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Prologue: The Messengers' Tale
(The first story told by Brethren foster parents to their spirit-wards)
This
is the story of the Messengers--of the beginning of our faith and of its
end. It is also our story, the story of the Brethren, whose task it is to
guard the Way of Ârata. You know it already, little one, for some of
it you have lived, and all of it you have learned before, in other incarnations.
But the reborn soul does not know itself at once, and so we tell this tale
each time you open your eyes anew upon the world, that you may remember who
you are.
In the time before time, All that Was and All that
Was Not came together in union, and a million gods were born. Each god went
out to create a world. The god Ârata made our world--Ârata, as
tall as the sky, with skin colored like the heart of flame and eyes and hair
like new gold. To men and women, whom he made last and loved best, he gave
the gift of his own power of creation, so that we could shape anything we
chose. Only the shaping of life did he withhold from us. For if we human
creatures could shape life, we would be gods ourselves.
Eons came and went: the primal age, when everything in existence was perfect,
and Ârata ruled in unbroken communion with all living things. Now,
Ârata was a bright god, for his nature derived from All That Was; but
other gods had more of All That Was Not in them, and these gods made cold,
barren worlds. One of them, the dark god Ârdaxcasa, became jealous
of his brother’s beautiful creation, and decided to take it for himself.
Ârata and Ârdaxcasa fought. One by one the lands were stripped
of life and sank below the waves. At last only our own great land of Galea
remained. There Ârata defeated his Enemy, in a burst of light so powerful
that Ârdaxcasa’s flesh was turned instantly to ash. Only his bones
were left. Ârata buried them, each in a different place, so that the
Enemy should never again be whole.
Then Ârata lay down upon the wasteland the battle had made, to sleep
and heal. He was grievously wounded, and his golden blood poured out around
him, alight with his divinity--if you had been there to look at him, little
one, it would have seemed to you he lay amid a lake of fire. Slowly, slowly,
the ground closed over him, and the earth took on the flame-color of his
skin. That is why, ever since, we have called his resting place the Burning
Land.
As Ârata fell into unconsciousness, the communion between his great
mind and the small minds he had created was broken. Our world was abandoned
to the emptiness of the cosmos. Time began its cruel flow, and death came
into being. It is for this reason that we speak of the time of Ârata’s
slumber as a time of exile.
But there was even more than this to burden humankind. The burst of light
that destroyed Ârdaxcasa’s flesh spread the ash of his being over all
Galea. Every living creature breathed it in. A piece of the Enemy’s cold
dark nature took root in us, beside the warm bright nature Ârata had
given us. Thus evil was born into the world. From that moment, all people
were at war--each man within himself, every man with every other. Even the
earth did battle. Ârata dreamed, and because his nature is creation
his dreams took form. Good things came of that--soft breezes, new plants
and creatures, the Aspects that to the ignorant seem separate gods but in
truth are only Ârata’s memories of his waking self. But dark things
came as well, from Ârata’s dreams of pain--storms and quakes, plagues
and demons, floods and drought. These too Ârata dreamed into being,
in a world that had never known such things.
The ages passed. Ârata slept on. The world sank deep into corruption
and godlessness. Ah, it was a monstrous time, little one--almost as if the
Enemy, and not Ârata, had won the victory. At last the chaos became
so terrible that Ârata could no longer rest. Rising a little way toward
wakefulness, he shaped a summoning dream, and sent it out in search of a
righteous man.
The man it found was Marduspida, a jeweler of the city of Ninyâser
in the kingdom of Arsace. Marduspida had a fine home and a handsome wife
and thirty strong sons and five graceful daughters. He did not wish to leave
all he owned and loved and journey into the Burning Land, as Ârata’s
dream commanded. Six times, out of the flaws that are most deeply rooted
in the human soul, he rejected Ârata’s summons--once from doubt, once
from ignorance, once from greed, once from complacency, once from pride,
and one last time from simple fear. But Ârata’s dream had chosen true.
In the end Marduspida could not deny its call. He bid his wife goodbye, said
farewell to his children, and set off into the Burning Land.
Marduspida walked without ceasing. The food of the gods nourished him, and
the nectar of paradise slaked his thirst. Still the blazing sun beat upon
his head and the hard ground burned his feet and the hot winds seared his
body, and by the time he reached the place where Ârata lay he was scorched
and wounded, worn thin as a shadow. He sank down upon the sands and fell
into a sleep as deep as death.
Ârata came to him then in dreams. For seven days and seven nights Ârata
came, in the form of a man with skin as red as fire, and hair and eyes of
golden flame, and terrible wounds on all his limbs. Ârata gave Marduspida
the wisdom of the universe. He told Marduspida of the path that men and women
must follow during the time of his slumber, to overcome the dark nature of
the Enemy inside them--the path of faith and action we call the Way of Ârata.
He told Marduspida of the glorious promise of his awakening--of the time
of cleansing that will follow, when all living things will rise to be burned
in Ârata’s holy fires, seared clean of the ash that is our birthright
and the darkness we have added to that burden; of the return of the primal
age, when Ârata will rule the earth as he did before, and all creatures
will exist again in pure and perfect bliss.
At last, when the dreaming was finished, Ârata ordered Marduspida to
return to the world, and write down all he had heard in a book to be called
Darxasa,
which in the tongue of the gods means “Book of Waiting”. Then from one of
his thousand wounds he took a drop of his fiery Blood, which the passing
ages had rendered as hard as crystal, and set it on the sands as a sign.
And he said to Marduspida the words that we today call Ârata’s Promise:
You are only the first. Watch always for the next. He will be born out
of a dark time. He will come among you ravaged from the burning lands, bearing
my blood with him. One act of destruction will follow on his coming, and
one of generation. Thus shall you know him. He will bring news of me, and
he will open the way, so that my children may be brought out of exile.
Marduspida woke, and found the shining crystal of the Blood beside him. He
took it up and returned to Arsace, and wrote down all the words that are
in the Darxasa. When he was done he read them to his sons and daughters,
who became his first disciples. Together, Marduspida and his children spread
word of Ârata throughout the kingdoms of Galea, that all men and women
might understand and follow the Way of Ârata. Marduspida became known
as the First Messenger, and his sons and daughters...can you guess, little
one? His sons and daughters became known as the Brethren.
On his deathbed, our father Marduspida bequeathed to us the golden necklace
he had made with his own hands to hold the crystal of Ârata’s Blood,
and bid us guard the Way of Ârata for all our lives. Beside his grave,
we thirty-five swore a solemn covenant: we would
guard for all our lives. We would not allow our souls to fall asleep with
the passing of our mortal flesh, as the souls of ordinary men and women do,
but suffer them to remain perpetually wakeful, born always into new vessels,
so that the world might never lack the guidance of the first faithful.
So it has been ever since. For twelve centuries our souls have been awake,
traveling without cease from one body to the next--a journey that will continue
until Ârata rises, and the primal age blooms again. But every bargain
has two sides, little one. For this long, long life there is a price. When
the age of exile ends, we will end with it. Of all the souls on earth, only
the souls of the Brethren will not rise into the perfection of the new primal
age.
It is not a thing to fear, little one. Does a laborer not grow tired at the
close of day? Is it not sweet, when a task is completed, to lie down and
rest? So it will be for us, when the time comes.
This then is your inheritance. Ârata slumbers still. Humankind waits
on. And we Brethren work, and guide, and guard, and wait--for the coming
of the Next Messenger, for the opening of the way. For the time when we,
like Ârata, may sleep.
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