Dreams of the Compass Rose (22 page)

“
Then you are unworthy,” said the priest. “Turn back. You may not enter.”

Nadir blinked. “Sir, if I may ask, why do you say this? You do not know me at all, so how can you pass judgment on my worthiness?”

“
You may not enter,” said the priest in the same lifeless monotone.

“
But I want to learn!” said Nadir, his eyes taking on a gleam of intensity as he took a step forward into the chamber.

In reciprocation, the priest glided with one fluid movement toward him, just one step, to match the movement of Nadir. And then he stopped again. His dark eyes did not leave those of Nadir.

“
What must I do?” asked Nadir, watching the impassive face of the priest guard, seeing now that it was young and smooth and placid like the surface of the waters in a basin at the doors. And something about the sight of such impassiveness infuriated him.

“
Do what you will,” replied the one who guarded the door. “But you may not pass.”

“
Let me at least speak to your Master Xin An-Dwei, the one who is oldest and wisest in all of the Kingdom in the Middle. Let him make the determination and pronounce judgment upon me!” said Nadir.

“
No,” said the priest impassively. “You may not speak to Master Xin, and you may not pass.”

“
By gods, I will pass!” exclaimed Nadir. “What kind of logic is this, priest? Your words have no good reason and you are unfair in misjudging me! Why do you continue repeating this, and why do you refuse to give me a chance?”

In response there was silence. The priest guard remained motionless and continued to look at him, without blinking.

A sudden gust of anger came to overwhelm Nadir, a mindless elemental feeling. He frowned, pausing in consternation, while possibilities sped before his mind’s eye. In reflex, the fingers of his hand tensed in a grip.

The priest watched his hand, saw the clamping of a fist in peculiar silence. And then he took a step back, bowing, with his own hands held palms together. Then he stepped back again, this time flexing his right, then left knee, and moving his hands in circular arcs in deceptively slow figures of combat. Finally he once again bowed, and stood still and relaxed, his hands at his sides.

“
I don’t want to fight you,” said Nadir. “But if this is what it takes—”

In that instant the priest moved like lightning. A sword was drawn from out of the folds of his orange robes, and he spun it from one hand to the other in ornate dance-like warrior movements that Nadir had never seen in his life. So quick was the sword that it was invisible.

“
Very well . . .” said Nadir through clenched teeth, and he quickly removed his own curved sword from its scabbard, holding it with both hands.

And it was not a second too soon. Because the next instant the priest struck in his direction, and Nadir had to parry impossibly quick multiple strikes, at the same as he was taking steps back from the onslaught.

Never had Nadir moved so fast. He had to use all of his concentration and balance just to parry the sword strikes, and still he had to retreat. Within seconds he found himself backing out the same door through which he had come in the first place. The moment he was outside, the priest quickly disengaged, and then moved backwards and inside, and shut the front doors in Nadir’s face.

Nadir staggered to regain his footing, his heels catching against gravel, then growled in frustration.

And then with a yell of fury, Nadir ran forward brandishing his curved sword and was at the door, pushing it inward, and found himself back inside the empty chamber.

He stopped.

The priest was not there.

But the next instant he felt a breath, a wind, a
something
at the back of his neck, and he whirled around only to see the priest’s sword crashing down on him, and he met the strike with impossible reflex, at the same time jumping wildly back, gulping air.

“
Who are you?” Nadir panted inbetween words. “You are not mortal, for no human man can move like this!”

But the priest said nothing, and instead he continued to approach Nadir, whirling his sword so that it cut the air with a hiss.

Nadir watched him, no longer moving, stilled with amazement, anger, and a sense of fate. And then, just as the other was only a foot away, and within sword reach of him, Nadir straightened, and dropped his sword.

He stood frozen, unflinching, hands at his sides, and felt the hiss of air sliced by a downstroke of the priest’s sword . . . which came down a hairsbreadth away from his neck and also stopped.

“
Why do you drop your sword now?” asked the priest, continuing to hold his sword blade poised at Nadir’s neck. The priest’s voice was calm and placid, and his breath had not even quickened after the violence of their sword exchange.

“
I am not sure . . .” whispered Nadir. “I am not sure why I dropped the sword. Maybe because in that last instant I felt that it was no use to fight you, who are my superior, and I resigned myself to your sense of justice.”

And then Nadir exhaled in relief. “I see that I was right to trust your will. For you did not complete the strike when you could.”

The priest suddenly smiled, and the shape of that smile transformed his face—no longer a placid empty basin of water, but bright and warm. He lowered the sword and with unexpected gentleness touched Nadir on the neck where the blade had rested only moments ago.

“
I am glad it was your choice,” he said. “If you had continued to resist, I would’ve had to kill you, and I do not want to kill yet another good man. Unfortunately we must maintain this test for all those who dare to seek the Secret Temple.”

“
Then what is the nature of this test, exactly?” asked Nadir.

“
It is a test of pride and awareness of one’s limits. Most who come here after all the travails—after having climbed up the stairs to the feet of the Sky Itself—most expect too much as the result of their extraordinary effort up to that point. Thus, they would fight me to their own deaths and never surrender, for they are blinded by their belief in their ability to win.”

“
I did not think I could win,” said Nadir. “I thought nothing. I merely wanted desperately to enter the Secret Temple. But I admit, one more bizarre moment of this and I would have turned away.”

The priest nodded. “Ah yes. There are such also, the ones who come and find me guarding the door, and who turn away simply because they are too much in awe. Very few find in themselves the right amount of balance to try hard enough, but also to know when to give up and be resigned to the truth. Do you know, kind stranger, that this kind of balance, this openness and flexibility in the face of reality, is one of the first steps toward understanding truth?”

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.”

M
aster 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.