-ren had left the place of his birth, the Two Kingdoms of the desert, fed by the great river, and had come to Kyra’s small forest country. In his own land he had been dissatisfied with the changes in the teaching of the Ancient Mysteries brought about by corrupt priests and kings who had forgotten how to be channels for the divine.

  He had studied long and hard to reach his present position, dared initiation rites that had killed other men, learnt truths almost too heavy to bear, but during this time he had also grown in wisdom and sensitivity. He joined the secret Lords of the Sun and learned to travel the world in spirit form and commune with peoples he would never see in the flesh.

  He had met Kyra in spirit form when she was an anxious child, frightened of the powers she had but did not yet understand. She came asking the mighty Lords of the Sun for help for her small, unsophisticated community in the far north of a green island country. A country which had no writing as his people knew it, but which read all natural things as though they were hieroglyphs. Trees, stones, the stars ... all spelled out for them the words of their god.

  Partly he had felt the natural pull of man to woman with this golden child, but more strongly he had felt the attraction of a new culture that seemed to answer all his doubts about his own.

  Her people did not capture truth in words, paint it on papyrus or hammer it on rocks until it was so fixed and dead that it had nothing of itself left.

  Truth for them was caught in flight, glancing from mind to mind. Always set free again. Never caged.

  All their hidden resources of spirit were used to gain wisdom, and when a truth was accepted it was accepted because it had been experienced, not because it was written down.

  For many years after Khu-ren had met Kyra he was restless and undecided.

  There was much that was great about his country, but he had a terrible foreboding of its end as he travelled the countryside and saw carved on every Temple wall static words, fixed and inflexible against change, monstrous texts boasting of royal deeds that never happened, glorifying war and killing, perpetuating the small thoughts of small minds for other small minds to copy without understanding. Symbols of gods and spirits accepted as the gods and spirits themselves.

  Kyra’s country became for him a place to start again, to try another way to truth.

  He had found it a hard way, exacting and uncompromising. But it had excited and satisfied him.

  He knew that Deva had once, in another life, lived in the country he had left, but he had not realized she still visited it until he saw the stone she carved. Seeing it had stirred old memories, old anxieties. In many ways the country that was now his own would benefit by writing. In many ways it would not. It had been an issue he had considered long and seriously, and had decided that their civilization was to be left to change in its own way, in its own time. Neither he, nor Deva, nor any of the carefully chosen students he had brought with him, would change the pace or nature of its slow but subtle progress.

  Was she there now, his daughter?

  He turned the dusty stone over and over in his hand.

  There was something else he knew about her past.

  Millennia ago, in another life, she and Isar had come to this country, immigrants like himself, man and wife fleeing from their homeland with a friend who had been threatened with execution. They had lived in this very part of the country, before the great Temple had been built, and the man, who was now Isar, had been murdered here. But he had been born again many times since he had lived with Deva in those ancient times and had evolved, while Deva had taken her own life and refused to leave the place where he had been killed.

  She had stayed, a shade, waiting for him, desperately clinging to her passion for him, refusing all change, all other destinies. It was she who chose Kyra to give her entrance to the time and place that would coincide with Isar’s return.

  The cord that bound them together was long and strong indeed. Deva’s eyelids stirred and Khu-ren stooped swiftly to massage her limbs.

  How he longed to see into her mind!

  Her long memories stretched to times before the corruption and her former father had been a man so great in wisdom that he had become a legend by the time Khu-ren was born.

  Deva murmured something, but the word was unfamiliar to Khu-ren. A name perhaps? The name Isar had once been called?

  Her eyelids were still again and she was lost to him.

  Sadly he sat beside her until Kyra came to join him and then together they prayed for her return.

  * * * *

  It was known by the priesthood of the Temple of the Sun that when a stone had become defiled in some way and weakened in its power, there was a way of returning it to its former strength by certain rituals.

  To begin with it was touched by the hands of priests circling in the direction opposite to the normal one, as though unwinding an invisible cord from it, and then a visible cord was wound spiralling around it by the High Priest from ground level to tip and down again to
ground level.

  The cord was a special one, kept only for this purpose, in a stone jar with a lid, brought from over the sea in the ancient days.

  It was made of three long and unbroken threads. One of the purest white wool, one of flax dyed with blue indigo, and one of fine gold wire. Where the cord had come from could no longer be remembered, but they all knew it was very precious and very sacred and must never be touched for purposes other than the cleansing of the stones. Prayers to accompany the winding process had been handed down by tradition, many of the words strange to the present priesthood, but intoned nevertheless with great care and reverence. There were some mysteries it was not wise to question. Belief had proved itself many times to be a powerful energy. Doubt was always destructive.

  After the winding, came the unwinding, and the ceremonial return of the cord to the jar.

  The cord and its beautiful container were then taken to the centre of the circle of which the stone was part, set upon the ground, three priests walking in measured steps around it, while drummers played an ancient tune, the beat of which was alien to the tunes of the usual Temple ceremonies.

  On this occasion it was not only one Sacred Stone that had been defiled, but the whole inner sanctum.

  The ritual had to be repeated for each stone of the circle and three times for the three stones that stood in the centre.

  Beautiful the gold, the blue and the white.

  Beautiful the Sun, the sky and the moon.

  Beautiful the man who stands on the earth and reaches to the Sun, and reaches to the Sky, and reaches to the Moon.