“One...came to...in the void,” muttered Shen, as the light of One above cleft effortlessly to Two — one bright, one dusk, “Elucian. Sucthul.”
Shadow and light began to swim and weave around each other’s writhing girth — hunting, fleeing — as Kai and Shen stepped beneath the shimmering loop.
“The duality at the heart of our universe — our mortal symbiosis.”
darkened disc dimming prime
The eddies of light and dark began to shift and shape to life.
“Elúcian and Súcthul became aware — formed identities.”
One pure elúcian light reflected off Kai’s gaze —
its slender shining hands outstretched
“Ephaïl.”
— encircled by a cloak of sable súcthul night.
“Déhath.”
shadows’ shifting scourge
The light and shadow each then bled off as three and three along the frieze and sought conflicting stars, spreading out to tell the tale of cyclic Light and enduring Dark. Along their intertwining paths, an eternal celestial dance, the Three and Three concealed and hounded Ephaïl in speeding, spinning orbits round and through each others’ sight, until they rushed and crashed as one across the frieze and splintered reshaped glory into Kai’s ingenuous sight.
“They hid Him. Ephaïl. They hid Him from Déhath, the Three of Li.... His own Three. He was not ready, you see, Salvator. Not ready to face Déhath again. They had to save Him. They....”
Shen’s voice wavered as his eyes flushed widely grey at the transfiguring gleam above. Kai’s dark eyes held fast in light, but sensing Shen’s disquiet, his hand again went out to calm him.
“The Tree,” continued Shen in softening stammers, “There’s the shining Tree. Within the Sucthul shadow. And there below...do you see, Salvator? The One! The Chosen One. ‘The One of rootless doubt who’d seek His shield, and resurrect the icy pulse concealed...One chosen to reveal, the Shield of Ephaïl’.”
Shen breathed in a deeply airless breath, then looked directly at Kai — in pride.
“The prophecy of the One, Salvator.”
Yet Kai remained transfixed by empyrean light as it slowly, steadily swelled to engulf the Shield, and then the One, and finally overwhelmed its Sucthul shadow, sending exultant luminous waves along and through the frieze, and when it seemed as though it would bloat and burst and gush its gleaming innards into space and shower its purifying clearness over one and all, the ancient, steely sun suddenly withdrew behind a charcoal cloud and the entire frieze withered and bled to chilly echoes in dust.
Shen restored, and shook his boiling head in the deafening silence: “This lothlous...grecknous...slithous...WEATHER!!!! I HATE this place. I HATE to be here, to live here. I need...I need LIGHT to live. LIGHT, not THIS!!!!”
Kai again took hold of Shen’s arm; at once he cooled.
“What? The Shield? It’s in the Tree. The other Tree.”
Kai led him towards the very heart of the temple — the snowy marble pool, in which pellucid emerald blues rippled serenely around the ancient, lifeless Tree.
“Where?” continued Shen alone, “No one knows, Salvator. No one. ‘Well hid within the stars’, you see. Not a soul.”
Kai looked down into the silvery plash — his reflection wavered and swam in the light from the oculus above; it shaped a nimbus about his dark, curly mane, and his mirrored wiry wisps of shadowy hair stretched upon the sheen like branches and roots and danced within the shimmer. Shen looked around the temple, his brow furrowing into colour as he noticed a rising sea of white cloaks moving in towards them over the marble as a ring, murmuring, pointing. Kai’s eyes simply widened as he saw the light around his silvery crown intensify and shift.
Such Light is born?
The congregation closed in tighter around Kai, as Shen flustered into a coral blush of panic — a ray of blaze was descending onto Kai from the oculus.
Or can it be assumed?
The sea of white stared up at the sky as the luminescence drifted down towards Kai; they murmured, then shouted, then applauded wildly, as from the heavens towards the centre of the temple descended a figure, a man, in a spectacularly white robe, suspended and carried down in a beam of energy. Shen’s panic turned benignly pale, and he raised a single rainbow of eyebrows behind his translucent skin.
“What a rare honour, Salvator — the High Priest.”
Next chapter — The High Priest
Sunday 20 March 2011
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