One Great Year (19 page)

After a brief moment of confusion, Inti wisely realized what was going on. “You need not fear me,” he soothed, placing a reassuring hand on the man's shoulder. “I want to know where the rocks come from, I don't want to harm you. This will be between us,” he promised.

The guard considered him carefully and answered, “I'll guide you.”

They set off, Inti bursting with curiosity, his irrigation system momentarily forgotten. The pair didn't speak while they hustled the ass along the dusty trail to the city gates. Inti wondered if he was being careless, possibly putting himself in danger, but he intuitively trusted the man.

Before long, they stood outside the low sloping entrance of the prison. The guard realized the enormity of what he was doing. It was a gift, a kindness he was happy to pay Sartaña. He would reunite her with her son. Somehow, despite the danger to himself, he knew it was the right thing to do.

They made the short journey through the corridors looking official and determined despite Inti's limp. The other guards jumped to attention and assumed that the high priest was close behind. When his guide stopped, Inti recognized the door with the eye that had reached out to him so strangely months before, the day of Patha the jaguar's death.

Sartaña stopped working and put her knife and stone behind her at the sound of her door being unlocked. She waited tentatively to see who would enter at such an unexpected time. The familiar face of her guard came around the edge of the door.

The guard stepped aside and Inti, squinting in the dim light to make out the figure, came eye to eye with Sartaña. She was awful, an ugly old crone. Her filthy black hair was streaked with grey and the knobby, ridged scars that patterned her face made her distressing to look at. The guard backed himself out of the chamber and, clicking the door behind him, left them alone. Inti was slightly alarmed to be locked in, even briefly, and he did his best to ignore the overpowering smells that accompanied life in that awful place.

Sartaña gasped with astonishment. She did not move, and more than ever she was tormented by the loss of her tongue. Her inability to speak at that moment was exactly the reason the cruelty had been perpetrated.

“Did you do this?” Inti asked in awe. He held the sphere of the flower of life protectively in his hand.

Sartaña nodded emphatically, smiling her broken, damaged smile.

The room was alive around them. Inti couldn't see her karmic code, but their auras danced and mingled, elated to be reunited. He felt it, the energy, and he went to her. He crouched in front of her. “How?” he asked, his young throat closing with emotion as their eyes locked only paces apart.

She put her hand to her throat and shook her head, indicating to him her inability to speak. His pity for her compounded. She took her stone and blade out from behind her back and held them out to him. He looked at the tool and back at her.

“Who are you?” he asked finally, searching her face.

She took his young hand in hers. He allowed it and did not mind the dirty, cracked frailty of her grasp. Her mind screamed out to him.
My son! Theron!
She sent all of her energy desperately into his.
He doesn't know me!
Sartaña thought in anguish.
Theron doesn't know me!
her Marcus-brain acknowledged painfully. Sartaña maintained her composure and calm demeanor, afraid to scare him away.

“What is this?” he asked, again holding out the stone carved with the seed of life. She couldn't reply. He stared at her, searching her eyes for an answer.

Suddenly, Inti reached out with his free hand and pushed up her ragged sleeve to expose her shoulder. His recognition was immediate. He looked from the flower symbol on her skin to the rock and back at her disfigured face. “No!” he croaked, barely able to breathe. “It's you!” Inti's mind raced.
How is this possible? What does it mean?
The colors around them were frenzied as his conscious emotion joined his unconscious.

Sartaña nodded emphatically, bringing his hand to her lips. Her tears poured freely down her ruined cheeks. Her face was luminous and filled with love.

Inti embraced the frail ghost, and their souls danced and bubbled as their auras mingled, sending pleasant shock waves through them. She felt like a skeleton in his arms, and his concern and sadness for her condition welled up in him. “I thought you were dead. They told me you were dead!” he cried, his tears flowing down his face.

Sartaña just shook her head and held him until the most violent of his sobbing subsided.

“Why?” he asked angrily. “What happened? Why did he send you here?”

Sartaña's joy turned to heartache as she once again imagined her young son mourning her.

“I need answers!” he shouted toward the door. The guard re-entered, unsure that he had done the right thing. He was further alarmed by the vision of the young man before him, so distraught and wild-looking. “You! Guard!” he said, grabbing the man with his free hand, the other hand still tightly clasping the flower-carved stone. “Tell me everything you know!”

“The high priestess is of royal, sacred lineage. Your father claimed her and killed her husband and your half-brother when he conquered this city. You were born one year later. When you were five, your father took over your care and your mother was brought here.”

“Who knows this? Who knows she lives?” Inti demanded through gritted teeth.

“Only the three of us and the high priest,” the guard answered. “He disfigured her and cut out her tongue so that she could never speak against him. I nursed her the best I could, but you see what a mess he made.”

“It is
your
tongue I should have cut out,” interjected Katari's deep menacing voice from behind the guard. In a flash, the point of Katari's spear burst through the startled man's chest. Inti let out a shocked scream as the guard dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. Sartaña and Inti recoiled in horror. “Take him!” Katari demanded, brutally tearing his weapon from the wound. Two guards entered from the corridor obediently and dragged their murdered cohort from the tiny cell, a wide smear of blood following them.

Katari surveyed the Emissaries cowering before him. His power and insight had been compounding daily, and he felt stronger and more infallible than he ever had. His Helghul-brain whirred and catalogued information, always learning and plotting. He would not make the mistake of leaving witnesses in the future.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance!” Katari hissed at Sartaña, raising his bloody spear to strike again.

Inti let out a yelp as his rage exploded, eclipsing him. His reason and self-control disappeared in that moment, and he hurled the cool, hard stone still clenched between his rigid knuckles. In one swift motion the young man had propelled the object at his father, who was only steps away. The rock made a sickening impact with Katari's right temple.

Katari was stunned. He had never imagined that the boy was capable of this, that his son, the spirit of Theron, could surprise him so completely. Katari's inner Helghul-voice howled in reaction, but the injured man only grunted as he slumped first to his knees and then fell, face down in the dirt, dead. Katari's blood ran fast and warm across the floor, his hands empty. The spear had been launched. Sartaña's fingers were wrapped around the unyielding wooden post sticking out of her belly. She thought of Amaru, her first son, who had died the same painful death. Inti dropped to her side, desperate to save her.

I will never leave you
, Sartaña thought, her Marcus-brain reaching out telepathically to Theron, but Inti could not hear.

“I didn't know about you … if only I would have known!” Inti said guiltily, as if he should have known what Katari had done. As if he could have made a difference somehow. Sartaña raised her weak hand to his lips, stopping his apologies. She didn't need them.

The guards returned to the cell as Sartaña's soul invisibly departed. Easily slipping away and upward, her karmic colors separated from Inti's.

Inti had not intended to kill his father, the high priest. He had not intended anything at all. He had merely acted. He had lost control and followed an impulse so overwhelming that he was powerless to stop himself.

Katari's words flooded back to him as the guards knelt above the slain leader. He was now only a shell, an empty sleeve. The spirit that had inhabited his body had disappeared like a shadow at dusk, creeping ever further, wider, thinner until it disappeared.

Inti heard his father's voice in his head: “You will skin many monkeys in life. A ruler must endure much to do what needs to be done,” and he understood that he had done what needed to be done. He had done what was best for the people of Stone-at-Center, but he was filled with remorse.

“Remove him,” Inti commanded, as the guards stared at the young boy holding his dead mother. Katari's lifeless body was dragged away.

The citizens did not grieve for Katari, only for Sartaña. They had learned the truth of the mother's incarceration and, happy to be free of their tyrant king, they had celebrated.

In a religious celebration, Inti was crowned rightful high priest and leader of Stone-at-Center and the surrounding lands. With assistance he led the people into an era of peace, prosperity, spirituality, and contentment. His wisdom was great, and civilization advanced at Stone-at-Center, despite a continued worldwide decent into a darker Age. Theron was a light in a narrow pocket.

The stone carvings had played their part. Even two thousand years later, by then called the Ica stones, they would incite conversation, speculation, and spiritual exploration for those who heard of them.

Marcus's spirit passed on, once more a spark in the Grid, to be judged, to be recycled, and to continue as an Emissary in the world of man.

Present Day

Quinn's message light was flashing when he woke at noon. There was a customer coming to pick up a laptop in an hour and he was in his boxers, unshowered. The blog was taking up more time than he had expected, and he almost always wrote deep into the night, interacting with readers. He switched on his carelessly splattered coffee pot and dug his thumb into his aching neck. Damn computer fatigue. Quinn was muscular and slim and appeared closer to his midthirties than his midforties.

He walked around the apartment, opening the windows to the wind and birds while he brushed his teeth. He listened to the sounds, finding meaning in their simple rhythm and song. There was a list of chores he would likely put off for another day—the recycling was overtaking the kitchen, and it balanced precariously in cardboard and plastic mountains, monopolizing his limited counter space. He didn't have curbside service and he would not add the waste to the dumpster.
Karma
, he heard in his head, and he avoided the pile.

Quinn spit a mouthful of frothy toothpaste into the kitchen sink, sideswiping yesterday's fried egg skillet, and did a quick splash and rinse. He placed his toothbrush on the window sill next to a bamboo shoot thriving in its cloudy glass of water. He poured his coffee and returned to his computer. The screen was filled with the text of Plato's
Republic
. He found it invaluable: a work penned more than two thousand years earlier filled with insights that were still relevant today.

Quinn loved to make people think—in his blog he challenged others to soar beyond their lives to seek understanding and enlightenment, not just chase conspiracy theories and fantasy. The night before he had blogged about enlightenment.

The Emissary
: I have often been asked: What exactly is enlightenment and how do I find it?

Enlightenment is a path, an eternal journey, one that never ends. One must first understand that between this consciousness and the unconscious, unlimited potential beyond mankind's current state of knowledge waits to be awakened.

So we ask: How is our potential awakened? By becoming conscious. By living in a state of awareness and “in the moment” at all times, responsible for our every action and thought.

The signs are all around us, but we cannot see them if our eyes and minds are closed to them. The Universe talks to us in three very simple ways: Synchronicity, Symbols, and Meditation.

Carl Jung coined the term “synchronicity”
⁸
or “meaningful coincidence.” It refers to the nudges to our unconscious in the right direction, seemingly totally unrelated events that are actually messages to us. If you expand your awareness and abate your doubt and skepticism, you will feel and see things 360 degrees with every cell, instead of in tunnel vision through limited and imperfect senses.

Trust your intuition. Synchronicity is what might skeptically be written off as mere coincidence. There are NO coincidences. It may come as a song on the radio with words that feel like they are just for you … a billboard saying “North Star” when you are wondering over and over in your head whether to turn south or north on the highway …. It is seemingly unconnected events that are connected for YOU.

Another way the Universe talks to us is through symbols. Large and small, symbols are the original language of humanity—the thousands of pyramids across the globe, the Sphinx, Stonehenge, the seed of life, the mandala, the yin-yang, vesica piscis, sacred geometry, etc. Symbols are found in art, science, architecture, and mathematics. The Ancients specifically intended to leave a legacy of understanding for future generations. Or, if we accept reincarnation, which I do, FOR THEMSELVES IN THE FUTURE. Every generation wants to pass on their wisdom and seeks to explain the meaning of life.

Meditation is the most important way we reach enlightenment. It has been said that prayer is talking to God and meditation is God talking back. Whether you believe in God, or some other manifestation of a higher power or universal being, Source, or nothing at all, it doesn't matter. Meditation is for everyone. When we quiet our minds, making them open and still, we create a home for consciousness to grow. Nothing can grow in a garden that is so choked with weeds that there is no soil or sunlight left to spare.