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‘Oh, doesn’t it? Why not, then?’
‘The lines may have been:
If stayed by puzzlement or pride
Let sacred serpent be your guide.
He cleared his throat as he looked at Liljana, and said, ‘To my order, of course, the sacred serpent and the Kundala are one and the same.’
‘But what if the verses’ maker knew the deeper way of things?’ Liljana asked him. ‘What if his sacred serpent was instead Ouroboros?’
‘Impossible!’ Master Juwain called out.
Now the sun had risen like a red knot of fire almost entirely above the notch. We could not look upon its blazing brilliance.
‘Impossible!’ Master Juwain said again.
He turned around toward the mountain behind us. Although the dawn was lightening it seemed to me to be growing only darker, for our hope of finding our way was quickly evaporating before the fury of the sun.
And then I heard Master Juwain whisper the words that Alphanderry had sung to us on a magical night:
The dazzling heights light deep desire;
Within the heart, a deeper fire.
The road toward heavens’ starry crown
Goes ever up but always down.
‘Back!’ Master Juwain suddenly cried out. He pointed at the mouth of the tunnel and the snow of the mountain around it. The sun’s fiery rays had set the whole of it to glowing. ‘Back, now, before it’s too late!’
He turned his horse to lead him into the tunnel. And Maram shouted, ‘Are you mad? It’s black as night in there! I’m not going back inside unless we find a way to relight the torches!’
I reached out and snatched the reins of his horse from his hand, and followed after Master Juwain. Atara grabbed Maram’s empty hand to pull him after us. Then, quickly, came Liljana, Estrella and Daj. Kane, as usual, guarded our rear.
And so we went back into the tunnel. The moment we set foot within, it came alive. The glassy walls glowed, changed color to a translucent white and then poured forth a milky light. It was more than enough with which to see. There were few features, however, to catch the eye. The tunnel’s floor seemed the same cut-stone road that we had trod before. The air was cold, and lay heavy about us as we pushed on through this long scoop through the earth.
‘Val, I feel sick!’ Maram said to me. ‘My head is spinning, as if I’d drunk too much wine.’
I felt as he did, and so did the others, although they did not complain of it. But there seemed nothing to do except to follow Master Juwain deeper into the cold air of this mysterious tunnel.
And then the air around us was suddenly no longer cold. The walls and ceiling seemed to pulse unnervingly, even if the light they shed was steady and clean. I looked back behind me to reassure Maram that everything would be all right. But even as I opened my mouth to speak to him, his form wavered and dissolved into a spray of tiny lights before coalescing and solidifying again.
‘Oh, Lord!’ Maram called out as he stared at me in amazement. ‘Oh, Lord – let us leave this place as quickly as we can before we all evanesce and there’s nothing left of us forever!’
Just then Altaru let loose a long, bone-chilling whinny. He shook his great head, struck stone with his hoof hard enough to send up sparks and then reared up and beat the air with his hooves. He nearly brained Master Juwain, and it was all I could do to hold onto his reins.
‘Lo, friend!’ I called to him as I stroked his neck. ‘Lo, now!’
The other horses, too, began either to whinny or nicker in disquiet. And Kane called to me: ‘Let’s tie blindfolds around them as we did when we crossed the Ymanir’s bridge over the gorge!’
And as he said, it was done. With our dread working at us like a hot acid, it did not take us long to cut some strips from a bolt of cloth and bind them over the horses’ eyes.
After that, we moved on even more quickly. I tried not to look at Master Juwain’s flickering form, nor that of Maram or the pulsing, hollowed-out walls of the tunnel. I pulled at Altaru’s reins and concentrated on the rhythm of his hooves beating against stone. I tried to ignore those moments when this rhythm broke and my horse’s great hooves seemed to beat against nothing more than air. I did not want to listen to Maram’s complaint that he could find no sign of the bones that littered the tunnel near its entrance. For I had eyes, now, only for its exit. As this circle of light grew larger and brighter, we all broke into a run. Master Juwain was the first of us to breach the tunnel’s mouth and step outside. I followed after him a moment later. And I cried out in awe and delight. The serpent, it seemed, had indeed swallowed its own tail. For spread out below us was not the rugged terrain and long road by which we had originally entered the tunnel but a beautiful green valley. And somewhere, perhaps near its center along the blue river below us, there must stand a collection of old stone buildings that would be the Brotherhood’s ancient school.
8 (#ulink_62cd4222-9ed3-5179-849c-16016ce581e7)
For a long while, however, we stood on a mantle of ground near the tunnel’s mouth looking in vain for this fabled school. Kane set out along the heights to our left to see what he could see, while Master Juwain picked his way along the rocks to our right. They returned to report that they could descry no sign of the school, or indeed, of any human habitation.
‘Perhaps,’ Master Juwain said, pointing at the folded, forested terrain below us, ‘the school is hidden. The lay of the land might conceal it.’
‘Then let us find a better vantage to look for it,’ Kane said.
‘As long as that vantage lies lower and not higher,’ Maram said. ‘It’s damn cold on these heights.’
We began making our way down the rugged slope into the valley. We found a line of clear patches through the trees that might or might not have been part of an ancient path. After an hour, we came out around the curve of a great swell of ground, and we gathered on a long, clear ridge that afforded an excellent view of almost the entire valley. All we could see were trees and empty meadows and the river’s bright blue gleam.
‘Perhaps your Rhymes misled us after all,’ Maram complained to Master Juwain.
Master Juwain’s jaws tightened as he readied a response to Maram’s incessant faithlessness. And then, from below us, through the trees, there came the faint sound of someone singing. I could make out a pleasant melody but none of the words. Although it seemed unlikely that an enemy would cheerfully alert us, Kane and I drew our swords even so.
A few moments later, a small, old man worked his way up the path into view. He wore plain, undyed woolens and leaned upon a shepherd’s crook as if it were a walking staff. I saw that he had the wheat-colored skin and almond eyes of the Sung. Long, thick white hair framed his wrinkled face. Despite his obvious age, he moved with the liveliness of a much younger man.
‘Greetings, strangers!’ he called to us in a rich, melodious voice. ‘You look as if you’ve come a long way.’
His words caused Master Juwain to rub the back of his head as he scrutinized this old man. He said to him, ‘A stranger’s way is always long.’
‘Unless, of course,’ the old man said, smiling, ‘he is no stranger to the Way.’
Now Master Juwain smiled, too, and he bowed to the old man. Having completed the ancient formula by which those of the Brotherhood recognize and greet others of their order in chance encounters in out of the way places, the two of them strode forward to embrace each other. Master Juwain gave his name and those of the rest of us. And the old man presented himself as Master Virang.
‘You did well,’ he told Master Juwain, bowing back to him, ‘to find your way here. My brethren will be eager to learn why you have brought outsiders to our valley.’
He cast a deep, penetrating look at Kane and me, as we faced him with our swords still drawn. I had a sense that he could peel back the layers of my being and nearly read my mind. And Maram said to him, ‘Then this is the Valley of the Sun? We weren’t sure, for we saw nothing that looked like a school. You don’t dwell underground, do you?’
He shuddered as he said this. Since the Ymanir, who might have carved the mysterious tunnel above us, had also built the underground city of Argattha in these same mountains, it seemed a likely surmise.
His question, though, made Master Virang smile. ‘No, we are men, not moles, and so we dwell as most men do.’
‘Dwell where, then?’ Maram asked. ‘I could swear that there isn’t a hut or even an outhouse in all this valley.’
‘Could you?’
Master Virang kept one of his hands inside his pocket as he looked at Maram strangely. Then he looked at me. The space behind my eyes tingled in a way that seemed both pleasant and disturbing. I found myself, of a sudden, able to make out the trees in the distance with a greater clarity. It was as if I had emerged from a pool of blurry water into cold, crisp air.
‘Ah, I could swear it,’ Maram muttered. ‘We’ve looked everywhere.’
‘Indeed?’ Master Virang asked. ‘But did you look down there?’
So saying, he pointed the tip of his staff straight down the slope below us toward the most open part of the valley, where the river ran through its heart. The air overlaying this green, sunny land began to shimmer. And then I gripped my sword in astonishment, for out of the wavering brilliance a few miles away, along the banks of the river, many white, stone buildings appeared. So distinctly did they stand out that it seemed impossible we had failed to perceive them.
‘Sorcery!’ Maram cried out, even more astonished than I. He shook his head at Master Virang, and took a step back from him. ‘You hide your school beneath the veil of illusion!’
Liljana, too, seemed disquieted by the sudden sight of the school – and even more so by Master Virang. In her most acid of voices, she said to him, ‘We had not heard that the masters of the Great White Brotherhood had learned the arts of the Lord of Illusions.’
But Master Virang only matched her scowl with a smile. He said to her, ‘To compel others to see what is not is indeed illusion, and that is forbidden to us, as it is to all men. But to help them apprehend what is – this is true vision and the grace of the One.’
He bowed his head to Liljana and added, ‘Our school is real enough, after all. You are tired and travel-worn – will you accept our hospitality?’
Although he posed this invitation as a question, politely and formally, there could be no doubting what our answer would be. All of us, I thought, bore misgivings as to how the Brotherhood’s school had been hidden from us. Even more, though, we were curious to learn its secrets and ways.
And so Master Virang twirled his staff in his hand as he led us back along the path. He fairly jumped from rock to rock like a mountain goat. The rest of us, trailing our horses, moved more slowly. It took us most of the rest of the morning to hike down into the valley and to come out of the forest onto the school’s grounds, laid out above the river. We walked through apple orchards, ash groves and rose gardens, and fields of rye, oats and barley. The Valley of the Sun was as warm and bright as its name promised, especially near the ides of Ashte with the full bloom of spring greening the land. A ring of great, white mountains entirely surrounded it and guarded it from the worst winds and snow.
This refuge deep within the Nagarshath range was nothing so splendid and magnificent as the Ymanir’s crystal city, Alundil, beneath the Mountain of the Morning Star. But it shone with a quiet beauty and was pervaded by a deep peace. It seemed to exist out of time and to take no part in the ways and wars of the world. We all sensed that it concealed ancient secrets. The two hundred or so Brothers who dwelled here worked hard but happily in getting their sustenance from the land. We passed these simple men dressed in simple woolen tunics, laying to in the fields with hoes or dipping candles or working hot iron in the blacksmith’s shop. Others tended sheep in pastures on the hillsides or attended to the dozen other occupations necessary for the thriving of what amounted to a small town. But the Brothers’ main occupations, as we would learn, remained the ancient disciplines, or callings, of the Great White Brotherhood. And each of these seven callings was exemplified by a revered master, and indeed, by the Grandmaster of the Brotherhood himself.
Master Virang, who proved to be the Meditation Master, helped us to settle into two of the school’s guest houses just above the river. Liljana, Atara and Estrella took up residence in the smaller of them, while the rest of us set up in the other. There, in these steeply-roofed stone hostels that reminded me of the chalets of my home, we spent hours soaking our cold, bruised bodies in hot water and washing away the grime of our journey. It was good to put on fresh tunics, and even better to sit down to a hot meal. Master Virang saw to it that we were served chicken soup and fresh bread for lunch, and cheese and berries, too. He left us alone to eat these heartening foods, but then returned an hour later to spirit away Master Juwain to a private meeting with the Grandmaster.
What they discussed all during that long afternoon we could only wonder. Master Juwain rejoined us only at the end of the day, when we gathered with the entire community of Brothers for a feast in the Great Hall. We were so busy, however, exchanging pleasantries with the curious Brothers that Master Juwain could not find a moment to confer with the rest of us. His face seemed tight and troubled, and I wondered if the Grandmaster had given him ill tidings or perhaps had chastened him for leading our company here.
I did not have to wait long to find out the answers to these questions – and to others that vexed me even more sorely. After the feast, we were summoned to take tea with The Seven, as the Brotherhood’s masters were called. On a clear, lovely night we adjourned to one of the nearby buildings. Here, from time to time, in a little stone conservatory, the Grandmaster came to dwell in solitude or sit with the Music or Meditation Masters, or others with whom he wished to speak. Indeed, the circular space where we met with them had much the air of a meditation chamber. White wool carpets and many cushions covered the floor across its length and breadth. Vases of fresh flowers had been set into recesses built into the walls. These curves of white granite were carved with various symbols: pentagram, gammadion and caduceus; sun and eagle, swan and star. In various places, some ancient artisan had chiselled the Great Serpent in the form of a lightning bolt – and of a dragon swallowing its tail. The twelve pillars supporting the dome above us also showed cut glyphs. The light from the room’s many candles illumined the shapes of the Archer, Ram, Dolphin, and nine other signs of the zodiac. The dome itself was smooth and featureless save for twelve round windows letting in the light of the stars.
This radiance seemed to gather within the hollows of a goldish bowl, set upon a marble pedestal beneath the northernmost window. In size and shape, if not shimmer, the bowl seemed like unto the Lightstone itself. I sensed immediately that it must be a work of silver gelstei, for I felt the silustria of my sword fairly singing to it. It must be, I thought, one of the False Lightstones forged in the Age of Law. Once, in the Library of Khaisham, my friends and I had come across a similar vessel of silver gelstei, shaped and tinted as the Lightstone in a vain attempt to capture its powers. Like all the silver gelstei, though, this cup would resonate with the true gold, and so was still a very great treasure.
The conservatory’s only items of furniture were three low tea tables, inlaid with tiny triangles of lapis, shell and jet, and set with little round tea cups. As my companions and I entered the room, the Grandmaster and his Brothers stood up from behind them to greet us. In Tria I had sat at table with kings, but these seven masters of the Great White Brotherhood seemed possessed of no less presence and authority.
Tallest of the Seven, and the most striking, was the Grandmaster himself. His name was Abrasax, but because the Brothers found it too much of a mouthful to address him as Grandmaster Abrasax, most of them called him, simply, Grandfather.
His age, I thought, was hard to tell. A corona of curly white hair covered his head and flowed in waves down his cheeks and chin to form a rather magnificent beard. His seamed and weathered skin made for rather a stark contrast with it, for it was as brown as a tanned bull’s hide. According to Master Juwain, Abrasax’s father had been a chieftain of the Tukulak tribe and his mother a Karabuk maiden taken captive as concubine. In Abrasax, I thought, gathered the comeliest features of both the Sarni and Karabuk peoples. He had the long, well-shaped head of the Sarni and a solid and symmetrical face. His muscular hands fairly radiated strength; I could easily imagine them working one of the Sarni’s stiff war bows, if not the great bow of Sajagax himself. But his nose flared like a delicate and perfect triangle, and so, I guessed, it must have been with his mother and her kin. His eyes were large and liquid like a horse’s eyes, full of gentleness and grace. And full of wisdom, too. And something else. In the way he looked at me, with sweetness and fire, I had a deep, disturbing sense that he could perceive things in me that others had never seen – not Atara or Kane, or even my mother, father or my own grandfather.
He motioned for me to sit opposite from him at the centermost table. I lowered myself onto a plump cushion, with Master Juwain to my right and Liljana to my left. Master Virang sat to the right of Abrasax, and Master Matai, the Master Diviner, joined us as well. The two other tables were pulled up close to ours, end to end, making for what seemed one long table. Maram and Kane took places at the one to my right, and so, across from them, did Master Okuth and Master Storr. To my left, Atara, Estrella and Daj sat facing Master Yasul and Master Nolashar, the Music Master. I couldn’t help staring at this middling-old man. His hair was cropped short like that of most of the Brothers, but was as straight and black as my own. Too, he had the long nose and black eyes of many of my people. His name and quiet, alert bearing proclaimed him as a Valari warrior, at least by lineage and upbringing. But now, it seemed, he trained with the flute or mandolet instead of the sword, and made music instead of war.
As soon as we all had settled into our places, the doors opened behind us, and six young Brothers entered bearing big, blue pots of tea. They set them down before us, along with smaller pots of cream and bowls full of honey. I took my tea plain, in the Valari way, and so did Master Nolashar. But most of the others set to pouring in cream and stirring their tea with little silver spoons that tinkled against the sides of their cups. The Brotherhood makes use of scores of teas, blended from hundreds of herbs, and the one I first sipped that night was as sweet as cherries, as fiery as brandy, and as cool and bracing as fresh peppermint.
Abrasax waited for the young Brothers to finish their work and leave. He smiled at Daj and Estrella in a kindly way. Then his face fell stern, and he looked at the rest of us, one by one, and most keenly at Master Juwain as he said, ‘I would like, first and foremost, to welcome you all to our school. It has been nearly a hundred years since anyone outside our order has taken refuge here, for our rules are necessarily strict and we do not usually break them. Master Juwain, however, has explained the need that drove him to lead outsiders here, and I am in agreement with his decision, as are the rest of us. As long as you abide by our rules, you may remain as long as you would like.’
His voice was deep and strong and sure of itself. But there was no pride or veiled threat in it, as with a king’s voice, only curiosity and an insistence on the truth. And so, with all the candor that I could summon, I bowed my head to him and said, ‘Thank you, Grandfather. If we could, we would remain in this beautiful place for a year. But as Master Juwain will have told you, we have urgent business elsewhere, and we would ask of you not only your hospitality but your help.’
Abrasax exchanged a quick look with Master Virang, and then Master Storr, a rather stout man with fair, freckled skin and eyes as blue and clear as topaz gems. And then Abrasax said, ‘You shall certainly have our hospitality; as for our help in your quest, we are met here tonight to decide if we can help you, and more, if such help would be wise.’
His obvious doubt concerning us seemed to pierce Maram like a spearpoint, and my prickly friend took a sip of tea, and then muttered, ‘The whole world is about to burn up in dragon fire, and the Masters of the Brotherhood must sit and debate whether they will help us?’
Abrasax just gazed at him. ‘You must understand, Brother Maram, that a great deal is at stake. Indeed, as you say, the whole world.’
‘Please, Grandfather,’ Maram said, ‘I’m a Brother no longer, and you should call me Sar Maram.’
‘All men are brothers,’ Abrasax reminded him, ‘but it will be as you’ve asked. Sar Maram, then.’
Maram nodded his head as if this name pleased him very well – even if Master Storr and a couple of the other masters present clearly disapproved of it. Maram looked around the table at the pots of tea, and I could almost feel his fierce desire that they should contain brandy or other spirits instead.
‘Few men,’ he told Abrasax as he nodded at me, ‘whether they are Brothers or not, have seen what we’ve seen or fought so hard to free Ea from the Red Dragon’s claws.’
‘You have fought hard, it’s true,’ Abrasax agreed. ‘But ferocity at arms, even of will, can never be enough to defeat the Dragon. Even as we speak, he moves to seize his moment. Has Master Juwain told you the tidings?’
‘No,’ Maram grumbled, shaking his head, ‘he hasn’t had the chance.’
‘Evil tidings we’ve had out of Alonia,’ Abrasax told us. ‘Count Dario Narmada is dead, murdered by one of Morjin’s Kallimun. Baron Maruth has proclaimed the Aquantir’s independence, and so with Baron Monteer in Iviendenhall and Duke Parran in Jerolin. In Tria, Breyonan Eriades has allied with the Hastars to hunt down all Narmadas of King Kiritan’s sept.’
Abrasax looked at Atara and said, ‘I’m sorry, Princess.’
Atara turned her grave, beautiful face toward him. ‘I’m sorry, too. My father’s father reconquered the dukedoms and baronies you speak of and made Alonia great again. Count Dario might have held the realm together. No one else is strong enough.’
‘Not even King Kiritan’s only legitimate child?’
Atara touched the white cloth binding her face and said, ‘A woman, and a blind one at that? No, I am Atara Manslayer, now – no one else.’
‘Then it must be said that Alonia is no more.’
Atara laughed bitterly. ‘Morjin will hardly even need to send an army marching north to reduce her to ashes.’
Abrasax massaged the deep creases around his eyes, then said, ‘Galda has fallen, Yarkona and Surrapam, too. In all lands, our schools are being found out and burned down one by one. Our Brothers, put to the sword. And yet the evilest tidings of all have come out of Argattha.’
His words piqued Liljana’s intense interest, and her plump, round face turned toward him as she asked, ‘And how have these tidings come to you, then?’
Abrasax looked deep into her eyes and told her, ‘We will be as forthcoming with you as we hope you will be with us. You see, for a very long time now, we have kept a secret school within Argattha. But not five months ago, it was discovered, and the last of our order there, Brother Songya, was captured and crucified. We will try to re-establish the school, but …’
A silence fell over the tea tables and spread out into the room. I gazed up at the flowers in the stands and the ancient glyphs cut beneath the stone ceiling. The round windows there glistened with starlight.
‘Before Brother Songya died,’ Abrasax went on, ‘he sent word of the excavations beneath the city. There is, as you know, a great earth chakra there – the greatest on Ea. Morjin’s slaves have nearly driven tunnels straight down into the heart of it. The digging has been stopped only by a great seam of quartz that breaks picks and shovels. If Morjin had a firestone, all would be lost. All is nearly lost, as it is.’
‘Do not speak so, Grandfather,’ Master Yasul said to him. The Master Remembrancer was an old man with skin as dark as mahogany and tight little curls of white hair capping his bald head. He might have hailed from Karabuk or Uskudar, but seemed so at home in this quiet room as to have been born here. ‘We still have hope.’
Abrasax picked up his cup to take a long sip of tea. Then he looked around the tables. ‘We must at least act as if there is hope. But I have said that this is a night for openness, and we cannot turn away from the truth. The Red Dragon needs only to gain a little more mastery of the Lightstone to open the great chakra. When its fires break free …’
His voice choked off as he looked at Master Yasul and Master Juwain. Then he said, ‘The first faint flames have already broken free. It cannot be long before he unleashes the Baaloch upon the world.’
At the mention of Morjin’s master, Angra Mainyu, the Great Beast, we all fell into a deep silence as we sipped our tea. Then Master Juwain said to Abrasax: ‘But what of the Maitreya, Grandfather? Isn’t it clear that he must be found and aided so that he can keep the Red Dragon from using the Lightstone?’
Abrasax pulled at his long beard. ‘No, that is not so clear as you might wish. With your help, Valashu Elahad gained the Lightstone only to lose it to the Red Dragon. If we lost the Maitreya as well, then there truly would be no hope.’
At this, I drew in a quick breath and said, ‘If fate leads us to find the Shining One, we will not lose him.’
I stared at Abrasax as he and the other six masters stared back at me.
Abrasax motioned toward Master Matai. He had the soft curls and golden complexion of many Galdans, and his sharp brown eyes seemed to perceive a great deal. And Abrasax said, ‘Our Master Diviner believes that these are the last days of the age, and that the Valkariad is surely near.’
With reverence and longing he spoke the name of that great moment at the end of history when all men and women would ascend to becoming greater beings: Ardun into Star People, and Star People into Elijin, who would take their rightful places as newly crowned Galadin. And the Galadin themselves would become as gods in the glory of a new creation.
‘The Age of Light must be at hand,’ Abrasax said. ‘Either that or the Skardarak, when all the stars shall be put out and it will grow cold and dark forever.’
