‘There is more that you should know,’ Master Matai said as he pressed his finger against one of the symbols inked onto the parchment. ‘The Maitreya’s star, I believe, will burn brightly but not long.’
I looked at Maram as he looked at me. Sometimes decisions are made not in the affirmation of one’s lips but in the silence of the eyes.
‘But we’ll die reaching Hesperu!’ he moaned. ‘Oh, too bad, too bad!’
And with that he hammered his fist on the table behind him hard enough to rattle the teacups and to shake from them a few dark, amber drops. ‘Why can’t I have at least one glass of brandy before I’m reduced to worm’s meat? Are there no spirits in this accursed place?’
‘There are those that you carry inside your hearts,’ Abrasax told him with a smile.
Maram waved his thick hand at Abrasax’s attempt to encourage him, and he turned toward me. ‘Can’t you see it, Val? It’s madness, this new quest of ours, damnable and utter madness!’
‘Then you must be mad, too,’ I told him, ‘to be coming with us.’
‘Am I coming with you? Am I?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Ah, of course I am, damn it! And that’s the hell of it, isn’t it? How could I ever desert you?’
We returned to our original tables then. Abrasax began a long account of how one of the ancient Maitreyas, on another world during the age-old War of the Stone, had sung to a star called Ayasha to keep it from dying in a blaze of light. We drank many cups of tea. Finally, it grew late. Through one of the windows, I saw the stars of the Dragon descending toward the west. And yet Kane still sat spellbound as he listened to Abrasax’s flowing voice, and so did Daj and Estrella. But whereas Kane could remain awake for nights on end, and perhaps longer, the children began yawning with their need for sleep.
‘I think that is enough for one night,’ Abrasax said. He closed the crystal-paged book from which he had been reading. I sheathed my sword, and my companions hid away their gelstei. ‘Tomorrow you must begin preparing for a long journey, and we must help you.’
He turned to look at Atara, Daj and Estrella, and all the rest of us, one by one. At last he rested his gaze on me. ‘I believe with all my heart that you will find the Maitreya, as has been prophesied. And I also believe that what will befall then will be ruled by your heart. Remember, Valashu, creation is everything. It is what we were born for.’
He stood up slowly, and stepped over to the pedestal holding up the cup of silver gelstei. After lifting it with great care, he brought it back to our table and set it down. And then he enjoined us: ‘Escort the Shining One back to us, here, and we shall help him, too. We shall place this in his hands, if not the true gold. And then we shall see who is truly master of the Lightstone.’
After that we went back to our hostels to rest. For hours I lay awake with my hand on the hilt of Alkaladur, by the side of my bed. A bright flame still blazed inside me. I wanted to pass it on like a strengthening elixir to Atara, sleeping in the little house next to mine, and to Estrella, Liljana, and everyone. I couldn’t help hoping that we might bring something beautiful into creation, even though I knew that before us lay an endless road of blood, destruction and death.
We spent the next days resting and preparing for what Maram kept calling our ‘mad quest’. In the warmth of the brightening spring, we feasted on good, solid food to build up our bodies against the trials that would soon come. We tried to strengthen our minds and spirits as well. Master Juwain passed many hours in the school’s library studying maps and reading accounts of the lands that we must cross. Liljana held counsel with Abrasax in an unprecedented effort to combine the resources of the Sisterhood and Brotherhood. Master Nolashar taught Estrella and me secret songs to play on our flutes and drive evil humors away. We all sat in the stone conservatory with Master Virang, who guided us through meditations so as to enliven our auras. This unseen radiance, like an armor woven of light, might protect us against the malice and lies of the Red Dragon – against even cold and hunger and the depredations of our own despair.
After nearly a week of this practice, the other masters joined us in these meditations, and the Grandmaster, too. The Seven brought forth their crystals and used them to quicken our chakras’ fires. As Abrasax told us, this would help open us to the angel fire and greater life.
‘That is the power and purpose of the Great Gelstei,’ he told us one fine morning with the larks singing in the nearby cherry orchard. ‘At least, the purpose of these small stones that we are privileged to keep. We use them with you as we believe the Star People do: in the creation of angels.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Maram said as he patted his overstuffed belly and let loose a rude belch, ‘I am rather like an angel, aren’t I? Five-Horned Maram will become Maram of the Golden Wings. Soon, soon, I know, lesser men will have to bow to me and address me as “Lord Elijin”.’
Abrasax shook his head in reproach for his sarcasm, and told him, ‘You need not worry about taking on that burden just now. The Way is very long – long even for the Star People, and we have rediscovered only part of it.’
He looked at Kane as if in hope that he might say more about this ancient path that human beings walked toward the heavens. But Kane just stared at the conservatory’s stone walls in silence.
‘I must say,’ Maram grumbled out, as he pressed his hand against his belly, solar plexus, heart and throat, ‘that I feel little different than I did before we began this work.’
‘That is because,’ Master Storr chided him, ‘your fires are blocked and trapped within your second chakra.’
At this, Maram shot Master Storr a belligerent look, and wantonly waggled his hips. Master Storr stared back at him in disdain.
Abrasax, however, was kinder. He smiled at Maram and said, ‘Give it time.’
‘Ah, time,’ Maram muttered. ‘How much of it do I have left before the candle burns out?’
He sighed as he stood up and gazed out the conservatory’s window at the setting sun. Then he turned to Abrasax and said, ‘You seem to have had all the time in the world, Grandfather, and yet that hasn’t kept old age from snowing white hair on you, if you’ll forgive me for speaking so bluntly.’
Abrasax smiled at this. ‘I will forgive you, Sar Maram, but things are not always as they seem. Just how old do you think I am?’
Maram gazed at Abrasax, and I could almost hear him mentally subtracting ten years from his assessment in an effort to repay Abrasax’s kindness: ‘Ah, seventy, I should guess.’
Abrasax’s smile widened. He said, ‘I was born in the year that the Red Dragon destroyed the Golden Brotherhood and captured the False Gelstei. That was –’
‘2647!’ Maram cried out. ‘But that is impossible! That would make you a hundred and forty-seven years old!’
‘Please, Sar Maram – a hundred and forty-six,’ Abrasax said with a grin. ‘I won’t have my next birthday until Segadar.’
‘But that is impossible!’ Maram said again. He looked from Abrasax to Kane. ‘Only the Elijin are immortal and –’
‘We of the Seven,’ Abrasax said, interrupting him, ‘have not gained immortality – only longevity. And other things.’
‘Ah, what things?’ Maram asked with great interest.
In answer, Abrasax stepped over to him, and he laid his long, wrinkled hands on Maram’s sides along his chest. And then he lifted him as he might a child, straight up into the air. Maram, although obviously no angel, did for a moment appear to be