Shadow on the Stones

by Moyra Caldecott

  The priests took their positions around the circle, the two Lords of the Sun stood within the triangle of the holy three at the centre.

  ‘Now!’ Khu-ren cried, and as the wind of the coming storm rose soughing in the trees, the sound of their incantation rose to meet it.

  Round and round the priests went, stirring the invisible energies of the air.

  Still stood the two tall Lords of the Sun, male and female, concentrating their energy and their will to reach Isar in a distant and desolate land.

  * * * *

  In her garden Fern stood with her arms around her Rowan tree, her cheek against its trunk, which pulled against her as its branches were torn and buffeted by the wind.

  She thought of Karne and Isar, and prayed that all the strength of the Spirit realms there to help them would be wisely used.

  ‘Remember,’ she whispered, ‘you are not alone. No one is alone. Remember it!’

  * * * *

  Deva’s eyelids flickered and for the first time since she had fallen into unconsciousness she opened her eyes and looked around her.

  She was alone in Kyra’s chamber, the flame of a lamp flickering beside her, the sound of wind and rain howling and beating against the wooden walls of the house, the door covering flapping like the wings of a trapped bird.

  Slowly she sat up, looking around her at the shadows, everything unfamiliar. Where was the hot sand of the desert, the green lush lands of the flood plain of the Great River, and her father’s Pyramid gleaming in the sun?

  Slowly her eyes adjusted as her mind accepted what she saw.

  She knew that she was Deva, the daughter of Khu-ren and Kyra.

  * * * *

  The storm drove Isar and Gya to shelter under a ledge of rock, squeezed between the rough earth and the hard stone, their hands scratched from the bushes and plants they had pulled aside in their haste as the wind drove a sudden squall of rain upon them.

  As the night wore on the two young men fell uneasily into dark pits of sleep, only to find themselves, unrefreshed, struggling to wakefulness again. So savage was the night that Isar found himself fearing it would go on forever, that Groth had somehow extinguished the God of Light, and nothing but darkness and despair was left to contemplate.

  It was during one of these moments of half sleep that Isar was startled to see the dark outline of a figure standing on the hillside beside him.

  Illuminated in the sudden splendour of a flash of lightning he recognized the Lady Kyra.

  He gasped and struggled to free himself from the encumbrance of the branches and turfs he had laid upon himself.

  ‘My lady!’ he cried, and wrenched himself free, half tumbling out of the cleft of rock into the stinging night.

  But she was gone.

  The next lightning flash revealed a hillside empty save for the thin trees struggling in the clutches of the wind and a distraught Isar streaming with icy water.

  ‘What are you doing?’ shouted Gya. ‘Have you gone mad?’

  ‘The Lady ... I saw the Lady Kyra,’ Isar babbled frantically, searching into the darkness for the figure he had seen so briefly but so tantalizingly close.

  ‘There is no one there. You are crazy!’ growled Gya. ‘Come back before you fall and break your neck.’

  Isar looked around him as lightning flooded the scene once more with its eerie, sickly light.

  There was nobody there.

  Gya was right. He was crazy.

  He crawled back under the ledge, shivering and soaked, his heart aching with disappointment.

  ‘Rub yourself, beat your arms ... you will freeze to death if you do not.’

  Gya began to pummel him and he rubbed himself as best he could with his stiff, icy hands. Warmth came gradually to him, but sleep was gone and for the rest of the night they talked, Isar telling Gya about his home and the Temple of the Sun, and the woman he thought he had seen on the hillside.

  ‘From what you say,’ Gya said, ‘it is quite possible she was there ... in spirit form I mean.’

  ‘Which means...’ Isar’s face lit up, ‘we are not alone and lost. They know where we are and will help us.’

  Gya slapped him on the back.

  ‘That is good news indeed and I will tell you some more!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Listen.’

  ‘I am listening.’

  ‘Does it not seem quieter to you? The storm has almost passed.’

  Isar was so thankful he did not reply, but buried his head on his knees to say a prayer of gratitude. He was so cold and wet, he did not think he could endure much more of such a night.

  As he shut his eyes he seemed to see the Temple and its priests around him, faintly, as one sees an after image, fading even as he tried to hold it. The Lord Khu-ren’s face was the last to disappear and Isar could see his mouth moving, but he could not make out what the words were.

  Gya was shaking his shoulder.

  ‘First light is on its way,’ he said urgently. ‘We should move. We will never be dry and warm until we do.’

  Isar was so dazed and unresponsive, Gya took the initiative and hauled his friend up by the arm and pushed him into the open.

  Isar looked around him, the first greyness of dawn was giving shape slowly and imperceptibly to the landscape. The wind had already dropped and the rain was falling only lightly.

  They gathered their few belongings together, Gya tenderly testing the gut string of his bow and rubbing it with fat from a small pouch, before he was prepared to move.

  Shuddering and shivering with cold, they set off down the hill away from the rising light. When they reached flat ground they started to run, rejoicing in the warmth the exercise gave them.

  The visions Isar had seen had given him courage. He had begun to feel there was no way out of Groth’s dark clutches, but now he knew he was wrong.

  The sun was not dead.

  ‘And even if the sun did die,’ Isar thought, ‘what is the sun but one form of created light? The source of all, the creator, is still there.’

  Groth could only at his most powerful put out the light of one small sun. He could not challenge the whole, for he himself was only a small part of the whole.

  Comforted, Isar began to make plans.

  He saw Gya and himself, the saviours of a whole people, striding down into Na-Groth’s dark domain, challenging him ... Gya felling him with one swift arrow, while Isar of the silver tongue, made speeches to the cowed populace and renewed their faith in the old ways.

  He caught himself smiling as he jogged along.

  He saw his triumphant return home and Deva running to meet him, excited by the stories she had heard of his victory. He saw his mother putting a garland of leaves about his head, and Karne, the great Spear-lord, bowing to him.

  There would be a festival of thanksgiving and Gya and he would be honoured guests, taken to the very heart of the Temple.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ Gya’s voice broke through his dream.

  ‘O ... nothing,’ Isar replied, flushing slightly, glad that Gya could not see into his thoughts.

  ‘I see the rain has soaked into your head and your thoughts are floating in it,’ Gya said sourly. ‘I will have to do the thinking for both of us.’

  This pulled Isar up short.

  ‘I am sorry, friend,’ he said soberly. ‘I was floating as you say, but now I am on dry land. How far do you think we are from Na-Groth?’

  ‘Not far. We had better avoid all tracks and villages.’

  The dim light of a grey damp day was around them. The landscape was sodden and heavy, as though from prolonged weeping.

  ‘Poor earth,’ Isar thought. ‘She feels the tread of Na-Groth’s feet as heavily as the people do.’

  ‘You are thinking again!’ accused Gya.

  Isar had a way of withdrawing into himself from time to time that disturbed Gya. He could not follow and he could not understand. He himself never felt the need to retreat from the world. He was always
present, always eager to sample what it had to offer and to test his skills against it.

  Fear and despair were not feelings that came easily to Gya, though he had known them briefly when his father died. Deep thoughts about the meaning of life were also rare for him.

  He listened with interest to Isar’s description of the Temple and the beliefs that sustained it. He knew there were many in his village who shared these beliefs even though Na-Groth had worked hard and harshly to destroy them. But for his own part he was prepared to leave the ultimate question unanswered and busy himself with matters of more immediacy.

  When he had said this to Isar, his friend had been shocked.

  ‘But you cannot separate the two,’ he had cried. ‘Awareness of the total shape of things affects the way you live your life. A traveller walking through a marsh, treads differently from one climbing a rocky mountain, and a man going nowhere, treads differently from a man going somewhere.’

  Gya could not deny it.

  ‘I will think about it, one day,’ he said, ‘but now all that I can think about is finding Na-Groth.’

  * * * *

  The two young men journeyed on, keeping to the wild places, but always bearing to the west.

  By midday the sun was breaking through the clouds in fitful patches, and their bodies told them that they were hungry.

  Fern’s training had given Isar a wide knowledge of plants, and it was Isar, the dreamer, who provided their meal, while Gya, the hunter, came back empty handed from his search for food.

  ‘I am glad to see you are good for something in this world,’ teased Gya.

  Isar punched him and laughed to see him roll with exaggerated movements and much hilarity down the slope he had just climbed up.

  ‘Catch,’ he called down to him and threw a bundle of edible leaves and roots after him.

  And so it was that Gya was halfway down the hill, and obscured by bushes, when Na-Groth’s men suddenly appeared and seized Isar.

  6

  The Capture

  When Kyra and Khu-ren returned to their home early in the morning after the storm, they found Vann, the healer-priest, with Deva. She was sitting up and sipping broth from her favourite earthenware bowl, made by Kyra when she was a young girl.

  The weariness that made Kyra ache in every limb, lifted the instant she saw her daughter so recovered.

  ‘Deva!’ she cried, and flung her arms around her, tears she had kept back all night welling from her eyes and falling on the girl’s dark hair.

  Khu-ren stood beside them, no less relieved and pleased, though he did not show it quite so openly.

  ‘I have good news for you my love.’ Kyra was smiling through her tears.

  Deva who had coldly held herself back from her mother’s embrace now turned to her, her eyes blazing with the question she dared not ask.

  ‘No. He is not back, but he is safe and we have seen him,’ Kyra said. ‘He has a friend with him. No, I do not know who it is, but there were two young men sheltering from a storm, and one of them was Isar. He saw me for an instant, but the air was too wild with lightning fire for the vision to hold steady. But we know where he is and he knows we are giving him support. Everything will be much easier now.’

  Deva buried her face against her mother’s breast and sobbed.

  ‘I miss him so!’

  ‘I know. It will not be long.’

  Khu-ren took his daughter’s hands and turned her slightly away from her mother.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked quietly, but in a tone that carried authority.

  Deva did not answer.

  ‘Not now my lord,’ Kyra said gently. ‘Not now! Is it not enough that she is back with us?’

  The Lord Khu-ren straightened and looked down upon the girl thoughtfully, and then he drew Kyra aside to speak to her privately.

  ‘It is not good to let her escape to the past all the time. She will never learn to grow with this life and be ready for the next.’

  ‘But surely not now! There will be time enough to discuss these matters with her when Isar is safely home again.’

  Khu-ren’s face looked dark and doubtful.

  ‘Who knows what time we have left,’ he said sombrely. ‘Now is the best time for everything.’

  ‘I beg of you,’ Kyra whispered. ‘She is not strong. See how pale she is.’

  The girl indeed was pale, her black eyes and black hair startling against the pallor of her skin.

  ‘She needs rest,’ Vann now spoke for her, and because Khu-ren had great respect for him as friend and healer, he allowed himself to be persuaded.

  ‘Let her rest then,’ he said briefly. ‘But watch her well and do not let her drift away again.’

  Vann nodded, and wiped the girl’s damp face with a soft cloth he had by him.

  Kyra sat down beside her, enfolding her in her embrace and rocking her slightly backwards and forwards as though she were a very young child again.

  The Lord Khu-ren watched them for a while, his face tender and loving, though there was still a line of anxiety between his brows. Then he left the room and sought sleep for himself elsewhere.

  The weariness that had temporarily left Kyra when she saw that Deva was so much better, returned, and her limbs grew heavy and her eyelids longed to close. Vann, seeing this, gently moved the rugs around the two women so that they were warm and together, and together they drifted into sleep.

  Before he left the chamber Vann leant down and listened to Deva’s breathing. He was content that she was deep in natural sleep and not in trance.

  As they slept it was the mother who slipped back in time, but to memories not far distant from the present, to her life as a child in a far northern community amongst heather and rocks, a circle of tall stones upon a hill which was the testing ground of a friend called Maal, and an enemy called Wardyke.

  At midday the two women woke, Deva forming a question even as Kyra emerged from the dream.

  ‘My lady, who is Maal? I sense great love for him in the way you call upon him in your sleep.’

  Kyra woke slowly, sleep falling from her like soft mist from a hill warmed by the sun. But she seemed to be still part mist, part woman, listening for something, stretching her senses to catch something Deva could not hear.

  Deva waited with patience beside her, but after a while Kyra seemed to stop trying to hear the inaudible and see the invisible.

  ‘Maal was the priest of my village before I came here,’ she said. ‘Karne, Fern and I loved him greatly. He taught us to see in ways we did not think it possible to see, and hear in ways we did not think it possible to hear.’

  There was a sad catch to Kyra’s voice.

  ‘You speak of him in the past,’ Deva said. ‘Did he die?’

  ‘Yes, he died.’

  Kyra was listening again, a frown of concentration gathering on her forehead.

  ‘What is it?’ Deva whispered. ‘What do you hear?’

  ‘I do not know. It is just that ... it may have been the dream that brought him back so vividly to my mind that I think I hear his voice ... or perhaps he brought the dream to me ... He promised me...’ Her voice trailed away in silent memories.

  ‘What did he promise you?’

  ‘He promised to come back to me when I really needed him. And now...’ Kyra stood up with sudden conviction. ‘There could not be a time I needed him more!’

  Deva was wide eyed.

  ‘Do you think he is alive?’

  ‘Alive yes – but on what level I do not know’

  ‘How will you know him if he has come back?’

  ‘I will know,’ Kyra said confidently, and then laughed. ‘He always used to say ‘You will know when the time comes’, and it annoyed me! I always asked for explanations, signs, proofs, but he would never give them to me. And yet he proved right every time. I did know when the right moment had come for things that he foretold. And I know now, somewhere, somehow, he is trying to reach me.’

  Kyra’s beautiful face was
alight with joy and hope.

  ‘I long to meet him,’ said Deva, a shade envious of her mother’s love for him.

  ‘Maybe you will!’ Kyra cried. ‘Come child, let us comb your hair and wash your face. Make yourself bright for the new day. Everything will be better now that Maal is near!’

  * * * *

  Gya watched helplessly as the brutal warriors of Groth beat Isar and dragged him down the other side of the hill and out of sight.

  His first instinct was to seize his bow and his arrow and let fly at them, but foolishly he had laid them down beside Isar when he had returned from the hunt. The men had taken them.

  He knew that it would be hopeless to try to fight unarmed. He was heavily outnumbered.

  He stayed hidden, his heart pounding with frustration, and decided that the only thing he could do was to follow and see where they took Isar.

  It was strange that they had not killed him outright. They must have received orders about him.

  * * * *

  Gya crept as silently and as swiftly as he could around the base of the hill, guided by the sounds the men were making as they crashed through the long grass and the bushes. They were shouting to each other in their guttural foreign tongue and some of them were singing a sombre song.

  Gya came near enough to ascertain that Isar was still with them and still alive, and then he kept well back and out of sight. His thoughts were bitter with regret that he had left his bow unattended.

  He would get it back whatever the cost, and he would rescue his friend!

  But meanwhile he needed patience and skill at keeping hidden. His hunting experience helped him greatly and Na-Groth’s men caught no scent of him.

  * * * *

  After several pauses to drink at streams, and once to terrorize a village and demand food, the group began to climb a steep ridge and make for a cleft that seemed to offer easier passage.

  Gya was still with them, weary and scratched and desperately hungry, but the sight of Isar, bound and staggering and constantly beaten, kept him going.

  Half way up the ridge he realized with dismay that the pass was heavily guarded.

  This gave him pause, and, for a moment, he thought he would have to turn back, but his friend and bow were in the hands of the enemy and were being carried inexorably nearer to the stronghold of the dread Na-Groth. He was determined that he would not desert them.