And with those words the priest bowed deeply before Nadir, and he said, “Now you may enter beyond the door. Master Xin will speak with you and will take you to the Secret Temple.”
Master Xin was tiny, ancient, and shrivelled, with skin that hung in limp folds over bony limbs, with a clean-shaven hairless skull and sparse white brows over narrow slits of eyes. The eyes were surrounded by an infinite number of wrinkles caused by laughter, and the Master’s feathered lips quivered in a toothless smile even now.
As Nadir bowed before Master Xin, he had the impression that before him was a ball of orange robes draped over nothing but air, and topped by a dislocated wizened head.
“Welcome, my young son,” said Master Xin in a high trembling voice. “So you made it past the guard at the door—good, good!”
They were speaking inside a tiny chamber lit only by a candle, which was just beyond the door that Nadir had had to struggle so much to pass. If this was the inner sanctum, the Secret Temple itself, it certainly didn’t look much more than a closet. After Nadir had waited in this closet-room for several moments, Master Xin had appeared, and begun to talk immediately. And now Master Xin asked Nadir more questions, all the while nodding.
“So you traveled from the desert lands?”
Once again Nadir admitted that his interest in the Secret Temple was incidental, and he confessed his true reasons for being in the Kingdom in the Middle.
“Ah, then you are here because you wish to learn how to better serve!” exclaimed Master Xin, interrupting him.
“Actually, if I could I would not serve any longer,” responded Nadir, lowering his head. “I want to be free of the bonds caused by my childish promise.”
“Is that so?” said Master Xin. “Well then, come along, and we will walk to the Secret Temple, and you can tell me your life story on the way. But be brief, son, for I am old and cannot listen to a life’s worth of events in a life’s span of retelling, for I have only one life of my own and it is near the end.”
And then Master Xin giggled, and opened a small door in one of the walls that Nadir had not noticed.
Bright morning sun struck their eyes, for the door led to the outside. Nadir bent his tall form and followed Master Xin into the sunlight.
They were back in the garden, but this portion of it was on the other side of the monastery walls. The mists had cleared, and overhead the sky streamed blue and the peaks of the great mountains were revealed at last, white and crystalline and blazing in the sun, for they were covered with the powder that Nadir had learned in his journey through this land was called snow, and was the coldest thing he had ever known in his life.
“Is the Secret Temple much farther from here?” asked Nadir.
“It is very near, my son, come along,” said Master Xin, beginning to walk in small quick steps along the terrace and toward a path that led away from this building, through the greenery. Nadir respectfully followed.
They moved along a clean gravel path, on both sides of which were tall verdant bushes and flowering trees with delicate white and rose-shaded blossoms of all shapes and sizes. Looking at them, Nadir was reminded of Egiras and her request. He must not forget to pluck an appropriate flower together with its roots and pack it in soil for the long journey back.
“Hurry now!” said Master Xin, interrupting his thoughts. “The sun is just rising over those distant peaks, and in another moment or so we will have the best view of the Eastern sky over this valley. The light itself will shatter into many colors, for there are still remainders of mist in the air, and you will see colors dance in the wind!”
And as Master Xin spoke thus, they had come to the end of the gravel path, and before them was the green expanse of a gently sloping hill. A small winding stream came down the hill like a serpent of mirror brightness in the sun, and it sounded like the mingling of rushing wind and bells as the waters ran over rocks and light spray scattered just at the edges of the shore. There were small islets and tiny ponds everywhere, some deep and opaque with growth, others clear and transparent against the rocks, and in those ponds moved bright forms of undulating great orange carp and their lesser hybrid golden koi, surfacing through the waters and then disappearing again.
“Ah!” said Master Xin. “Just in time.”
And as if on cue, the sun came to shimmer past a certain outcropping of rock, so that its edge was a bare sliver against the silhouette of the mountain, and it struck the land at a diagonal. Nadir stared and saw lines of sunrays drawn across the air. Where they passed through moist water spray, there were sudden splintered rainbows of light. Rainbows rebounded and hung like cobwebs, and in their iridescence were tiny moths and dragonflies and other creatures that arose over the ponds and the greenery and swirled over the gardens like living dust motes.
“Well, now that you’ve seen it, how do you like it?” asked Master Xin, raising both hands to encompass the scene around them, spreading gnarled fingers and turning palms upward. Nadir breathed in the air of the garden and he smiled. “It is beautiful,” he said. “Perfect with peace. So beautiful that I admit with some shame that I would rather stay here, and not walk with you any farther toward the Secret Temple. Maybe we can pause here a while more?”
“Walk farther? Why, we are here already, my young son. Your heart senses it true,” said Master Xin. “Behold, around you is the Secret Temple. Look around with wide receptive eyes, for this is it.”
“But this is a garden!” exclaimed Nadir.
“What greater Temple is there?” said the Master, narrowing eyes in pleasure against the cool, water-drenched morning wind. “But deep inside you know this already. No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret Temple from prying eyes, somewhere in its heart of hearts, is but a decoy for the masses who need this simple concrete limited thing in their lives. The real Temple is the whole world, and there is nothing as divinely blessed as a blooming growing garden.”
Master Xin paused and looked at Nadir. “So now, Nadir, you know the secret. You can carry this Temple with you always, anywhere you go. And you can worship the gods anywhere where you hear the sound of the wind.”
And in that moment a deep bass tone sounded from a distance behind them, issuing from the walls of the monastery. The echo of the sound resounded low and profound. And then it came again, twice.
“Listen!” said Master Xin. “The gong sends its sound all across the world to unite it in singleminded focus. For while the wind is the natural sound of the world, the gong is the voice of the wind intensified, a single unifying note that fills the Secret Temple and reverberates, building in strength. Notice how the sound is everywhere. . . .”
“Yes,” said Nadir softly. “The sound seems to ring and vibrate in my bones.”
“Good!” said the Master. “This is how you are bound to the Secret Temple. Each reverberation that echoes through you also echoes back upon the rest of the world, back and forth endlessly, until you become inseparable from the living fabric around you.”
Nadir closed his eyes until he heard the echo behind his eyelids, and saw the sound, and then he took in a deep breath.
“Yes! Breathe it!” whispered Master Xin. “The scent of the blooming garden is also allpermeating, and it fills your lungs and then your heart and spirit with heady perfume, and it too is carried on the wind. Breathe deeply so that you will always remember this when you leave us. . . .”
Nadir’s eyes flew open.
“I never want to leave,” he said darkly. “I would rather stay here than return to serve her until she takes all my soul from me and drinks me dry. . . .”
“What is the meaning of servitude, Nadir? To serve is to be strong. By serving you render assistance to one who is weaker than you in one way or another. She needs you, Nadir; go back to her and serve.”
There was a pause of silence as they both listened to the wind and the
final dissipating echoes of the gong.
“But if serving means being stronger than the one you serve, and we serve the gods,” said Nadir suddenly, “then is this not blasphemy? For would it not indicate that we are greater than gods?”
Master Xin smiled.
“Ah, but this is where things are turned upside-down. For in truth, the gods serve us. They are the ones who watch over us like children, allowing us to grow through our own means, and stepping in only to avert the worst kind of disaster. And the greatest evil is not always what we think it is. So often we mortals raise our voices in anger at the gods, at their perceived indifference or injustice, like a child who is denied a favorite toy, when in fact the child is preserved from true harm.”
“How can that be?” said Nadir. “How can death and sorrow and pain and war not be true harm? For the gods never protect us from these horrors. And the gods allow us all to die. Where in that is divine justice?”
Master Xin thought for a moment, and then pointed once again to the panorama before them. “Look at the garden, Nadir. In the garden, some trees die and are uprooted, while others are planted. Some flowers are pruned and plucked, while others are propagated and grafted onto new branches to form new hybrids. Some of these trees and flowers are old, others young, and it makes no difference. But the garden continues, and it is all one thing, that of balance and justice, for every day it is different down to the tiniest leaf and blade of grass, and yet in its sum total it is always the same.
“And thus is the world. If you can sense that you are only one blade of grass, and that you are one part of the garden, then your fate and destiny and will and direction become amplified and at the same time dissolved, for you are all and nothing, the whole garden and a single blade of grass. And whatever happens to you happens to the whole garden, and whatever happens to the garden happens to you. You blend and you remain in eternal motion. It is only when you slow down to consider your separateness, your unique fate, that you fall away from the garden, for it continues to move and grow all around you.”
“I need to think about this,” said Nadir, looking at the jade-green hillside, carpeted with countless blades of grass.
“Think of this for as long as you live,” replied Master Xin. “Indeed, the Secret Temple is maintained by means of thought.”
“You are a great man, Master Xin,” said Nadir with a sigh. “How I wish I had your wisdom and your immediate answers.”
There came high-pitched old laughter.
“My answers are as old as this garden. And I am not what you think,” said Master Xin.
“How so?” asked Nadir.
The old one paused to take in a deep lungful of the wind, then smiled blissfully, closing narrow eyes.
“I was born a girl child, and grew to be a woman,” said Master Xin An-Dwei, as though only now remembering this detail. “I am old—an old woman, and few know it, even here in the monastery of the Secret Temple. And now it matters little and is all the same thing, because with time the distinctions between man and woman grow less and less.”
Nadir stared at the ground in shame at his own blindness and oversight, feeling his dark cheeks grow hot.
“That is another thing you need to learn, that wisdom brings a mixing of the polar opposites, and if you have been born a woman, you become more like a man as you age, while if you have been born a man, you become like a woman. There is no shame in that, no weakness, rather the power of the divine comes to fill you more fully, for the divine is neither man nor woman but both, and the more of both you accept into yourself, the closer to godhood you move.”
“I have so much to learn, Master Xin,” said Nadir softly, his gaze still lingering on the ground in shame.
“Who doesn’t?” Master Xin said smartly, and as Nadir looked up he saw a twinkle of hilarity in her eyes.
“But where to begin?”
“Good question, young son. When new acolytes come to learn from the Temple they are usually told to begin to learn what interests them most. It is a fallacy that there should be a specific order of discovery of truth, because your own natural urge for truth best dictates what you must learn next. Your curiosity and need to know guide you better than anything. So then, what do you want to know above all else? That is where you need to begin.”
“Then I want to know how to move with the impossible swiftness of that priest who guarded the door!” exclaimed Nadir. “I still do not understand how he did it, and I would learn from him this art of combat.”
“I see you like pain. Why is it always like this with all of you young ones? But do not fear, you will have your wish. Stay with us and learn this thing, this pain. And as you do, I will come often and watch you practice,” said Master Xin and started to laugh, and would not stop. Was it only a blink of an eye, or had many moons waxed and waned? Had the rains come and gone, and then the leaves of many colors of fire fallen in the garden, leaving bare branches to be covered with the white cold powder from heaven?
Nadir was not sure. He lived in a dream of fluidity, silence, balanced movement and ascetic control. Days flew by him like gangly cranes or like soft dun-gray sparrows, long and short. And through it all he was slowly changing.
The Secret Temple permeated him with the peace and silence, and had entered him through his pores all the way to his innards.
The garden of jade hues came to him even in dreams, and the gong resounded in the earth and in his bones, until the routine of the monks and priests had become his second heartbeat. Nadir learned pain, and he learned release. And most of all he learned how to tread the fine line between either extreme.
And then all of a sudden one day he woke up.
For a memory of the Princess Egiras came to him, together with old soul-sick constriction and images of the scorching desert sun. There were so many women here in the Kingdom in the Middle who looked like her, beautiful and deathly-pale yellow, with black silk tresses and slanted hidden eyes. And yet, observing them, never was he prompted to remember her who had sent him here.
Instead, what touched him was the sight of a great pale flower with rose-streaked petals that grew alone among the thicket of dark leaves on a bush near the bench where he used to sit every day.
The flower—proud and pristine, a thing of variegated perfection of whiteness interlaced with rose, and yet with petals fine and fragile as rice paper—was surrounded in a bower of intimacy by dark protective foliage.
Simple appeared the deep green leaves, simple and dark and strong. They shielded the delicate splendid blossom from all sides, always nearby yet never touching, never encroaching upon its perfect solitude.
Without the embrace of the strong leaves, the flower would not persist. And this revealed to him in part the nature of his promise.
Nadir knew now that all peace and reverie was shattered, and he had to go back. He had to return to her, and to serve her, and to keep his promise to her. And, as though reinforcing the perfection of his that one thought, a wind swept through the garden around him, and he heard the distant strike of the Temple gong. DREAM NINE
THE COMPASS ROSE
The object floated in a water-filled pool in the exact middle of the world. It had the shape of a four-point star, and its North-South rays were made of peculiar iron ore that aligned itself with the magnetic core of the world, and pointed North. Its East-West rays were made of layers of buoyant cedar and sandalwood covered with resin to protect it from rot, for it floated in a water-filled pool and yet had to last forever, or at least until the gods deigned for the world to end.
The pool of water spanned a man’s height in diameter, and was hewn from the heart of a rock formation sculpted in the semblance of a great rose.
The stone was marble, and the rose sculpture itself reposed in the middle of a grand hall that was in turn the center of the greatest palace the world had ever known. The taqavor who ruled the palace was lord over emperors and kings, and had conquered all the lands around him, to the rim of the horizon.
&
nbsp; His were the wide expanses that faced the rising sun; his were the boundless oceans at its back. His were the lands at the sun’s cold right hand and its fiery left. East, West, North, South.
The words had not existed before. They were newly brought into being by the force of the taqavor’s desire to assign order to the horizon all around him, to anchor that which was uncharted.
Past, Present, Future, Alternate—the realm of other possibilities. Such were the additional ethereal directions superimposed in an infinite array of invisible layers upon the physical ones. And the words to describe them existed but had no life.
And then one day they were all bound together.
The taqavor who ruled the mortal world had assigned his artisans and craftsmen an immense task—to produce one object that would define the whole of his empirastan. Before the artists could conceive the object’s actual shape and function, and seduce it into physical existence, there had to be found a natural equivalent of this object—a shape or form or structure on which it could be modeled.
At first, the artists looked upon the sun itself, and wrought a flat golden shape with a multiplicity of rays extending all around it in a gleaming circle. Then the sculptors took over, and created a golden sphere studded with needles of rays, like a bristling pine-fruit. But the taqavor took one look at the object and scornfully motioned it away with his hand.
“Take this away and create for me a thing not just of beauty but of inner power. For, this is an empty shell I see before me, and it does nothing to remind me of the power of my empirastan.”
The taqavor was no longer young, but he was strong, and luck and most of the gods were on his side. Thus he could still command instant terror in those who served him.