The Fate of Our Union, page 26
Keresaspa allayed her curiosity. “Mithra and Sol are hosting the Ritual Meal, which takes place in this room. By consuming bread and wine, the grapes and wheat of the Uniquely-Created Bull, these initiates are reborn. The man in Mithra’s cap is the Father, the seventh grade; the man in Sol’s crown is the Sun Runner, the sixth; while the man in the lion’s head is the Lion, the fourth.”
Liof stared at its head. “What’s special about the Lions?”
“The initiates of this grade roar like lions, yet their hands and tongues are purified with honey, like the Persians, instead of water, and they must keep them pure of all that’s distressing, harmful, and loathsome. Since they are fire initiates, their rites are accompanied by a fire-related liquid.”
“I like the lion,” Liof said fondly. “I heard he defends the family.”
“In truth, and the lionesses hunt their food.” As they emerged from the sun hatch, Keresaspa roared, “You know how to rrride?”
“Y-yes,” Liof stammered as urban soldiers charged toward them. “My father taught me.”
“This will be your first lesson in warriorhood.” Keresaspa knelt and shaped her hands like a stirrup.
Liof placed her foot in her red palms, grabbed Rostam’s flaxen mane, and swung her opposite leg over his back. Keresaspa leapt in place, mounting her horse behind Liof.
“You’re the driver.” Keresaspa looked into her anxious eyes. “Keep a calm mind that’s in the moment to halt uncertainties and quicken responses.”
“Got it.” Liof urged the golden bay into a gallop.
“Great start.” In Parthian shots, Keresaspa fired arrows at the soldiers hurling javelins behind her horse.
Suddenly an armored soldier ran toward them, aiming his pilum.
Liof quelled her alarm and spurred the horse as a whiz passed her ears. She looked down from the leaping steed to see the soldier pieced by a raven feather. “I did it!”
The Good Shepherd encouraged the lamb. “Your father would be proud!”
ahton found trewa on the praetorium’s wall. “I’m too late.” She’d been painted in wedding garb, holding the governor’s right hand, head down with an austere face. “Is this the last time I’ll see her—this way?” Ahton’s fears couldn’t be veiled. “Is this what I must say when I return to my wife?” As his mind darkened, Ahton noticed a sun amid a clear blue sky in the painting. “Looks like they were married outside, yet the background is only sky as if they were standing on something high above the ground.” Ahton raised his head as if he were trying to see the wedding. “The roof.” He saw a circular hatch in the ceiling.
Ahton turned toward a towering case with countless shelves of legal books. He placed his foot on the first shelf while grabbing the fifth with his hand. Staring at the hatch, he climbed the shelves, unconcerned with the growing distance to the ground. Gripping the top of the forty-ninth shelf, just below the ceiling, he pushed against the hatch, but it wouldn’t budge.
Ahton thrust his hand repeatedly against the hatch, which made the shelf supporting his feet crack from the force. He ceased, yet the shelf continued cracking. “I’m going to fall. And fail.” He heaved a sigh, lowering his head till his eyes leveled with the case’s top. “A scroll.” Between the top shelf and the ceiling lay a scroll. He grabbed the scroll and let it unfurl, having enough knowledge of Latin letters to read a sentence from the text. “The Lion is the key.”
On the side of the hatch, Ahton saw a keyhole. He removed the lion-head knob of the scroll, revealing a key. Hope rushing through him, he inserted the key and turned the lion head, hearing a click. As the shelf began to snap, he lifted the hatch and pulled himself onto the attic floor.
“The gods are with me,” he whispered. In the blackness, Ahton saw a small glow in the distance. Cautiously he walked toward it, holding up his sword as it disappeared. “Who’s there? Show your face!”
The light returned, illuming a face. “Father!”
“Trewa!” The sight of his daughter’s glowing countenance wrought a heavenly joy. Lowering his sword, Ahton ran to Trewa and embraced her under an archway.
She sobbed in his chest, tears running down his chainmail. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“I thought the same.” An enormous weight lifted off Ahton’s mind, his helmet falling as he arced his head over his child. “Where’s your husband?”
She shook her head. “I’m not married.”
Ahton sighed hesitantly. “The painting downstairs tells a different story.”
“That was made prematurely yesterday.” Trewa looked up at her father’s weighted face, her eyes urging his full relief. “—For the actual wedding today.”
“Were you violated in any way?” Ahton met her eyes, holding back for the answer.
“No.” Trewa shuddered. “Though the fear of it haunted me.”
Ahton sank into his daughter, relieved, muscles tense from lingering anger.
“There’s a window here.” As her father stepped back, Trewa held her oil lamp against a wall.
Ahton slid his blade inside a crevasse within the wall, then thrust his arm strength against the hilt. A locking hinge snapped loudly as a hidden window flew open, exposing the blue sky. Trewa breathed the cool air caressing her face. “This was the background for the painting.”
“It’s only a picture, now.” Ahton sighed relief once more, then stuck his head out the window and saw how high they were above ground. “This way.” He grabbed his daughter’s hand and hastened her toward the hatch. “Hold onto me as tight as you can. And bring the lamp.”
“I’ll never let go!” Trewa wrapped her arms and legs around her father’s back, squeezing.
Heart feeling hugged, Ahton climbed down the bookcase with Trewa safe on his back. When they reached the praetorium’s floor, he looked up at the wall of laws, more than a pleb could shake his fist at, then looked down, beckoning Trewa for the lamp. “I hope they have good memories of these bad mandates.” He ignited the lion head on the key scroll and laid it on a shelf. “Everyone out,” Ahton roared. “Fire!”
at the pasture, keresaspa stood with liof near the chariot, waiting as Sunu rode back from the smoking city. Their anticipation turned to disappointment when they realized that Elleandâd was not sitting with his two bags of treasure.
“Where’s the rest of your cargo?” Keresaspa’s heart sank into disillusionment’s depths.
Ahton’s daughter, Liof’s, heart sank too. “Where’s my sister?”
Keresaspa’s horse, Rostam, sank his head in their aura.
“Fatefully,” Sunu feigned dismay. “I couldn’t find her.”
Keresaspa approached Long Ears and shot a burning stare into Sunu’s eyes, tilting her head to talk privately. Away from Liof, Keresaspa spoke heated words in hushed tones. “You’re not being truthful.”
Sunu sneered, frowning down from his horse. “How can you who keeps secrets accuse me of being untruthful?”
“I’ve seen your past.” Keresaspa’s knowing face was severe. “I know you attacked a helpless mother before killing her son’s father. Now you’ll add this to your misdeeds.”
Sunu recoiled guiltily.
“You cannot continue being used; you cannot continue not seeing the user; you must not allow it to remain unseen!” Keresaspa sought his true heart, staring into his storm grays. “You must vanquish your ignorance and conquer your attachment before you go any further.”
Sunu gripped the gold hilt of Rîki’s sword, leaning hard against his bags of gold.
“When the value of a man is based on who he is and not what he has, it is an incentive for him to strive for what he needs: a virtuous character. Otherwise, he will descend to dishonor and death, and everything that gives his life meaning will perish in the coils of narrow-minded materialism.” Keresaspa revealed everything she’d seen, everything she wanted him to know. “You do not want people to think that is all you are capable of; you have much greater value: like when you risked your life to save your brother, when you saved a friend who loves you like a brother, when you saved the twins torn from their father and mother—those are deeds in which you were proud to be seen.”
Sunu’s lips began to quiver, and his eyes began to burn as feelings for these moments and her heartfelt look inside him tugged at his heart.
“Hros is almost here.” Keresaspa saw him galloping in the distance. “Ahton is on his way—if it’s known that you left the helpless daughter you’re committed to helping, it would be a great dishonor.”
Sunu sniffed back his heart, blinking a tear from his eye. “The deed is done.”
“Come with me.” Keresaspa observed the noose in his left hand. He’s abused its use . . .
Sunu wouldn’t budge. “I’m waiting for my men.”
. . . leaving no other choice. Keresaspa snatched the Fetter of Awe, releasing the bags of treasure.
Sunu barked, boiling with rage as he watched them fall, “How dare you!”
Enough listening—it’s time for tough love. Unafraid of the raging sea, Keresaspa cast the Fetter over Sunu’s shoulders and pulled him from his horse. The wolf helm fell from his head; the draco fell from his hand. Sunu tried bucking the Fetter, yet with the strength of Verethraghna who destroys the malice of the Daevas, Keresaspa shepherded him to her.
Sunu bucked in vain as fate dragged him against his will.
Once she’d pulled him onto the chariot, Friund and Hros ran under the yolks and morphed, the former into a white horse and the latter into a gray horse.
“What’s going on?” Sunu watched uneasily. “Where are you taking me?”
Keresaspa whipped the chariot’s reins. “Take us home.”
21
The Whole Truth
on the twice eight-spoked chariot, Keresaspa drove toward the east. Sunu stood beside her, feeling weak and disoriented. Where are my retainers? What happened in our raid? Am I still alive? Surrounded by blue sky and the Fetter of Awe, Sunu reached for wisdom. “What happened?”
“You fell from Glory.” Keresaspa stood at the chariot’s helm behind the twelve-spoked wheel, watching the clouded sun between the galloping gods.
Sunu’s rear felt sore. “I remember falling from a horse.”
“You were flying on your horse when we first met, saving lives with Rufus.” Keresaspa summoned the beautiful memory of flying with him over the mountains. “But when we met again, you were no longer flying or saving but taking without Rufus. So I broke the spell, making you fall from your glorious horse.”
Sunu appeared confused. “I was under a spell?”
“You were,” she affirmed, facing forward at the chariot’s helm. “I couldn’t see who had bespelled you until I found this chariot . . . Then I saw It and Him.”
Sunu felt like a yoked horse. “Is that why I feel drained?”
Half-smiling, Keresaspa faced Sunu. “It wasn’t easy lassoing the furious horse onto this chariot.”
Sunu turned around to see a clear sky above a five-spoked wheel. “Where is the Black Sheep, Rufus?”
“You parted ways in Bohemia.”
“He wasn’t bespelled?”
“No,” Keresaspa remarked, “but he gave a heroic effort and became a warrior endeavoring to break your spell.”
“Now that I’m cured”—Sunu tried breaking the Fetter but couldn’t move his arms—“are you going to set me free?”
Keresaspa watched him struggle. “What does it mean to be free?”
Sunu relaxed his arms and leveled his chin, preparing for a challenge. “Is that a riddle?”
Keresaspa squared her eyes with his. “It’s a test of wisdom.”
“It means no one can control your actions.”
“So if I let you go, stop controlling your actions, you’ll be free?”
Sunu answered as if it was too easy. “Yes.”
“Then you won’t be afflicted by others’ opinions as one captive to emotion?” Keresaspa tightened the Fetter around Sunu’s torso. “You won’t submit to anger when seeing others’ possessions.” He couldn’t wiggle his arms or legs. “You won’t let others’ provocations compel you to fight?”
Sunu strained, less than confident. “I don’t know.”
“You can’t be free if one of these controls your thoughts, words, or deeds.” Keresaspa tested, Fetter in hand, “What does it mean to be free?”
Keresaspa’s sun sprouted Rufus’s seed. “To be unattached,” Sunu affirmed.
Keresaspa whipped the Fetter of Awe from Sunu’s body, freeing his limbs, yet kept the noose in her hand. “Do you know why I like birds?”
Sunu’s grasp was strengthening. “Because they’re not attached to the ground.”
“You’re learning.” She was glad the spell was fading. “When you’re unattached, above the world, you can see the Self.” Keresaspa extended her arms like wings, letting her eyes take in the cosmos. “And find unity.”
Sunu concentrated on a bull-shaped cloud in the distance, clearing his mind of disunifying thoughts.
“The body, mind, and senses are attachments: the body is the soul’s temporal vessel whose rightful purpose is to obtain virtue for the soul’s nourishment. The mind and its higher faculty, the intellect, aim to identify the soul’s nourishing virtue. The senses distract us from our purpose by evoking thoughts of vice, which do not represent our soul, the true Self.”
Sunu intensified his focus on the bull, detaching his body, mind, and senses.
“Sunu the Self is a righteous soul of action, inclined toward just force to stop violence against his brethren and sistren.” Keresaspa placed Sunu’s hands on the chariot’s reins. “Your body is the chariot, intellect the charioteer, mind the reins, senses the horses you control. Your Self is Lord of the Chariot.”
Free and focused on the cloud, Sunu let Keresaspa steer the white and gray steeds down into a gloomy forest; their hooves landed, awakening his senses as they clopped the cold damp earth, then fell silent before a wretched-looking man, lying on reddened grass, a spearhead protruding from the back of his old black tunic.
“Rufus!” Sunu leapt out of the chariot and knelt beside the Stoic’s body. His eyes were closed, and his skin was pale. One of his hands lay on the shaft of his spear; the other lay on a broken bottle, which had cut his hand. Blood had splattered on his tablet over the entry, I endured the sticks and stones, prevailed through evenness and law, but like Cato versus Caesar, the wolf won the war.
Sunu’s mind immediately recalled Rufus’s praise of Cato’s suicide in defiance of Caesar’s power: After keeping the peace and ensuring the common safety of the Roman senators, three hundred Roman businessmen, and the Utican citizenry, Cato, having surpassed Caesar in justice and honesty, refusing to surrender his liberty and dignity, ran his sword into his breast with his injured hand, plucked out his bowels, tore open his wound, and died beside Plato’s dialog on the soul’s immortality.
Sunu pulled the spear from Rufus’s body, laid him back, and lowered his head solemnly. “My intellect knows this is the Fates’ will, but my mind is misjudging it as misfortune, and my body is showing an opinion influenced by the senses.” Sunu’s face flushed, eyes misting at the thought of never hearing his ethical mouth.
Sunu withdrew the Sacred Inextinguishable Fire and willed it to encircle Rufus. Over orange-yellow flames, he raised the copper horse-head Mace of the Chief to consecrate the pyre. “Fate brought us together, two foals running from their fathers, one from the sword, one from the shield. The failure to embrace them and stay together made everything fall apart.
“Like the skeletons of Thunor’s goats lying on their skins, the sacrifice of the peasants lies dead on his cloak, dark as the bereaved, pale as bones, no kin to mourn over his corpse.
“Long-enduring Rufus, whose pains were worse than ‘poor me,’ was uncomplaining like Hercules who cleaned the cattle dung or Thunor who lodged in a goat shed or Jupiter who a goat suckled in a cave. Rufus would rather have these indignities than live in glory.
“The duty-bound goat of the god of oaks sought nothing more than public service and peace among the circles, nothing more than peace of mind and a modest place to rest.
“My witan of iron-spined reason was well aware of the dangers of believing the powers that be, of joining the pack; full well, he knew the wolves would make me one of their sheep, or I’d become a sheep-eating wolf.
“The self-focused stallion disloyal to his friend and family sees the consequence of his pride in the death of the unprideful. Hanging his head over his nobler half, the once ungrateful now appreciates his greatness.”
“His Self is immortal,” Keresaspa consoled, stepping off the chariot, “even if it were out of his vessel.”
Rufus opened his gray eyes. “By Jove, I’m on fire!”
“Thank Jove—you’re alive!” Sunu released a sigh and a tear, slapping Rufus’s flaming tunic into smoldering ash. After subduing the fire, he realized the red on the grass was not blood but wine and that the spear on the ground only pierced Rufus’s tunic, not his breast. “Tell me the story.”
Fully awakened by burning and beating, Rufus recounted through wine breath, drops streaming from his lips like tracks of blood, “I must have fallen. Metaphorically, that is. Physically, I fell in a drunken stupor, smashing the bottle in my hand and piercing my tunic with the spear I used to steady myself during my walk in deep thought.”
“Was it the memory of your parents’ murder? Or the deaths attached to your father’s sword? Bohemian’s ignorance of nature’s laws? Or my inconstancy to manly virtues?” Sunu was used to Rufus being an unshakable rock. “Tell me, I value your opinion, not based on popular opinion.”
“The werewolf’s killings were unstoppable.” He arced his back, disheartened. “Burdened by each of my brethren’s corpses, I lost control. I stopped listening to my father’s voice, which kept me from questioning whether I could have saved my parents from the Wolf’s fire, and I started questioning whether I could have saved my people from the werewolf. I let failure get the best of me, even though it was fated, and started drinking Landscaðo’s wine I’d found in his fortress.”
