The eagle lifts his questing eye
And wings his way toward sun and sky;
The whale dives deep the ocean’s gloam –
Always seeking, always home.
The world whirls round through day and night;
All things are touched with dark and light;
The dusk befalls on light’s decay;
The dying dark turns night to day.
The One breathes out, creates all things:
The blossoms, birds and star-struck kings;
With every breath all beings yearn
To sail the stars and home return.
The dazzling heights light deep desire;
Within the heart, a deeper fire.
The road toward heavens’ starry crown
Goes ever up but always down.
As Kane put down the mandolet, Alphanderry looked at Master Juwain and smiled.
‘Am I to understand,’ Master Juwain asked him, ‘that these words were intended for me?’
It was one of the glories of Alphanderry’s music that each person listening thought that he sang especially for him.
‘Let’s just say,’ Alphanderry told him, ‘that there might be a sentiment in this song that a master of the Brotherhood would do well to take to heart. Especially if that master guided his companions on a quest through the dark places in the world.’
‘Were you sent here to tell me this?’ Master Juwain asked him.
In answer, Alphanderry’s smile only widened.
‘Who sent you, then? Was it truly the Galadin?’
Now sadness touched Alphanderry’s face, along with the amusement and a deep mystery. And he said to Master Juwain, and to all of us, ‘I wish I could stay to answer your questions. To sing and laugh – and even to eat Liljana’s fine cooking again. Alas, I cannot.’
He looked skyward, where Icesse and Hyanne and the other glittering stars of the Mother’s Necklace had just passed the zenith. In that direction, I thought, lay Ninsun, the dwelling place of the Ieldra – and the light that streamed out of it in the glorre-filled rays of the Golden Band.
‘But if you could remain only a few moments longer,’ Master Juwain persisted, ‘you might tell me if –’
‘I can tell you only what I have,’ Alphanderry said with a brilliant smile. And then he added:
The road toward heavens’ starry crown
Goes ever up but always down.
He reached out to touch Master Juwain’s hand, but this impulsive act served only to brighten Master Juwain’s leathery skin, as with starlight. And then Alphanderry dissolved back into that brilliant whirl of lights we knew as Flick. Only his smile seemed to linger as Flick, in turn, vanished once again into neverness.
‘Ah, how I do miss our little friend,’ Maram said, staring at the dark air.
Kane, I saw, stared too, and his dark eyes wavered as if submerged in water.
‘But I wonder what he meant,’ Maram continued, turning to Master Juwain. ‘His verses are even more a puzzlement than your Way Rhymes.’
Master Juwain held his hands out to the hissing fire. His fingers curled as if grasping at its heat.
‘It is possible,’ he finally said, ‘that Alphanderry sang verses of the true Way Rhymes.’
‘The true Rhymes?’ Maram said.
‘Perhaps I should have said, “the deeper Rhymes”. The higher ones. Just as there are verses that tell the way to many places on Ea, there are those that describe man’s journey toward the One.’
He went on to explain that the path to becoming an Elijin, and so on toward the Galadin and Ieldra, was almost infinitely more difficult than merely finding the Brotherhood’s secret sanctuary.
‘Our order,’ Master Juwain explained, ‘has spent most of ten thousand years trying to learn and teach this way. But we have understood only little, and taught less. The Elijin surely know, the Galadin, too. But they do not speak to us.’
Everyone looked at Kane then. But he sat by the fire as cold and silent as stone.
‘At least,’ Master Juwain went on, ‘the angels do not speak to us, we of Ea. Surely on other worlds, they share with the Star People and the eternal Brotherhood the songs that I have called the true Way Rhymes.’
‘Why are they so favored, then?’ Maram asked, looking up at the sky.
‘It is not that they are favored,’ Master Juwain told him. ‘It is rather that we, of Ea, are not. You see, the true Way Rhymes are perilous to hear. Consider the lesser Rhymes I’ve taught you. If learned incorrectly or in the wrong order, they could lead one off the edge of a cliff. This is even more pertinent of the higher Rhymes that would guide a man on the journey to becoming an Elijin, or an Elijin to becoming a Galadin.’
The fear that flooded into Maram’s face recalled the fall of Angra Mainyu – and that of Morjin.
‘I notice that you say, “guide a man on this journey”,’ Liljana carped at Master Juwain. Her voice was as sharp as one of her cooking knives.
‘It was a figure of speech,’ Master Juwain told her. ‘Of course women must walk the same path as men.’
‘Oh, must we, then?’ Liljana’s soft face shone with the steel buried deep inside her. Then she added, ‘You mean, walk behind men.’
‘No, not at all,’ Master Juwain said. ‘You are to be by our sides.’
‘How gracious of you to accept our company!’
Master Juwain rubbed the back of his neck as he sighed out, ‘I meant only that our way lies onward, together.’
‘Oh, does it really?’
Liljana moved closer to Master Juwain and knelt by his side. She placed her thumb against the tips of her other fingers and held them cocked and pointing at him. From deep inside her throat issued a hissing sound remarkably like that of an adder. And then, quick as any viper, she struck out with a snap of her arm and wrist, touching her pointed fingers against the lower part of Master Juwain’s back.
‘Your way, I think,’ she said to him, ‘is that of the serpent.’
‘And your way is not?’
‘There are serpents and there are serpents,’ she told him. ‘Ours is of the great circle of life, and we name her Ouroboros.’
What followed then, as the fire burnt lower and the night darkened, was a long argument as to the different paths open to man – or to woman. Liljana spoke of the sacred life force that dwelled inside everyone, and of the arts that the Maitriche Telu had found to quicken and deepen it. Master Juwain’s main concern was of transcendence and the way back toward the stars. I did not pretend to follow all the turnings of their contentions and justifications, for there was much in what they said that was esoteric, legalistic and even petty. I understood that their dispute went back to the breaking of the Order of Sisters and Brothers of the Earth long ago in the Age of the Mother. And like siblings of the same family who had set out on different paths