DUALITY: The World of Lies (18 page)

The incense burner on the altar was mostly
ash. An antique and finely carved cabinet astride the altar held
more. Dharmaism was the most common religion in the realms and an
influence on Gahre, though he seldom practiced. He remembered more
flashes of the dreadful passage that had led him here. He recalled
praying to Fo, with the desperation of man finding religion on the
verge of death, and the last thing he remembered seeing was a
living statue of Fo opening its eyes him. Based on that, he decided
he had best to pay his respects.

He lit a handful of incense which he held
above his head as he knelt before the altar, bowed, and said “Thank
you, Fo.” He dropped the burning incense into the brass burner and
made his way to the sunlit opening on the other end of the temple.
It exited into a courtyard, with simple wooden benches and walled
in by high roots that left in their gaps openings and paths.
Looking up he could see the massive trunk and branches of the Great
Oak towering over all. He wandered through this rhizome maze under
the warm afternoon sun til he came upon a clearing with a fire
burning neath a raised pot in a simple makeshift brew station.
There he saw a thin, lightly robed and sandaled older man trudging
toward him from the opposite way bearing a hefty bucket of water,
which he set down at once upon sighting Gahre.

Gahre recognized him or at least thought he
did. The wooden statue with mossy feet that had come to life before
him, this was him! They met by the fire at the center of the
encampment. The man seemed amiable and very pleased indeed to see
him.

“Sit, young one, sit! How long have you have
been up and about?”

He spoke with an acute accent, but appeared to
be fluent in Gahre's northern dialect.

“Not long, kind stranger.” Gahre followed his
cue and sat beside the fire.

“I see you are walking normally, young one. I
was concerned, as the injury to your foot was fairly serious. But
between the treatments I administered and your robust life-essence,
it seems you are well into recovery. Have you any abdominal
pain?”

“Yes, I experienced some after drinking
water.”

“You must drink more! I will prepare a
medicinal tea.” He continued to speak as he set about ladling water
into the hanging kettle and searching about for the components for
the brew. “You were struck by a deathly water adder with a
neurotoxin so potent it would kill most men in an hour. I believe
you were under its lethal effects much longer than that. Your
nerves were gravely poisoned and your internal organs suffered much
damage. It took me some while to diagnose, and you were far too
delirious to be of any help. I was able to match the bite marks and
the symptoms to the species of the serpent from a tomb here in this
temple's archives, and which by good fortune this temple held in
its stores the reagents to counteract it.”

“You are doctor, kind stranger?”

“I am a man of medicine, among other
things.”

“I thought you were a Buddha when I came upon
you.”

The man laughed. “No traveler, I
would never lay claim to such an eminent title. I am a seeker of
enlightenment though, and when you found me I was deep in
meditation. I am
Jokhon
, of the southern realms, ascetic and seer. I take it by your
tongue, you are of the region to the north and east of here,
perhaps Tulan or its surrounding territories?”

“Aye, ascetic , I am Gahre of Tulan, Son of
Danu. I don't know how to express my gratitude for the aid you have
given me. Surely you saved my life and that is the measure of my
debt to you.”

The ascetic shrugged. “Please, I do not trade
in favor or debts. You would have done the same for me. And I
believe that it is by no mere chance our paths did cross,
journeyman. Even in the weakened state you arrived to me in, I saw
a magnificent aura about you, of such potency as I've not before
witnessed, that same vital essence from which your body has formed
to such sublime perfection. It was with great enthrallment I plied
my arts to such a specimen. I am overcome with joy that I may now
know your mind. You spoke, you know, dazed in delirium, upon many
topics. Demons you talked of, The World of Lies, Justice, even
Dharma. I could not otherwise make sense of your mutterings lo
these many days, but it gave me an indication of what concerns
occupied the basest regions of your mind.”

Gahre was puzzled. “Many days, ascetic ? Did I
not arrive to you last night?”

The ascetic chuckled. “Bright one, look how
your wounds have healed, well beyond what five days should
accomplish, let alone one!”

Five days seemed hard to believe!

“Ascetic , my recollection is undoubtedly rife
with distortion, but it seems when I first came upon you, you were
a carving of wood with moss and lichen growing over your feet. Yet
here I find you now, a living man.”

“I am seer, young one. I had been planted
there in that spot for months deep in meditation. As you see, these
are the grounds of a Dharma temple, and barracks for the pilgrims
who will come later in the summer season. The rest of the year I am
the lone inhabitant of this place.”

Gahre hardly knew where to begin. “Tell me of
this discipline you cultivated that allows you to reside rooted in
stillness for months on end, alone in the wild, covered by winter
snows and spring moss!”

“Through years of discipline such a state may
be cultivated in the body where metabolism and circulation are
slowed nearly to stasis, not entirely unlike the way a bear
hibernates in the winter. All systems are conserved in an aura of
static energy derived from the habitat the monk meditates within,
essentially becoming as natural a component of that habitat as any
common stone would be. This is called assimilating to nature by way
of mind extension and internal alchemy.”

Gahre had heard tales of such fantastic feats,
but had always taken them to be highly exaggerated. Months on end
without food or water, exposed to the elements. It bordered on the
supernatural.

“You are a Dharma monk, then, yes?”

“Dharma? Well, yes, in my youth I knew I was
destined to be a holy man, and my first foray into wisdom was to
join a monastic order. I followed my calling with vigor, memorizing
the scriptures, performing the chants, and taking my proper place
in the society of my brothers. Yet, something was
wrong...”

“I bet I know, kind one, what that something
was. It's the same corruption that is found in any gathering of men
under any doctrine,” Gahre interjected.

The ascetic looked into him with peaked
curiosity. “Yes, that is a very general yet very apt assessment.
How has your young mind come to such clarity of a universal
truth?”

Gahre relayed something about himself and laid
out the broad strokes of the conflict he had faced with the
authorities before coming here.

“So you are not of The Order?” asked the
ascetic , surprised.

“Quite the contrary, I am at bitter odds with
them, and have vowed to uncover their secrets.”

“That is a dangerous path, young one, but you
seem to have a proclivity for dangerous paths, so I won't attempt
to dissuade you from it. As for The Order and their secrets, there
is a rationale to why they shroud Truth from the masses. But as a
seer, they can't keep anything from me.”

“You are possessed of Forbidden Knowledge
because you see the beyond?” Gahre asked. “What is it that you see,
and by what manner do you see it? By your eyes or by way of your
wisdom?”

“By way of a gift,” the ascetic
answered. “And if you seek wisdom, young one, I will give you
freely what I have of it. I left the monastery and the path of
Dharma, because it led to the same narrow place, of ritual,
routine, chanting, manner of speaking... til you could not tell one
of us monks from another. The Dharma, like all doctrine, is a cone,
wide upon entering yet narrows and becomes ever constricting by its
end. I was conformed, molded, and mind-controlled by it. The
ritual, the prayer, the memes and platitudes, the worldly politics
of the monastery... these were but the husk of that divine truth I
sought in the beginning. Such is my experience with doctrine. From
there I joined a movement of theists and took their system to heart
and prayed to a unitary God, but again, I was left feeling empty
and corrupted by a system of brainwashing, deceit, and subjugation.
Disillusioned I set off on my own to follow the Great Way in
isolation so I might assimilate to the natural world, shedding
behind me all human doctrines and orders in my wake. In this manner
I made true spiritual progress, and through it I came into
knowledge of an ascended master of The Way, one ancient and
enlightened beyond this world, yet in it. That is the way of the
ascended masters, those who slip into such seclusion that they
become like the subtle whisper of a spirit sung in the wind. One
who is not, yet 
is
. So I sought this master that I might gain his
wisdom.”

Gahre was entirely enthralled and urged him to
go on. But the ascetic , seeing that the brew was ready, ladled it
into a stoneware cup and thrust it firmly into Gahre's grasp. “Its
taste is foul and bitter, but you are to drink all of it, this
entire kettle, every drop. When your body tells you it can't bear
to consume another drop, disregard it and force more
down.”

“Aye, Doctor,” Gahre agreed and sipped at the
dark inky substance. He suppressed an immediate and overriding
impulse to spit it out. Instead, he swallowed and sipped again with
a visage of repulsion set upon his face. “Oh, that is truly awful,”
he laughed.

The ascetic laughed with him. “It will aid
your body in restoring your internal organs and damaged nerves back
to a full and complete recovery.”

“This ascended master you sought,” Gahre cued
him back to the tale at hand, “you found him then?”

Shaking his head, the ascetic sighed and went
on. “Nay, young one, I could not endure the trials he set for those
who would have audience with him. It was not unlike that terrible
night when you arrived, dying and delirious from poison, facing
your mortality.... but worse, and it went on and on. I simply could
not endure; my soul lacked the very fiber to do so. When the ordeal
was done however, I found I had been granted a precious gift that I
still hold dear to this day: The Sight.”

“You speak of the Third Eye that can see
beyond our material plane?” Gahre knew enough about it having been
raised in a community steeped in the tradition of the Dharma with
many practitioners among his elders and peers alike.

“Nay, young one, I speak of the Masters Eye,
which sees all spaces of this very plane we dwell in, and without
the limits of our localized vision. I have explored every corner of
this world of ours. It is such a wondrous gift that I may travel
and see the sights of distant lands from wherever I sit. It is
nothing less than a divine power granted by a great
master.”

Gahre was utterly intrigued. He would normally
discount such a fantastic claim, but Jokhon had all the markings of
pious and truthful man. He tried to imagine it: to be able to look
upon anyplace at any distance with only will of mind. And if a
human mind has that capacity, what else could it do? He had so many
questions for this man. He decided to deliver the most essential
first.

“So our world then, it is a sphere as the
cartographers claim?”

“It is undeniably that, a sphere of vibrant
blue ocean and green land, white clouds and beige desert. It is
like a shining glass orb, a magnificent gem held in the cosmos with
no supports, turning and turning, west to east, changing day to
night and back again.”

“You were above the world, in the
heavens?”

“Early on, I delved into the heavens above our
world and saw the sphere of Cearulei Azur, by which our sphere is
dwarfed ten thousand by ten thousand times in scope. I then turned
and eyed the PoleStar North, and I went there and into its searing
white luminosity. It too had a world, but larger and cold and dark
and void of life. From there among the broad and dyed curtains of
the heavens, I ascended to the Four Kings, and they were grander
still, many orders of size larger than our Cearulei. Up and onward
there I passed starworld system after starworld system by the
multitude through the pastel clouds of the cosmos, and then I rose
above those clouds into a space beyond them.”

“The cosmos extends beyond the painted
clouds?”

“Aye, I cannot even convey the scale of it to
you; it is like looking into the very mind of God. I turned and
looked back and saw our multitude of stars were within a painted
cloud, the whole of which was not a speck of dust in the expanse
that surrounded it. Stars by uncountable numbers in all directions
and of all sizes, and I saw that they were part of a swirling city
of stars, shaped as the markings on Fo, multitudes and multitudes
beyond calculation. Where our world was but dust to the cloud, and
that cloud a fleck of dust to our city of stars, so beyond that was
an infinity of swirling star-cities forever in all directions. The
scope of it was more than my mind could fathom, and I was set upon
by madness. I traversed star to star and world to world, dead and
empty worlds, ringed worlds, crystal worlds, worlds of beings crude
like insects, and paradises flawless beyond portrayal. And in those
paradises I saw heavenly beings and I could not bear their gaze,
for they saw me as well, and I was unworthy of that place. My mind
broke down and was flung into vertigo. I tried to find the path
back, but I was lost in the eternity of the cosmos. I wandered in
this state from star to star seeking the painted cloud that
shrouded this world, and then I found one, and I scoured its
multitudes for my dear Cearulei, but I could not find it. In time I
came to see that I had entered an entirely different cloud and left
it and tried to remember the form of the cloud that I had seen
before. I wandered through many, mad and desperate, til I came back
upon one in which I recognized the Four Kings within. And even then
it took me days to find the twin star system of Cearulei and
Rubeli, and this world and my body upon it. I had been gone nearly
a year when I returned to my vessel, and I was on the brink of
death with my muscles eaten away and my skin dry and taught like a
mummy's. It took me months to recover my health, and lesson
learned, I have kept my explorations terrestrially bound ever
since. Partially enlightened, I may be, but there are heights upon
heights I am still as yet unprepared for.”