THE GREAT CARVED stone towers and spires and stupas of Chandi Maya rose from the flat plain like ancient giants slowly rising to their feet. Built in the old days when the Dharbudsu Kings had ruled over Jayangan, before the coming of the Mujisals from Al Aksara, the Great Desert, Chandi Maya had fallen into disrepair over the centuries but was still an impressive, awe-inspiring place.
There were at least thirty temples in Chandi Maya, linked by a maze of stone avenues. The biggest temple of all stood in the middle of the maze, and this is where Anda Mangil was leading them. Not another soul walked along the great avenues of broken stone; not a sound, except for that of their own footsteps, broke the eerie silence. Dewi and Adi felt uneasy. The silence was almost like a living thing, a waiting thing. They kept close to Anda Mangil. Sometimes he would pause and give a little nod, or a bow, this way and that, in respect to the ancient spirits and Dharbudsu gods whose holy place this was.
They reached the huge central temple, the Temple of the Great Mother. Towering above them, it was a truly splendid sight: Every square centimeter of its surface was carved with scenes from the ancient stories; its yellow-white stone glittered in the sun as if it were made of gold. There were no windows, only a dark doorway. A long, steep flight of stone steps led up to the doorway, and Anda Mangil started up these without hesitation. Dewi followed suit, but Adi, struck with a sudden fright, stared up at the doorway, which looked for all the world like a giant’s open mouth. He had never set eyes on a place like Chandi Maya. The Dharbudsu temples he’d seen back home were cheerful little wooden open-air pavilions, with flags fluttering, and flowers, and incense.
Anda Mangil turned. “Come, Adi,” he said gently. “There is nothing to be afraid of. This is a good place. I can vouch for it.”
Adi felt for the tiny silver heart he wore under his finery. “I hope you are right,” he said with an effort at a light tone, starting up the steps.
As Dewi came closer to the yawning darkness of the doorway, she could sense a presence more and more strongly. There was someone—something—there, she was sure of it. She wanted to talk to Anda Mangil about it, to be reassured, but she could not open her mouth. Her feet just kept moving of their own accord, drawing her up, and up. Anda Mangil reached the doorway, stepped through it, and disappeared, as if a hand had reached out from inside and whipped him in. The hair rose stiffly on the back of her neck; a cold sweat broke out on her brow. She stopped and waited till Adi reached her on the steps. She whispered, “Are you all right?”
“Perfectly,” said Adi, though he looked pale. “Are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I was just waiting for you to catch up.”
Their eyes met. Adi quietly extended a hand to Dewi. “Shall we go in together?” he whispered. Dewi swallowed, nodded. Shyly, she put a hand in his. So, together, they crossed the threshold. Instantly, they were enveloped in darkness. As their eyes began to adjust, they saw Anda Mangil bowing before an altar of plain stone, chanting quietly. He had taken the gifts out of his basket—flowers, fruits, beeswax candles—and laid them on the stone.
In front of him was a beautiful golden statue of the Great Mother, a woman with a fierce but lovely face and many arms. Her many hands held, among other things, fruits and flowers, and skulls and bones. To one side of the altar was another figure, of stone this time: a massive and extraordinarily lifelike statue of a warrior. It had a handsome face under a coiled, tall headdress, armor on much of its body, and a large kris clasped to its breast with both hands. Suddenly it moved, sending flickers of light throughout the temple. So sudden was the movement, so bright the flashes of light in the darkness, that Adi and Dewi had no chance to move or even cry out; they just watched in petrified terror as the stone figure, unclasping its hands, stretched its arms out to either side of it. In one hand, it still grasped the kris. It was the blade that was making those flickers of light.
Dewi and Adi were so frightened that they felt as if they had been turned to stone themselves. The splendid folds of their clothes lay stiff and cold on them; their hearts seemed to have stopped beating. Only their still-joined hands felt even slightly warm.
“Why do you disturb the peace of the Temple of the Great Mother? I am the guardian of the temple, Senopati.” The voice was huge, booming. The face was human and yet not. It stayed within its carapace of stone, and yet the carved cheeks and nose and forehead rippled slightly, the way stone and earth ripple in a quake. The eyes stayed fixed, the expression eternally frozen.
Anda Mangil spoke, calmy, courteously. “Great Lord Senopati, warrior of renown, destroyer of the wicked, we bring gifts for the Great Mother, in the hope she may grant us protection. And we would like your guidance, O Senopati. We are Anda Mangil, Adi, and Dewi, and we seek Snow, Fire, and Sword, to defeat the forces of evil that once more threaten Jayangan.”
The kris flashed once, twice, three times; then Lord Senopati’s great hands brought the dagger down, with great delicacy, onto the altar. The great voice rumbled, “It was right you came here, for I have a warning. Snow, Fire, Sword you seek. These must be found, and held. Without them, you are in very great danger indeed. Your enemy knows of your existence, and of what you seek, and he will search to find you before you can accomplish your task.”
There was a dismayed silence. Then Anda Mangil said, “Our enemy knows what we seek, O Lord?”
“Yes. He will try to find them before you do. And he will try to use them for his own ends. He will try to stop you getting to them.”
“But Lord Senopati, does he know, then, what Snow, Fire, Sword are?”
“No. He does not. But that is even more dangerous. Beware! He will have you followed to see if you find them—and then take them himself.”
“Great Lord,” said Dewi, daring to break in, “how do you know these things that even the spirits do not?”
The great stone warrior turned his head stiffly to face her. “I am not a spirit like the others. They were never human, but I was. I was once a man, and now I live only in this form, for my body has gone to the land of the dead. I am neither fully human nor fully spirit, but a dweller in the shadowlands between, and so I see things neither spirits nor humans see. I meet the ghosts of those who have passed like me into the shadowlands. And from some of these, who have been murdered by the enemy who hunts you, I have learned certain things.”
“O Lord Senopati,” Dewi said, “were any of those who spoke to you named Bapar Wiriyanto or Empu Wesiagi?”
“No,” said Senopati.
“Lord Senopati, are any bearing those names in the shadowlands? If…if they are there, they would just have arrived.”
There was silence; then Senopati said, “There is no one of those names newly arrived in the shadowlands.”
Hope flared in Adi’s and Dewi’s faces. Adi said, “Lord Senopati, did you hear—can you see—can you tell us the nature of what we seek? Are they rings? Are they talismans, or instruments of power?”
“No,” said Senopati. “Snow, Fire, and Sword are to be your companions in this fight, and not just instruments of power. I do not know exactly what or who these companions are. I know the enemy seeks the same things, but I do not know who he is. I can tell you this. When I was alive, I fought the hordes of the Demon King, and living eternally in Chandi Maya was my reward. I have known many wicked men who have fought under the banner of the Demon King. Some chose evil because of their greed, their lust for power, their hunger to destroy. This one shares some of these things. But something else drives him too—something I cannot understand, something that makes him different from the evil men I have known before. This enemy has veiled his face.”
“He is a man, then,” whispered Adi. “He is not a demon.”
“There are worse things even than demons,” boomed Senopati. “Demons are what they are because it is their nature. Men who become demonic through their deliberate embrace of evil are worse still, and far more dangerous.”
“Great Lord Senopati,” said Anda Mangil quietly, after a short silence. “We need your guidance in one more matter—could it be possible that the spirit of Kris Rajadi is bound up with the ring that Adi wears?”
“Kris Rajadi’s spirit is bound to the sky-iron,” growled Senopati. “It does not wander the earth but stays in Kotabunga. It is a different Sword you seek. You must not be fixed in your thoughts.”
“Then, great Lord Senopati, the ring on the hand of my other friend does not bear the spirit of Fire either?”
“It does not bear the spirit of Fire,” rumbled Senopati, “but it may call fire, if the right words are used and there is no other way. As indeed may the other ring. Both are rings of protection, and because you seek protection in the water realms, their power is bound up with the opposite of water, which is fire. Yet they are not, in themselves, what you seek.”
Anda Mangil bowed deeply. “We thank you, O great Lord Senopati.”
“There is nothing to thank me for, Anda Mangil. I am only pleased that I am not altogether forgotten in this world.”
Why, thought Adi suddenly, there is a wistful sadness in Senopati’s voice. “O Lord Senopati, I was afraid to enter this place, but now I am glad,” he said.
“Yes,” said Dewi. “You have been very kind to us, Lord Senopati.”
Senopati let out a strange, scratchy kind of laugh. “Kind! It is a long time since anyone used that word of me. Even in life I was not given that name very often. But it is a good one. I will cherish it, in the long darkness of my stony sleep. Thank you.”
“O Lord Senopati,” cried Dewi, “was it difficult to fight the Demon King when you were alive? Did you know what to do? We are so confused and uncertain, my Lord.”
When Senopati’s voice came again, it was not big and booming, but soft, and touched with memory. “Yes, child, it was difficult indeed. We often did not know what to do. We were afraid, and confused, and sometimes despairing, for the Demon King was strong, and at first we were not. He was full of tricks and made us lose our way a number of times, but we fought because we could not bear to see everything destroyed. We fought because we could not live, otherwise. We could not be slaves.” The voice was fading, fading. They strained to hear it as it became softer and softer. “Do not forget that light and darkness are mixed, that the child comes out from the watery darkness of the mother’s belly into the light, that the sun’s heat can burn all in its path, yet without its distant light, all would die.” The voice had quite faded now, and Senopati was once again a strangely lifelike statue, stone eyes fixed eternally on some point behind those who knelt at the altar, massive hands clasped around the kris on its chest.
They spoke little in the car as they pulled away from Chandi Maya and resumed the journey to Siluman. The gods and heroes of the ancient stories had once seemed so different to them. Yet now, both Adi and Dewi knew that was not the case. Senopati had become a great legend, a great hero, and eventually the guardian of the Temple of the Great Mother, but he had once been a young, confused person. He had not known from the beginning the outcome of his fight with the forces of the Demon King; he had suffered and been afraid, like them. The thought gave them immense comfort.