The dark flashing shapes of MIGs hurtled over Chong-ho-dong Valley… a scrap of memory from a distant ancestor who had fought in the Korean War…
A sleepy French village slumbered on a spring morning. Chickens clucked and squabbled in the dust of a roadway. Beyond the row of beech trees to the east, the deep-throated thunder of big guns grumbled. The tired, tattered legions of the Kaiser, grimly plodding on towards Paris…
The roar of cannon and the drumming of hooves. Steel sabres flashed in a hot dusty afternoon sun. Behind the bellowing cannon, stolid Russian peasant faces stared in amazement at the cavalrymen as they flew straight into the blaze of the cannon. Red-faced, choleric, shouting, Lord Cardigan led the Light Brigade into the jaws of death…
Now the pace quickened. Faster flew the visions…
The skies above London were crimson. Lines of bent backs crept out of the city over the bridges, bearing hastily-assembled belongings. King Charles and the entire court had left that morning. The Great Fire raged on unchecked…
Wind whipped the painted wooden sign to and fro, creaking and squealing. Rain sleeted against the diamond-paned windows of the old, low-roofed inn. But within the Mermaid, fire roared on the grate and painted huge black shadows across the walls and the nodding, smiling bearded men in throat-ruffs and rain-daubed cloaks who sat listening to Ben Jonson talk. In a distant comer, pale young Edmund Spenser called for mulled ale and bent to scan the verses he had just scribbled…
Swifter—and swifter yet! Like great wings beating on the wind, alternately dark and bright…
A dim rainy morning. Knights in mud-splashed cloaks and rust-smeared mail. Their faces were pale and tense beneath shaggy beards and layers of dirt. Awe and terror was in their eyes and their mouths shaped hoarse oaths as they bent humbly beside the great red-golden lion of a man who lay dead with an arrow hideously protruding from one eye. Harold Godwinson was dead… the Saxon cause was lost forever… and William the Norman would be king. They wept beside the fallen champion, kneeling in the mud…
Howling like madmen, their scrawny bare bodies smeared with blue paint, the Picts swept up against the great wall and came scrambling up in the very teeth of the Roman swords. Lucius Albionus cursed thickly and roared an order. Bugles rang cold and clear and reinforcements sprinted along the wet clay roadway. The battle would be long and fierce, but it would end eventually, the tired old Roman thought. But what’s the use? Hadrian’s Wall will fall in time; even the Empire will fall… why fight and die here in the misty wastes of barbaric Caledonia?…
The flash of a golden helmet in the morning light! Red-cloaked legions swung clanking in tight formation to meet the charge of the bearded savages. Atop his black mare, the Lord Scipio Africanus smiled coldly. He was well pleased. The host of the Carthaginians was crushed; all they had left was the native savages to hurl against the iron strength of Invincible Rome. Soon the glittering African metropolis would fall, and young Rome would triumph, her greatest foe destroyed. The road to Empire lay clear before her… naught could hold her from dominion over the earth…
Night lay, black wings folded, over the frowning ziggurats of ancient Babylon. All slept, the conquered Persians and their bold Macedonian conquerors, sated with the victory feast. But a light burned in the palace window, where a young man scarce more than a boy bent over ancient documents murmuring archivists set before him. He took a swallow of red wine and bent forward again, holding the parchment map closer to the oil lamp whose wavering glow blazed on his golden hair. Aye, this was the route to the Indus … and when the proud Gangarids had knelt before him… on to fabulous Cathay and the very ends of the earth itself… then, surely, Zeus his father would give him a place among the undying Gods, for he had outdone every man who had ever lived… the fires flickered low, but he saw it not. For flesh is weak and the young grow weary swiftly. And young Alexander slept, exhausted, dreaming of bright glory, unaware, as all men are unaware, that he was doomed… Swift now, almost beyond thought, thousands of lives passing in the flicker of an instant…
They bore him in secrecy out of the mud-brick palace and down the reed-bordered river to the secret tomb where all was ready. The rows of little dark men with shaven heads and linen kilts bowed before him as he passed, as a field of grain bows before the wind. Their voices were lifted as one voice as they intoned the quiet, blessed words:
“May he repose in the Western Mountain, and come forth on the earth to see the disc of the Sun, and may the roads be open to the perfect Spirit which is in the Netherworld! May it be granted to him to walk out, to enter and go forth as a living soul, to give offerings to He-who-is-in-the-Other-World, and to present all good things to Re-Horus, to Nekhebt, Lady of Heaven, to Hathor, princess of the Desert, to Osiris, the Great God, to Anubis, Lord of the Sacred Land, that they may grant to him the breathing of the sweet breezes of the North Wind.”
And thus the mummy of Narmer the Lion, he who had first united the Upper and the Lower Lands with the strength of his sword, passed into the hidden tomb. The first Pharaoh of Egypt passed through the shadows into the sunlight of the Gods…
And he came at length into a shining Presence amidst the gloom of the most ancient of memories. Like a shadow of burning gold It hovered against the darkness.
When the voice spoke, it was low and soft as a whisper, But there was strength in it, and unconquerable youth, and a bright vigor that ages of shadow had not dimmed.
“I am Valkyr,” It spake to him softly. “The Lords of Life and Death banished me from Eternity into Time, for that crime of which you will have heard ere now. Thus have I lived through ten thousand million lives, passing from world to world; thus shall I go on forever through innumerable incarnations until I have accomplished the task set for me. Through you, O Kirin, shall I expiate mine ancient sin…”
Here, in the dim shadows of the inmost mind, amongst the shards and tatters of forgotten lives, drowned in the depths of this strange and timeless dream, there could be no amazement. Kirin felt, instead, a boundless wonder. For all his days, he had been host to a God! How strange the thought, and yet, in a way, how very fitting. For was not he, too, a thief?
“I have long since grown weary of the stale monotonies of mortal life,” the Voice went on softly. “Life after life offered, but repetition of the same narrow range of emotions, the same few small senses, the same limitations. A human body is but a sordid prison to one of the Immortals, O Kirin. Hence I submerged myself deep within the mind of my hosts, dreaming of past glory… and of glory to come.”
Did the dim flames beat higher for a moment? Did traces of bygone splendors blaze up within the ghost of the banished divinity? Kirin could not be sure.
“Soon we shall enter the Tower, you and I. I can help you but little, for my strength has ebbed over the aeons of my imprisonment, and I am weary from loss of the strength I have already given unto you, although I grudged it not. Be wary then, O Kirin, and step with care, for I can help you but once more before the end…”
A strange conflict rose within his dreamself. How to explain to that gentle, sorrowful, weary being that he did not want to give up the Medusa to another! How display before that crippled angel who slept within him, the shame of his own greed? Even as he struggled to find the right words, he felt the dream ending, and fought against it…